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Rating: 
Summary: HP a220n is still problematic
Review: Buyer beware. Our a220n has been under repair more than it's been functioning.Purchsed HP a220n from local big national electronics store for X-mas 2003. Out of the box it would not bootup so returned to the store where they replaced the hard drive (supposedly). Was OK for about 2 weeks and it failed again at bootup - "hard drive not found". Sent to HP in Cali for repair. They reformatted the HD. Good for about 2 weeks, then same error. Returned to HP again, they replaced hard drive this time. Now when it boots, the machine displays non-windows diagnostic pages that list a variety of disk errors. Works intermittently. Through all of this, the HP reps (including the ones from India) have been polite however they've been unable to diagnose the problem via phone. We're re-boxing the CPU one more time for return for repair. Who knows, maybe it's simply a bad internal cable or a CPU ... it's still under warrantee so I'm not digging into the CPU. Next time, I'm getting a Dell.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the most problematic computer I have ever owned
Review: I purchased my pavilion in early July and immediately began having installation problems either it would allow complete installation of games but fail to play them or it would simply not allow any installation at all.
I've spent several hours speaking with HP support to no avail finally I was told to send the machine in for repairs which took 3 weeks, when I finally got it back it still did not work.
HP is now asking for the machine back in order to take another crack at fixing it but refuse to tell me what plan of action they are willing to take if they can not fix it.
Despite the fact that HP has a record of this problem dating back to the time of purchase they are telling me the can not simply replace the computer.;
I find this unacceptable
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good desktop - but lots of fluff
Review: I purchased this computer in late July. So far - we have had no problems at all, and with a family of five it gets a lot of daily use. I particularly like the multi-format card reader - its a really handy way to download digital camera photos, and the fact that it is very quiet. The CPU cooling fan appears to be thermostatically controlled and only runs occasionally. But, there are a few downsides. First, HP has chosen to include dozens of add-on applications and free offers which no one in my family uses. Yeah, I know, you can remove them - but why should I have to remove junk in order to speed up my computer? Secondly, the HDD is really large (120 Gb) but its an old technology 5400-rpm drive. Between all of the start-up junk included by HP, and the speed of this drive, this computer takes nearly two minutes to boot to a log-in prompt, and switching between programs is relatively slow. Third, it comes with on-board graphics which are only so-so with newer games. Both IL2 Forgotten Battles and Raven Shield ran poorly on it. Good news is that it does have an AGP slot and the upgrade to a 128mb DDR nVidia card was cheap and easy (kudos to HP for easy access to the interior). Last but not least, it does not include a set of restore CD's (although it does have a separate restore partition on the HDD). You have the option, on a one-time basis, to burn a set of recovery CD's but that seems kinda chintzy on a nearly-$700 computer. Overall, I am satisfied with the a220N and we all like how quiet it is - but it could've been a lot better.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good desktop - but lots of fluff
Review: I purchased this computer in late July. So far - we have had no problems at all, and with a family of five it gets a lot of daily use. I particularly like the multi-format card reader - its a really handy way to download digital camera photos, and the fact that it is very quiet. The CPU cooling fan appears to be thermostatically controlled and only runs occasionally. But, there are a few downsides. First, HP has chosen to include dozens of add-on applications and free offers which no one in my family uses. Yeah, I know, you can remove them - but why should I have to remove junk in order to speed up my computer? Secondly, the HDD is really large (120 Gb) but its an old technology 5400-rpm drive. Between all of the start-up junk included by HP, and the speed of this drive, this computer takes nearly two minutes to boot to a log-in prompt, and switching between programs is relatively slow. Third, it comes with on-board graphics which are only so-so with newer games. Both IL2 Forgotten Battles and Raven Shield ran poorly on it. Good news is that it does have an AGP slot and the upgrade to a 128mb DDR nVidia card was cheap and easy (kudos to HP for easy access to the interior). Last but not least, it does not include a set of restore CD's (although it does have a separate restore partition on the HDD). You have the option, on a one-time basis, to burn a set of recovery CD's but that seems kinda chintzy on a nearly-$700 computer. Overall, I am satisfied with the a220N and we all like how quiet it is - but it could've been a lot better.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Computer, Bad Support
