Asking For Opinions On This Machine...

[007]

... I've got a good chance to pick one of these up, not an actual HP distributor but still unwrapped and brand, spankin' new in the box with all the accessories, and possibly HALF the price of it here on Best Buy.

HP - Pavilion Desktop with Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor - p6140f

Yea or nay, and why?

Thanks in advance to those who give me a legit, informed opinion.

 

[alan1]

... I've got a good chance to pick one of these up, not an actual HP distributor but still unwrapped and brand, spankin' new in the box with all the accessories.

HP - Pavilion Desktop with Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor - p6140f

Yea or nay, and why?

Thanks in advance to those who give me a legit, informed opinion.

Depends upon what you are using it for.
If you are doing anything with graphics, it is weak in that area, but that can be changed.
I'd avoid Window's Vista as the operating system, it sucks.
Other than that, seems like a good machine.

 

[xsited1]

... I've got a good chance to pick one of these up, not an actual HP distributor but still unwrapped and brand, spankin' new in the box with all the accessories.

HP - Pavilion Desktop with Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor - p6140f

Yea or nay, and why?

Thanks in advance to those who give me a legit, informed opinion.

Quad core, lots of RAM, hard drive is a little slow. You might need to upgrade the graphics card. Windows 7 will ship when available. Otherwise, looks great right out of the box.

 

[007]

... I've got a good chance to pick one of these up, not an actual HP distributor but still unwrapped and brand, spankin' new in the box with all the accessories.

HP - Pavilion Desktop with Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor - p6140f

Yea or nay, and why?

Thanks in advance to those who give me a legit, informed opinion.

Depends upon what you are using it for.
If you are doing anything with graphics, it is weak in that area, but that can be changed.
I'd avoid Window's Vista as the operating system, it sucks.
Other than that, seems like a good machine.

More pictures, music, multimedia sort of thing for me, no graphics, no gaming. I can upgrade the OS to Windows 7 later on if Vista is that bad. I already have a Seagate 1Tb external hard drive, but I've had three people try and get this screwed up Realtek sound on this computer fixed now and they've all failed. I've also been told that upgrading or doing a full install of another OS probably won't fix the problem either, so I'm fed up. I'm buying a new computer. I've got probably a hundred CD's ripped that I can't listen to... screw this.

 

[Ringel05]

For the price it's not a bad system for an OEM. 64 bit means you can probably go with 16GB of RAM but that is dependent on the motherboard, (mobo). The mobo seems to be one of the cheaper ones, no s-video, crossfire, etc, I'd really like to see the specs on the mobo. The hard drive is a little slow for a 1 Tb, and you will definitely need a graphics card, at least a half a gig and possibly a good sound card. There's about $190 right there, retail (cheap side), $110 on E-bay, new. The major drawback is Vista but you can upgrade to 7 when it comes out. Quad core is great but unless you're willing to fork out the bucks for the peripherals that match it then it's pretty much a waste.
Don't know how savvy you are with computers but I know I can build one twice as good as the one you're looking at for about the same money (not offering to do it but I will offer guidance).

 

[KittenKoder]

... I've got a good chance to pick one of these up, not an actual HP distributor but still unwrapped and brand, spankin' new in the box with all the accessories, and possibly HALF the price of it here on Best Buy.

HP - Pavilion Desktop with Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor - p6140f

Yea or nay, and why?

Thanks in advance to those who give me a legit, informed opinion.

Hardware looks decent, but the software is ... blech. I would be good for a multimedia computer, but don't expect it to be "perfect" ... my computer has about the same hardware specs, but it still has issues with video acceleration, especially back when I first got it (had XP on it). With that hard drive I would partition a swap of 1 gig ... but then you would need Linux ... which would speed it up a lot.

 

[Kat]

It's going to come loaded with all kinds of crap you would probably want to remove.
HP is good (bad) to do that. I don't like any HP products. They are a PITA...IMO

 

[007]

For the price it's not a bad system for an OEM. 64 bit means you can probably go with 16GB of RAM but that is dependant on the motherboard. The motherboard seams to be one of the cheaper ones, no s-video, etc. The hard drive is a little slow for a 1 T, and you will definitly need a graphics card, at least a half a gig and possibly a good sound card. There's about $190 right there, retail, $110 on E-bay, new. The major drawback is Vista but you can upgrade to 7 when it comes out.
Don't know how savy you are with computers but I know I can build one twice as good as the one you're looking at for about the same money.

It says that it is upgradable to 16 gig of memory, and as far as hard drive speed, I'm sure it would be more than sufficient for what I'd use it for. I might upgrade it with a sound card because I have a ton of music ripped onto my external hard drive, and use that to listen to all the time. I do have a Denon receiver and a Denon DVD-3800BDCI Blu-ray player, so I wouldn't be looking to it for better video than it probably already has. The video, and audio for that matter, in the Denon 3800 is second to none.

