HP Compaq Business Desktop Dc7700 > Reviews (5)

Shiny and full of beans is my affectionate way to refer to our latest desktop recruits here in the office. No, not the staff but the PCs they work on.
And they don't come much fuller than the DC7700 by HP Compaq.

As previously mentioned we are switching to becoming a HP Hardware user fast and their desktops have been a pleasant suprise during hardware replacement.

Let have a look at the product.

The Case has a shiny silver front giving it a cutting edge look while is Black case with removable side panels make maintenance, upgrades and repairs easy with full access to the internals of the machine. Accessed from the front is the essential CD/DVD recorder, 2 USB sockets for attaching various devices such as cameras, keyboards and mice as well as a microphone and headphone socket. Whoever invented front accessible sockets like this needs a firm shake of the hand! long gone are the days of reaching around the back, groping in the dark, hoping to connect with a free socket!

Shown in the picture but not present on our DC7700's is a 3.5 inchfloppy drive. I think the days of relying on a floppy are long since gone so we will not be missing it. There is however a blanking plate covering a potential hole should you require to install one.

Spin the case around and you can see a whole host of connections on the back. Get ready for this....there are 6 rear USB sockets! Yes, throw away your old USB hub as this has all the expansion and connectivity you could ever need! Add to this the traditional PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard fittings, a Parallel socket for a traditional printer, a serial port for some of the more scarce devices that now use them as well as a Gigabit Network connection, you are all set to roll in the office with this PC.

Popping the case open, I can tell you a bit about the insides.
There is a fat juicy 2.4Ghz Pentium Core 2 Duo processor that is the real brains of this PC. Designed for the next generation in software, it can easily cope with todays cutting edge applications and operating systems. XP is a doddle on this with no performance inpact. Even Vista works stupendously well on it.
All that power is gonna generate some heat and boy, do they have a cooling fan to keep it cool! Its huge! Ive never seen a cooling fan as big as that before!
Memory is set at 1gb from the manufacturer and its is installed in 2 of the 4 Memory slots. Therefore there are 2 more slots available should you feel 1gb is not enough!
A suprise when we first turned one of these PCs on was it has a built in speaker that is capable of playing music compared to the standard BEEP BEEP BEEP you expect on motherboards.

Setup and installation.
Thanks to HP for making this task as painless as possible. Most of the configuration and installation of the operating system is performed before the PC has been shipped which means the last few setup tasks are straightforward and relatively quick. You can be up and running in a matter of minutes after plugging it in for the first time. Start up and shut down is very quick indeed thanks to the performance of this PC.

If you get stuck, it comes with a recovery CD (very handy) and a very comprehensive manual. This makes a nice change compared to the PCs that ask you to make your own recovery disks and manuals on CD.

Preinstalled on the PC are Intervideo WinDVD for watching DVD movies, PDF Complete for viewing PDF documents and the general HP Backup and recovery applications as well as their security tools for protecting your PC. Nothing to write home about but it gives you a fully working office ready PC.

Price, well I was very shocked at the price when I saw it. We have been paying around £500 for the base units which include a HP USB Keyboard, Optical USB Mouse and a 1 year warranty. I think this is an absolute bargain considering you are getting a cutting edge branded PC with an operating system ready to go. I am replacing all our unbranded "home build" type PCs with these right now so the maintenance headache can sit with a helpdesk instead of me!

Absolute must if you are thinking of replacing your business PCs!