HP ENVY h8-1440t Desktop with 2nd Gen. IntelCore i7-3820 (3.6 GHz, 10MB Shared Cache, 10GB DDR3-1600MHz SDRAM - 3 DIMMs, 1TB 7200 rpm SATA 1st hard drive plus ExpressCache HP 16GB Disk Cache SSD)

Pros: fast shipping

Cons: - not able to run Linux
- not able to recover win8
- not ablt to install win7
- incompetent tech support
- front USB and audio jacks actually facing backward

Summary: Before I bought the desktop, I wanted to make sure that I can run Linux. I first chatted with HP online, and was instructed to call the sales. After calling the sales, I was directed to tech support, and then back to sales, ... I spent nearly 2 hours on the phone, being kicked around to 3 sales managers and 3 tech support experts. Some people admitted that they had no sufficient knowledge, some people assured me without even knowing what Linux is, but thanks to the last tech guy who "appear" to be very knowledgeable, I finally placed the order.

It turned out to be a wrong decision. I tried to install Linux but there is no driver for the weird ATI Radeon HD7570 video card. Upon contacting HP, they asked me to download from AMD. I went to AMD website, downloaded the latest Catalyst driver, but when I tried to install the driver -- it said no supported video card found in the system. After a frustrating week, I decided to roll back to the preinstalled Windows 8. However, the machine cannot recover the original OS. Calling HP tech support didn't do any help. They kept saying that the machine should automatically recover, but it just didn't.

Then I decided to install Windows 7. However, the machine froze while booting the Win7 installation disk.

Bottom line: this PC has a weird hardware (I suspect the video card) that's not compatible with Windows or Linux. So don't buy!