Decent machine, mixed experience
Written: Aug 30 '04
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Pros: Tough machine, durable, looks cool, great processor.
Cons: Poorly-constructed chassis, blah video card, clueless associates.
The Bottom Line: If you want a tough, reliable machine and have a little extra cash/know-how to spare on upgrades, you won't be disappointed.
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| elementalevil's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion 8860 (P2941AR#ABA) PC Des... |
I'm not sure I should even be writing this for a machine that's been obsolete for years, but maybe if someone is shopping around for a used and/or refurbished one...
Bought the 8860 in January of '01 after much contemplation and begging parents - it was basically my high school graduation gift. At the time I was not terribly demanding of it, using it mostly for web surfing and word processing, with side trips to play "The Sims" (which looked great on it). It also happened to be the first DVD player in our household and as such was met with much fanfare; I believe the first movie I watched on it was "Gladiator." As I have a habit of naming all of my machinery, it has been dubbed "R2."
It is now nearly September of '04 and the machine is still with me, although drastically different. It has run the gauntlet as Bastion of Piracy, Entertainment Machine, and general point of pride (I have, some, uh, nerdish tendancies for a female). I've basically spent what some might consider an obscene amount of money to keep this 8860 going... and I guess I freely admit that I could have gotten another machine for about the same $$ that I've spent on it. But -- this was not all at once or in one lump sum(college bills, et al) so the HP remains. What you will see is several years worth of upgrades and repairs.
I am going to preface this by stating that I absolutely hated Windows Millennium right from the outset. This machine was absolutely awesome when I bought it; it boggled my sixteen year old mind. But the platform is wobbly at best, horribly unstable at worst.
Problems/Solutions:
2001: Sound card abruptly stopped working for a week. No one is sure what happened, not even the HP tech who helped me out. I was ready to ship it out to get it fixed when it miraculously began working again. Haven't had a problem since, but now realize that it's integrated into the motherboard.
2002: Hard drive apparently sustained some form of damage. I partitioned it and it held together awhile longer.
--The TNT video card dropped dead on me. I went out and bought a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce4 and picked up another 128megs of RAM while I was at it - at that point, 512 or so was becoming standard in the dorms and I felt my machine was lagging.
2003: Complete and utter hard drive failure. The entire thing basically died on me and wouldn't start up. I'd been backing up my stuff right along so I didn't lose too much (except that paper I wrote...) and defragging/virus checking regularly, so was somewhat puzzled. Turned out I couldn't afford anything beyond an e-machine, so I took a friend of mine who is more computer-savvy than I am to the store.
Picked up a 512 stick so now I have something like 700 RAM. Also bought a new hard drive - Maxtor 120gig. We took the entire computer apart (it looked quite bad for awhile), installed the new HD, reformatted the original one, installed the RAM. We also put on Windows XP. When R2 booted up for the first time in weeks, it was a completely new machine. Worked like a dream, and XP was oh so stable.
Yeah, well, as it turns out that original hard drive really DID have some problems. Four days after The Great Rejuvination is quit cold. We disconnected it, reformatted, and put everything onto the new Maxtor. Ended up leaving the original HD in there because pulling anything out of the 8860 chassis is a pain.
Other than that, came home and was oohed and ahhed over for having the coolest 'puter in the house. I bought Altec Lansing speakers that summer; the sound card doesn't allow much bass boosting, but they are a great improvement over the included package.
2004: My favorite, most reliable feature died: the burner. After hundreds of CDs and almost four years I guess it lasted a long time. Bought a new, external one.
The external required (well, REQUESTED) a hi-speed USB adapter, so I went out and bought that and had a friend install it for me. As it turns out, one of R2's PCI slots is bad... who knew? We used the working one and everything was fine.
That worked okay, then abruptly shorted out. Haven't heard back from the company. I am thoroughly impatient, so I bought a forty-dollar internal at the school store. Had the friend install this one too (really a reliable sort, this guy) and at the same time finally pulled out the old hard drive to check it. Predictably it was dead.
The new burner worked okay for awhile, but as of lately it's been spitting out some "bleh" CDs that skip around a lot. It may be the kind of CDs I'm using (haven't had a chance to test them on anything besides my discman... actually, it might be that) but if it's the burner, then I'm starting to wonder if my power source is leading to problems.
But, aside from all of those... the machine is still here. I've seen a lot of horror stories about 8860 motherboards, but mine hasn't failed me yet (knock on wood). I play games such as Freelancer and Quake 2, and do some heavy photoshopping at times, and the Athlon processor still zips along. I admit at this point I've got a great sentimental attachment and it would take quite a machine to pry me away from it, but eventually R2 will end up in semi-retirement.
Major caveat: the chassis is the bane of my existence. In order to fiddle with anything/fix anything inside, you MUST take apart the entire thing. I've opened and shut it so much that I'm fairly used to it at this point, but in the beginning it was baffling. When I had HP support on the phone trying to help me out, they were apparently not used to its ins and outs and were not very helpful. However, they were very nice and spoke good legible English - which is not something I can say for other support lines these days.
As games and programs become more high end and demand more processor speed, this machine does show its age. Otherwise, it continues to function well. It goes back and forth to school with me and so far it's probably racked up 3500 miles or so in the car. I am by no means a computer expert but I've had a great run with this machine - of the computers in my family over the past 4-5 years, it's the only one that has really lasted. (We've had Dells and Compaqs, I'm the odd gal out.) When my father's computer broke down completely this summer, he was VERY glad I had poured some money into my old HP to keep it going - he needed it for work.
Over the past few years I have probably spent close to $1000 getting this computer upgraded/repaired/resurrected.
I guess in the end, it's been worth it. It's a nice little machine.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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elementalevil
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Reviews written: 4
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