Hewlett Packard Pavilion 513n (P9850A#ABA) PC Desktop

1 rating: 3.0

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1 review about Hewlett Packard Pavilion 513n (P9850A#ABA)...

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HP-513N ~ the perfect Christmas present

Jan 16, 2003

by SusiDee34

Rating:

Pros: fast & user friendly for the most part

Cons: miss some of my old programs & still miffed about the CD thing

The Bottom Line: hmmmm

As a doting grandmother I decided it was time for my three grandchildren to enter the age of technology. My oldest, at 13, certainly needed a computer for school work and even the youngest at 6 was using computers in school. I thought it would be the perfect Christmas present.

I’m not insane
I bought ME a new computer and gave them my 3 year old HP-6400 series. More than they would ever need or use. Of course stripping the hard drive down to bare bones was a little chilling, but I certainly couldn’t give them a computer with the sites I visit loaded into its memory bank now could I?

I’ve got bells and whistles
There are people out there that know what this means, not me:

Cache Memory 128KB
Data Bus Speed 400MHz
Optical Storage/Read Speed 40x (CD) / 16x (DVD)
Optical Storage/Rewrite Speed 8x
Optical Storage / Type CD-RW / DVD-ROM
Processor / Manufacturer Intel
Processor Class Celeron
RAM / Installed Size 256MB
RAM / Max Supported Size 2GB
RAM / Technology DDR SDRAM
Storage Hard Drive / Formatted Capacity 60GB

That was all from their book, as you can tell they are certainly not MY words. Does anyone besides me feel like they just read a foreign language?

What I do know is that it is faster and will hold more junk that I tend to download than my old one did.

It’s a big change, but I’m adjusting
I went from Windows 98® to Windows XP-Home® and it has become quite an adjustment. I’m still not comfortable with the new program or the layout but I’ll adapt eventually. However one of the pre-installed programs was WordPerfect 10 and since I had previously used WordPerfect for all my Epinions writing and storage, I was delighted to have that. A simple transfer from one computer to the other moved all my Epinions files.

I do miss my Adobe photo file but gained PhotoImpression 4 on the new computer. Not as easy to work with but again I am learning. I did pick up a lot of new games that have become new obsessions [like Spider Solitaire & Pinball] which was a plus.

The CD Writer?
So far I am disappointed. I was mislead by the salesman at CompUSA about the usability of this feature. In fact, when I asked him a direct question about this it turns out that he blatantly lied to me. I've already admitted that I am stone stupid about these computer gadgets so I don't mind exposing myself yet again.

I asked him directly if I could copy CD's & VHS tapes that I currently own through the system on this computer. The salesman left me under the impression that I could copy and/or record CD's & DVD's from what I have in my hands right now. Bare faced lie. Sure I can download stuff from the internet but I don't do that and that isn't the reason I wanted the dang thing in the first place. It also wasn't what I asked him, so I am just a bit upset about that.

This means I still have to purchase another CD burner to do what I want to do, which is copy old VCR tapes onto CD's. I was very plain when I told him what I wanted, he was making the sale anyway, why did he have to lie about it?

On top of that, he could have sold me yet another product had he been truthful with him. Stupid cow.

Purchase price was $700, with $150 mail in rebate, taking the price down to $550. Not a bad present for myself if I do say so.

Oh yeah, the grandkids liked their computer too.

Thanks,
Susi

p.s. Thanks to category lead opinionated3 for researching this out on Epinions for me, I couldn't even find it in the data bank. 'nuf said.

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50

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