My 25th Birthday Present
Written: Feb 04 '03 (Updated Sep 18 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Quality of Tech Support: |
 |
|
|
Pros: HP Brand, 17 Monitor, Processor Speed, CD-RW Drive
Cons: Need to buy the Recovery Software since some pcs didn't come with it installed.
The Bottom Line: Great buy that will last you for many years
|
|
|
| witchyangel's Full Review: HP pavilion 531W-B Celeron 1.3GHz / 40GB / 256MB /... |
For my 25th Birthday I wanted a new desktop computer. Already owned a HP Laptop so I did my research and found wal-mart carried HP computers now. My parents bought me one. I got it home and set it up to discover the speakers weren't working right. Took it back to wal-mart within the week and got another. The speaker plug didn't fit into the speaker jack at all so that one went back to walmart too. Third time is a charm.. I got the third on home and got everything set up and working.
Took no time at all to setup the computer following the easy to follow poster included in the box.
This computer came with Mouse (replaced the wheel mouse with a optical mouse of my own), keyboard, Speakers (replaced factory speakers with my own since they my own speakers had a subwoofer). Has 2 USB Ports which wasn't enough for me so I bought a USB Hub. The Ports are colored coded to match the things the factory sent you so you can easily figure out what goes where.
Most of my programs worked fine with XP or just needed a new software to be compatible. My scanner and digital camera were to outdated to work with XP so I upgraded those. My printer got jealous and went out so I had to get a new printer too.
I have had this pc for a year.. No problems at all. I use it for downloading music, collecting graphics, photos. I have used up half of my 40GH Hard Drive.
If this HP computer is anything like my 3yr old HP laptop it won't get replaced until it gets really outdated.
This computer comes with a built in Network card so you can hook up more than one computer to share a internet connection and files between computers. Which is really easy to do with the HP as your main computer.
This computer makes things so much easier.. I put a blank cd-rom in the drive and it gives me a prompt asking me what I would like to do. The burn program that comes on the pc is very easy to use.
After recieving this computer my dad went out and bought one and so did my best friend and they are pleased with thir computers too.
The recovery software is suppose to be on a hidden parition on the hard drive instead of coming on a cd-rom. But if you want the cd-rom version in case need a new hard drive then you have to purchase the software from HP.
Now on September 18, 2004 I have had this pc over 2 years and have had no problems.
I have made some changes to the system since I bought it.
Windows XP seem to run a big sluggish for a brand new pc so I added more memory and now have 512MB of RAM.
Being the computer geek I filled up the 40GB Hard Drive. I wanted more space without having to give up orginal hard drive. So I bought a 120 GB Hard Drive and had Best Buy install it. Well let me tell you, that was a HUGE mistake. I wanted them to partition both drives and they failed to do it correctly and I didn't get to use all of the new hard drive. Then Best Buy complained cause I had History Kill on my pc which erased all internet traces. They couldn't snoop and see my internet activity. Since Best Buy failed to do the job correctly I set out to correct the job. I decided just to do a complete recovery of Windows and start over.
I contacted HP about getting directions on doing a recovery with a second hard drive installed. They were very helpful and pointed me toward a website that explained it all. Okay I figured no big deal.
I chose to do a complete recovery and then couldn't get the system to do the recovery and reformat. I kept having this problem and knew it wasn't a USER problem. I contacted HP and they kept telling me how to do a recovery with the information on the HIDDEN Partition. Still after numerous times nothing was happening. I set out to do my own research and found that HP failed to put this information on some computers like they were suppose too. So I had to call HP and order the recovery disks for my pc.
After getting the recovery disks in, which were 7 disks I unhooked the new drive and everything seemed to work out like it was suppose too from there. I setup my own partitions this time and got the correct amount of space with two hard drives.
Its been over a year since I did a complete recovery and haven't had any more problems. But I do highly recommend purchasing the recovery disks cause not all HP computers have the necessary software installed on it like it should or that data might go bad.
For Christmas 2003 I recieved a HP DVD-RW drive. It was easily added to the pc and have had no problems with it.
I also added a Wireless Keyboard and Mouse to this computer.
Can you tell yet I'm a computer geek?
Not sure i would want to get rid of this pc for at least another year or two and only then cause of new faster processors.
I really like my HP computer and have been very pleased with how this computer has stood up. I even dropped it once or twice accidently on my porch and it didn't cause any damage to it. This computer will still probably be running when I sell it in another year or two.
I have had several other pc's over the years, custom made, compaq, emachine. But yet this is the best pc yet.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): gift
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
witchyangel
|
|
Location: Oklahoma
Reviews written: 86
Trusted by: 6 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.