HP Pavilion t3345.uk - Athlon 64 3700+

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Design	Good
Manufacturer Support	Good
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great processor, Massive Hard Drive, Cheap price for what you get
Disadvantages:	Graphics Card is poor if you want to play the latest games at top spec

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

About a year or so ago I decided to invest in a new PC as I was not having much luck with my last one, after much deliberation I decided to go with the T3345 due to it's fast processor, well sized hard drive and general superiority over other desktops within a similar price range. I already had a decent TFT monitor so was able to focus all of my £600 on getting a good base unit for my money. Obviously now you can pick up something a lot better than this for £600 as when buying a new computer there is no such thing as future-proofing really, but at the time of purchase it seemed to me to be a good deal. I am still very happy with the computer I chose in the end so feel that I made a good decision in investing in an HP computer as it has been extremely reliable and has yet to go wrong which is always nice. I'm sure at some stage it will go wrong, but at the moment I'm happy with it and the performance doesn't seem to have dropped in the slightest since the moment I bought it.

For all those that are interested before I start to write the main brunt of my review, here are the technical specifications of what you will get for your money (and for those that aren't, feel free to skip past them and read on)

~Processor, Operating System and Memory~
Processor AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 3700+
Operating system installed Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
Chipset ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200
Standard memory 1 GB
Memory type DDR-SDRAM
Memory slots 4 DIMM sockets

~Internal drives~
Internal hard disk drive 250 GB
Hard disk controllerSerial ATA hard drive
Hard disk drive speed (7200 rpm)
Optical drive type DVD drive
Optical drive speed 16x max
Second optical drive type DVD writer
Second optical drive speed Double Layer ±R/ ±RW 16x/8x max supporting LightScribe technology

~System features~
Memory card device 9in1 memory card reader
Modem High speed 56K modem
Network interface 10/100BT network interface
Video capture interface IEEE 1394 FireWire® Interface
Video adapter NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6200SE Turbocache
Video RAM 256 MB video memory
Internal audio Integrated 5.1 sound solution
Audio connectors 3 front audio ports, 3 rear analog audio ports & 1 rear digital audio port
Keyboard Wireless keyboard and mouse
External drive bays 2 external optical drive bays, 1 internal HDD bay
Expansion slots 3 PCI (2 free)
External I/O ports 7 USB 2.0 ports (3 in front); 2 FireWire-IEEE-1394 ports (1 in front); 1 parallel port

~The Operating System~

Any of you that have ever used a standard laptop or desktop will probably be familiar with the Windows format, and I will imagine that the vast majority of you will be reading this on your Windows based computer (hopefully not too many of you will be on Apple's as although some will proclaim them to run a lot better and find them to be a lot nicer looking, I can't stand the look of them and think that they're highly over priced for what you get with an Apple mac/powerbook.) The operating system here is Windows XP Home Edition and is probably the operating system which is most commonly found, and I really quite like it. Whereas in the past editions of Windows have been full of errors and prone to crashing, with Windows XP Microsoft seem to have ironed out all of the creases and come up with a fine operating system that is pleasant to look at, easy to use and a generally competent piece of equipment meaning that you don't need to have to worry about saving your documents every 5 minutes just in case everything goes wrong and you lose all of your work. Obviously occasionally things do go a bit wrong so it's safer to save your work frequently as a matter of precaution, there haven't been many occasions where XP has let me down so as a general rule I'm pretty happy with it and really can't fault it. Over the years Windows has bared the brunt of numerous jokes about it's operating systems lack of stability such as the labelling of the program 'Microsoft Works' as an oxymoron, however I think that Microsoft have finally cracked it with Windows XP as it is a great system, I can't wait to see what Windows Vista is like (the forthcoming Windows operating system). .

Although Home Edition currently dominates the market as it is the cheapest of the Windows XP editions, Media Centre Edition seems to be coming more and more prevalent as Media Center PCs are becoming more readily available with their constant dropping in price. Although I don't actually own a Media Centre PC, as I understand it - it functions in the same way as Home Edition, however it has a couple of extra functions which make things such as listening to music and watching DVDs easier processes to navigate so if I was you I would definitely consider spending a bit extra and getting Media Centre as although Home Edition is great, you'll get more for your money out of Media Centre hence the generally higher price tag.

~Processor~

The processor supplied here is an AMD 3700+ with a processing speed of 2.2GHz. What the 3700+ basically means is that this processor will perform as well as a 3.7GHz Pentium 4, so is a strong processor and although there are now better processors on the market, this AMD should do you proud for a good while yet. It is a fairly quiet processor and doesn't tend to get too hot - obviously if you spend all day at it with a lot of applications open then the heat is going to build up a bit but as a general rule, the T3345 tends to stay fairly cool and shouldn't be making you sweat any time soon. I have no qualms with this processor and it is definitely a lot better than the 2GHz Celeron processor that I had on my previous computer - AMD are a great producer of processors and when you install one of theirs, you just know you're going to be in for a treat.

