Computer pricewatch for those looking at buying...

Late November 2007

The HP Pavillion 9000 series looks like a winner for the performance minded. Check out the Pavillion Elite M9077c-b an in-store Costco special, for $1499, I believe.

Its got

• a 24" HP monitor (a significant upgrade from 22"monitor both in size and resolution - 1,920 x 1,080 is full HD)
  
• an Intel Quad-core QX660 processor for greatly improved multitasking (care for editing videos while doing anything else?
• a 400GB HDD (with a free internal and external drive bay), and a free PCIe 16 expansion slot
• This HP has both the HP Personal Media Drive slot and Pocket Media Drive slots, which allow HP's propriatary cartridge-like drives to be installed. The 'Personal' drives are based on 5.25" HDD's and are an ok value.
  
• the GE Force 8500GT graphics card is pretty good for multimedia uses, but not for real hard-core gamers, though it supports DirectX 10. It also has a regular NTSC and hidef ATSC video tuner for those who want to watch or capture TV (not sure about the specs here).
  
• Its got lots of card reader slots and connectors including Firewire for that older video camera.
• A wireless keyboard and mouse rounds out the great feature set.
  

The only things missing are

• an external eSata connector (but you don't really need it with the internal bays, or you could add a connector to the free expansion slot), and
  
• an enhanced audio card (if you don't need the eSATA or feel like ripping out the modem, you can use the slot for this),
• and built-in RAID support. Then again, a RAID NAS like the WD MyBook World Edition II might be the better choice for data backup and shared storage.
  

I've been watching the HP machines evolve recently and this one hits nearly all the features. Performance benchmarks I do not have, however. You may want to check them out before buying, but overall, judging by the components and featureset, this is a killer machine, very well rounded and even upgradeable.