Desktop Reviews

This is an excellent calculator for business purposes, for speed, and tax figuring and it's just the right desk size.
It is fast enough to keep up with my entries, and the auto tax computation feature really makes business use a breeze. The display is large enough for most folks even those with less than perfect vision. The print is clear, and the two color printing makes subtracted entries easy to identify. It also makes negative totals stand out!

As long as the ink rollers last, you should never have a problem with this product. Once you are forced to change ink rollers, you'll discover the need for tweezers, or forceps because these rollers are so small that a person with normal sized fingers cannot perform this procedure without tools!!!
Also the rollers must be inserted behind a tiny spring, and proper position is imperative. If you dislodge the spring, you'll work for half an hour to get it back in the right place. Pay close attention to the position of the tiny spring before and during roller replacement, so that in the event you knock it loose, you'll know where to reposition it. Be sure you have tweezers or forceps ready at hand to change these ink rollers.

If you can keep the printer inked, you'll remain a happy camper with this product.

First off, I am a huge HP fan!!! The R&D department should be fired for making this printer. This is the worst printer I have ever used & by far the loudest. I have had 2 of these printers now & they always jam up no matter what type of paper you use. I am taking this one back too & getting a high end HP color laser. All I can say about this product is stay far away & don't even consider thinking about buying one. BTW I am still a huge HP fan.

HP misses the mark on this one. Took hours to set up. Could not connect with USB on Windows XP. "24 hour" HP tech support closes at 5. Clearing paper jams requires removing major components. The unit churns, clangs, and roars like a beast. Print quality is okay, however.

I like that this is a real toner laser printer as opposed to one of those wax-type printers and that it is pretty fast. Drivers are OK but could use some help (I'm using win2000). Of course the price is great for a color laser!

Didn't like that it is kinda loud - can't print after family goes to bed! Also, it is not picture quality. The colors are sometimes WAY off, the drivers have no adjustment for this and the quality is like a magazine print - nasty dot effect. Finally, the toner rubs off on light colors! Really wierd.

In conclusion, I should have bought a simple B&W laser and a color Inkjet Photo printer to serve my needs. My wife says I'm not allowed to make this sort of purchase anymore and is confiscating the credit cards after this one! :-)

This is a quick follow-up to my previous review of this item. Sure enough, when I got the CPU back from the shop after having had the floppy drive replaced, the first cd I burned was marred with glitches, just as was the last one I burned right before the machine went for repair. Guess I'll have to have the DVD and CDR drives replaced now! Folks, whatever you do, stay away from this particular model: I couldn't even consider recommending an electronic product which I'd had to take for repair twice within the first two months of ownership (and yes, it was purchased brand new.) HP/Compaq really ought to be embarrassed. It may not look like a duck, but it sure quacks and desecrates like one!

Despite the usual experience one can get from an HP product (HP owns Compaq.) there was a lot to like about this model. However, too many frustrations with this unit make me unable to recommend it to anyone else. I'm sticking with it simply because the money's spent and the return is past.

Most of what I'll discuss is about the internal design, but, the few surface elements I will touch upon are disappointing. Like with most HP computers, HP can't seem to get this one to work right out of the box. Something installed at the factory causes Windows Explorer to want to bug out a lot. Either crash on start of Windows, or simply freeze over the course of use, causing it to stop responding. Plus, you can't seem to add the Paste Internet Explorer button to the WE Toolbars. You CAN, but, it's useless to do since pressing it will cause WE to freeze. Windows Explorer locking up or freezing has plagued HP PC's since at least 2000, when I first encountered it. So, since it doesn't work right out of the box, how can I really recommend it, since they just installed things on it without even testing to make sure they all work okay?

Inside the machine... man, I really wanted to recommend this model internally... It's got a lot of great hardware in it, but, HP is famous for doing this. They're good on hardware, but lousy on bundling the software necessary to use it. In terms of design, the interior is well done. The drives are held in not with screws against a plate but with a railing system so they can slide in and out. The IDE data cables that connect to the mother board have loops on them so you can hook your finger in them and easily remove them from their sockets. The upper drive bays are designed in such a way that you can easily connect their back cables by merely sliding the opposite drive forward a bit to make the space. However, HP shoots themselves in the foot by being "cute" with other design aspects.

