HP Pavilion XL918 @ Costco For $550 - Your Thoughts

[bigal96]

Seems like alot of techies here ... so what do you guys think of this deal from Costco? Solid? Fair? Weak? Great? Skip it and just get a Dell??

HP Pavilion XL918 - $550
Celeron 1.0
128 MB SDRAM
30 GB Ultra DMA Hard Drive
HP CD-Writer (8x/4x/32x)
15" Monitor
56K Modem
Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Works 6.0 (I'll need to upgrade this to MS Office)

Thanks for your input.

 

[tydas]

That 15 inch monitor will kill your eyes, being that 17 and 19 inch are reasonbly priced i would upgrade that part. Probally has some lame intergrated vid card which won't play modern games.
Seems good for surfing, mp3 and email tho...

 

[Sanjoelo]

Fair at best. You could do a lot better for your money. Pavilion systems are pretty poor in my experience. Might be worth it for $350 or so.

The new Dell systems actually seem to be improving in build quality, incredibly enough. If they were better on the shipping and support side, I might actually be tempted to buy (instead of build) for the first time in years. Well... Alienware has been a temptation, but paying $1500 more than it would cost me to build the same system has been a deterrent.

 

[JohnnyBlaze47]

Yeah, but for what's coming in it, I think it's a great deal. Most HP bundled systems start at $700. This would be great for my mom or someone new that wants a computer, but won't be plotting to rule the world with it. If they're gaming, they'd probably be looking for a system with a good card already or at least an AGP slot for upgrading. Good find.

EDIT: Granted, while most of us could put together a far better system than that for the money, for somebody looking for a nice Christmas gift without having to have the hassle of taking a phone call at 2 in the morning to answer some questions, it may be worth it. BTW, my Pavilion PC has been going for over 3 years, and the only problems I've ever had with it have been caused by me. Granted, it's not the most upgradable. It tops out at 256MB RAM, only PCI expansion slots, and it's ONLY (works fine for what I do) a 300 Mhz AMD K6-2, it's been great.

 

[bigal96]

Thanks for the insight ... yeah, it has an integrated Intel Direct AGP 3D graphics vid card, but I'm not a gamer, so that part is fine for me. Basically will use it for email, surfing and burning music. The SDRAM is expandable to 512MB.

I think the best part is the "no-questions-asked" return policy at Costco ... if you want an upgrade, return the whole damn thing to Costco ... my buddy has been doing this for about 3 years now and it always works.