Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion a210n Desktop PC (2.50-GHz Celeron, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive,DVD-ROM Drive, CD-RW Drive)

This system is very slow mainly because it is loaded with tons of spyware that hogs system resources. You think popups are bad on the internet, just wait until you get them when you're not even connected to the web. That's right, HP has advertisments sliding in from the side of the screen at all times. This system also monitors your web habits and sends info back to HP.

Are you interseted in getting rid of the operating system (a proprietary version of XP made especially for HP that is slow as hell), well forget it. HP support offers zero drivers for this system and does not support you if you install any other OS, that includes your own copy of XP. No other OS is possible, no drivers exist anywhere, no support for anything other than the marketing bs system in place, no reformatting of the hard drive, zilch.

I have my old system in the same office that has a 333mhz proccessor and 96 megs of ram and it's faster than this new HP Pavilion a210n!

We're talking about marketing gone very wrong here folks, the main goal of this PC is to market to you.

This computer sucks hard, stay away from it. That's my advice.

Contrary to what the guy with the first review said,this computer is very good.Maybe he had a lemon computer(I had one which ate my files-twice!),but I have this one,and it runs fast as heck,with no internet problems.Contrary to what the Amazon review said,this runs games perfectly fine-Black and White runs perfectly,and that game sucks up a pretty byte!

Besides,the power button glows neon blue,how can you beat that.^_^

So if you're on a budget,you'll like this computer!

This computer is not bad at all. Yes, there is no recovery disks included and there is no firewire port, but where are you going to get the 48x cd burner and the dvd player for this price? Hp did do a mistake when they sold these computers without recovery disks, but its not just this model, its ALL the models they are selling. In this computer, there is part of the hard drive that is for recovery so the only thing ou have to do if u want to make a backup, just click and drag. Another thing, many reviewers said they had a problem connecting to the internet....?? What is that about? I bought this computer FLOOR MODEL and a bought a Nec Multysync1555v al for about 800. Never looked back. Never regretted it. Even though it was 1 month being floor model, it ran fine. To be exact, it was floor model at circuit city. The computer is not bad at all. What did disapoint me was the lack of a video card. Don't get me wrong. it "has" a video card (how would it not have a video card!) but the video card is intergraded., meaning its basically built on to the mother board. First thing I did when I bought this was buy a 128 mb video graphic card. Improved graphics, but if you dont run programs like macromedia flash, adobe photoshop, and such that I use, you will not notice the difference.

Overall this is not a bad computer. If you are shopping, copy the price...the specs...look around... and you know you will come back to order it. A computer this good, at a price this good. It's Grrrrrrrrrreeaaaat

I got my computer over a year ago and have had no problems with it. The HP handles anything I ask it to do. In 2003, like tons of other computer users, I had difficulties with viruses and trojan horses, but, after switching to Mozilla, this problem became a thing of the past and has nothing to do with the PC I now use. I've found that for photography and word files this model is ideal and offers a high rate of speed. I usually have about 10 windows open, 2 Word files, and MSN messenger and yet I never have any difficulties with crashes. Overall, I can't say anything bad about this model and don't plan on getting a new PC for another few years. I don't care what the new ones look like, this one is functional and saved me some cash (and continues to).

Bought this HP Pavilion a210n Desktop PC) brand new in the summer of 2003 soon after it had come out, and it's still going strong to this day. It was purchased to be a workhorse utility computer, mostly for Internet access, document editing, Website creation and administration, along with storage of documents and photos. It wasn't bought for gaming, so having the latest and greatest video and audio hardware wasn't a factor. It came with an Intel Celeron 2.5 GHz processor, and I almost passed on it for that reason, but a friend who worked for HP in their mid-range computing section had recommended it most highly, so I followed that advice and have yet to regret it.

This PC came with an ASUS P4G533 motherboard (HP name 'Echo'), and had a mPGA478 processor socket, so I knew that it could be upgraded to an Intel P4 Pentium processor at any time. I never bothered, but still consider it from time to time. It had all of the standard serial, parallel, PS2 keyboard and mouse sockets, along with 6 USB ports (2 front & 4 rear), all of which have proven to be quite sufficient. The onboard audio (Realtek ALC202A) is sufficient, though not spectacular.

Memory: it came equipped with 256 MB RAM installed (184-pin, DDR SDRAM) but this was quickly upgraded to 512 MB, then later to 1024 MB (2 x 512), filling the two sockets. The memory is not proprietary (unlike some other systems), allowing for reasonably priced upgrading.

Hard drive: the original HDD was a Seagate 80 GB (Ultra DMA 5400 rpm) unit, which had problems within the first 60 days. Contacted HP support and they immediately sent a new Seagate Barracuda 80 GB HDD (7200 rpm) as a replacement. Have since added another Seagate Barracuda 80 GB HDD, and both have performed quite well. These are backed up daily with a Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive an excellent device that works boringly well, as any backup device should.

Additional drives: it has a 1.44 MB (3.5-inch) diskette drive, which is rarely used these days. The CD-RW drive (48x/12x/48x max speed) and DVD drive (16X max) perform well, but I need to keep a paperclip handy to eject discs about half of the time, a common CD & DVD drive problem.

Software: Microsoft Windows XP was factory installed, and there was a backup partition from which restore CDs could be created, which I did. As far as the rest of the 'free' installed software goes (WordPerfect 10, Quattro Pro 10, Arcsoft FunHouse, Greeting Card Creator, MusicMatch Jukebox, Quicken 2003, etc), most of it was removed within the first 90 days. As others have found out, these 'freebie' applications can be resource hogs, and often are quite buggy. Installed a licensed copy of Microsoft Office 97 Professional as the 'mainstay' application, and only recently 'upgraded' to Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. Still learning the new interface, but it's amazingly solid.

Security: immediately upgraded the 'trial-ware' Norton Antivirus to a regular version for multiple computers, and then 'resource hogging' problems began to start. Switched to AVG Anti-Virus and used it for years. A few months ago, switched to Windows Live OneCare 2.0 and this has proven to be very effective and gentle on the system resources. It works well in the background and has automated the backup tasks on this and my notebook computer since it works with up to 3 users.

Keyboard & mouse: the original corded units were OK, but replaced them after the first year. Like the Microsoft Optical mouse units, but am seriously considering changing the present Microsoft keyboard to the IBM Enhanced USB Keyboard, mostly because of its ruggedness and classic IBM keyboard feel.

Support: this has been very good, as noted above with my hard drive problems. It should be noted that the online support resources are excellent, as is driver upgrade availability.

Pros:

- Very quiet operation
- First-rate HP online support resources
- Excellent integrated 10/100Base-T networking interface
- Easy access to internal components via removable side panel
- Dark grey solid steel case; plastic trim hasn't shown any wear
- Standard Microsoft Windows XP, now at SP3 level
- Multimedia performance better than originally expected

Cons:

- Maximum 1 GB RAM, wish it could go to 2 GB
- Celeron processor OK, but a Pentium 4 would be better
- Onboard Realtek ALC202A audio could be better
- Original keyboard & mouse are nothing to rave about

The HP release date for these was 27 May 2003. I expected to get about 4 to 5 years out of this computer, but since it has performed so well, would really like to get about ten years out of this one. Had I reviewed this years ago, would have given it a 5-star ranking, but by today's standards really can only give it a 4-star rating, and that because it's been so reliable.

It's a workhorse that has exceeded my expectations, a bit long in the tooth now, but still doing what it should.