A Product Review of the HP Pavilion M9065.Uk-a Elite Desktop

HP has come out with a series of Pavilion desktops that they've dubbed the "Elite" series. These desktops typical come loaded with some of the best hardware they can round up. Thanks to some aggressive pricing they have also been some of the most popular desktops in the market today. I've been lucky enough to get my hands on the HP Pavilion m9065.uk-a an Elite PC. I'm going to let you know how it performs and what kind of consumers are going to get the most out of this desktop.

Hardware:

Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600

Tuner: a NTSC / ATSC Television tuner

Optical Drive: a CD R/RW with integrated 16x dual-layer DVD +/- burner

Storage Space: (2) 320 GB hard drives (making for a 640 GB total of storage space)

RAM: 3 GB of RAM (expandable to an 8 GB maximum)

Graphics Accelerator: Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS graphics (utilizing upwards of 1535MB of available system and dedicated memory)

Just glancing over the hardware sheet I find this PC very impressive. The Intel processor is quite strong providing very quick startup of Windows Vista (which comes preinstalled). The TV tuner is an excellent edition really allowing this PC to take over in the living room. The dual hard drives allow for this notebook to store hours of high definition video thanks to Vista's integrated DVR software essentially replacing your TiVO. This desktop has plenty of RAM but if you feel like you could use a little more it is upgradable all the way to 8GB which in my opinion would likely be a little bit of over kill. The Grapihcs card performed well when I tested it with a few high end games. I had no trouble cranking the graphics all the way up, and everything I gave it ran smoothly.

Connectivity:

6 2.0 USB ports (to be used to connect all sorts of peripherals from digital cameras and iPods to printers and thumb drives)

2 FireWire ports (these are used for high speed data transfer between digital camcorders or other compatible PCs)

1 Composite video input

1 S-Video input

1 S-Video output (this is a typical projector connection but can be used with compatible TVs)

1 DVI output (a monitor and television connection)

1 HDMI output (this is to be used to connect the PC to a high definition television)

1 VGA output (this is a typical monitor connection)

Audio out / microphone in jacks

Digital audio out / in jacks

2 PS/2 ports (this is an old school input device connection)

15 in 1 media card reader (so that the consumer can directly insert the memory from their mobile devices into the PC)

1 56K modem port (this is so the PC can dial up an internet connection)

The connectivity in this desktop is phenomenal! I love that it has the HDMI output as well as the component inputs. This really allows this desktop to become then entertainment center. A student won't need both a television as well as a computer in their dorm room. This will just as easily find itself at home in the living room replacing a few of today common entertainment center components. This thing looks great when you hook it up to your big screen flat panel HD television and play games. I find it hard to believe any consumer would be unhappy with this PC. Priced at $1400 it is very competitive considering all that it offers. I wouldn't wait around too long on this one; I don't foresee any drastic price fluctuations in the near future.