Okay system but it lacks power and is very noisy!

I purchased this system as a replacement for one that I built myself. I've been a computer enthusiast for about 12 years now and I figured I'd give HP another try.

I've owned three HP's total, over the last twelve years - the other two I had were sturdy and I never really had any problems with them; I merely 'out grew' the systems and either upgraded them or replaced them with something newer and faster.

The new Intel Pentium ViiV processors had just hit the market so I decided to see what all the hype was about.

So, down to the nitty-gritty:

Processing power

This system comes standard with an Intel Pentium Viiv 2.8 GHz processor. It's touted as being a 'true dual core' processor. Frankly, I'm not impressed with it. I run Adobe Photoshop with a Wacom USB tablet for drawing on this machine and it is very jumpy after about an hour. On top of that, after I've used Photoshop, I have to reboot because the system is very sluggish.

Memory

This system comes standard, out of the box, with 1 gig of RAM which is pretty good - depending on what you're going to use it for. I immediately upgraded to 3 gigs because I like to manipulate digital images and draw with my Wacom tablet.

USB and other ports

This system comes with a plethora of USB ports on it: three in the front and four on the rear of the machine which is really helpful! I have a printer, scanner, the Wacom tablet and my digital camera that all require the use of a USB port so this is one of the best features as far as I am concerned. The front of the system also has a place to plug in a microphone, headset, a plug for some MP3 players and a firewire port.

Sound

The computer doesn't come with any speakers so I bought my own only to find out that it has 'onboard' sound - a sound card built right into the motherboard. It's not a big deal, my MP3's sound fairly decent (thanks to the Logitech speakers I bought) and I have had no real problems with the sound at all. I did try adding a sound card to the machine (that was a mistake) and had an extremely difficult time getting the Soundblaster XFx card to work correctly. Eventually, the soundcard - because of its incomparability issues that Soundblaster refuses to admit to or fix - had to be taken out because it caused my HP to crash.

Software

This particular model doesn't come with a lot of bells and whistles in the software department. It came with Microsoft Windows Media edition 2005 - which I can't really tell the difference from the regular Windows out now. It came with a free trial of Microsoft Office - which only lasted for 30 days - and the standard tools that HP provides with all it's desktop models: HP Photosmart, Adobe Reader, Quicktime viewer, Real, some internet service providers (AOL, Netscape, Earthlink) software. Finally, it also comes with a Norton Anti-virus suite and firewall.

Drives and Card Readers

This model comes standard with a Lightscribe 16x DVD/CD Read/write drive. I've got to admit, I have never used the lightscribe technology. I've never had the need to. The drive works well enough, I can copy CD's to my iTunes library very quickly and I can very easily copy things from the computer to CD on a re-writable disk. This system also comes with several different card readers built right into the front. It supports: SmartMedia/xD, MMC/SD, Compact Flash I/II, and Memory Stick/PRO. I have xD cards so I've found this pretty helpful; just pop the card in, transfer the information over and you don't have to use up your digital camera's batteries!

Graphics

This computer came with on-board video - the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator to be exact - which is okay if you're not doing anything technical or game related. I found this was lacking for a "Media Center" computer, so I upgraded to a GeForce 6600 graphics card.

Overall

I think this is an okay system if you're going to be browsing the internet and doing your home budget on. I've made some modifications to mine and I can play games on it but I only recommend that to someone who knows what they're doing or wants to pay someone else to do it.

Quite frankly, I am not impressed with this system. I don't feel that it runs any more efficiently than the old system I was running - which had an AMD Athelon 3400+ processor in it. I think if they were going to make a 'media' system as this one is advertised to be, it should have a lot more power, memory and a better graphics card.

The worst part about this system is the CPU fan which is really, really very loud! I can not sit at my desk at home and talk on the phone, otherwise my friends and family think I'm sitting next to a jet engine! It is very annoying!