HP Pavilion Slimline Desktop

The HP Pavilion Slimline s3020n ($580 direct) is the first in HP's new breed of Vista-equipped compact PCs, and it adds both styling and strength to an already successful design.

HP has improved its innards over last year's sub-$600 slimline PCs. It has raised the system memory to 1GB and, more important, has added support for the multimedia-friendly HP Pocket Media drive. If you need a second or third PC for the kids or grandparents to use for everyday multimedia tasks, the s3020n is worth a close look.

Among recent small-form-factor PCs, the Slimline PCs look as attractive as the Acer Aspire L310 and almost as good as the Apple Mac mini. The Acer and the Mac mini are smaller, but the HP doesn't require an external power adapter. The s3020n's styling is mostly shiny piano-black, as opposed to last year's silver-gray color scheme.

I like the sleek front panel with its "buttonless" eject mechanism. Just press the indentation on the top of the DVD burner drive, and it pops right open. You can also use the included multimedia keyboard's eject button. I applaud the detail HP has put into its new keyboards, mice, and monitors. All three components match the general styling of HP's new PCs, with glossy black plastic faces with silver accents.

HP Pavilion Slimline Desktop Features :

• Memory card device : 15in1 memory card reader
• Modem : 56k modem
• Network interface : Ethernet 10/100BT integrated network interface
• Video adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Graphics with TurboCache
• Video RAM : 128MB dedicated graphics memory. Up to 319MB Total Available Graphics
• Memory as allocated by Windows Vista™
• Internal audio : High Definition Audio with up to 7.1 surround sound capabilities
• Keyboard : HP multimedia keyboard
• External drive bays : 1 external optical drive bay, 1 internal HDD bay
• External I/O ports : 5 USB 2.0 ports (1 in front); 1 FireWire®-IEEE-1394;
• Expansion slots : 1 PCI slots (available), 1 PCI-E x16 slot (available)

HP Pavilion Slimline Desktop Specification :

• Processor : AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 3800+
• 2.00GHz, 512KB + 512KB L2 Cache
• Operating system : HP recommends Vista™ Home Premium.
• Chipset : NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
• Standard memory : 1024MB
• Memory type : DDR2-SDRAM
• Memory slots : 2 DIMM (240-pin, DDR2) (occupied)
• Internal hard disk drive : 250GB
• Hard disk controller : SATA hard drive
• Hard disk drive speed : 7200 rpm
• Optical drive type : DVD Burner
• Optical drive speed : 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R DL, 4x
• DVD-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 16x DVD-ROM, 40x CDR, 32x CDRW, 40x CD-ROM