Home > Consumer Reviews > Compaq Presario 5400US Desktop (1.2-GHz Celeron, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive)

For the available feature (burner and USB ports in the front)it is a good buy at least for what I paid ... I already own a compaq and quiet happy with the basic needs for my kids (school projects & of course downloading songs).

A lot of people feel they need to go out and pay a ton of money for a computer that will do all of the basic stuff most people do. If you are just using a computer to surf the web, do word processing, spreadsheets, and other office stuff then you don't need a high end system. If you want a computer to play graphics intensive games such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament or if you are doing video editing, then you are better off looking at other systems or better yet, building your own since most retail system skimp on the graphics card (on-board, TNT2 or Geforce MX instead of a regular Geforce 3 or 4 or a Radeon 8500 card). At any rate, this computer is just fine for the average user.

I purched this product Thursday of last week. I purched this product at the price of (Tax and all) 1090.00. At Radio Shack in Muscle Shoals, Al. Not very happy at this time, after seeing your cost!

This is an excellent computer for a person just getting into computers. Don't spend $$$ on stuff you do not need. I bought this Compaq for my 6 year old son and it is perfect. This is my third Compaq that I have purchased and they have never given me any problems. If you don't need a 80 gig HD, DVD player, CDR or a very fast CPU, this is the desktop for you.

If you are looking for a basic machine to do a little surfing, some household bookkeeping, and some regular emailing, there's nothing wrong with this Compaq. Certainly, the price isn't bad either. However, it does not include a monitor, which you'll need to buy separately, and it does not include any kind of NIC (network interface card), so if you have or will be having any type of broadband access (DSL, cable or satellite), you'll need to buy not only a modem, but a NIC as well (though some of the newer cable modems will utilize the USB port quite easily). The machine is certainly not set up for gamers either, with very limited graphics capabilities (a result of the low power NVidia card and the Celeron chip's inherent limitations) and mediocre ESS sound. Thanks to the rather small hard drive it would not be ideal for an MP3 collector either, though there is an adequate 8X CD burner included. Anyway, like I said, it's a good, basic machine and if that's your interest, you'll be happy with the unit. I should point out that expanding these Compaqs (a lot like their HP bretheren) is a daunting task; things are tight in the case and adding cards and drives is a challenge. Lastly, Compaq's reliability has been acceptable, though its service has been less so.