A Review of the HP Pavilion M8300F Desktop PC

In this review I have my hands on the HP Pavilion M8300F Desktop PC which is one of HP's top selling multimedia PC's. This desktop is designed to do it all, from playing games to movies, and everything "fun". With the recent explosion of lower priced HD televisions and the influx of consumer dollars into the multimedia arena this style of desktops are currently among some of the most competitive. This is good news for the consumer as prices drop and the desktops get loaded with more and more features. In this review I'm going to let you know what kind of features you can expect from the HP M8300F and who would get the most out of owning one of these machines. First I'm going to start with a run down of some of the basics.

Hardware:

Processor: 3.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ dual-core processor

Storage Space: 2 320GB hard drives yielding 640GB

RAM: 3GB (expandable up to 8GB)

Optical drive: CD R RW with integrated DVD R +/- RW

Tuner: NTSC / ATSC

Graphics Accelerator: Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE (uses both dedicated and shared system memory)

Includes: keyboard, mouse, and remote control

This thing comes pretty well stacked. I love that it has the integrated television tuner, it really unlocks a lot of Vista's multimedia potential. You could actually use this desktop as the backbone of your living room's entertainment center. This could serve as a digital video recorder, a gaming system, and even as a standard PC for web browsing, and god forbid... work. The graphics card is adequately strong to power some of the most graphically intensive titles and there is enough RAM to multi task in memory hog Vista.

The HP Pavilion M8300F does come with a lot of trial ware that can go. Many of it has little to no use when compared to many of the features already pre-included in Window's Vista. These add undue strain especially at start up and I would delete whatever you're not going to use immediately.

The only hardware upgrade I would consider would be to expand the RAM. It is capable of handling 8GB but 6 would probably be all that you would need. The move from 6 to 8 would probably not illicit noticeable gains unless you're using this desktop for some serious graphical editing or 3D rendering.

Connectivity:

1 Ethernet port (to hard wire connect to your LAN)

6 2.0 USB (to connect with about any peripheral from mice and keyboards to printers and digital cameras)

2 FireWire (to connect and process high speed data transfers from other devices such as digital camcorders)

1 VGA (connects to a standard computer monitor)

1 S-Video (typically used to connect to a projector although may be compatible with some televisions)

1 composite A/V (connect to a television)

1 audio out, digital audio out / 1 mic in

15 in 1 memory card reader (use this to insert your solid state memory from your digital camera)

I love the connectivity, I would like to see something in line with an HDMI port, however the composite output will do the trick. I just like the compactness and ease of the HDMI. The 15 in 1 card reader is a little over kill but you can be sure it will have no problem reading whatever memory you happen to use.

This desktop is currently on sale for about $750. This is a steal; I expect to see it bounce back up to around $1000. It is worth every penny at that price point. It would certainly make any gamer happy, or entertainment junkie. It will hold its own in the office as well running AutoCAD or just pumping out spread sheets. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a winner.