They included several screws attached to a plate inside the case for future upgrades. While that is unusual and a nice gift, they're not standard. They're the funny kind of screws that have Philips heads, but, must be used with flathead screw drivers. The bezel is poorly designed, so, certain drives, like the Sony DRU-500a cannot be placed in the top drive bay. Otherwise, the drive simply will not open at all. The floppy drive slot is placed so the drive itself is recessed in relation to the slot, which means you must press pretty firmly on Eject button so the floppy has enough propulsion to eject it out enough for you to grab. So, you'd better have your hand near the slot, or the floppy will fly to the floor.

The PCI slot is protected by a cover, which is a nice idea in thought, but they failed again in execution. The instructions say to replace the screw when you have removed the slot cover, which is NECESSARY to insert a new card, but, the cards COVER the hole! Plus, the instructions say to use a Philips when it is quite clear that a flathead is all that will work!

One final comment on two of the installed hardware components. On the first day after I could return the unit, the hard drive just died! Up and died! HP wants you to send in the ENTIRE PC to see IF you're right before they will replace it! IBM, IOMega, and others will just take your credit card number and send you a replacement drive. IF you don't send back the old drive, they charge you for a new one! There is absolutely NO need to deprive people of their PC's with something that could easily be solved within a week's time of shipping new and old drives back and forth! Shame on HP! The other one, the modem: it's listed as a v92 56k Cheetah modem. Well, the Cheetah aspect is in name only: this modem would only connect, in general, at 28.8, so, I swapped it out. Speaking of swapping out things, as you can guess, I was FORCED to swap parts out: the modem and the dead HD. For someone who isn't experienced with doing that, this makes this model NOT a good first choice system. I also swapped out the optical drives to replace them with better ones.

I've paid for it, I can't return it, so, I must live with it. But, that doesn't mean YOU have to. DON'T buy this! In fact, skip ALL HP products you don't need! I need HP ink cartridges because that's all I have, and HP doesn't give you much of a choice. But, other HP products (The Pavilion PC in 2000, a returned Pavilion in 20003, the DVD 100i and 200i rip off DVD+ burner models.) have been nothing but frustrations and empty promises.

The previous reviewer gave you a pretty good thumbnail sketch of the flaws with this product, so I won't belabor the point. Apt to say, though, mine found itself in the repair shop within days after I purchased it from Amazon. Why? Because the floppy drive did not work, right out of the box: Could not snap a disk in the drive. I've been buying electronics for longer than I care to recall, and I don't think I've ever seen such ineptness so soon after a product's purchase. I needed the drive to install a few programs I wanted, so I couldn't put the repair off. Further, I noticed around the same time that a cd I burned had a few glitches in the recording (not in the original, of course.) The drive looks perfectly normal and all was clean, but you can bet that the next time I hear something like that, this machine will be back in the shop again. As the previous reviewer lamented, the money's already spent--so I guess I'm stuck with it--but I cannot in good conscience recommend a product laden with such problems right out of the package. This thing looks real nice, both outside and inside, is very fast and strong in processing and memory, and the price is nice, but if you don't enjoy headaches and hemeroids, stay clear of it.

This was supposed to be a new computer, however, when it arrived, the box said that it was refurbished.

The modem did not work.

The customer service was poor. Obtaining a return authorization was like pulling teeth.

Other that that, everything was great!!!

My recommendation -- do not buy from Compaq or Office Depot.

This is a solid starter computer.

Note the two different cosmetic faces this computer can have.

