Hewlett Packard a1528x desktop computer Review

I came across this HP a1528x machine four years ago and liked it because it was a budjet friendly machine with an above average graphics card and sound at the time. The operating system was also a plus considering its backwards compatabily with games and other software. I added an extra gigabyte of ram and an external floppy drive, but other than that the specs have generally remained the same. I was a little disappointed in the lack of upgradeability.

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE, HP vs19 flat panel monitor 32 bit resolution, four usb slots, Realtek High Definition Audio, DVD/RW with lightscribe, five media card slots. Microsoft Works.

After having a series of DELL computers I was a bit uneasy about trusting the HP backup system that uses a seperate, protected section of the hard drive to fix any problems instead of the set of CDs I was used to. The particular system I purchased had a bum hard drive and the HP customer service center was far from helpful. (After several days of dilligent calling I had my new hard drive.) I have since used this backup system several times with no problems. 

Granted this is an older system. But for anyone looking at a used model for personal or educational use (this would be a great starter computer for kids and there are a lot of inexpensive XP games) this is still a nice machine for everyday use. It handles most games prettty well. The BIG FISH Games console that came with it added some fun to an otherwise stripped down machine. The only game I had trouble with was "Fate" and that was fixed for the most part with a software update and extra RAM. This really isn't a computer for high end graphics or power users. I use Photoshop 5 on it to edit photos but that is the most the ram will take without crashing the system.

If you run across one of these and you need an extra desktop for the kids or everyday surfing the internet or word processing and casual gaming this will work for you. It's definitely not a hard core gaming system that can handle high end graphics.