Digital Trends

HP Pavilion s3020n Slimline April 30th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Setup and Use

As with most computers these days, setting up the Slimline s3020n is very easy. In the box are the s3020n itself, the keyboard, mouse, power cord, modem cable, product documentation, and disks. It took me less than 3 minutes to open the box, plug everything in, attach the wireless antenna, and store the box away.

The initial boot and setup took less than 5 minutes. Once the s3020n was configured, an external timer showed that a cold boot took one minute and 30 seconds to the Vista desktop, 2 minutes and 26 seconds till HP's Total Care Advisor program launched, and 2 minutes and 56 seconds till the HDD returned to a post-boot idle. None of these times are impressive, but they're not exactly embarrassing, either. The s3020n can begin tasks immediately after the Vista desktop appears.

Our s3020n was configured with 1GB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM, which is double the base configuration, but half the recommended memory for Windows Vista. Because of this limitation, the s3020n runs Vista well, but nowhere near its full potential (you'll find the s3020n performing much better with the tried and true Windows XP).

The 15-in-1 memory card bank on the front of the s3020n is very handy. No more external USB memory card adapters to deal with (or lose), and no more connecting digital cameras and media devices to the computer with cheap-feeling USB cables.

The back of the s3020 shows plenty of inputs/outputs, but no DVI support

HP showed some generosity by including a 16X DVD burner. In fact, the LightScribe DVD drive is better than a generic DVD-RW drive, in that it can be used to burn images and text onto the top surface of specially coated DVDs and CDs. This eliminates the needs for awkward paper DVD labels and is classier than hand written notes on burned disks.

Concerned about poor video performance from the integrated 128MB video card, I tested some DVDs on a LCD monitor and LCD TV. Surprisingly, the s3020n gave excellent results on both types of screens and with numerous DVDs. Despite the fact that the s3020n has only an analog VGA output, the picture quality was quite sufficient. Of course, the s3020n also has an S-Video output with digital audio out, so if your TV set has S-Video in and an input for digital audio, you're going to get slightly better video results. HP really should have made an optional DVI (or HDMI) upgrade available.

Upgrading the s3020n after purchase is tricky for most, but relatively easy for experienced users. Of course, with a very tight space and proprietary board, the easiest targets are the hard drive, RAM, and DVD drive. Someone with an enterprising mind and some skill could even modify the Pocket Media Drive Bay to be an iPod dock. Pretty cool.

The inside of the s3020 shows little upgrade potential