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Full user review
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4.5 stars
"Great machine if you look at the competion"
Pros: Good performance, excellent media, stable, roomy, top LCD, built-in Bluetooth, RAID, made to order, and it looks great.
Cons: Need to order a wireless keyboard/mouse separately ($50), the remote isn?t black.
Summary: I just got the machine to replace an HP Pavilion which was a few years old. I looked at a lot of machines and the Pavilion remains about the only machine in its class. I looked into another HP, but there really isn?t any comparison ? the XPS blows it away.
I am at a loss with the cons which folks include. Price is on par with the Pavilions, so I?m not sure what else folks are comparing it to. The size of unit is larger than the Pavilions, but this is good since it has extra slots, drive space, air flow, etc. The LCD is useful ? it allows you to access the system as a stereo (play music) without having to turn your TV fire up Media Center. Bluetooth worked fine for me ? I had my cell connected within minutes and listening to it via the speakers. I have had no problems with MC under Vista (Ultimate SP1). It is much snapper than under the Pavilion?s XP, it allows watching TV with windows in front, and it can be copying files or disk scanning without missing a beat.
You can configure it pretty much as you like ? I had RAID-1 put in since it I work from home and my HP went down due to a hard disk failure.
My only two negatives were both small. The first is that (despite all the ordering options) it doesn?t include an option for a wireless keyboard and mouse. $50 solves that problem, but it should be in the choices. The second was that the Dell remote is silver ? unlike the keyboard, mouse, and machine itself which are stylish black and perfect under a 46? LCD. I solved this by just using the HP remote from the Pavilion.
