Product Description

HP Pavilion MediaSmart M8530F PC. The HP Pavilion Media Center desktop PC is designed and built for your digital life. Take control of your digital entertainment with a PC that helps you consolidate, organize, and play your favorite movies, music, photos and videos. The front-panel 15-in-1 memory card reader makes it easy to transfer photos, music, and other files to and from your digital camera and other peripheral devices. The SuperMulti DVD burner with LightScribe technology lets you create custom, silkscreen-quality labels and artwork directly onto LightScribe-enabled CD and DVD discs. The nVidia GeForce 9300 HD graphics card with 256MB dedicated graphics memory, DVI and HDMI capabilities with support for Microsoft DirectX up to 2047MB total available graphics memory as allocated by Windows Vista. A built-in drive bay fits an optional HP Personal Media Drive, for up to 500GB of additional storage that you can carry with you when you go. AMD Phenom processors enable true multi core solutions for a new dimension in performance that deliver an exquisitely powerful, intensely visual and strikingly efficient computing experience. The 64-bit edition of Windows Vista Home Premium with service pack 1 is for serious computer users who have advanced high performance needs. This latest edition brings together Windows Vista innovation with cutting edge PC hardware to deliver access to vast amounts of memory, stronger security, and a new level of reliability. Security features such as Data Execution Prevention /DEP and Microsofts PatchGuard provide an additional layer of security against threats, while increased memory capabilities improve the performance of applications with heavy memory demands. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 provides the latest operating system improvements and enhancements from Microsoft.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2460 in Personal Computers
• Brand: Hewlett-Packard
• Model: M8530F
• Dimensions: 15.16" h x 10.75" w x 7.60" l, 25.00 pounds
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz
• Memory: 5000MB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Disk: 750GB
• Processors: 1

Features

• Desktop PC with 2.2 GHz AMD Phenom X4 9550 quad-core processor, 2MB L2+2MB shared L3 cache
• 5120MB PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM memory (1x2048MB 3x1024MB expandable to 8GB), 750GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9300GE with hybrid SLI technology with 256MB dedicated video memory
• SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, dims in inches: 7.60 (W) x 15.16 (L/D) x 16.54 (H) approx., 32 lbs. approx.

Customer Reviews

That's a lot of computer for the price
I just finished getting everything tweaked the way I want it and I am mightily impressed with this machine.

First the cons:
1) Video card is a little weak. Not recommended for hardcore gamers. However, see below for the video card pro.
2) No wireless networking. A minor nitpick since I do not place my computer near my router. Easily solved by picking up an adapter.
3) No install discs. The hard drive has a recovery partition in case you need to recover, however, I would much prefer physical copies of the OS. So far this is the prime con.
4) This is more serious nitpick. The media reader does not fully accept SD cards (they only go in about half way and hang out). My other readers accept the card fully and have an eject function. I am not very comfortable having a very flimsy disk protruding where it could possibly get easily damaged.

Now for the pros:
1) Vista 64-bit is incredibly fast when you have this much machine. 64-bit Internet Explorer is noticeably outperforming both Firefox and Chrome.
2) This machine is whisper quiet. Even running the video card as hot as I could this machine puts out less decibels than my ps3 (which is very quiet).
3) The video card is respectable. It has native HDMI support (although I had to connect via DVI-RGB and tell the computer to output to HDMI before getting signal). The card is incredibly quiet (my guess is heatsinks rather than fans). While I wouldn't recommend the card for Crysis, I have been able to consistently get 20 frames per second out of World of Warcraft running 1980x1050dpi (and high quality) on a 42" screen. Running a somewhat lower resolution and slightly downtweaking the quality I pull 30 (bright areas) to 60 (dark areas) frames per second constantly. Lowest I dropped to tonight was 29fps and that was with a LOT of screen clutter plus multiple programs running in the background.

The pros outweigh the cons. I highly recommend this machine. Even for hardcore gamers you are not likely to find that much processor/ram for the price and it is relatively easy to replace the video card (with a 9800gtx+) and increase the power supply. For casual users you just can't beat the bang-for-your-buck value.

Be Wary of Using as a Media Center PC
The system operated great as long as I wasn't recording shows with Media Center. Since the machine is sold as a Media Center PC I installed two Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 pci express cards. The cards were designed for Vista so I thought it should work fine. HP says not to use internal tuner cards but that makes this machine useless as a Media Center PC! Go ahead and try to find a high end usb tuner card.

On both Vista and Windows 7 Beta with the latest Media Center, recording a show frequently results in an unresponsive media center. The only way to get Media Center back is to end task on it. When you're back in MC the show that was recording will appear in the recorded shows list as "currently being recorded" and will shortly become unresponsive again. The only way to stop the hourglass and gain control of your MC software is to reboot.

With some effort you will be able to record most of your shows but it is not even close to an unattended recording situation.

I know...I ignored HP's advice on the internal tuner card thing. But why would you sell it as a Media Center PC and then not allow people to use the best tuners in it?

3rd motherboard and counting
First unit had the sound card fail after a week. After 2 hours on the phone with tech support they had me send it off to repair. The repaired unit worked about a week before it started shutting off randomly. Another 2 hours on the phone and another trip to the repair center. I just received the unit from repair and the new motherboard has another bad sound card. Somehow this was not caught at the repair center. I'm about to send it off for motherboard number 4 and will never buy a HP product again.