Compaq, HP Release Flashy Home PCs

HP Pavilions get stylish, while Compaq grows Presario family with Duron systems.

Tom Mainelli, PCWorld.com

Home PC buyers have two more choices this holiday season: Hewlett-Packard released on Tuesday a sleek new Pavilion desktop and Compaq bolstered its sub-$1000 lineup with two Advanced Micro Devices Duron-based Presario PCs.

HP is positioning its Pavilion 2755C to appeal to seasoned consumers looking for a stylish, compact second PC for additional rooms in the house, says Ray Aldrich, spokesperson. The stylish blue-and-silver unit is a mere 13 inches tall, 14.75 inches deep, and 4 inches wide, and can sit vertically or horizontally, he says.

At launch, the Pavilion 2755C is available in a single configuration, Aldrich says. That model has an 800-MHz Pentium III processor, 128MB of PC-100 SDRAM, a 20GB hard drive, a 4X/4X/24X CD-RW drive, integrated graphics (via the 810E chip set), a V.90 modem, and a 10/100 Ethernet card for $1049. A matching 17-inch monitor (the MX70) costs an additional $399.

The units are available now through HP's online store, or you can purchase one through HP kiosks in retail stores. The company will not have the product on retail store shelves in time for holiday shopping, he says.

Small but Expandable Pavilion

Because the Pavilion 2755C is intended for more-seasoned home users, HP offers some expansion capabilities in the bite-size unit. It's not a sealed box, Aldrich says. Besides accommodating more memory, it gives you access to three open slots inside the case, he says.

The unit's integrated graphics--which draw resources from main memory--shouldn't turn off buyers because only the most sophisticated PC users demand a dedicated graphics card, Aldrich says. Many of HP's most successful consumer PC products use integrated graphics, and the technology offers plenty of power for most people, he says.

Presario Line Grows

Compaq's newest Presario 5000 models, which offer a dedicated graphics card combined with AMD's well-regarded Duron processor, are intended to tempt home users who want strong performance without a high price tag. These are Compaq's first Duron-based systems, and are available now--among the first Duron systems to hit retail shelves.

Compaq has found great success with AMD processors, says Brett Faulk, director of retail desktop product marketing. The Duron is a natural evolution from the company's earlier low-end systems that used AMD's K6-2 chips, Faulk adds.

"The Duron provides significantly more performance than the previous K6-2 products," he says. Plus, the dedicated graphics should appeal to people who expect high performance and want to upgrade graphics later, he says.

The $699 Presario 5WV254 includes a 700-MHz Duron processor, 64MB of PC-100 memory, a 20GB hard drive, a 40X CD-ROM drive, an NVidia graphics card with 8MB of video memory, and a 56-kilobits-per-second modem. The Presario 5WV270 sells for $899 and has largely the same features as the 5WV254 but improves to a 750-MHz Duron chip and adds a 4X/2X/24X CD-RW drive and a network card.

Compaq offers matching monitors: A 17-inch monitor (MV740) sells for $399 and a 19-inch unit (MV940) sells for $499. Both the PCs and the monitors include MyStyle Color Accent kits for personalizing.

Dawn of Duron

The Duron is an offshoot of AMD's popular Athlon processor, and is designed to compete with the low-priced Celeron processor from Intel. Early PCWorld.com tests show the Duron noticeably outperforming systems with comparable-speed Celeron chips, a result likely due to a larger on-die cache and a faster front side bus (the Duron's bus is 200 MHz, the Celeron's is 66 MHz). (See "Duron Duron: AMD's New Processor Rocks.")

Despite its superior performance to Celeron, Duron has drawn few vendors to use it in systems positioned for holiday season sales. Although AMD announced Duron in April, the processor has different requirements than the existing K6-2 products and the Celeron have, which seems to have slowed vendor adoption (see "AMD Revs Ahead with 1.2-GHz Athlon").

Compaq's systems are only the second set of Duron-based systems to ship to retail from a major U.S. vendor. In September MicronPC.com released its Duron-based Millennia RS2150A to Best Buy stores (see "MicronPC.com Ships Duron System.")