Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion a250n Desktop PC (2.60-GHz Pentium 4 (Hyper-Threading), 512 MB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive, CD-ROM Drive)

When I first saw this computer, i thought it looked awesome. It had the 2 things I wanted: A drive for my digital camera's memory cards and a DVD burner. I waited a while and finally got it on special at Futur shop for 1499$ Canadian. I couldn't wait to open and try it out.

Then the disapointments started to creep in.
The first problem: you have no cds with. No cds containg drivers for you video card or your soundcard. No windows XP cd either.
You only have one cd with it and guess what..its an AOL cd.
This might sound stupid, but if AOL can send CDs with HP computers, then why can't HP?

What they have done is partitioned MY hard drive. And installed the back up of windowsXP and drivers on MY d drive. Because of this partioning, MY C drive is reduced to 107Gb. Then to top it all off, they install over 7Gig of trial software on MY c drive. So instead of starting of with a 120 gig hardrive, I start with a 100 and with very annoying pop-ups from all the various trial software. Excuse me, this might seem weird to you, but when I pay for 120 Gig harddrive I expect one, NOT a 100 gig one. And when I pay for it, it becomes MY D drive and MY C drive.
Not yours.

If you check out the HP forum, you will notice the techs guys are smugly saying that they have this question every 3 months and that its Microsoft fault for no longer providing cds on computers with windows preinstalled.

Sure, I can accept that, but that doesn't prevent hp with providing drivers and software for the DVD burner and the video and sound cards. (When you just by the burner, they provide the necessary drivers and software with it.) And if AOL can send cds of their software, then surely HP can do it to. These days, cds only cost pennies. All in all, this computer cost me 1725$ canadian, for that much money, I expect at least something more then an AOL cd.

If I would have had driver cds I would been perfectly happy. I could have reformarted the c drive and recuperate the D drive and install a bought version of windows XP. I googled it up and someone had actually tried to reformat his computer without the drivers, but then couldn't find all the drivers on HP's website. He had to search it up, and the end result was that his system was crashing and that it was working "sort of".

Now, this computer isn't bad. On the contrary, I love the way it looks and it runs great, the drive for SD cards worked fine as did the DVD burner. I have to admit, the DVD burner is just awesome. I watched dvds in it and they worked wonderfull, no skipping or anything.

And if you never intend to format your harddrive and don't mind that a part of your computer (the D drive) is completly unaccesable, then go for it.

However, I know the importance of reformatting your hard drve from time to time. And with an unaccessible d drive, I don't feel as if it is MY comuter. I am also very disapointed in HP, this was just the computer that I was looking for. If someone in HP is reading this, please, please, please provide some cds in the futur, or if you don't, then at least don't provide an AOL cd. Or try even better: provide ALL the drivers on your website.

Are those few pennies you saved on cds really worth it?

Not in my case, I brought mine back and got my money back.

The a250n is a great computer for the enthusiast on a budget. I got mine from Best Buy (big mistake, try shopping elsewhere) or just get it here from amazon.com. I like the fact that is has an NVidia Graphics card instead of onboard graphics that takes away from your overall PC RAM. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a quick system and doesn't want to bother with the white box manufacturers that are scattered across the net. HP makes a decent product, and they are definitely better than the comparable systems you can buy at retail chains. Definitely consider the Pavilion a250n when shopping for you next PC with a Pentium 4 processor with HT technology.

First of all, i think this the best computer for the price range (i bought for $1400). I havent had much trouble with anything at all, everything works fine (i have SuSe and XP running). As a amateur photographer, i really like the 4-1 card reader, it helps me out a lot. There are lots of USB ports, you get a firewall port in the front, making things a bit easier to reach.

Performace is just awesome with this computer. I can run multiple programs at once, and the computer doesnt slow down or freeze. Its also pretty good for gaming, but i think it needs a better graphics card.

The only complain i have about this is, HP didnt include any software/operating systems CD. This could be trouble for people who wants to reformat their hard drive.

the Hp a250n is a pretty good computer. i got it after having a micron melenia max with the 1.2 athlon With Win ME on it . pretty sad. but this computer beats that by a mile
i upgraded my graphics card to a 128 meg radeon 9600xt and added another 512 megs of ram which was rather cheap for the pc 2700 i think it was like 80 bucks for the 2 2.6
It does come with a partitioned hard drive which for some people would really bother them but for me i figure if i ever find my way up to 100g of things in my HD ill either just install another one probably an 80 gig or something. either that or figure out how to unpartition it or just whipe it and reinstall windows off a bought Cd . dono if that would work with all there HP BIOS On there but theres always restore disks. one thing . when you buy this dont let them optimize it for you or make you a copy of the back up disks. or pay them to do your windows updates. its all very easy to do yourself and can save you some money . Dont let store people rip you off. because its all right there for you and easy to do . but anyways. this is a nice computer. espechially the price. i have had no troubles at all with it. i always run norton system works on all of my computers and it seems to help out a bit. I sapose scan disk can do the same but i have faith in norton.

This computer has all of the digital and home needs for music, games, software, photos, and movies. YOU CAN EVEN MAKE YOUR OWN DVDS! If you got all of this on Dell, you would be spending about $2,000 dollars. Well, do the math. Its ultra fast and you never have to worry about hard drive space being used up because you have so much of it. This is the way to go for anyone! TRUST ME, IT IS AWESOME!

Ok, you don't get Windows XP cd. But, you get a whole nothere drive, called the D:\ drive, which is for system recovery or re-formatting the hard drive. This system is for a family or an amateur photo and video maker. 5 Stars!