I am so excited! We bought a Compaq (basic middle of the road specs) in February, a couple of months after the fire. We have had NOTHING but problems with it. Major problems started recently with the pc going into permanent hibernation mode and not being able to power up for days - it was terrible to say the least. After spending at least 30 to 40 hours on the phone with Compaq/HP over the past month (and experiencing some of the worst customer service ever), they finally gave us a brand new computer with much better specs. Soooo....I have to brag just a bit, LOL. It has:

2.2GHz AMD Athlon processor
1 Gig of DDR Ram (came with 512mb and we added another 512)
GeForce 8x graphics card with 128mb DDR video memory and TV out
Built in front access 9-in-1 memory card reader (for digital camera) so we just have to plug in the memory card and that's it! No cords and all that.
CD-ROM drive
BEST PART - DVD+RW and CD+RW!

We've never had a DVD rewrite before!

Our previous computer only had 128mb ram, 40gb hard drive, and a CDrom. So, needless to say, this was much better. Our new computer flies! It's amazing

I think that HP did well compensating us, and we are very satisfied.

By Mommyathome on Friday, July 9, 2004 - 08:32 pm:

We once purchased a compaq and ended up returning it for a full refund. It was just basic, like you described your first one to be.

I'm glad they got you a new one! I hope it works out to be a great one!

By Amy~moderator on Friday, July 9, 2004 - 08:37 pm:

Robin - you have no idea how much I hope the same thing!

By Bobbie~moderatr on Friday, July 9, 2004 - 09:49 pm:

Good news.. And best of luck..

By Dawnk777 on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 03:35 pm:

You are lucky, Amy! My Dell is 3 years old this month. Since Gary built himself a computer and built Sarah a computer, I have the slowest one in the house (although the specs aren't that bad.) I wish he would build me a new one, too! LOL! 1.3 ghz processor Pentium 4/ 512 MB Ram / cd-rw/dvd player/ ordinary sound card, since the nice one inside it died (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card died - I liked it better, though!) Also, 80 gig hard drive with 8 MB cache. (hard drive is nice!

It's not bad, but DH has 2.4 ghz processor and DD has 2.6 ghz processor! LOL!

It didn't come with a card reader, but we bought one of those. Both DH's work cameras and our personal camera use compact flash, but if someone came to our house with a different one, we have other various slots that could work. My card reader is a small rectanble and we velcroed it to the side of my tower! LOL!