This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
My reliable HP Pavillion died after 10 years and I was anxious to replace it with one as good, if possible. BestBuy offers a few Windows 7 machines again, so I ordered this one with the i7 processor. I also got an Acer 27" monitor to update the old 23" CCFL HP. ProDesk is business-oriented and the Acer is sold as a gaming screen, so I got a mullet, I suppose. Everything worked right out of the box, which was a complete surprise. I turned the brightness down on the screen to avoid sunburn and liked it even better. Then I pushed the HP refresh rate to 144Hz, which is the screen's advertised capability. 60Hz was the HP default and showed no flicker. The 144Hz caused the screen to freeze and the browser to crash. I was told that the i7 Intel is paired with a pretty weak integrated graphic card, so I will settle for the 60Hz setting and notice no difference at my level of use. I wonder about the 4GB RAM, but can always add more later. My biggest peeve is last. HP gave up their reliable and versatile Realtek sound manager in favor of a very fickle product from DTS. It has been impossible so far to get a setting that works for all sources. Equalization and volume vary constantly, even in the middle of play. DTS is a great name in surround sound, but this is a turkey. Overall, my mullet is great and I hope it will last another 10 years. The tower and the screen have all the variety of connectors in abundance. I've since added an upscaling BluRay player to play through the screen independent of the HP.
Very smooth operation overall and I WILL conquer the DTS!...