~RAM~

With the gigabyte of RAM that is supplied here, this should be enough to run plenty of applications at a time without slowing down the system too much and having it crash on you every half an hour. I constantly have a number of applications open such as MSN messenger, Firefox, Windows Media Player as well as Word, Photo Shop etc. and the gigabyte of RAM is more than enough to suit my needs, however if you really feel like you need it, then you can install up to 4GB of RAM with this machine which in my opinion would be a slight overkill, but some people seem to like to compensate their lacking in certain areas by boasting of just how hard they can RAM.

~Storage~

With the T3345, up to 300GB of storage space is provided, however with the model I got - the hard drive was 250GB which was more than enough to meet my needs. When it says 250GB, you don't actually get this amount as it is rounded up, so what you actually get here is 242GB but don't let this put you off as this is the case for all hard drives, not just this one specifically. Again, although there is 242GB provided, Windows XP itself actually takes up around about 3 gigabytes so when you invest in a hard drive, make sure that the one that you're getting provides more than enough space for your requirements. At the moment I have about 157GB of space left on my hard drive so I've still got plenty of space if I require it and have a substantial enough amount left as to not slow down the general performance of the computer. I would say that the 250GB hard drive is a good size as even though I have plenty of music, games etc. on here, I still have a lot of space left so this should be a substantial enough amount of space for most as I can't see many people needing more space than this, unless of course you intend on downloading large videos and other space consuming commodities. When you look at getting a hard drive, not only do you need to look at the size of it, you also need to consider the speed as slow hard drives can really slow the general performance of a computer down, however the 7200 rpm here is more than fast enough and should satisfy your needs and requirements.

~DVD Drive~

The double DVD drive here is great as it means that if you're in the process of saving a game and it takes a while to save (for example, Football Manager) then you can start up a DVD in the other drive without having to wait to take out the game and insert the DVD, you can listen to CDs while you play games or if you wish, easily copy DVDs for backup. It's great for lazy people like me as it means that if you play a certain game/CD/DVD a lot then you can leave it in one of the drives for as long as you want without having to constantly re-insert it after playing other things. Ok, so that's probably not the best of plus points that I could have come up with, but still - at least I'm honest about what I like about it. If you have no use for 2 drives then leave the top drive open and use it as a drinks holder, it's perfect. Don't make the mistake of using the lower layer drive as a drinks holder mind - when the top drive comes out it'll knock your drink all over the floor and you wont be a happy bunny!

Dual layer is supported, so when dual layer DVDs begin to come down in price then this feature can be exploited as dual layer DVDs can hold a lot more on them than standard ones, so although dual layer DVDs are extremely expensive at the moment at around £2 each, once the technology becomes more readily available and more people start using them, the price should begin to come down making dual layer technology extremely useful as a means of storing large amounts of data on a single disc, rather than having to use numerous ones. The DVD drive here is brilliant as you can write and record CDs and DVDs without making too much noise - computers I've had in the past have always been incredibly noisy when discs have been in the drive meaning the speakers would have to be on full just to be able to hear, however here not much noise is made at all and it no longer sounds like a train in rushing through my house whenever I play a CD or DVD.

The lightscribe technology that you get is amazing - you can burn images into your CDs/DVDs, making them look extremely professional. Obviously this is a great feature for the purpose of labelling CDs for anyone, but it would also make an extremely useful function if you're in a band as if ever you make a Demo then you can make the CD look all professional even if you're on a shoestring budget and are much more likely to impress any press that you happen to send your CD to for review, radio stations you send the Demo to etc. Obviously in order to use this function you need to buy special lightscribe CDs, however these CDs are really no more expensive to buy than normal CDs so it is at no extra expense that you get to use this amazing feature.

~No Floppy?~

The floppy disk has become a somewhat redundant method of data transfer these days, probably mainly due to the fact that if you had a floppy disk you could almost guarantee that by the time you got to the computer you wanted to transfer the data to, the floppy disk would be corrupted and the data would be lost. This was ever so slightly irritating, but at the same time if ever you hadn't done your homework, you could always rely on the 'I put my work onto this floppy but I just put it in the computer and it says it's corrupted!' excuse, was probably overplayed a tad by me though what with my floppy disks mysteriously getting corrupted every time a new piece of work was due in, interesting!

Anyway, what the floppy disk has been replaced with here is a 9 in 1 memory card reader meaning that you can take your memory card out of your camera, phone etc., slot it into the computer and straight away the drive will be read and you'll be able to access all of the files that are on your card, whatever card you happen to have. It saves with the hassle of having to attach your USB cable, hope it 'recognises' the device that you've attached and then wait to be able to access the files on the card, usually after installing some pointless programme that will eat into your hard drive for the sake of transferring a few photos onto your PC every couple of weeks/months.

~USB Heaven~

In total there are 7 USB ports here, 3 in the front and 4 in the back so you can easily connect everything you want at the same time such as your printer, scanner, web cam, TV tuner, ADSL modem, and at the end of all that - still have space for more. It's always handy to have a couple of USB ports free because if you're anything like me then you'll be forever finding new things to add to your computer that require USB connection, and if you don't have any spare then it's always annoying having to unplug USB cables all the time and wait for the newly inserted devices to register.

