Compaq Presario 5000

WHAT'S HOT: The Presario 5000 is a good-looking, well-designed starter PC for families. Our review unit came with translucent blue accent panels (and a coupon for one of four other replacement colors, your choice). Two of the system's four USB ports are mounted conveniently on the front of the case, behind a translucent, milk-white door, and the lower accent panel folds down to reveal storage for five CDs. With the bottom panel open, you can snap off the upper accent panel to access the four externally accessible drive bays (one of which is free for expansion). You can easily slide the drives out the front by squeezing two tabs that lock each one into place.

Beginners will appreciate the color setup poster and the novice-oriented manual that describes PC and Internet basics; the book also provides a thorough troubleshooting table, but only rudimentary information on upgrade options. Also included is a "My Presario--Learning More" CD with animated, narrated tutorials and links to Portable Document Format user-manual pages with additional details.

WHAT'S NOT: Though this Presario is clearly not designed as a high-performance PC, we were nonetheless disappointed with this Duron-900 equipped system's PC WorldBench 2000 score of 138, which lags behind the score of the only other system we've tested with that processor and 128MB of RAM by 4 points.

While the side panel pops off easily without tools, it requires some jiggering to slide back into place. Would-be upgraders who do open the case will have to navigate through the power wires and drive cables that hang over the CPU cooling fan and the RAM slots. And you'll have a very hard time removing any of the PCI cards for upgrades if your system comes as our review unit did: The cards were anchored with screws that require a Torx screwdriver--not a common household item.

WHAT ELSE: Compaq's 17-inch FS740 monitor (which includes a built-in microphone) displayed slightly blurry 12-point text at 1024 by 768 resolution but rendered good color in our image tests. Movies looked sharp and bright in our DVD playback exercise. The monitor-mounted JBL Platinum Series satellite speakers (driven by an integrated SoundMax audio subsystem) delivered clear, reasonably strong sound. Equipped with an NVidia GeForce2 MX-based graphics card, this Presario posted middle-of-the-road frame-rate scores in our graphics tests. An 12X/4X/32X CD-RW drive provides backup and music CD-burning capabilities.

The Compaq USB keyboard is jam-packed with 18 hot-keys, including Internet shortcut buttons, one programmable button for launching an application, and CD and DVD playback controls. Meanwhile, the standard keys offer a little too much resistance and didn't feel very solid under our fingers.

Buyers can configure Presario models with numbers ending in three zeros--such as this unit--on Compaq's Web site. Other models, such as the 5009CL or 5011CL, are sold in retail stores with set configurations. Compaq also offers preconfigured and user-configurable models of the Presario 5000 series with Pentium III, Celeron, and Athlon processors.

UPSHOT: This Presario 5000 is an attractive starter system for basic e-mail and Web surfing or for light-duty home-office chores, but intermediate or advanced PC jockeys should look into beefier Pentium- or Athlon-based models.

SUMMARY

Compaq Presario 5000 PC WorldBench 2000 score of 138, Duron-900 CPU, 128MB of SDRAM, 64KB L2 cache, Windows Me, 40GB hard drive, 16X DVD-ROM drive, 12X/4X/32X CD-RW drive, Compaq NVidia GeForce2 MX graphics card with 32MB of SDRAM, 17-inch Compaq FS740 monitor, integrated sound, JBL Platinum Series speakers, V.90 modem, network adapter, midsize tower case, Microsoft Word 2000, Quicken 2001 New User Edition. One-year parts and labor warranty; free unlimited 24-hour tech support. $1310 800/888-0220 www.compaq.com