alt="The 8418’s (Rs 139,999, HP India, New Delhi, 011-6826000) superb sound quality and smooth game play make it ideal for multimedia entertainment"
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A high-end home PC with excellent
sound quality and graphics
The Pavilion 8418 is a multimedia home PC. It sports a PII
450 MHz processor with a 9.6 GB hard disk and 128 MB SD-RAM. It has an ATI 3D Rage Pro
Turbo graphics accelerator card with 8 MB video RAM, a 4x DVD-ROM drive, an internal 100
MB Iomega zip drive, and a V.90 56 kbps internal data/fax modem.
Plus a 32-bit PCI sound card capable of 3D-stereo and Dolby
surround sound. There are two PolkAudio speakers and a large sub-woofer that produce
excellent quality sound output.
Our overall experience with the PC was really good. It has
a multimedia keyboard with lots of special function keys that make it a pleasure to work
with. There are keys to operate the Windows Media Player, together with a knob for volume
control and a mute button. Quick-launch-buttons for the Internet, e-mail, and
Internet-search. It also has three user-configurable keys. And an HP scroll-mouse with a
scroll-wheel that makes scrolling through large Web pages very convenient. Even the
15" monitor has various preset modes for playing games, graphics, and running common
applications.
The computer ships with Win 98, and lots of software like
Microsoft Works 4.5a, MS Money, QuickLink III Fax, Quicken 98, EasyPhoto, Encarta 99, HP
Pavilion Media Rack, VCD Player, a DVD player and Incoming.