~Pre-installed Software~

When you buy this system it will come with a number of useful applications as well as some less useful ones. You get the standard Microsoft Office pack which will supply you with the titles of Microsoft Works Suite 2005, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Works 8.0, Microsoft AutoRoute 2005, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005, Microsoft Money Standard 2005, and Microsoft Picture It! Photo Premium 10. You will find that many of these will come in handy, however there will probably be a few that you don't use, particularly Microsoft Picture It 10 as if you have Phostoshop or Paintshop then you will really have no need for this application, another of the fairly wasteful applications is Encarta encyclopaedia as there are plenty of online encyclopaedia's that you can use if you need such as Wikipedia, so you don't need to open up pointless RAM eating applications in order to access a decent encyclopaedia. When you get a new PC it's always best to look through the software, work out what you need and what you'll be using, and then go through and remove everything that you will not be requiring so you can free up a bit of space and resources which later on could prove to be useful.

As well as the standard Office pack, you will also find the PC pre-installed with useful free ware such as Windows Media Player 10 with which you can watch DVDs and listen to and organise all your music, and for your internet browsing needs; Internet Explorer 6.0. If I was you though, when you get your computer, it'd be worthwhile you downloading a better browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera as with Internet Explorer you'll be prone to getting viruses and spyware installed on your computer if you're not careful, so it's a lot safer to look at downloading a different browser - it's perfectly free and makes sense as the other browsers available are far better than Internet Explorer and less likely to kill off your computer before you even get going. Microsoft Movie Maker is another decent piece of software you'll find pre-installed with your computer as with this you can edit your own videos, inserting special effects into the mix wherever you please and it can just generally be a fun little program to play around with if ever you get a bit bored.

~Gaming~

If you're into your gaming then the graphics card that is supplied with this computer probably isn't going to cut it for you, especially if you're interested in playing the latest games on it. Most games will play with the NVIDIA GeForce 6200SE TurboCache card which is supplied, it's just that if you want the game to run smoothly then you will need to put the game on its lowest settings which will of course limit the quality of your gaming experience and you wont be getting the best out of the games. I have tested this card with a few games (not many really as I'm not the biggest of gamers) and although I've found that games such as The Sims 2, Football Manager 2006, Half Life and Half Life 2 etc. will work well, if you're looking to play games such as Quake 4 etc. then they will only play well on the lowest settings. So basically, if you're into gaming then you'll be looking to replace the graphics card as soon as you get the T3345 which could prove costly depending on just how extravagant you want to be in choosing a graphics card. For around £70 or so you could probably get yourself a competent graphics card to suit your needs, however they can retail up to around £500 which is actually more than the T3345 itself costs these days.

A new batch of graphics cards are due out in a couple of months, so it's probably best to wait till then to make your purchase, however if you're really desperate to get your computer fitted up with a decent graphics card then I would recommend looking more towards the £70 end as even if you do opt for an extortionate £500 card, before long it will be extremely dated and you'll have to shell out another load of money to update your past it graphics card. It may seem like future proofing now, but given time you'll begin to realise that there really is no way of future proofing when it comes to computers - it can be an expensive business if you want to keep up to date and always have the latest high end machine which is why I always feel that it's better to invest in a middle of the range machine which you know will last you a while but wont leave you fuming in a couple of years time when technology has long since raced past you.

~General Performance~

Whatever you're looking to do with this computer, it should be sufficient to your requirements, unless of course you're interested in playing the latest games and as I have already stated - while most games can be played, you'll want to invest in a new graphics card if you're to do this. Most programs will run extremely well, in fact as yet I have never experienced a single program not running as a result of insufficiency on the behalf of my PC, everything I have thrown at it, it has dealt with greatly, playing DVDs perfectly, thumping music out clearly, running multiple applications at a time and will happily run a virus checker while you go about doing other things. If you're into music production then this PC will meet your requirements as it will happily run Reason while you surf the net, same goes for if you're into graphic design as Photoshop also runs without any kinks while you run other applications. So the T3345 is pretty much an all round performer and will probably never let you down, once you start running this computer you'll begin to wonder how you ever coped without it, I certainly did anyway.

~Final Verdict~

The T3345 is a great system and if you're forever moaning about the slow speed of your computer then it's an essential purchase as at it's current price of £474.99 including posting and packing (Misco.co.uk), it really is a snatch. All you're buying here is a base unit so you're going to have to already have a monitor, and speakers if you want to get any sound out of it, however a mouse and a keyboard are provided with your purchase so you don't need to worry about that (well, essentially anyway - the keyboard and mouse that are provided are wireless so although this is a bit of a novelty and will save clutter from an excess of wires, there will be a slight lag when you move the mouse/type with the keyboard, meaning that you will experience a slight delay between typing and actually seeing the letters come up on the screen in front of you which can get a bit annoying). I think that this was a really great buy by me as although a price depreciation is clear, it's not as massive as what you'll usually find with a computer. I'm still extremely happy that I made the correct choice in purchasing the computer that I did as it has served me well and has never let me down yet, plus it has a far better specification than any of my friends computers which always annoys them greatly as I surf in style and they surf with struggle. This computer would look great in any home or office and I'd definitely recommend it to others.