A Lot of PC, Not a Lot of Money
Written: Oct 28 '06 (Updated Sep 24 '07)
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Pros: Plenty of RAM, large hard drive, decent software, lightscribe CD/DVD burner.
Cons: No discs or manuals.
The Bottom Line: Just can't beat it for the price.
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| Bruguru's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario SR2050NX (RE476AA)... |
Call me a geek, but one of the times that I really get excited is when it’s time to buy a new computer. I just love going out, looking at what’s new and improved, finally selecting my new PC and then bringing the little bundle of joy home. Even better, the entire affair has gotten progressively cheaper over the years.
My old Dell Dimension 2400 had served us long and well (almost three years), and in fact is still running fine and dandy as our second PC. With teenagers and adults sometimes all fighting over the computer at the same time, a second computer seems almost a necessity these days. But it was starting to have problems (the DVD/CD burner drive had given out) and was just a bit behind the times.
So, we looked around and decided on a Compaq Presario SR2050NX. We had looked at a number of PCs in the same price range as this one. There has been some consolidation in the PC world nowadays, and one of the more interesting things we remarked on was that the same PC can vary in price based solely on the manufacturer’s name it bears.
As many are aware, HP bought Compaq not long ago, and eMachines acquired Gateway. That being the case, be wary of the fact that we saw seemingly identical PCs (same case, specs, software, etc.) in our travels that were almost undoubtedly manufactured in the same facility. Still, an HP model just like the SR2050NX commanded $100 more.
After debating, we almost bought a similar Compaq product to the SR2050NX at CompUSA. That one, however, would have run us $150 more and had slightly less processing power. At the time, I was a bit upset that they only had floor models left and would not budge on the price in consideration thereof.
That worked out fine in the end, however, since we bought the SR2050NX for the very reasonable price of $599. A $50 HP rebate and a $100 Microcenter rebate brought our final price to just $449, an amazingly low amount for this much computing power. That was without speakers or monitor mind you, but we did not need or want either anyway.
So, you’re likely asking at this point, what do you get with this PC?
Intel Pentium D 820 processor with two processing cores running at 2.8 gigahertz.
One Lightscribe Dual Layer 16X Max DVD +-R/RW Drive
One Gigabyte RAM (expandable to 2GB)
250 GB Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP 2005 Media Edition
ATI Radeon Express 200 Graphics card
Media Card Reader Slots
Six USB 2.0 ports, two front, four rear.
Two PCI Express expansion slots, one front, one rear.
10T/100 Ethernet card
One expansion bay.
Software package including Norton Anti-Virus, Microsoft Office (trial version), Microsoft Money, Quicken, Magic Match Jukebox, Sonic Record Now!, and more.
Right away, we liked the performance of our new PC. Our old Dell had been upgraded to 512MB of RAM, but still had problems running several programs at the same time. Not the Compaq. As I type this in Word, I’m also running a virus scan in the background, listening to Beethoven.com with Windows Media Player, updating a spreadsheet, browsing Firefox with 15 open tabs, and downloading Java updates. Multitasking is a snap with the SR2050NX, and should you need more RAM in the future, there is an open slot for another SIMM.
Our first real test was a PC game. We loaded Star Wars: Empire at War which ran ok on our old PC (which admittedly did not have a graphics card), if a little choppily. Here, however, the difference was amazing. The game runs blazingly fast, with crisp clean graphics and bright booming sound.
Hard drive space was a real issue with our old PC. My first PC, bought over 12 years ago, had about 450 megabytes and we thought in those days that was more than anyone would ever need. How times change. Today, with two teenagers downloading MP3s like crazy, digitizing CDs, playing games, creating documents and more, space is at a premium. 250 Gigabytes seems plenty, for now, to suit our needs. Out of the box, we had about 224 Gigabytes available, with about 8 GB reserved for a system files (including Windows) backup partition and the rest taken up by installed files. Having transferred most of our personal files from our old PC and installed several programs, we still have about 195 GB left. So far, seek time has been lightning fast, though that may change as we fill the drive.
The CD/DVD burner will burn a music CD in about 7 to 8 minutes; a DVD takes about twice as long (longer for dual layer, which we have not tried yet). Burning is easy through Sonic, but we have just as easily burned discs with Rhapsody, Jukebox, and iTunes. We do like the Lightscribe technology, which allows you to burn a label directly onto blank CDs bearing the Lightscribe logo. You simply flip the disc over and run the special software, and in twenty minutes a custom burned label graces your disc.
Setup was a snap, and we were up and running about 15 minutes after getting home with our new toy. It will take you a bit longer to fully setup all of your Windows user accounts, install all of the software, and transfer your old files But you should not have any difficulties getting your new PC set up.
Keyboard and mouse are basic. On the downside, no system discs or manuals were included with the PC. The manuals are not so much of a problem, as they are included in digital form on the PC and you can print them, or segments of them, if you desire. But the system software, Windows especially, could be a problem in the event of a total disk failure.
Overall
This is a lot of PC for not a lot of money. The only other PCs with comparable features (but not as good) were eMachines and Dell, and we didn't want to wait for a Dell to ship (I'm loathe to buy an eMachines, t00).
Three years ago, we paid about the same amount of money for our Dell PC. Given the advances in computer technology and accounting for inflation, that makes this a really great deal, and a whole lot of PC for not a whole lot of money.
Update 9/2007
Going on a year of ownership, the SR2050NX is still going strong. We have observed that the processor fan is rather loud on this PC. If you hear it coming on repeatedly, it's probably a good sign that you have dust built up in the PC and retaining heat. Once we cleaned the dust out, our computer was silent as the night once again.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 449.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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