Digital Trends

HP Pavilion Elite m9200t March 30th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Upgrades and Expansion

The drawbacks to this PC include a messy interior and just a single PCI slot available for expansion. Good luck getting a card into the free slot too, as there are wires all around the area despite the fact that HP has zip-tied some of the loose wires together.

Getting to the hard drive cage is also a bit tricky, due to the fact that it’s blocked by a removable drive cage that requires a long screwdriver and the removal of two screws to lift the cage out of the chassis. Obviously “mainstream” users don’t tinker inside their PCs often, but upgradeability is one of the best features of today’s PCs, and HP should make this process easier for its customers.

At the end of testing we tried out HP’s system recovery software, which pulls the factory image off a second hard drive partition for quick recovery should you want to wipe the slate clean and start over some day. We just pressed F11 during bootup and were taken to the recovery menu. With a few clicks of the mouse we restored the factory image and the PC was as good as new again. We also like the fact that HP allows you to restore the image but save all your files. This is an excellent feature and one we wish more companies offered.

The interior of the HP is a jumble of wires, and an empty storage bay blocks easy access to the hard drive cage.

Conclusion

The m9200t is overall a decent machine that would serve most home users quite well. Though there’s nothing egregiously wrong with it, there’s also nothing that really blows our hair back. We like that it can play HD movies, record TV and even be a media center. It’s not a bad package at all, but we’d still like to see less bloatware, easier upgradeability and a bit more pizzazz in the next iteration.

Pros:

• Very quiet
• Lots of configuration options
• Blu-ray and HD DVD support

Cons:

• Bloatware and toolbars
• Internal wiring is messy
• Looks are bland