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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 24 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 43 found the following review helpful:
 Great PC - OS needs work though Nov 20, 2007
By Vishal Jangla
I got this computer about two weeks ago. This baby is lightning fast. How good is it, you wonder? Windows Vista has a utility built-in that ranks the hardware its running on. The scale is 1 to 5, 5 being the most optimum hardware for the operating system. This one scored higher than a 5! I have compared this computer's configurations to Dell and Gateway, both costing atleast $400 more for a similar product.
The only drawback so far appears to be the TV-out feature. It does not work! Problems with TV-out are common place with the Vista O/S. There's postings all over the Internet about NVidia having this problem on the Vista O/S. Hopefully they'll fix it soon. For now, if you absolutely need TV-out, stick to XP or get another machine that doesn't have NVidia.
39 of 44 found the following review helpful:
 A Powerful Upgrade Oct 15, 2007
By T. Wells
I purchased the HP m9040n from a big box retailer. It has worked well from the time it came out of the box. I was previously working on an older Presario desktop with a single processor. That computer couldn't handle the task of editing HD Video. This new unit made it possible for me to edit native HD video (Sony AVCHD format on Studio 11 software). The HD editing had fewer crashes on the m9040n than the older Presario had editing SD video. The HD editing playback is a little herky jerky still, and I was hoping that upgrading the RAM from the standard 3MB out of the box to 6 MB would help, but upon the suggestion comment below, I'll be happy with what I have.
Playback of the HD video downloaded from my Sony HDV camcorder using Sony's HD video player is smoother than playback during editing. Again, for comparison, on the older Presario (with a 2.4ghz single processor and 1.5mb of RAM) playing HD video on Sony's player was a worse herky jerky playback experience than playing HD during video editing on the m9040n.
The graphics card comes with an HDMI output. I'm hoping to purchase a long enough HDMI cable to connect the computer to my living room TV set. The m9040n comes with a media content infrared remote. This should allow me to playback my HD content on the computer on my large screen TV without having to get a HD DVD until the format war has a winner.
Overall, I'm pleased with the system, especially for the price.
Update:
I edited 45 minutes of HD native AVCHD files down to 20 minutes using Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate software. I don't have an HD DVD drive, so I rendered that project onto the Pavilion as an MPEG4 Full HD file for playback. The installed Vista Media Center does not recognize that MPEG video, but the Windows Media Player does play the file after it quickly went online and updated its codec. That Full HD file plays flawlessly from my hard disk without any hesitations or degradation of its HD image on my Samsung 22 widescreen monitor.
The time to render 20 minutes of HD edited material was about 35 minutes. This HD rendering was faster on the Pavilion than the SD rendering using the same software took on the Presario.
Update #2:
The NVidia graphics card HDMI output works great for using your HDMI ready HDTV as the monitor. This will allow you to play HD video on your widescreen TV if this is what you plan to upgrade for
33 of 37 found the following review helpful:
We don't need all that power Oct 22, 2007
By S. H. Wood
"Draven_Wraith"
I have had my m9040n PC for a while now and it is a Great all around PC, It's my 3rd HP. at first I Hated Vista, MS loves bugs on a new OS, I even took Vista off and installed XP PRO. That was a lot of work but with HPs help finding the necessary XP drivers we did it. I was having issues with some Games not working with Vista, and I knew that they worked with XP. I lost a lot of software and hardware (the remote) when I switched to XP, so I have reinstalled the HP software and Windows Vista, NOTE: HP doesn't recommend changing your OS and are not responsible if you PC doesn't act right when you do. MS is releasing a 1GB Vista patch in January to fix a lot of Vista issues. The only down sides with the PC is 1) the 300 watt power supply, If you want to upgrade to a nvidia 8800 graphics card you need to upgrade the power supply to around 600 watts, 450 min. however it comes with a nvidia 8400 gs/256mb card, which is a good budget card, remember the 8800s are the top of the line (this month) and 2) HP installed PC2-5300 @667mhz memory, the motherboard can handle up to PC-6400 @800mhz. But if you're not a power gamer this PC has everything you could ever want from a PC... SPEED. It even has some of the same things that the high-end gaming PC's have, and you can't build one that has everything this one has for this price. The good thing is you can still upgrade the m9040n later when things get really fast. Hoped this helped.
Well it's April 2009 and I still have my M9040N, MS has fixed many of the Vista bugs and are available through MS Windows upgrades. But remember I have upgraded my graphics Card, power supply and installed 1 more Gig of memory. Which I found out that if you're operating Vista in 32 bit it will only notice 3Gigs. You will need to upgrade the Vista OS to 64 bit to take advantage of more memory.
But by now HP has come out with a better faster PC at around the same price, but with simple upgrades you can extend the life of your power house, what I did over a year ago still allows me to still hang in with what's out now. This PC has a lot of what high-end gaming PC installed in 2007 so that is one reasons this PC still Rocks. With continuing Graphics upgrades because with the price of the cards coming way down. In the end you can get can get another two or three years out of this PC maybe more. But if you are not a gamer, I can't see any reason to upgrade, Windows Office 2007 Rocks on this PC. And as for internet, never been a problem.
It's 2012 and my M9040n is still with me, I have upgraded to the 8 GB memory max and Windows 7 PRO x64 bit, replaced my power supply after it went out and now replacing the 8800 GTS 640MB graphics card after it went out to a GTX 275 1GB graphics card. This PC Rocks! I haven't found a game that I can't run.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Lousy Quality Control Dec 19, 2007
By Retired "RILID"
I bought my HP m9040n in early November with the intent of using it for a lot of video and photo editing. I also wanted to take advantage of its DVR capabilities once I figured out how to link wirelessly with my home theater. Unfortunately, I really haven't had a chance to put it to the test because in the first month, I needed to return it twice to HP for repair. The first time involved a noisy power supply fan (it sounded like something rubbing against the fan blades). Upon it's return from HP, I then learned that the USB connectors on the front panel did not work. This time HP techs replaced the front USB receiver and the CPU!
Call me a glutton for punishment but I still own this computer, and (fingers crossed) have not experienced additional problems for the last two weeks. At this point, my only other observation is that I am mildly disappointed in the speed with which programs open and run. I really don't see that much improvement over my 5 year old Pentium 4. Admittedly, though, I lack the computer savvy to know whether the problem lies with HP, Vista, my satellite "high speed" service, or AOL.
On the positive side I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge HP's tech support operation. Whenever I called, I quickly reached customer support and the techs tried their best to help. Returning my computer to HP for repair was also relatively painless. Turnaround time was about one and half weeks each incident.
If I knew then what I know now, I probably would not buy this computer. Tough to say, though, whether I ended up with the one bad apple or this is a more widespread problem. Good luck.
25 of 28 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Computer, Lousy Documentation Dec 07, 2007
By Dean A. Van Peursem
"JDVan"
HP Pavilion M9040N Elite Desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600, 3 GB RAM, 640 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium)
This is a good computer and configured with quality components. I've now owned this for about two months. I have spent untold hours getting this setup to be used as a Media Center with a Direct TV Satellite Receiver and a Sony Bravia HD TV. And then had a Video card failure to agravate things further. HP's documentation and on-line chat support is totally incomplete and horrendous. I have owned PC's since the mid 70's and this is the worst documented computer I have ever owned. HP should be ashamed of themselves. Windows Vista operating software relative to the Media Center is "Shaky" at best. Be prepared for hours of work and many frustrations trying to use this as a Media Center setup. However, I now have it all working. Finally.....
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