Review: I've worked on computers alot in my time. This seemed like it would be a simple computer that I could just enjoy. it was running great! except for the fact that HP loaded it with a bunch of HP software (trialware) and a wonderful advertisement window that would randomly peek in from the side of the screen every 15 minutes (if you thought popups were annoying, wait til you try to handle an hour with that thing on). But I got it all cleaned up and running just the way I liked it. Unfortunately, something internally had screwed up. Since it wasn't displaying anything on the monitor, I naturally checked the video cards. I tested both the onboard PCI (shared memory ugh) a seperate PCI, and two different AGP cards. All produced similar results. So I decide to call up HP support. After about 15 minutes of trying to get the computerized voice recognition to understand why my product was, I got to listen to the exact same 1 minute country song in repetition for about 45 mintues. Until finally it rang and the annoying song stopped. I had a representative start by asking me what the problem was. I told him exactly what happened, explained that I checked all fans on the computer and all were functioning correctly, there were no system beeps whereupon the man decides to take matters into his own hands because he obviously had the solution. After listening to him explain to me for a half hour on how to unplug my computer (and having him ask me if it was unplugged a million times), he instructed me to hold the button for 20 seconds. And it still didn't work. The man went on rambling how I wasn't qualified to install my own video card (even though it is no longer brain surgery, for plug and play. But I was properly grounded) then the man went through the exact procedure listed before (the whole holding the button thing and making sure my computer wasn't plugged in). The man said that they'd ship it to their center and reformat the harddrives (and hopefully reset the CMOS too) Upon recieving the computer everything worked fine and there haven't been any problems since. To the point: I might be making a big deal about the fact that I clearly demonstrated that I knew how to handle computers and assemble them. Nevertheless, the support decides to belittle my knowledge and just toss out all the extra information I gave them because I was not "qualified" to give information. Well all I have to say to anyone buying this computer or any HP computer is that the support isn't as great as they make it out to be. Just buy a normal computer with no support, but with a warrenty. The warrenty is nice, but support is completely unnecessary. That I leave for you to chew the fat a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: DONT BUY CELERONS(P1 OLD) COMPUTERS,
Review: This computer beats any Celerons with empty MHZ, The AMD cpu are much better infact 2600+ is same as P4 2.6Ghzz, sometimes even faster in games, Athlon XP is the best for gammers.
Anyway now about the PC;
Overall, This computer beats out the p4 2.6 anytime. Most of all this computer is a great multimedia computer great software for dvds, memory sticks for camcorders, and cameras. Graphics in itself is already decent for fan of animation or graphics or creating movies. The space is more than enough. The price hard to beat with these specs.It's a excellent package all together maybe for the exception for hardcore gamers.I easy recomand this fast& furiest PC!
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This machine is an excellent value. It offers all the power, speed, and extra's needed for small office or home use. The processor, RAM, hard drive, video card, Cd-RW, DVD ROM and other components are well able to do all that may be asked of them into the forseeable future. Hard core gamers will want a faster proceesor and better video card, but the rest of us need not pay a premium for "cutting edge" technology. This machine is plenty fast by normal real world standards.
In my work I use several computers with different processors - Pentium, Athlon, and Celeron. As a previous reviewer commented, I also recommend avoiding the Celeron and spending just a little more for Athlon or Pentium. You will not regret the investment.
One nitpick - I wish it came pre-loaded with Word and Excel rather than Wordperfect and Quattro Pro Apparently Microsoft has priced themselves out of the OEM market and most manufacturers save the money in order to offer lower prices. HP and others take note, I will pay a little more for Word and Excel if it is offered!
All in all, this is an excellent buy in a competitive market. Things change fast, but one can buy this and never look back.
Rating: 
Summary: RAM Memory needed and expensive
Review: To replace my 5 year old computer and to enable me to do graphics programs and burn CD's, I decided it was time for a new computer. The pavilion a220n looked promising after research. Amazingly, it ran almost as slowly as my old computer when I first set it up. Supposedly lightyears ahead of my old computer, I was astounded and disappointed. 2 reasons accounted for the slowness: the new Windows XP operating system is a RAM hog and the many items that were preloaded on the computer also slowed it's performance. After removing some unnecessary items, it was still slow, and expanding from 500MG to 1GB RAM seemed an option. HOWEVER, one can not expand to 1 GB RAM on this system without the purchase of not 500MB RAM, but a full 1000MB because this system has TWO memory slots of 250 RAM, each of which must be expanded to 500, rather than being able to reach 1000MB with only 500 additional MB. VERY DISAPPOINTING AND EXPENSIVE to get this to run smoothly. It performs much better with the extra RAM
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