A Review of the Wildly Popular HP Pavilion M8330F Desktop PC

Desktops priced under $1000 are typically the most popular in terms of total units sold. While there is a wide range of desktops available under that figure one of the most popular has been the HP Pavilion M8330F. With a great combination of features and performance this Pavilion has really earned some rave reviews. Not one to blindly agree I decided to get my hands on one and find out how it really performs. First let's get started with a few of the basics.

Hardware:

Tuner: 1 NTSC / ATSC tuner

Processor: 2.2 GHz AMD Phenom 9500 quad-core

Storage Space: (2) 320GB hard drives (producing a total of 640GB)

RAM: 3 GB of RAM (upgradable to a total of 8 GB)

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

Video Accelerator: NVidia GeForce 8500 GT graphics card (using up to 1535 MB of total system and dedicated memory)

Expandability: open bay for HP external hard drive

This quad core AMD is a great processor. I have experience with several computers operating with this chip and have loved the performance. The dual hard drive setup really allows for plenty of hard disk space which is crucial considering that this desktop has a television tuner. That means that this can essentially act as a digital video recorder (making your TiVO obsolete). The graphic cards is also fairly strong and I had no trouble cranking up the graphics when playing games. There was little lag when multitasking basic operations like multiple tabbed browsers and a few office applications. Performance gets an A+ from me on this PC.

Connectivity:

6 2.0 USB ports (this is the typical port used to connect peripherals like digital cameras, iPods, and printers)

2 FireWire port (a port used for high speed data transfer typically between a digital camcorder and sometimes a compatible PC)

1 Composite video input

1 S-Video input

1 DVI (a monitor and sometimes television connection)

1 HDMI output (this allows the computer to be connected to a high definision television)

1 VGA output (this is a typical monitor connection)

1 S-Video output (a connection typically used for projectors and some compatible TVs)

1 audio out / 1 mic in

1 Digital audio output

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

15 in 1 media card reader (this allows the owner to insert the memory from their mobile devices directly into this PC)

1 Ethernet port (allowing this computer to connect to a wired network)

1 56K modem (so that this computer can dial up an internet connection)

For the price range I'm impressed with the connectivity options that HP has included. The high definition output is great considering the TV tuner and the DVR capabilities included in Windows Vista. This means that as good as this notebook performs in the office or bedroom it's going to perform equally well alongside the rest of your living room's entertainment center. With an average online retail price at about $830 this desktop is a real steal in my opinion. While there may be some big sales coming up in early August I don't foresee the bread and butter PC's like this one experiencing very large price drops.