Home > Consumer Reviews > HP Pavilion S3430F Slimline Desktop PC (AMD Phenom Quad Core 9100E Processor, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB Hard Drive, Blu Ray Drive, Vista Premium)

I have owned the Slimline S3430f for about 3 weeks now and have been impressed with the performance of this computer. It has a small form factor and can be mounted horizontially so it fits well in my home theater credenza. It is connected via HDMI to my Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver and then to a 50" LG plasma TV.

I have played Blu-Ray, HD DVD and standard DVD's on this system. So far I've only had one disk that was difficult to play but I was able to get it to work. I have a 5.1 sound system and it relays both Digital Dolby and DTS signals. Have not yet used high definition audio but that requires a 7.1 speaker set up on my receiver.

I have ordered WIN DVD 9 Plus Blu-Ray software. I am using the trial version of WIN DVD 9 now - its All2HD upconverting for standard DVD is incredible, better than my Oppo DVD player. The included HP DVD software is a stripped down version of Power DVD but the latest verion of PDVD will not play HD DVD disks unless you hack it.

I have also loaded over 150 music CD's on the sytem in WMA lossless format - good quality sound playback on the HP S3430F via Windows Media Player. First time I have had most of my music on computer and it really makes it a lot easier to access. Big benefit that was not considered when I bought the computer.

Its also fun to use the system to surf the net on the big screen. The S3430F does NOT include a wireless keyboard and mouse so I had to buy them separately - IOMEGA offers a 2.4 gigahertz model that works from up to 33 feet away. HP should have included something like this given that the system is designed for home theater and remote access is critical.

All in all I have enjoyed using the system. Lots of RAM, good sized hard drive, Windows Vista 64 Bit plus quad core AMD chip make it plenty fast and able to multi-task easily.

What a product from hp? Like it very much, from the second I took it out of its box and when I inserted it into my LCD table like a dvd player, for the first time I see vista like an operating system instead of crab, high speed and performance running software and games smoothly I tried fifa 08 it works 100% and crysis at a normal and low resolution, and it works good too.
Wireless lan card also is a good feature as a desktop pc, nvidia vga card gives u a cool graphic performance and a perfect control of colors and brightness.
I should mention this: hp has a great chatting support 24/7 I spoke to them more than 10 times for another laptops cases and never takes more than 10 sec to receive an answer from tech..
Sorry for my English and have a nice time with ur great product u r going to buy :)

I ordered this HP Pavilion S3420F Slimline with the HP 19" monitor and HP 4180 printer last Monday night, took advantage of the free offer of Prime shipping, got it all (plus the 3 softwares I ordered) on the following Thursday. Set it up in a few minutes, and within another few minutes we were on the internet with the built in WiFi and that beautiful big screen monitor, fantastic display, awesome! Got to admit we havn't figured out the TV tuner and some of the other features yet. We are so delighted with what we got, did quite a bit of research, very pleased. I have ordered quite a few things with Amazon and have always had good results even when we returned a watch, great response!
HP has a rebate right now if you order a PC and a printer on the same day (I called to verify this with HP) and from the same business (e.i. Amazon) I would get $50. back on this $85. printer. And Amazon has a deal when I ordered this PC that MSFT Office H&S is only $75.! Great deals!
I look at Amazon with confidence before I look anywhere else online.

I brought the s3421 which is the same as the s3420 only without the tv tuner, another retailer is featuring them on sale this week. I brought this computer to replace my high end HP laptop that died. Because of that I hesitated buying another HP. But I've had HP's in the past that were fine. And I swear by the printers. I didn't want another laptop though. This litte computer for the money really packs a punch. I found I rather like the Windows Vista system and I know I'm in the minority on that one. But this computer is fast, stays cool, and you can barely here it running, unlike the laptop before it. Nice softwhere assortment with it. Let's face it the avg computer user really only needs Microsoft works for their office needs. You only need office if you work at home and there is a 3 month student trial for Office 2007. I rather liked the look of that also(let's not forget and support our open source buddies by downloading openoffice free Office clone that can read Microsoft office files). The special keys on the keyboard make it easy to acess mail, internet, open and close the disk drive. The disk drive is vertical that took some getting used to. You can use is laying on it's side but space didn't permit me to so using as a tower. It's small maybe 30# larger then a wii if that. I don't know if it's the trend these days but didn't give you any software disks. You have to make a recovery disk yourself. Very little written instruction. So if you've never used a computer before might have some problems. It has 6 USB ports, firewire, media card reader. Even though mine didn't come with a tv tuner it still has the Media center. Now I got this with my laptop and a usb tv tuner which I could use. The Media center has come a long way since I looked at it. You have the option to download movies (at a price), watch shows on most of the basic cable channel for ex. History channel, food network. You can intergrate with you music, except if you have an ipod and itunes, they don't work well with others, there are programs that will unlock the protection Apple puts on anything you put into itunes but if you have thousands of song might not be worth it. Also with music get yourself some good speakers has a nice sound but I have some cheap speakers I got temp while using another computer. With a 500 gig hard drive unless you a media hound won't fill that up. Hard to believe my first computer had a total of 6.4 gig hard drive. I paid $[...] after rebates and this computer does what some priced twice this amount. It' definately a good value. The one selling here is also with the tuner and remote. But if you fine without you might check out a popular office supply company till 5/31/08. And remember real people don't wear real fur.

I am enjoying my HP Slimline. I love that is is smaller is size yet much bigger in every other way, than my old PC. I was worried after hearing all the neg about Vista - but I love, it, too. I don't know why most don't - sure it takes some getting use to but it's snazzy. Excellent PC for the price. After researching online and reading reviews - I'm super happy I went with this one! Bought it at my local Circuit City tho - on sale!