HP Pavilion A250e

Editor's note: After our September chart went to press, HP changed the name of this system to the Pavilion A250e. The change will be reflected in October's chart.

WHAT'S HOT: At first glance, the Pavilion 775e looks identical to its sibling, the Pavilion 764n. Like the 764n, the 775e has a blue-and-silver minitower case. However, the 775e has some improvements over the older 764n, including improved performance. The 775e, with a 2.167-GHz Athlon XP 3000+, earned a 128 score on PC WorldBench 4, making it one of the fastest machines from HP we've tested to date. (The four other machines we tested with Windows XP Home averaged 134--about 5 percent higher--but all those systems had 1GB of RAM, twice the 775e's 512MB.) The 2.67-GHz Pentium 4-equipped Pavilion 764n, in contrast, earned a score of 115.

The 775e also comes with speakers that we liked more than those we tested with the 764n. The Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers sent out bass notes that nearly rattled the walls of our test lab. They'll satisfy all but the most ardent of surround-sound or immersive game enthusiasts.

The 775e also has the mettle for working with digital media. It ships with a DVD+R/RW drive and has a separate bay under the floppy drive with slots that can accept a variety of storage media formats (CompactFlash Types I and II; SD or MultiMediaCard; and SmartMedia and Memory Stick) from devices such as digital cameras and PDAs.

WHAT'S NOT: Since it's a minitower case, the Pavilion 775e has less room for expansion than systems in bigger tower cases. It has no open sockets for additional memory, but there are two open bays for removable-media drives and two available hard-drive bays.

WHAT ELSE: The 17-inch HP MX75 CRT monitor that shipped with our unit delivered acceptable image quality. Together with the 775e's integrated graphics, the CRT displayed easy-to-read but somewhat fuzzy-looking text. If you spend long hours reading on screen, this isn't the monitor for you. In addition, we've seen more-vivid graphics from other 17-inch CRTs.

The HP keyboard that came with the system is as solid as a rock, and it is both well-designed and easy to use. It doesn't offer as many hot-keys as other keyboards, but it does provide buttons for launching a media player, adjusting volume, and navigating CD tracks. One unusual key launches the HP Picture Toolkit, an integrated suite of applications that lets you do creative things with your digital images. Among the apps is ArcSoft PhotoImpression; though its image editing tools are entry level, it also lets you create photo slide shows with music.

As with other HP systems, the 775e's list of included software is a generic mix of home-oriented titles. The best of the lot is Corel's WordPerfect Productivity Pack, a collection of titles that include WordPerfect 10 and Quattro Pro, a full-featured spreadsheet application, as well as Quicken 2003 New User Edition. The 775e's documentation is geared toward the uninitiated, with hand-holding illustrations and a large setup poster that matched our test unit.

UPSHOT: This home-oriented system offers speed and the tools for working with digital media. But we recommend choosing a better monitor.

SUMMARY

HP Pavilion 775e $