I recently upgraded my machine from a Celeron 450 to an Athlon 700 similar to this machine. The depressing aspect of this costly upgrade is the anticipated speed increase turned out to be a myth. After upgrading to the athlon, Windows ME actually took longer to boot up, and half of the 3D applications I normally run were no faster than that of the Celeron's performance. It appears as though only first hand experience can help others choose reliable products, and this is why I do not encourage you to purchase your machines based around an Athlon setup. A jump in 250Mhz no matter the Chip should be noticable, and after spending 500+ dollars to have everthing upgraded, it can only frustrate you when the compentry fails to perform.

The HP Pavilion 8662C is not only supporting the Athlon technolgy, but has the undefying disadvantage of an line assembly manufacturing process. There are no professional technicians hand placing each component, instead, a series of arms and hydrolic drills put together the finalized product. Most of the options (Video, Sound, Modem) are integrated with the motherboard which prevent you from ever replacing malfunctioning hardware without a major repair job. And on top of it all, their technical support is terrible and frustrates even the most patient individuals.

Seriously consider an alternative before purchasing an HP product.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 500
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: 701-800
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30