All you need to do is add ram. I added a 512mb PC2100 chip ($99 05/04) to this machine and it flies. I can play Madden 2004 just fine. Regularly, I will have opera full of windows, adobe photoshop, macromedia dreamweaver, winamp, seti@home, antivirus, two messenger programs running... and the computer is well under control. I can flip back and forth to windows with ease without any problems. If you want to play the latest games, then ofcourse, you're to need a better machine with a dedicated video card, but otherwise this is a great machine for 95% of tasks. The case has a small footprint, which I like. Note that I didn't use the modem, but the onboard network card is fine and I threw a second hard drive in with ease.

The front USB ports are handy.

i love this pc i got it as a birthday present and it is awsome. it runs multiple files so easily.mine came with 248 MB of ram and 2.60 GHZ i got it at wall-mart for $500.the only reason i gave it 4 stars is because it does not run games to perfectly.but,it downloads things(like songs,and games) very fast.all around a good computer(even though it is a little noisy)
p.s. i love the burner/compact disk combo drive

Very bad product. Documentation did not match installation software. Software gave errors. Hawking website doesn't show this model. Tech support wait time in excess of 45 minutes. Tried to push through the installation, and it failed. Returned product.

I setup this product for my home use, thinking I may use it for a client too. The documentation is pretty sparse and the CD manual is not easy to read. THe documentation says that this is a multi-ptorocol device. This is actually correct but not in the traditional sense. In this case it appears that multiple protocols are REQUIRED for the server to work. In my case I desired to just use TCP/IP in a windows XP environment. The device appears to follow the Microsoft lead of requiring some type of Netbios to be present.

Not all of the admin tools work under XP, but enough work to get it functional.

Overall for the cost, it works. It could be lots better but what really can you expect from a device the size of a printer dongle. (If you know what a dongle is, you have been in the business too long, like me. For the uniformed, it is a security device typically attached to the parallel port of a PC to counter software piracy. In this case, the "dongle" is on the printer, not the PC.)

I read the reviews here, but decided to try it out anyway, as it is the cheapest alternative I could find. Having read here and elsewhere about the need to disable WinXP's firewall, I tried to do that before I started the installation. However, I couldn't find it anywhere on my PC, so I decided to go ahead and see what happened without messing with the firewall.

I was surprised at how easily this mini server installed. It took me less than 30 minutes to install it on three WinXP machines and one Win2000. I followed the instructions exactly as they were printed in the booklet, and didn't have to do anything extra. Very smooth and very easy. I highly recommend it... at least from my experience with it.

I put my heart before my head on this one. It's the nicest looking mouse and keyboard you can put on your desk, plus it's got a bluetooth transceiver, what more could you want?

How about a product that works? For whatever reason the mouse and keyboard go to sleep after only 2 or 3 minutes of inactivity which would be fine if they didn't take literally 2 or 3 seconds to wake up. It is very annoying and causes problems when trying to use a (sleeping) keyboard modifier on a non-sleeping mouse.

Then the mouse eats batteries.

The bluetooth transceiver they include basically doesn't work with anything else. Certainly not any of the Pocket PC's out there.

No indicator lights on the keyboard at all - no caps, no num lock, no cool glow. There's no reason to put 2 AA batteries in a keyboard, make it 4 or 8 and give me some indicator lights. They're just little LED's.

Mouse feel is so-so and always seems to be just a little off.

Your BIOS can't see it so if you need to change settings there or if you need to change startup options for XP you need to have a wired keyboard handy.

Setup is a big pain too but you only have to do it once.

Maybe I'll buy version 2 of this but all I can recommend is to stay away from this and get Microsoft's regular wireless desktop which is a very nice product (even if the range is short).

Microsoft should be embarassed.

ive had mine for a long time and most of the time ive had it i hadent been able to get it to work, any other wireless keyboard and mouse set would probably be a better idea. on another machine the logitech wireless system worked as soon as it was pluged in, but this required many hours troubleshooting, uninstalling and reinstalling just trying to get it to finally see that yes there is infact a keyboard and mouse present within its range. so if your into annoying things, please by all means buy it. otherwise id at least recomment a wireless set where you can charge the mouse batterys so they dont run out too quickly. i suppose that is a plus, the batterys dont run out *too* fast with the microsoft one..

