HardwareCentral - HP Media Center M370N Photosmart PC Review

HP Media Center M370N Photosmart PC Review

Not Too Shabby

November 21, 2003
By Eric Grevstad

Not Too Shabby

The 48X Asus CD-ROM drive is a generic item for listening to or ripping audio CDs or installing software, but the HP DVD Writer 300N is a nifty combination of 4X DVD+R, 2.4X DVD+RW, 8X DVD-ROM, and 16/10/40X CD-RW performance. And the 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7,200-rpm hard disk (partitioned into C: and D: drives, the latter holding the factory disk image for system-restore emergencies) is fast and roomy.

We've already mentioned the plentiful, front-mounted input/output ports, but there are loads more around the back: PS/2 mouse and keyboard, serial, parallel, a second IEEE 1394, second through fifth USB 2.0, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, and digital audio out as well as the usual analog microphone, line-out, and line-in ports.

The Radeon 9200 AGP card has composite and S-Video out ports as well as its VGA connector, and a 56Kbps modem occupies one of the three PCI slots. Another PCI slot goes to the Asus TV tuner/MPEG-2 decoder card, which completes the back-panel barrage with TV and FM radio coax inputs and S-Video and left and right audio inputs.

It's easy enough to remove two thumbscrews and peek inside the case, but consumers will be daunted by the prospect of performing any surgery in its crowded confines. The Asus P4SD-LA motherboard (with Intel's 865G chipset) has one PCI slot and two DIMM sockets free (the four sockets can hold up to 2GB if you throw away the two 256MB DDR333 modules provided).

But the PCI slot is jammed against the graphics card, and the memory sockets are all but buried under cables and wires. There are no drive bays available -- the memory-card reader occupies what would normally be a vacant internal hard-disk bay above the floppy drive, but the relatively modest 200-watt power supply might discourage expansive thoughts anyway.

Slick Software

In addition to Microsoft Works 7.0 and Money 2003, the trial version of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2003, and the Real One and MusicMatch media players, HP preinstalls assorted programs for getting the most from the DVD+RW drive. The CD/DVD burning software, Sonic's (formerly Veritas') RecordNow, is a little skimpy compared to the RecordNow Max version, but InterVideo's WinDVD player and ArcSoft's ShowBiz 2 video editor are both solid performers.

So are HP's own multimedia tools, which range from an HP-labeled add-in for Windows Explorer that helps novices launch appropriate players and editors to the new HP Image Zone, a house-brand digital-camera software suite for new Pavilion and Media Center PCs that can hold its own against image managers like Adobe Photoshop Album.

Image Zone offers thumbnail and slide-show views of images; basic but helpful editing functions ranging from automatic and red-eye touch-ups to cropping, resizing, and tweaking color, brightness, and sharpness; an easy way to back up and restore the My Images folder; and tools for ordering prints, sending e-mail messages with embedded thumbnails rather than attachments, and creating online albums, cards or flyers, or a DVD-player-compatible slide-show disc with musical accompaniment.