Ok- last night I looked "under the hood" at this HP computer that I purchased on 12/2006 with what seemed like decent specs at the time- $400 for a 3GHz "multimedia edition" WinXP with 1GB DDR2 ram memory. It was for a friend of mine- an FP. It has been in storage since being purchased; I just want to get this thing cranked up!

The reality of the situation was that it had some very prominent problems/flaws that were caused by HP cutting corners:

* The 250GB HD was a Seagate (Seagate HD are probably the most unreliable HD out there)
* The Power Supply box put out only 250 Watts- I haven't seen one of these weaklings since the 386 computer days 15 years ago!
* The 1GB Ram wasn't really 1GB- about 30% of it went to the graphics adapter card.
* The computer box was crowded- typical of HP computers. Although the motherboard had expansion slots for 3 more SATA drives, there was neither the room nor the power to support them.

I then looked at the monitor- the HP Pavilion f1703. That was the culprit of my blackouts. It is well known to have several fusion joint problems (see http://www.lesliewong.us/blog/2005/05/02/hp-pavilion-f1703-flat-panel-display-blackout-solution/ ). HP will not fix it since this monitor is now way out of date, even though this is a design problem. I'm going to have to do some soldering in the next few days. Fun.
[Linked Image from i38.photobucket.com]
I took a 350GB Maxtor drive and put it in as the primary drive leaving the Seagate as a backup drive. I then ordered 2 more GB "DDR2" ram from Crucial.com for about $78, not a bad deal. I had to order SATA cables, as I had never worked with SATA drives before ($4 eBay). I ordered a 600 Watt Power Supply from eBay (~$30).

Take home message: don't buy HP unless you absolutely have to. Heck, even I like to not have to deal with this stuff!

Last edited by alborg; 03/07/2008 4:04 AM.