The New HP Media Center - A Review

The new HP Pavillion m8100n is a pretty sweet computer - too bad Microsoft Vista makes it very difficult to enjoy or control. I'll elaborate on that in a moment...This computer has a nice, sleek, black tower with lots of bells and whistles that I still have not discovered. So, this will be a very basic review on most accounts

The best feature on this computer is Windows Media Center. This program allows you to record live television similar to using PVR/DVR/TiVo. You can then import it to Windows Movie Maker and edit the recorded material to make a video or even take screenshots. You can even use the radio tuner to listen to and record music. The problem here is that Vista does not seem to like any of these programs very much so I have already had to recover my computer because of conflicts. What happened was that, after running my computer for about 10 days, I stopped being able to view the recorded material from certain channels. I was told that Vista was likely behind this problem. Nice...

To make using the Media Center easier, the system came with a remote control and I think it works well. The remote controls radio, television, picture and video programs. There's even a print button!

The m8100n is very quiet and pretty fast (not surprising since it's got 3 GB of memory!) I cannot even tell that the computer is on half the time. It also has a huge amount of storage so even someone like me, who edits videos and pictures very often, does not use up most of the available space. If it does become a problem, you can always buy one of those new HP Personal Media Drive. Many people have used those little USB memory keys that you "plug" in to the front of the computer. Well, this is just a huge one and there is a bay for it to fit in to so you don't have to worry about having a power source or wires as is the case with external hard drives. From what I have seen, you can get up to 160 GB from a Personal Media Drive which is really handy.

The screen that comes with the computer is huge! My screen is 20" and it almost feels like a waste because no websites are really designed to accomodate it but it sure looks nice on my desk. Either way, it is wonderful for those of us who need to watch television on the computer for editing purposes.

No software CDs or speakers come with the computer, which, I guess, is becoming pretty standard but it was disappointing for a computer that is called a "media center." To be honest, I think it's actually pretty ridiculous that this computer doesn't come with speakers. Maybe they assumed we all have speakers laying around, and some of us do (thank goodness), but they aren't, necessarily, media center worthy. The screen has small speakers on it but they barely count....

In order to list all of the problems, I would have to stop everything I was doing for a week and chain myself to the desk; that is how bad some of the Vista problems are. Here are some basic heads-up, though:

Do not assume that, because the computer came with certain software, it won't conflict with Vista. For example, my computer came with Norton Internet Security 2007. Vista regularly says that it doesn't like this program. I downloaded Microsoft Live OneCare which claims to work with Vista and guess what? It doesn't. Programs like Feed Reader, Incredimail, Roboform and more, are going to have issues (Incredimail cannot be installed, period).

Vista isn't all bad but, in its' current state, it is isn't worth it. You can't avoid it on brand new computers but wait a while before installing it on your older PC.