I am interested in what you could build better than that though for under $500.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

My Dell FLIES, 2.6 quad core. 6 MB memory. HUGE 22 incu flat panel. I just need some programing classes next semester. Oh 750 HD. The only thsy scares my is viruses and spy ware. I don't to sites that I am not familiar with but sometimes you havv to take your chancens.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

Oh and my comp is upgradable to UN GAWDLY propotions.

 

[Si modo]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

 

[Ringel05]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

For laptops I'm a Lenovo fan myself, super tight keyboards and you can throw the thing against a wall and it will keep running. (Of course I'm overstating but not by much).

 

[007]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

 

[Si modo]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

I've always had IBMs machines (before they went to the Chinese). They are truly perfection. Truly. And they were worth every penny. My home desktop is an IBM I bought back in 2002. At that time, I had to order custom memory and processors, so it cost me a pretty penny and because of that, it is still quite up to date with current machines. But that seven year old machine is still superior to my desktop at my office (a Dell - bleeech).

I am not a computer geek at all, but do know what I need to know to get my work done. And, IBMs were really perfect.

I will consider a Lenovo (used to be IBM) when one of my two dies, but will have to research how the quality is.

If the quality is still comparable to when it was IBM, personally the extra cost would be so worth it, IMO.

Anyway, that's my review and not a very technically informed one at that.

 

[Ringel05]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

Pale,
Do you currently have an OS disc? What type of internal hard drive, graphics card, etc does your current system have?

 

[007]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

Pale,
Do you currently have an OS disc? What type of internal hard drive, graphics card, etc does your current system have?

No I don't have an OS disc, and my son who fancies himself quite computer savvy says installing a new OS won't fix my current no sound problem. I have an HP Pavilion a1610n with a AMD Athlon, 2.4 GHz, and 1 gig of DDR memory, upgradable to 4 gig. What I did was, like an IDIOT, uninstall the Legacy driver for my Realtek sound, and now it won't let me reinstall it because it keeps saying I need this Microsoft bus driver, which IS in it, but still gives me an error message saying it's not. It's a known problem. One I've googled and tried every fix under the sun and nothing has worked yet. I'm wondering how they ever got it working in the first place.

And the graphics is what came installed, NVIDIA, and the internal hard drive is a 250 gig.

 

[Ringel05]

Pale,
Check out this system:

Media Center HTPC CPU Computer Core 2 Duo hp DVD burner - eBay (item 200392849377 end time Oct-14-09 1622 PDT)

It's one hell of a machine for $568 shipped if you can get your hands on an OS.

 

[Ringel05]

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

Pale,
Do you currently have an OS disc? What type of internal hard drive, graphics card, etc does your current system have?

No I don't have an OS disc, and my son who fancies himself quite computer savvy says installing a new OS won't fix my current no sound problem. I have an HP Pavilion a1610n with a AMD Athlon, 2.4 GHz, and 1 gig of DDR memory, upgradable to 4 gig. What I did was, like an IDIOT, uninstall the Legacy driver for my Realtek sound, and now it won't let me reinstall it because it keeps saying I need this Mircrosoft bus driver, which IS in it, but still gives me an error message saying it's not. It's a known problem. One I've googled and tried every fix under the sun and nothing has worked yet. I'm wondering who they ever got it working in the first place.

And the graphics is what came installed, NVIDIA, and the internal hard drive is a 250 gig.

Not concerned with trying to fix your machine, you already said you couldn't. I was looking at "bare bones" systems that you could switch your drives and cards into, the problem is they usually don't come with an OS.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

I have a Pavilion dual-core laptop (using it now).

HPs are fun - lots of bells and whistles - that's cool.

But....things break on them and I give their customer service a C+ rating. They do what they are supposed to do, but you really have to spend a lot of time getting them to do the right things.

I like this, but if I had to get another machine, I am not sure I would go HP again.

Being totally honest. Not displeased, not overly pleased either.

Hey as long as you are cool with customer service you can get just about anything. If you don't just tell them they will NEVER get another dime of your money and you will get results.

 

[namvet]

My last three computers have all been HP's. Can't say as though I'm TOTALLY satisfied with them, but I don't want to buy an eMachine, a Compaq, a Dell or something like that either. I can't seem to find anything that's a comparable machine for the same money.

Pale,
Do you currently have an OS disc? What type of internal hard drive, graphics card, etc does your current system have?

No I don't have an OS disc, and my son who fancies himself quite computer savvy says installing a new OS won't fix my current no sound problem. I have an HP Pavilion a1610n with a AMD Athlon, 2.4 GHz, and 1 gig of DDR memory, upgradable to 4 gig. What I did was, like an IDIOT, uninstall the Legacy driver for my Realtek sound, and now it won't let me reinstall it because it keeps saying I need this Microsoft bus driver, which IS in it, but still gives me an error message saying it's not. It's a known problem. One I've googled and tried every fix under the sun and nothing has worked yet. I'm wondering how they ever got it working in the first place.

And the graphics is what came installed, NVIDIA, and the internal hard drive is a 250 gig.

I disagree wiith the son. a system recovery will install a brand copy including drivers and everything. what ya got to lose????