HP Pavilion a6600f Budget Desktop Personal Computer

10/21/08 - HP's Pavilion a6600f is somewhat a step back from its previous budget model the a6500f. Sure, it has a lower price tag but that is achieved by reducing some of the features from the system. While it may be slightly less expensive than many competing models, it also features less memory and hard drive space. HP does make up for this by including the 64-bit version of Vista. Overall, there are better overall systems though for just slightly more money.

10/21/08 - HP seems to be looking at the economic climate in the world and using it to decide how to produce its entry level desktop PCs. The Pavilion a6600f is the latest in a long line of low cost desktop PCs that drops the price compared to the previous a6500f model. One might assume this is due to reduced costs in the components, but it appears that HP is reducing the overall features of the computer.

For instance, the processor of the Pavilion a6600f does use a same Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 processor as the a6500f, but the company reduced the overall system memory from 4GB to 3GB. This doesn't reduce the performance too much on the system. The issue really is that more companies are now offering 4GB standard on budget desktop computer systems. At least HP still includes the 64-bit version of Vista so that the system can properly support 4GB and more of memory is users wish to upgrade the memory.

The big disappointment comes from the storage on the Pavilion a6600f. The a6500f featured a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive, a size that the industry seems to be standardizing for the budget segment. HP has decided to drop the hard drive size down to 320GB to cut costs. This leaves users with a third less space for storing applications and digital media. HP still includes their standard dual layer DVD burner with LightScribe media support though.

As with pretty much ever HP system, it comes preloaded with a large number of applications. This is good in that it provides users with just about any application they might need, but it also loads the system with a fair amount of trialware that decreases the overall performance and storage space on the system. Buyers will want to clean the system of unwanted applications to improve performance and free up drive space.

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