Description:
HP's new Pavilion a400n Desktop PC is a cost-conscious system best suited to light and medium home and home office duties. Certainly not ideal for upscale pursuits such as 3D animated graphics, high-end 3D games or demanding multitasking, the Pavilion a400n is nevertheless a good bet for those who can do without state-of-the-art power or amenities but require lots of storage space and a rock bottom price point. Driven by a reasonably peppy 2.7 GHz Celeron processor and a minimal allotment of 256 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM memory, the Pavilion a400n isn't intended to keep up with the latest Pentium 4-infused units but will certainly suffice for the majority of tasks it will be asked to perform. HP has enclosed an integrated Intel Extreme Graphics video chipset with 64 MB of shared (not dedicated) video memory, and a large 80 GB hard drive on which to store all your files and programs. The system features two optical drives -- a CD-RW drive and a DVD drive -- thus allowing you to burn and play audio CDs, archive files to compact disc, watch DVD movies, and quickly copy files from one CD to another. In this stock configuration, DVD writing is not supported. Other key amenities include a front panel-mounted 7-in-1 digital card reader for accessing memory cards from devices such as PDAs and digital cameras, six high-speed USB 2.0 ports (one of the front) for exchanging information with external devices such as scanners and external drives, two FireWire ports (one on the front) for fast interaction with digital camcorders, two available PCI slots, a front-mounted microphone and headphone port, and six-speaker surround sound audio support. The package does not feature a speaker system or a monitor, thus allowing you to choose from the many alternatives currently available. Communication facilities include a 56K modem for low-speed dial-up surfing and a 10/100Base-T Ethernet interface for high-speed e-communications. An HP Internet keyboard and HP mouse with convenient scrolling wheel complete the hardware picture. The bundled software package features such essentials as the Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system, Microsoft's Works 7.0 productivity suite, Quicken New User Edition 2004 financial center, and a variety of multimedia and security utilities.
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