I purchased a Pro-Star M570TU which is a Clevo laptop. If you want a Clevo laptop do not purchase from Pro-Star go with another company. The Pro-star tech. support is non-existent. They never update their drivers. They will not supply any Bios updates. I had to contact one of their competitors to get any useful information on my laptop. It seems once they have your money they could care less if your laptop keeps working. The main tech. service manager is just downright rude and unhelpful and a few other words that are not appropriate for a review. The Clevo laptop is OK but as soon as the drivers are outdated you're out of luck with Pro-Star.

i've have a prostar 8834/888ES now fully loaded with duel 80 gig hard drives and dvd burner etc. and the biggest thing i have found with the laptop is the fans on the bottom of the computer will get plug under the cover where it blow air accross the heat sink and cause the processor to get very hot and can cause problem if not cleaned about every 3-4 months it is not hard to do take the cover off and only remove the screws holding down the heat sink they are on springs so take caution when unscrewing them so you dont loose them, lift the heat sink off and remove the dust and hair that collects on it and you will have alot cooler running and less prone to problems i have own mine now for almost 3 years with only one problem in the first month having to replace my power supplie as it failed after only haveing it for 3 weeks which if you know anything about electronic devices they will usually fail in the first month or so specially if you run them thru there paces running hard close to full capasity if they are gonna fail they will do so. but if you keep this laptop clean and remember to run antivirus and firewall and adaware and spybot s&d and keep them up to date your system should last you a long time. just wishing for better battery life with all the features LOL  

I payed extra for extended warranty and after one and a half years can't get the screen fixed through philips magnavox, when I called prostar to see if I could some help honoring warranty they tried to sell me another monitor. I had tosnd the computer in already about two months after I got it. Have had problems with the pci card slot eject button, and the speaker/headphone jack. The DVD player does not play DVD's that will play on friends computers and home DVD players. I payed extra for a mid to high level computer system at the time, and also a three year extended warranty for a computer that can't be used without an external monitor. I've had the computer for 18 months and have had problems with it constantly.

1 year and 1 week after I bought my Pro-Star 8854, it stopped booting. I got an RMA, shipped it to xtremenotebooks (the reseller) who had it for 2 weeks before shipping it to Pro-Star who had it for another 2 weeks. They tell me the motherboard needs replacing. They fix it and ship it back in a crappy old box with popcorn for protection. A month later, it stops booting again. Return it again. This time they say a RAM module is bad. Replaced, returned, this time in an even WORSE box. It works for a week, then stops booting AGAIN. This time, I ship it back and they tell me that the CPU has become unseated and a pin on it is bent ... and the only way for that to happen is if I had tampered with it. Xtremenotebooks refuses to pay for the repair (I'm out $150 so far in shipping charges) and are even refusing to pay for shipping it back to me!  
My church pastor has had 2 faulty pro-stars, my father-in-law has returned his twice, and our church media department has returned their Pro-Star. Each time they return the unit on an RMA, it comes back badly protected in a box that is NOT the one you shipped it in. Their repair and return practices are questionable, their support terrible. DO NOT BUY FROM THEM!

I bought a ProStar 8250 4 years ago and it's been great. As a result of that experience, I recently bought a ProStar 8834 without bothering to look at other makes. I'm impressed with its price and features. It was shipped and received on schedule. I've had a number of questions about its operation and have received fast and helpful answers by e-mail. I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever.

I purchased a pro-star 8834. This is a great laptop in many ways and I am happy with it for the most part. There are some exceptions though. After a few months the lettering started wearing off of the keys. They replaced the first 5 or 6 keys telling me that they were doing me a favor since they were not covered under the warranty. Then after i asked for the 8th key they tried to tell me this would be the last one they would replace. The email tech support seemed very rude and when i had to talk to them on the phone the guy made fun of me about it. I was very suprised at how rude they were. you'd think that $3200 would get you better tech support. Well I got my new keyboard and behold...it had stickers on it for the lettering like my dell instead of paint:-) Now I'm supposed to send the keyboard back with in 7 days and i have to pay for it myself. I have no idea where to send it so I've tried calling all morning and all i get is an answering machine telling me to leave a messege and they will call me back. Of course I left a messege the first time and havent heard back yet. So you think my laptop is great with my new keyboard installed? Ha think again! I came in to work this morning, set my laptop up and brushed my fingernail up against the palm rest just to see a big line of paint scrape off !!!!. I think this thing was painted in china with no primer or adhesives in any of the paint!!!!. I'll have to try to take the plastic palm rest off and paint it myself with some quality paint. So Huff. I have to admit...you still cant buy a dell near the power of my pro star...but the quality and support and warranty of the dell is far superior.

