HP Pavilions

does anyone have any experience with these particular PCs??

my girlfriend's parents are looking to buy a reasonably-priced PC, and i know they sell these at Wal-Mart. are they pretty OK PCs??

if not, any other recommendations for not-too-pricey PCs??

THANKS!!!

 

one more question -- what about the celeron processors?? i've been hearing and reading various things, but they are less expensive, and it sounds like they've GREATLY improved over the past few years.

 

HP makes fairly decent PCs, and they are good for a beginner. Much better then an eMachines unit . A Celeron I believe is still based on the PIII core, so it's not as "advanced" as a P4. But it's failrly fast for most applications, so unless you play really demanding games, or use AutoCad for a living then it will be fine. You basically get what you pay for...

 

There are different varieties of Celerons, the best variety is the P3 generation. This is a very short, but direct answer. PC magazine explains these sorts of things in much greater depth in various issues, as new products are introduced.

gj

 

Hello arthropod98, I have 3 Pavilions all about 2 years old. One has had no problems, one has had the power supply fail and one a hard drive and power supply fail all after the one year warranty :-{. I don't have a clear picture whether this is considered normal failure rates but it sure seems like to much. These are all celeron, one 600 and two 550's. I have used a 550 with a Pentium III and for my purposes there is no difference in performance but I don't game or use heavy graphics. I would think a celeron at 1000+ processor speed would be a fine machine......Mike

 

really appreciate all the responses!!

since it's my girlfriend's parents that are looking for PC recommendations, i'm leaning towards a gateway or dell. they can get a really nice system (with a pentium III or IV processor), for around $1K, so i think i'll be recommending that.