Overall, I have to say that I found the compaq to be a good laptop. It handles well and has a fair amount of storage and RAM. However, like many other laptops made my HP (Compaq) it has serious flaws reguarding battery life and overheating...

Con's:

*The battery life: realistically, I could only ever get about 2 hours out of this laptop when perfoming the kind of tasks that it is marketed to perform (music, video, internet).... this isn't really portability.... in my honest opinion the compaq has to be plugged into the power source to be of any real use for susatained periods of time
*Overheating: Compaq and HP are well known for having "problems" with their laptops overheating... For a month or two you;ll wonder what the hell im going on about.. however after a while of use you'll begin to notice that the base of the laptop becomes ridicuously hot... to the point of pain to touch.
*The Screen: This laptop, like many others has a hi-gloss screen which is useless when near any source of bright light.

Pro's:

*Memory: the memory is suitable for most users, whilst it's not as big as some of the newer high end models have, it certainly has sufficient for most home users who arn't going to have terrabites of video
*Features: the compaq has a fair deal of pre-installed software on it. Depending on whee you buy from, Mine had trials of microsoft office, norton 360 and some games.... useful to be able to use out of the box and then deal with buying full versions later

OVERALL: I would say that, for the price, there are plenty of better options than this compaq...... I have now switched to a Dell and an Acer, both of which have far better battery lifes and do not suffer from overheating... even when left standing all day .