Pavilion a1060a

HP's Pavilion range of PCs is well worth considering if you are after a good-looking home PC for everyday computing and multimedia. Indeed, the target-market for this machine is users who are heavily into digital photography and even digital video editing.

The Pentium 4 540 processor runs at 3.2GHz and its ATI Radeon X300 graphics card is a mainstream card designed for viewing digital images and video on your PC, but not for playing games. A 200GB hard drive provides plenty of space for storing your digital media and a DVD burner allows you to back up your data. The DVD burner is also Lightscribe-capable. Lightscribe, a technology created by HP, uses the DVD burner's laser to burn images and labels on special dye-cast discs (the technology only works with Lightscribe-capable discs). Once you have finished burning your data, simply flip the disc back into the burner, data side up, and burn a label for it. It does take some time and the result is monochrome, but fairly impressive nonetheless.

This machine is also equipped for watching TV and DVD movies, as it ships with an analog TV tuner card (which also lets you listen to FM radio) and a fully functional remote control.

This HP is set up with all these functions enabled. All the software HP supplies is preinstalled. This includes Microsoft Works 8.0, Encarta Standard 2005, as well as HP's operating system and application recovery programs.

HP has done a great job of making this machine look good. Its front panel has stealth optical bays and a sliding door conceals the USB and FireWire ports. If you're after an attractive, off-the-shelf PC for entertainment, education and for storing your digital media, this one is recommended. The supplied software and the excellent no-fuss nature of the set up process makes for an impressive out-of-box experience. Its $2799 price tag includes a 19in LCD monitor.