HP Pavilion M8430F Desktop PC (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 750 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

List Price: $1,214.00

Features:

• Powerful multimedia desktop with TV tuner (NTSC/ATSC), personal video recording functionality, and programming guide
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, 750 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM (8 GB max), 16x LightScribe DVD drive, 54g Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
• NVidia GeForce 8500 GT graphics with up to 1535 MB total available memory; Gigabit Ethernet; open bay for optional HP Personal Media Drive
• Connectivity: 6 USB, 2 FireWire, 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, 1 DVI, 1 S-Video, 1 composite A/V, digital audio output, surround sound speaker output, 15-in-1 memory card reader
• Pre-installed with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium (Service Pack 1); includes remote control and wired keyboard/mouse

Customer Reviews:

Best Value Computer [Posted on 2008-06-01]
I have had this computer for 3 months and love it. I have had no problems at all it runs very quiet and blazingly fast. My Vista experience rating on this is 5.7. This is a great machine.

WoW... Amazing PC!!! [Posted on 2008-06-09]
I must say that after buying Dell for the last 5 years this is such a much better system for the hard earned buck. I replaced my monster XPS700 with this one and I slapped an NVIDIA 9800 GTX card on it and this baby rocks. I am running WoW and AoC without any issues whatsover. This one is worth getting....!!!

Like the computer - don't like the operating system. [Posted on 2008-06-20]
The HP Pavilion M8430F Desktop PC I purchased from amazon.com arrived within 2 days of the order. Perfect timing. Initial setup was easy and the documentation, though minimal, was adequate. After several days of working with the unit the DVD recorder/player stopped working. I immediately called HP's toll free customer support and after turning the unit over to their control on-line, the technician edited the registry and solved the problem. I was impressed to say the least. The unit is fast at rendering video clips, which is the main reason I chose this computer in the first place. However, that said, not all of my video/audio editing software has installed successfully. The software in question was updated to work with Vista but apparently only works with Vista's 32 bit version. From what I can glean from user forums the software really doesn't like any version of Vista. So, now I am at a crossroad. I'd like to go back to Windows XP Pro in order to get ALL of my software to work, but in so doing I will apparently lose the use of that 4th gig of ram and possibly all of the Windows Media Center capability that the unit has to offer. Decisions, decisions. I like the computer - but I don't like the operating system.

AV input [Posted on 2008-06-24]
This is a nice computer but one of the main reasons that I bought it was because it had the audio/video input card in the front of the tower in the fourth picture. I was wrongly mislead when I just got it in the mail there was no such interface, but other than that I don't really have a problem with it. This makes me mad because I bought a new monitor separately in faith that I would be able to use it to hook my 360 to my computer and play on my monitor (I have to still see if that is possible).

superb [Posted on 2008-07-02]
Extremely happy with my new system. No porblems have surfaced using Vista as of yet.

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