New HP desktops shine, want you to buy more stuff

Rich Brown | Sep 06, 2007

HP announced the first product of its joint design efforts with Voodoo PC this evening. Our review of the HP Blackbird 002 is up, and it achieved the highest rating we've ever awarded a desktop. We'll let the review speak for itself, but we'll only add here that while we wrote about a custom config that won't be available until October 1, you can buy a similar, fixed-configuration system today for US$5,500 that looks like this:

Overclocked Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850

Two Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards

Windows Vista Ultimate

2GB 800MHz DDR2 Corsair SDRAM

160GB 10,000 rpm hard drive

500GB 7,200 rpm hard drive

Two 16x dual-layer DVD burners

One external drive bay on the top, another on the bottom right.

HP also announced its new Pavilion Elite line of digital-media-oriented desktops. They look basically the same as the Pavilion Media Center systems from earlier this year, with a few tweaks to the glossy case. We're still working on our review of the higher-end Pavilion Elite m9040n, but we can tell you so far that we're perplexed by the fact that it has bays for two different kinds of removable HP hard drives. This feels like a serious waste of space design-wise, and also like a transparent upselling tactic. The good news is that this system no longer has the superfluous "Media Center" designation in its name, as all PCs with Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate include Microsoft's Media Center interface.

This post orginally appeared in CNET Crave.

Filed under: PC & Peripherals
Leave a comment | Bookmark | Share