Compaq has always put out some sharp looking laptops over the years, and their newest model in the Presario line is no different. The Compaq Presario F730us is an excellent mid-sized reasonably priced dual core system. Powered by the AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-55, this 1.8 GHz processor should be able to hold it's own for many of the functions you'll be using it for. Even the built in NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 video card with 288mb ram. The quality of the 15.4 inch screen which runs at 1280 x 800 is fairly decent as well. The only thing that threw me off was the 1gb of ram in a 2x 512mb dimm setup.

The Presario F730us has plenty of input/output ports. 3 USB , Modem, Ethernet, S-Video, VGA, Headphones, and Microphone. You'll also have 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity so you won't run into any troubles there either. It's built in lightscribe dvd player may be attractive to the media frenzied, but the cost of lightscribe dvds has kept that technology from catching on as much as it should have. The 3 USB ports might be the only thing that could cause an issue, as all it would take is a mouse, external hard drive, and a USB stick to occupy all of your ports. This won't be an issue for most users, but it's definitely something to consider before purchasing it.

At around $600, this system isn't bad for what it will deliver. But at this price range, for the size and specifications that it offers, you can easily find something a little bit heavier or lighter that has more options, in the same price range. I would highly recommend this system to new college students or light computer users who only want one system.

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