INTRODUCTION:

One of the marvels of modern computing technology, laptops (or notebooks) have become, ore a necessity rather than a luxury. Thankfully, laptops have also gotten quite affordable, with brand new budget models from reputable brands such as HP Compaq and Acer coming in below the RM2K point, and with respectable specifications to boot.

No longer do so called budget laptops come only with a tiny fraction of the RAM, hard disk space and processor specs of mainstream models, and some even come with passably game-able integrated graphics engines in place of the barely usable Intel GMAs. And the build qualities of budget laptops have also improved much in the last few years.  No longer are you stuck with budget laptops that actually feel and look cheap.

So, there I was looking at the budget laptop line, trying to get a new laptop for a friend with a given budget of around RM2,000. Soon I found myself awashed with choices from Acer, ASUS, HP Compaq, BenQ and a couple of other local brands. But as the laptop I was supposed to buy had to come with gameable graphics (read: no Intel GMAs), that dropped quite a few brands from the list, leaving me with only the Acer Aspire 4520  and the HP Compaq Presario V3614au, both costing RM1,999.

The technical differences between the two were not quite that substantial (Acer Aspire: 2X 1.8GHz, webcam, nVidia 7000M; HP Compaq Presario: 2X 1.9GHz, no webcam, nVidia 7150), but as the HP Compaq had a design that was much more pleasing to my friend’s eyes (and he didn’t need a built in webcam), we decided to get the Presario, which he later agreed to let me write this review on.

SPECS:

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