HP (Hewlett-Packard) Pavilion A250n Desktop

I've owned two HP Pavilion a350n PCs over the past ...

Strengths: Decent combination of hardware for the price

Weaknesses: Incredibly poor technical support

Summary: I've owned two HP Pavilion a350n PCs over the past month. The first one lasted 9 days before advice from HP's tech center in India trashed it so bad I returned it for a refund. The replacement worked fine for one whole day before continually crashing, losing Internet connections, generating a stream of serious error messages, losing settings, etc. HP's technical support, both online from its Help center in India and by telephone, has been atrocious. Their instructions are contradictory, inaccurate, nonsensical and even bizarre. If you get an a350n that works, great. But if you ever need competent technical support, forget HP.

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This is a computer with a large hard drive, speedy ...

Strengths: Large hard drive, great options & programs, speedy processor, ease of use.

Weaknesses: Comes with some software alsready installed that can be described as spyware/adware.

Summary: This is a computer with a large hard drive, speedy processor, plenty of options/programs. The 6 in 1 Media Card reader is nice if you have a digital camera or PDA that has removable storage. If you have other HP peripherals this computer comes with the drivers installed. If you like Corel products they're already installed. It also comes with a trial of Spam Subtract for e-mail that is worth keeping. The only downside is that it comes with some software that is known to have Spyware/Adware, such as Weatherbug, Wild Tangent Game Channel, & an update program called "Updates from HP" that uses Backweb Lite. It's not a big deal to remove the programs either manually or by using a Spywear removal Program. All in all, it's a great Home computer that can make DVDs & CDs, easily work with pictures or videos, do Word Processing, email & surf the net with ease & has plenty of storage on the 120GB hard drive. Oh, yes, it still has a floppy drive!

89% of People (8/9) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

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I purchased this PC to convert my VHS tapes to DVD ...

Strengths: Outstanding PC for the money.

Weaknesses: No second hard drive mounting brackets. Does not work with the ATI AIW 9700 Pro video card.

Summary: I purchased this PC to convert my VHS tapes to DVD. This PCs' processing power will easily handle the task. To capture the VHS tapes I installed an ATI AIW 9700 Pro video card. The PC would never boot with this card. I hand to install an ATI AIW 7500 card. HPs support had no clue when I asked why the mother board would not accept the 9700 Pro card. The software (Archsoft Showbix DVD) that came with the PC to process DVDs is outstanding.

80% of People (4/5) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

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I would recomend that you purchase firewall protec ...

Strengths: I like everything about it, I just had another computer that was pieced together from PC Club and it had problems with everything, including the Sims game that I play. This doesn't have those problems

Weaknesses: I haven't found much I don't like about this.

Summary: I would recomend that you purchase firewall protecting software... I don't know if this was the cause but I had all my passwords stolen right after I got this computer so therefore I had to change everything. IT is just a good idea to protect yourself, even if your computer has a good built in protection.

75% of People (3/4) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

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I GAVE THIS THREE STARS AND THE REVIEW SHOWS FOUR ...

Strengths: Can add to a total of 1.24 GB of DDR SDRAM memory.

Weaknesses: Tech support.

Summary: I GAVE THIS THREE STARS AND THE REVIEW SHOWS FOUR STARS--------------------------------------------I am not an ace on computers but I have had one for four years. I have called the tech support number about 6 times and the fastest they have picked up the phone is 35 minutes. One tech guy told me I am lucky because the usual wait is 2 to 3 hours. I think they don't care if you have to wait that long. And they do have people there that are dummies. One tech told me that I don't have a dvd or dvd writer.

67% of People (2/3) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

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