HP Pavilion A520N Desktop PC (2.2 GHz Athlon XP 3200+, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Combo)

Rating:
Summary: Good value but no game rocket
Review: After looking around for a good all around PC for e-mail, corrospondence and a lot of still photography we landed on this one.
My teenage son says the video card is too slow but he has his own purpose built game machine and the graphics on this box are way more than adequate for the Photoshop intensive use I put it to.
The card reader on the front is a wonderful touch for us photographers as is the DVD burner. The machine has all the I/O's any sane person could want.
My employer just bought a load of dual processor Xeon HP workstations for video editing and the build quality on the HP machines was so good that I hoped some of the magic would have rubbed off onto the Pavillion line.
So far so good.
Better, I think, to get a computer that has been "spec'ed down" to meet a price point as opposed to one that has been "built down" to keep the sticker low.

A well built workhorse that won't send you to the poor house.

Rating:
Summary: YAYYY!
Review: I bought this ocmputer about 2 weeks ago and I am so happy I did. I was going to choose either this or the 530n which costs about 200 bucks more but the only real difference is 40gigs. so I chose this one. It is great for gaming, great for digital film editing, and great for everything else that the average pc user would do. I really really love it. I think i have finally found my soulmate.

Rating:
Summary: YAYYY!
Review: I bought this ocmputer about 2 weeks ago and I am so happy I did. I was going to choose either this or the 530n which costs about 200 bucks more but the only real difference is 40gigs. so I chose this one. It is great for gaming, great for digital film editing, and great for everything else that the average pc user would do. I really really love it. I think i have finally found my soulmate.