Great computer!!!

So, I buy a new desktop every five years or so, and my old XP with 1G was running pretty slow, so I figured time to switch machines. I looked around at the 'build your own' part of the HP and Dell sites, and they were a little expensive for what I wanted (quad processor, 4G RAM), and was prepared to plunk down $1300+ for the HP m9160f. Then I noticed this machine at Best Buy for $400 less, went on-line, checked out the reviews and made my purchase on Amazon (which was about $100 less than Best Buy).

This is a fantastic computer, fast and quiet. I'm not a gamer, but do like to download/play music and videos I find online while listening to radio, surf around, use business applications, etc. I've had this for three weeks, and it's done it all without breaking a sweat. Vista takes a little getting used to, but the transition wasn't as painful as I feared. Nor was transferring my files over, I just put them on my external hard drive and copied them back onto this machine. All XP hardware  more

Best choice for a Media Desktop

I am an IT professional, so I usually tend to prefer building my own machines. Nothing I could build could come close to touching this box. It is silent, fast, feature-rich, and very affordable considering the specs. Most importantly, everything works the way it should.

The one negative is the inevitable crap-ware they load up on it. It's going to take you some time to remove all the garbage (Wild Tangent games, etc...). Uggh. But this is easy to do even for a non-technical person, and every manufacturer loads this garbage up on their machines.

Specific features that shine:
-Digital TV Tuner works great... I didn't think I would use it but I am.
-750 GB Removable HD option is fantastic (go ahead and spring for it, worth every penny)
-Case is a little cheesy-looking but is DEAD SILENT
-Remote actually useful in living room situation
-Wireless configured in seconds
-Vista is ACTUALLY WORKING WELL AND IS EASY TO USE

I highly recommend this system for anyone but the most demanding  more

Fast and plays well with others

Needed a replacement for my Acer laptop that has had media buffering problems since the day I bought it.
Was going for a Quad Core with 3GB I saw at Costco, but after a couple of days of research it was gone. Found this at Best Buy just in to replace the previous model I was eyeballing.
I knew that in the windows world 4GB = 64bit OS that gave me a little bit of pause but I always want leading edge in my computers so they last a couple of years.

The only real headache so far has been that Zone Alarm is not ready for a 64bit world, so I went with Trend Micro. Took a lot of tweaking to get the machine not to respond to pings (if Zone Alarm can make it so easy why cant everyone else). Once Security was up it was all good.

My default browser is Firefox and so far it's doing fine, on this box.
I have widgets setup to watch CPU, Ram, and network traffic and I have yet to really see this machine stress.

Multiple downloads from different sites, running Call of Duty 4 with a bunch of other  more

Fantastic Computer for Price

I purchased this computer to replace a Gateway laptop whose internal HD failed after less than 2 years. The HP is GREAT. MUCH faster than the laptop (a Duo Core, 2GB Ram). I really like the Personal Media Drive option, although I was not sure I would like it when I purchased the HP. Very convienent to just slide in a big HD, useful both for backing up and archiving important data. I did not have much problem with installing my existing software on the new 64 bit version of Windows Vista Home Premimum although I did need to get a few new drivers for external devices (ie a Sypder Pro 2 monitor calibration device). Only one program did not either run on the 64 Bit Vista or did not have a 64 bit version that I could download (that program was DxO Optics Pro Version 5. A good program, but if it won't load, it's not much use...).

Great Computer With A Great Price

This Computer replaced my P4 w/ hyper threading. Let me just say, I love Vista and the quad core really get the job done! Vista is finally shaping up and the computer multitasks extremly well :)