Worth it's weight in sand......
Written: Nov 16 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quality hardware
Cons: none as of yet....
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| myoptical's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Vectra VEi7 (D8131T#888) PC Deskto... |
Specs
CPU: Pentium III 600 MHz
Hard drive: Quantum Fireball 8 Gig 7200RPM
Video card: Matrox Graphics MGA-G200 AGP 8MB
CD-ROM: LITEON CD-ROM LTN4855
NIC Card: 3com Etherlink XL 10/100
Sound: Crystal SoundFusion
Monitor: HP75
RAM: 128MB of 133MHz SDRAM
Windows 2000 w/ Service Pack 1
Motherboard: na
I was upgraded from an old UNISYS Aquanta to this HP model around June of this year. UNISYS no longer produces Desktop computers and has affiliated itself with HP as of late. It was a Pentium I - 266 w/ 128MB or RAM, a 4 Gig Western Digital hard drive and some other parts that no longer have a business to fall back on.
Our on-site Tech Team let me know it had arrived. I meandered on over to their side of the building and got a dolly and picked up my new equipment. After wheeling the cumbersome boxes for the CPU and monitor, I reached my desk without injuring anyone (or myself).
The packing was rather good in that I had to get assistance in removing the items from the dang box. The styrofoam fit so tight that I wondered how the hell they got it in the box in the first place!. I shuffled my belongings on my desk to accomodate the new CPU, mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers. After breaking down my old PC, I moved it to an empty desk. I didn't want to return it to the Tech Team until I was sure this unit was completely functional. I had already backed up all my pertinent data to the network as well as my personal profile information (like my favorites folder, desktop shortcuts, etc all found in the c:\windows\profiles folder).
I inspected the 17" monitor thoroughly for travel damage and found none. Setting up the monitor was a bit of a chore. The base was a bit of a hassle getting it connected to the monitor. That means I had to read the instructions several times and the process was not intuitive. I Inserted the power cord, plugged into the outlet and turned it on. I happily saw the "No Signal Input" message and turned it off. The monitor will go up to a resolution of 1280X1024 with a refresh rate of either 60 or 75Hz. The monitor produces an extremely crisp display due to it's .26mm dot pitch. Interpretation: the smaller this value is the smaller the dots are that make up the picture, the better and more precise an image you will see. A good number of monitors now use .28mm pitch so I've been mildly impressed with the performance of this monitor thus far. The Matrox Millenium AGP video card utilizes an improved connection architecture over the PCI and ISA. 2-D and 3-D renderings are quite good.
I plugged in the keyboard and mouse. By the way, each has colored plugs which match colors on the back of the computer...talk about brainless. I plugged in the LAN cable, the power cord and the speakers. The Labtec speakers came complete with headphones, batteries and AC adapter too. This sound card is capable of voice-over-the-internet, which is a big phone bill saver.....
I powered the PC up and began to access the BIOS (Basic In Out System which is like the grunt-level of the computer). Since I had the computer on, I opened the CD drive. I inserted an image CD into the CD ROM drive, finished my changes to the boot up sequence so the bootable CD could be used, exited the BIOS and sat back to watch the fireworks. Windows 2000 and the other software packages were imaged, after which Win2k proceeded to make the necessary changes to the image I installed.
Well, that was my initial experience. Here are some additional important points. The case has 3 thumb screws holding it to the chassis in the back. This makes for much easier removal of the case. The desktop case has 5 shelves and four slots. Plenty of room is available for inserting additional components like CD-writers, additional hard drives or DVD players.
I have yet to spend the inordinate amount of time necessary trying to determine the motherboard make and model. There are 3 PCI slots and one AGP (for the video card). There was one remaining slot available on the motherboard which leads me to beleive one of the components is integrated. I hate integrated components (personal experiences)! The motherboard runs at a bus speed of 133 MHz. When you hear of PC-100 or PC-133 RAM, the speed of the RAM is to be equal to the motherboard bus speed. As this motherboard is for a Pentium III 600, it and the SDRAM runs at 133 MHz. Yes the BIOS is flashable (upgradeable by using downloadable software packages).
The unit I received is a Pentium III 600 MHz workstation w/ 128 MB of RAM. The level-1 and level-2 cache are both internal to the processor. This results in a performance boost as the processor does not have to send and receive information over longer distances to this fast turn-over memory storage area. The hard drive's speed of 7200 rpm makes it almost 50% faster than the one I have at home. "ATA-66" for hard drives means the controller is internal to the hard drive instead of on the motherboard. This speeds up performance similar to how the Level-1 & 2 caches being internal to the processor boost performance. The faster hard drive, bus speed (133 MHz) and processor speed make this workstation much more responsive than my previous computer.
Listen to me...."much more responsive." You'd swear I was writing a car review. But like automobiles, you have a very high customization factor, new models almost monthly, functional and performance upgrades resulting from new technologies...why not make that comparison. Graphics look better, colors transition better, applications load faster, number crunching applications complete their work quicker. The CD ROM makes excessive noise, but most of the newer and faster ones do anyway. Using Windows 2000 as my operating system is the topic for an upcoming review, but it has proven reliable for this workstation. I had no problems with drivers for the hardware being found by Win2k. When the computer goes into sleep mode, it takes close to 15 seconds for the monitor to fire up again though.
This Vectra is meant to be a business workhorse. Suffice it to say that if it was really meant to be a "workhorse" the RAM should have been 256MB. Wishful thinking...I know! I don't have the luxury of comparing its performance against it's equivalent, the AMD Athlon. Since it's my work computer I won't be playing any games on it either. An interesting addition to the standard documentation is an image creation and recovery disk (CD). The standard HP hardware diagnostics CD is also included for End Users that would like to begin the troubleshooting process prior to obtaining support. Overall, I've been reasonably impressed with it's performance. Although the CD ROM laser seems to have issues too often to be amusing.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
myoptical
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Member: JOHN B. WADE III, all liberties reserved
Location: near Chicago, Illinois Republic
Reviews written: 59
Trusted by: 64 members
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