HP Pavilion t760.uk Photosmart

HP's latest offering is a budget PC that's geared towards budding digital photographers. Until recently, a budget PC may not have been able to run the software needed to edit digital pictures at a decent enough speed, but with the 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 contained processor in this Pavilion, that won't be a problem.

This is complemented by 512Mb of memory and a generous 160Gb hard disk. The memory only takes up one of the four slots on the motherboard, so you can easily add some more at a later date.

The Pavilion comes with a 128Mb ATI Radeon X300SE graphics card. This might struggle with some of the latest 3D games at high detail levels, but it's very capable of dealing with anything else. The system doesn't come with a monitor, so you will have to factor that into your budget.

Inside the case, the wiring is a bit messy, but shouldn't cause overheating problems. Because it's quite a small case, though, there's not much room to manoeuvre. All of the internal and external drive bays are full, but there's space for one more hard disk, mounted vertically next to the existing one.

There's no floppy disk drive, although there is a memory card reader at the front that will handle all common card formats. The recordable DVD drive will write + and -R/RW discs as well as dual layer DVD+Rs, while there is also a second DVD drive.

There's a TV tuner card in one of the PCI slots and a modem in the other, leaving one free for expansion. However, like many computers nowadays, the fan on the graphics card is so large that it overhangs the spare slot, so you run the risk of overheating the system if you fit a card in there.

That said, there isn't much these days that requires a PCI slot, as most new pieces of hardware can be attached via USB or FireWire. To this end, the T760 has four USB ports on the back and another three on the front, as well as a FireWire socket on each.

What makes this PC suitable for photography is the camera dock, which mounts on the top of the case and can download pictures automatically. However, it isn't included in the price and you have to log on to an HP website to order one. It's free, but you have to pay a couple of pounds for the postage, which is a bit cheeky considering the price of the PC.

Software includes Windows XP Home, WinDVD SE, WinDVD Creator and HP Image Zone. The warranty is a one-year return-to-base affair, covering parts and labour.

The camera idea is nice, but to use this feature you are restricted to a particular model. And if you can live without the dock, you can pick up a similar system with a monitor for the same price.

Contact:
HP 0845 270 4222
www.hp.com/uk

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