HP Pavilion A500N Desktop PC (2.08 GHz Athlon XP 2800+, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo)

[Archived in HP Pavilion Desktops, Hewlett Packard, Hewlett-Packard, Products]

Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Price at amazon.com: New from $679.00

List price $757.00

Product Description:

The HP Pavilion A500N desktop PC is built for your home multimedia needs. In addition to a CD-RW drive, the A500N has a DVD-ROM drive for DVD movie playback, HP's Image Zone software, a multi-format memory card reader, and ultra-fast USB 2.0 and FireWire ports for connecting your digital cameras and camcorders. The A500N also features a fast 2.08 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ processor, 512 MB of installed RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. For a step up in price, the HP A510N offers a faster processor and a 120 GB hard drive. The Basics Hard Drive: The 80 GB Ultra DMA hard drive (7200 RPM) is small in comparison to other desktop PCs in this range, and certainly smaller than youÕll need if editing a lot of digital video. It does have more than adequate storage for all your documents and a good-sized library of digital photos and MP3s. Processor: The 2.08 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ processor offers a high level of performance that's equivalent to a 3.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4--speedy enough for PC gaming, graphic design software, and multimedia creation. It also features a 333 MHz front-side bus (FSB) speed and a 512 KB L2 cache. Memory: The A500N comes with a 512 MB built-in memory (1 x 512 MB DDR SDRAM, 333 MHz)--a good start for power users. It only has a 1 GB maximum memory expansion (2 x 512 MB). CD/DVD Drive: This desktop PC comes with two optical drives: a CD-RW (for creating your own CD mixes) and a DVD-ROM (for reading data and DVD movie disk playback). The CD-RW drive has 48x write, 24x re-write, 48 read speeds for CDs--which is at the top end for CD writing speeds. The DVD-ROM drive has 16x playback speed (DVD movie discs require 8x). Keyboard & Mouse: The A500N comes with an HP Internet keyboard and scroller mouse (both with PS/2 connections). Sound and Graphics The A500N features audio and video cards that are integrated into the computer's main board. The sound card uses the AC'97 (Audio Codec '97) standard (configurable to 6 channels of audio). The video/graphics card has up to 64 MB of shared video memory. It is suitable for good range of gaming graphics and multimedia video playback, but might not stack up for ultra-realistic 3-D PC games. Connectivity and Expansion Slots For expansion, the A500N has two 5.25-inch external bays (none available), two 3.5-inch bays (none available), three PCI slots (two available), and one AGP 8x slot (available). It comes with a built-in floppy drive and the following external connectors: 7 USB 2.0 ports (3 in front, 4 in rear) for connecting a wide range of peripherals--from digital cameras to MP3 players 2 FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link) ports for connecting digital video camcorders and other peripherals (1 in front, 1 in rear) 1 parallel port for connecting older printers and scanners 2 PS/2 ports for connecting keyboards and mice 1 VGA monitor port 1 serial port for older peripherals such as early PDAs 1 microphone, 1 headphone, and 1 line-in jack in the front 9-in-1 media card reader on the front, compatible with CompactFlash (Type I and II), MicroDrive, Smaredia, Memory Stick/Memory Stick Pro, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digitial, and XD Picture Card It also has an integrated 56K modem (V.92) and an RJ-45 LAN network port (for a 10/100 Ethernet connection to networks and DSL/cable modems). Preloaded System and Software The A500N comes with the Windows XP Home Edition operating system, and it also features Microsoft Works (for working with word processing and spreadsheet documents). Other preloaded software includes Microsoft Money 2004, Quicken New User Edition 2004, Norton Antivirus 2004 (with 60-day LiveUpdate subscription) and Personal Firewall 2003, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Encarta Encyclopedia 2004 Standard Edition, HP Image Zone Plus, RecordNow 6.5 (for burning CDs), WinDVD SE 4.0 (for DVD playback) and WinDVD Creator 2, MusicMatch Jukebox, and Apple iTunes. The included HP Image Zone Plus photo and imaging software makes it easy to organize, edit, share, print, protect, and store your photos and video clips. Organize and find your photos easily by timeline, keywords, and/or location using the unique photo-globe mapping tool. Remove red eye and fix other common problems. Share your photos quickly via e-mails that include thumbnails with links to the full-sized imagesÑwithout downloading time-consuming attachments. What's in the Box This package contains the HP Pavilion A500N desktop PC, power cable, keyboard, and mouse. It is backed by a limited warranty for parts and labor for one year from date of purchase.

Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Waste of Time Rating:
Let me first say that Amazon delivered just fine and the computer arrived on time. Now, I hooked up the computer and there was a message on a black screen that said something along the lines of Disk Boot Error, Please Inster Boot Disk and Press Enter. Bios wasn't seeing a hard drive so I went in an forced Bios to boot the hard drive first. Still didn't recognize it. I called HP and they sent me the recovery disks, which contains a whopping 7 disks (cd-roms). I put them in and it said No Operating System Found. There was no operating system installed on this pc! I called HP AGAIN and said that the disks didn't work, so they are sending me a new hard drive. I have waited for a total of 2 weeks for the computer to arrive and to get it up and running, this is rediculous. I will write another review or edit this one if possible if and when I get the HP up and running.

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Comment: Not entirely satisfied with HPa500n (Great MB,Crappy case) Rating:
Great MB, has 5 usb 2.0 front 3, rear 2
2firewire plugs front 1, 1 rear
audio plugs both front and rear headphoneplug,input, and mic up front.

Motherboard includes 2 SATA plugs, so potentialy 8 Sata, and one additional Ide HD (9) total "potentialy"

2Ide connectors onboard CDr/w and DVD HD is using a proprietary cable so u have to order annother cable to fill the last ide device (money grubbers)

unfortunatly there is no way to mount even just 1 additional HD, without purchasing THEIR HD "cage", which I could not find on their website, despite their correspondence that said it was.

Powersupply 250W BARE MINIMUM, I will have to upgrade case to intall more HDs, and the power supply for ANY casefans.

No Recovery CD included, but u could buy one from them (money grubbers) they did put a recovery Partition on the HD subtracting 5 gigs from the 60Gig HD

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Comment: so so for the money Rating:
its a very compact unit, nice look and the slots for memory sticks and cards r easily accessible in the front but this maseen is too slow on processing speed....its sometimes slower than the old AMD athlon K7 that I owned...and there is no space in the front to slot in myh old drive for swappin
the games it came with r great... but still for the money I coulda got somethin better

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)