Hewlett Packard Pavilion Desktop 9720 desktop computer Review

I bought this PC back in the last 90's when it was top of the line and you could build your own system at Circuit City for about $3500.  I basically was lied to and discovered this recently when I made enquiries about the Max RAM I could have in the system.  When I purchased it I was told it was the next generation of RAM that was about to take off and performed 30% faster than other RAM at the time, and that I could put up to 4GB or RAM into my system.  I recently found out from HP that this system was ONLY tested for 512MB of RAM even though the Motherboard appears to be able to handle 4GB of RAM. 

Back then RAM was VERY Expensive and even today the type of RAM for this system is VERY Expensive and I only purchased a 512MB to add to my existing 128MB of RAM, this should give you a time perspective compared to what systems cost and are loaded with today.  My system did work faster when I added the 512MB of RAM but the system is VERY slow today with all the Memory intensive applications and Windows OS out there, so it's basically a dinosaur now.

My main points were to stress that HP products were crap and today we often see tons of very Cheap and discontinued HP and Compaq laptops and desktops at places like Big Lots, Walmart, and other budget shopping places.  It's truly too bad there are NO other good options out there as Dell builds their own drivers and complicate the support of their laptops in order to get you to sign up for a service contract that's only good for Corporations and businesses who can foot the cost of these systems.  IBM is another option but you tend to pay more for the brand name, and forget about eMachines, Gateway, or other systems.  There's definitely a niche market out there for a manufacturer to build a good laptop without all the extra crap on it that people like myself don't need or want wasting our system's resources.