I find this combo excellent once you've updated the drivers just as you need to do with all computer hardware,microsoft is very good at supporting their in-house products and this is no exception. I had the Intellimouse Explorer mouse for two years and it started having problems,I called MS and they only asked for was it's serial number and sent a new updated mouse replacement without question albeit it took a month. Bluetooth tech is still developing and needs updating,if your a computer savvy geek and want leading edge equipt like this combo,go for it..I give it for 5 stars.

After days of trying to record some old vinyl onto my computer I gave up and called the Griffen. I explained to them that no matter what I tried, the audio signal was getting seriously clipped. They informed me that they are having problems with all of these units and that they are working on a fix...no idea when that fix will be released.

They also informed me that they could not provide a cash refund because it was purchased through a third party.

hope this helps

bl

After going through 2 of these, Griffin customer support finally told me that "There is a known bug in the Apple USB audio driver that is most likely responsible for the effect you describe. According to Apple the driver sends an "empty packet". This results in a flanging, phasing, and ring modulation." What this means is that about 25% of the time that you send an audio signal to the PowerWave, the output is completely distorted. If you restart the audio, it usually corrects itself, only to become distorted again. This isn't a huge problem if you're just playing music in iTunes, but if you're using the PowerWave as an amplifier while you're working in Final Cut Pro or any other application that involves stopping and starting audio, it is completely useless.

They are working on a firmware upgrade, but as of 9/18/03, this product is unusable with Mac OS X. It baffles me that the company continues to sell these without any kind of disclaimer, especially since Griffin is a Mac-centric company. I hope this review saves a couple of Mac folks from a big headache.

The sad thing is that this will be a really cool product once they fix it. And while they're at it, they should put an on/off switch on the thing, because it has a huge blue light on it, and gets a little hot if it's on all day and night (not to mention wasting electricity).

I've had this unit for over a year now. I use it primarily to power the Apple Pro Speakers because my main desktop is my Powerbook laptop. I also have a Tascam USB controller that is interfaced with it so I can do some digital recording (audio and MIDI). Finally, I hooked up a nice powered subwoofer to the RCA outs which gives me MASSIVE bass and sound rivaling my stereo system downstairs (not quite, but still better than any wimpy sub/sat setup made for computers). Figuring out how to put all of these wires in the right places took some trial and error (and required purchasing the griffin audio USB hub), but I got it figured out in a day or so and haven't touched the wires since. The possibilities with this unit are fantastic. Last summer I got some incompatibility with OSX mentioned in one of the other reviews with the funky distortion, but it hasn't happened since last summer. I don't know why...perhaps the update to jag? Anyways, IT IS GONE. Complaints are similar to the others...BIG BLUE LIGHT is very BRIGHT and annoying. Also, the case does seem fllimsy and not very MAC-like (i.e., not very stylish). Oh, and I did call Griffin to get some help with hookup and they were VERY friendly and helpful. I am quite pleased with this thing.

I bought this device to communicate from any room in my house with my tungsten|w (which has its own issues). The devices will only connect in the same room. There are no wi-fi solutions for this palm, so I'm stuck. Technology is letting me down. I'm becoming Amish.

Buyer beware this is a useless product, if you set a password it locks you out even if you use the password you set, you can still Telnet into it but have to return the unit to Belkin for exchange, as Belkin support do not know anything about Telnet.
Belkin are a rubbish company who provide unuseable support and customer service not availible.
I have never used such a bad company this is my first and last belkin product you can not even configure the first client IP it gives out, so is useless in a network enviroment.

Bad product, bad company, bad support, you have been warned.

We had this AP in our office for some time now, and it works well (we are using a fixed IP address).

