Brand Takes On Sony and Dell, Compaq Challenges eMachines and Gateway
The holiday shopping season has yielded to spring savings, and HP has refreshed both its HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario lines of retail desktop PCs. The former brand emphasizes digital media for music, video, and photo buffs, while the latter offer stylish new design for bargain-minded school and home office workers.
Taking the Compaqs first, the Presario S3000NX offers an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor, 256MB of DDR memory, a 40GB hard disk, and a 48X CD-RW drive for $499 (before a $50 mail-in rebate). While it uses integrated graphics, even this bottom of the Presario line (like the other Compaqs) has an AGP slot for 3D game cards.
The Presario 3100NX steps up to an Athlon XP 2100+, 80GB hard disk, and CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive for $589 (before rebate). Users seeking more speed and storage can opt for the 3200NX model’s Athlon XP 2400+ processor, separate 48X CD-RW and 16X DVD-ROM drives, and 120GB hard disk for $669 (before rebate).
The top of the Presario desktop line, the model S3300NX flaunts a 128MB Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 graphics card and 512MB of DDR memory, as well as an Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and 120GB hard disk. It’s $819 before the $50 mail-in rebate. All the Compaq desktops come with Norton AntiVirus and Microsoft Works as well as Windows XP Home Edition.
The multimedia-oriented HP Pavilion line begins with the 505n, which combines Intel’s 2.2GHz Celeron CPU with 256MB of DDR, a 60GB hard disk, and a 48X CD-RW drive for an estimated street price of $519. The Pavilion 515n uses the new Celeron/2.3 chip with an 80GB hard disk and separate CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives; it’s $599.
The Pavilion 725n ($699) packs an Athlon XP 2400+ processor, 80GB hard disk, 512MB of DDR, CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives, front and rear IEEE 1394 ports, Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics, and a six-in-one media card reader. Like its siblings, it comes with Windows, Works, Norton AntiVirus, and HP’s Picture Toolkit software for editing and sharing digital photos.
Finally, the HP Pavilion 735n brings DVD creation and video editing down to $899, with a DVD+RW/CD-RW drive (plus separate CD-ROM), Athlon XP 2600+ horsepower, 512MB of memory, GeForce4 MX graphics, and the media card reader.