HP Pavilion a6700y desktop

The HP Pavilion a6700y has no exact price competitor of the system's we've seen at retail stores. We compare it with the $650 Dell Inspiron I530-120B, but you could just as easily match it against the $550 Gateway DX4200-09 or the $500 . Against the Dell listed, you'll note the HP has a smaller hard drive and less RAM, but it also offers 802.11b/g wireless networking where the Dell sticks to a traditional Ethernet connection. Of the two, we don't find Wi-Fi necessary in a desktop, and we'd gladly trade the HP's wireless adapter for more RAM, a faster CPU, or some other more useful feature.

We're by now very familiar with the HP Pavilion a6700y's case, a simple, serviceable glossy and matte black design that neither stands out nor offends. A media card reader sits in our preferred spot on the easy-to-reach upper portion of the front panel. The DVD burner, a spare optical drive bay, and a collection of audio, FireWire, and USB 2.0 ports hide behind a series of front panel doors.

Like most midtower desktops in the $500 to $600 price range, HP's $560 Pavilion a6700y is mostly here to get the job done. We found that its lower-end AMD quad-core processor is a decent enough multitasker, but HP's component selection is questionable. In particular, the HP sacrifices core capability for Wi-Fi, a feature we can't get too excited about in a stationary desktop. We can recommend this PC only if you're especially price sensitive, and you spend most of your time using programs you know are multicore-friendly. Otherwise, look for a system with a more balanced set of features.

Price range:

Specifications: Processor: AMD Phenom 9150e quad-core 9150e (1.80 GHz) ; RAM installed: 4 GB DDR-2 SDRAM ; Hard drive: 500 GB Serial ATA ;

The bottom line: By sticking a wireless network adapter in a desktop with relatively slow performance for its price range, it almost feels as if HP has phoned in the configuration of this Pavilion a6700y. We can think of few reasons to justify purchasing this PC.

The bad: Slow general performance and poor multitasker for the price; better to trade Wi-Fi adapter for a more useful desktop feature or more performance.

The good: Decent multithreaded application performance; wireless networking.

Product summary