One caveat about the range:
This is a "Class 1" Bluetooth device with an output power of 100mW, which will indeed have a 100m range, but ONLY if the other device is also Class 1. All mobile devices (phones, PDAs) I know of are Class 2, with an output power of 2.5mW and a maximum free air range of 25m, effectively meaning "same room" indoors. Class 1 Bluetooth would drain the battery of a mobile device too fast. This one of the weaknesses of WiFi (30-100mW output power) - a WiFi card needs more power than a PocketPC (let alone a Palm) and will cut your battery time in half or less.

Gosh..

This modem is no good! I have bad phone line, that is why I purchased this modem (I heard USR makes the best of a bad line). Install was easy but I experienced these conditions:

1) The Control Center would not find the modem.
2) Connection speeds always slower than my laptop
3) Would disconnect all the time (1 to three minutes max connection)

It is going back to the store for more shelf life....

This is a horrible little soft modem, that freezes the computer upon disconnecting from the ISP under W/98. Didn't bother to call tech support, returned modem ASAP for refund. Don't bother, go with ZOOM instead.

U.S. Robotics 56K Faxmodem PCI for Windows Model 5699B was very easy to install and it came with the software which drives the hardware. All it took to take out the old modem and install the new modem was 5 minutes tops.

This modem includes the V.92 and V.90 ITU standard technologies and it works far beter than I expected. Sending e-mail and attachments are around 50 percent faster, with a quicker internet connect and it takes incoming calls while online so you won't miss that inportant telephone call while online.

Package Contents:

U.S. Robotics 56K Faxmodem PCI for Windows
RJ-11 phone cord (7ft)
Quick Installation Guide
Installation CD-ROM

Minimum System Requirements

Pentium 133 MHz Processor or higher, as recommended for your specific Windows operating system
Available PCI 2.1 Slot
CD-ROM drive
Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP operating system
56K Compatible local analog phone line
V.90 required a V.90 56K ITU standard capable service provider
V.92 requires a V.92 56K ITU standard capable service provider

Two-Year Limited Warranty

Free parts and labor coverage
Factory repair or replacement

The product box says, "Ready. Set. Connect." and it really is.
Remember that this modem fix a PCI slot which is a white slot off of the mother board.

My review is for the full version 9, not the upgrade, but they should be the same. I had so many problems with version 8, but I made the mistake of hoping version 9 would be better. WRONG.
The good: Pinnacle Studio is packed with features and is quite easy to use.
The bad: It's JUNK. Full of bugs even with the latest updates. It's slow too. STAY AWAY from this product!

I had Studio 8 and enjoyed it. I moved to studio 9 and hate it. There are lots of bugs too many to mentions. There Quality Assurance and marketing department has done a horrible product release that is full of bugs!!!!

My suggestion is stick with studio 8 if you have it. Otherwise go buy another competitor product.

Good Luck

I've recently upgraded from Studio 8 to version 9 and have been pretty pleased. As yet, I've only had one lockup. (while searching the help.) My projects have been a mix of analog capture in AVI and MPEG2 files, as well as DV. These have had a number of effects in some cases, some clips were shortened, and I've played with the DVD menu structure. (basic stuff) The output from a burned DVD appears pretty good for the price. However, I haven't tackled any large projects yet. With Studio 8 I've captured 2 hour movies from TiVo, created menus/chapters, then burned them to DVD. I mention this because there would ocassionally be a A/V sync problem after some scene transistions. The 16:9 support is nice, but frame conversions are weak. Conversion of 4:3 to widescreen simply squashes the frame - distorting everything. Some other options like screen cropping would be nice, or allowing mixed formats in the same project. If you only use one format, then it's not an issue.

Other than those points, my complaint would be the inclusion of locked-out features. I'd rather not install something I can't/won't use. Like SPAM on my PC I cannot control. Oh, and the S/N included wasn't valid - oops! Service emailed me another in about 12 hours.

In general, check that your PC can handle the software, and is stable - it appears to demand more than Studio 8. I'd suggest browsing the manufacture discussion forums (Pinnacle) to see what the common issues are, and how to resolve them. Finally, all software has bugs - so if you grab the first copy - expect many patches (or simply wait a few months.) ps. the latest patch was ~50Mb