This review was modified by its author, dnador, on 10/27/03 12:37 PM.

As a college student laptops are needed. I was very spektical about getting a laptop. I have never had a laptop and I was every close to my computer. So when my professor told as that a laptop was required I had nightmares that I was never going to find the right laptop for me. I want to the big department stores and couldn't find the right one for me and the customer serivce was not good. Then one of my friends referred my to Pro-Star. I was a little nerveous about going to a smaller company. But as soon as I walked into the store everyone was so helpful. The customer service here was great. They new that I was feeling a little nerveous about shopping at a smaller store. They didnt press me to buy something from them. They made sure that I got want I wanted and need. When I left, I left with a laptop 6174 and I have not regretted shopping with Pro-Star. My laptop works great. I dont leave my home without my laptop. I suggest you use Pro-Star for any of your laptop needs. You will be one happy camper like me.

As a recent purchaser of the 8854 notebook, with the top of the line options, I would just like to say how happy I am with the quality of the product and with the service surrounding it. This is the second time, I bought from this company. The last time, was a 8290, about 4 years ago. They deserve recognition for the quality of their products and their outstanding service.

I am extremely pleased with the excellent customer service and high quality product this company provides. They were very helpful in answering all of my questions about their product and made the purchasing experience very easy and straightforward. After I had received my laptop, I had some operating questions. I spoke with the on of the tech and found him to be very helpful and professional.

Most unreliable laptop that I have ever had. The customer service was actually hostile. I have had three of the same unit because the ones that they send are always defective, and the one that I have now showed a major failure after 3 days. They actually told me that customer service was not important to them, I guess ego just wins out sometimes. Funny.

I bought a Prostar 2253 three years ago. The system was great. I do not experience any problems with this system, except some bugs with Microsoft 98. Thanks to Prostar's employees, they help me to solve all the problems.  
 
I recently decide to buy a new 8854 notebook computer with Prostar. They send me the system as promised. This time I order with Microsoft Windows XP Professional. This system runs great. I can run my TV cable and use the MP3 player as a walkman. Thank you, Prostar.

Overall the laptop is a nice computer but there are issues with quality. When the computer was 6-mo old the battery had to be replaced under warranty, which went with little trouble. Unfortunately, with only a little over a week on the warranty the computer was acting up. After making email contact I requested an RMA via voice and email with all requests going unanswered after the initial contact email. Now that the warranty is over Pro-star has no record of my 4-RMA requests or any of my calls nor my emails and will do nothing to help me. Whether this tactic of ignoring my RMA requests for a soon out of warranty computer was willful or do to some other error I do not know. I can say they told me that basically I was out of luck. So you do get good value for your money providing your computer works but if you need to rely on their repair or tech assistance then you are (in my experience) out of luck.

I bought a Pro-Star laptop from this company back in May of 1999. It was a killer deal at the time, although there was a slight inconsistency between their advertised deal and the deal I actually got. I ordered it over the phone and the rep was helpful and I think even threw in a PC card modem cheaper than normal. Overall, the purchasing experience was good.  
 
The laptop itself has held up very well. Over the 3+ years I have had one dead pixel in the screen. The only other problem that developed was that the socket where the AC adaptor plugs into the laptop itself is flimsy and not very sturdy. An accident occurred in which the plastic surrounding the socket broke and it severed the power connection inside. By this time it was out of warranty, but I sent it in to them to get fixed at a reasonable price. They reinforced the area around the plug and sent it back to me, but it still didn't turn on. This was a disappointment. I had to send it back to them again (they reimbursed me for this second shipment) and this time they replaced the motherboard at their cost. It was nice that I didn't have to pay for it, but it was an unacceptably slow process. I'd say it took a couple weeks between the time that they got it in the second time until they finally shipped it back out. Overall, I was without a laptop for almost two months. The power connection has started having problems again and this time I am fed up with it. I'm just building a desktop to replace this laptop.  
 
I'd say, aside from the cheap physical construction of the laptop, it has performed very well for almost 3.5 years and has been worth the money. The company seems easy to deal with until it comes to out-of-warranty repairs, in which case my experience was not so great. Also, most of the people I talked to on the phone, whether in tech support or repair dept. or what, had Asian accents that made it difficult to communicate at times.  
 
By the way, I am not familiar with their current product line and cannot comment on that. However, at the time I ordered mine it appears that they were stocking all laptops from an OEM maker named Kapok (mine included), whose laptops are also sold by other companies. If you look at the ads you will see that some of the pictures from several different companies are of the same laptop. That's because they are Kapok laptops.

This review was modified by its author, incipient, on 9/8/02 7:50 PM.