HP Pavilion a1525a

OK – ok machine but hp service useless cant get good help from hp, takin to independant service to check bios if no good then motherboard replace good machine fast on xp screen goes blank just after start up, vista no good had installed went back to xp mce 2005, on board usb has a fault keeps turning off then on, can't use them also card reader cant use may have faulty mother board

HP a1525a okay – I brought this computer exactly two weeks before Windows vista came out in  January. I got a pc which was around nz$2200 for only NZ $1600, because the shop was clearing old Windows Xp computers due to the arrival of new windows Vsita computers in a week or so.( Thet didn't know about the express upgrade)I was looking at this computer a few weeks earlier but because of the high price and becuase it only came with 512MB DDR2 RAM I thought this was a over priced pc.

Given the huge discount I thought even if I upgrade the RAM to 1.5GB it was a good computer. My sales person said that the graphics card was very good with 256 MB of memory and he said that this was beeter than a Nvida 6600 256 MB card on anoteher pc that I was interested in. ???? Only after setting this pc up I noticed that this pc had a very useless hypermemory intregated graphics card.

I also got a express upgrade from Windows XP MCE 2005 to Windows Vista Home Premium, so after upgrade the memory  to 1.5GB this computer was able to run all the premium features of Windows Vista including the new Windowss Aero glass user interface.

Perfomance wise this pc can multitask very easily with 1.5GB of memory. You can run a virus scan, defrag you hard disk and watch a dvd with around  65% CPU usage, although this computer crashes and burns when iit comes to contact with single threaded aplications. Although you might like to uninstall Nortan 2006 as it eats all the memory resourses.

You also get a Double Layer write capable Lighscribe enavbled drive, where with the right media you can burn images to you disk in black and white. Theses drives are around NZ$200 in the stores.The hard disk is also very good with a 160 GB capacity and it is SATA.

After installing Windows Vista here were my Windows Exprience scores.

PROCCESSOR: 4.7( for your interest a fast core 2 @2.4 Ghz s about 5.3, a athlon x2 3800+ is 4.8 with the pentium d 805 is 4.6, with the high end single cores below 4.5 and dual cores above 4.5)  RAM : (1.5GB) 4.2 HARD DISK: 5.3 Graphics: 2 (very bad)

The Vista scores were good for the proccessor, memory and hard disk catagories but the graphics were terrible. When you upgrade to Vista the graphics memory defults to only 64MB, and this good for nothing card filckers and stops responding always. The monitor goes blan k all the time. Due to this I am going to upgrade the card to a PCIE ATI Readeon X1650 as the a1525a has a spare PCIE slot.

In conclusion this is a very fast pc with 1.5GB of RAM due to the fast Intel Pentium D 820 CPU, although don't try to overlock it- the cpu runs very hot aready. If you buy this you will have to uppgrade the memory and the graphcis card so there is basiclally noo point in getting this unless you get it in a saale like me. Other than the graphcis head ache( although this card will display the Windows Aero glass) thsi is a very fast computer but it gets let down bing ti8me because of the ATI Xpress 200 graphics solution. Comes with a fast dual core pentium d 820 with two core cores running a 2.8Ghz. Not as good as core 2 e6xx line, more like the athlon x2 3800+ and 4200+. Free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. Comes with worthless ATI Xpress 200 256 MB hypermemory graphics which eats 100MB of system memory, although capable of running aero, slows down perfomance.