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The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
Powerful Machine useful for Photographer's workflow
My review is mostly for Enthusiast/Professional Photographers...
I needed a new powerful desktop with 64-bit processing. My Sony Vaio desktop that once was cutting edge two years ago,is now not able to keep up with many of todays demands. Especially my updated versions of Photoshop CS, and Lightroom 2.3 which works native in 64-bit.
64-bit...
Published 18 months ago by Jeep 4x4 Enthusiast
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32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
Decent computer (HP m9500y/m9500f)
Edit (May 3, 2009): My review is for the HP m9500y, which has the same specs as listed for the m9500f on amazon.com. My review is for that computer only. My review also appears for the HP m9550f because Amazon.com has the two products linked.
I've owned an HP m9500y for a couple months now. It's a decent PC and runs all the software I want to run...
Published 17 months ago by Eric
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
Powerful Machine useful for Photographer's workflow, February 25, 2009
My review is mostly for Enthusiast/Professional Photographers...
I needed a new powerful desktop with 64-bit processing. My Sony Vaio desktop that once was cutting edge two years ago,is now not able to keep up with many of todays demands. Especially my updated versions of Photoshop CS, and Lightroom 2.3 which works native in 64-bit.
64-bit allows windows to accept, use and maximize a computer with 4+ gbs of RAM. The HP Pavilion Elite M9550F comes pre-installed with a maxed out 8gbs of ram.
So for a photographer using high end software, and downloading large amounts of files. This computer works swiftly and effortlessly.
On my older sony desktop, it took about 15 minutes to download 4gb off of a compact flashcard. I could not do any other task while it downloaded, or risked data loss or the download not completing.
It takes about a minute to download with the HP, and I listen to music and/or check emails with no detectable slow down in the system.
On my old desktop, if I changed modules in lightroom, or did any form of editing it took a few seconds to see the changes. I sometimes had to hit Ctrl+Z so I can see the before image. With my new HP,... It's so fast that I miss the changes if they are not drastic. The screen appears to blink, because it responds so fast to my commands.
The onboard 1TB of storage is another huge plus. There are still very few desktops on the market with an internal 1TB drive. I have purchased three 1TB external hardrives, with two mirroring the HP's internal drive. There is a bay available that can be used for an additional internal drive, and you can purchase a HP Media Drive up to 1TB to plug right into a special bay. No wires, or software is necessary.
I distribute CD's to models and clients often. The LightScribe technology that is part of the CD/DVD drive lets you etch custom labels and artwork right on a LightScribe-enabled CD or DVD. This allows you to look professional and a cut about the rest.
There are several ways to hook up a monitor, so I have the VGA attached to my old CRT monitor, and HDMI port attached to a 30inch flatscreen. Using dual displays is just a few clicks, and takes your image editing to another level.
There are a lot of features that I'm sure I missed, but these are the standout features to me, using it for photography.
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32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
Decent computer (HP m9500y/m9500f), April 5, 2009
Edit (May 3, 2009): My review is for the HP m9500y, which has the same specs as listed for the m9500f on amazon.com. My review is for that computer only. My review also appears for the HP m9550f because Amazon.com has the two products linked.
I've owned an HP m9500y for a couple months now. It's a decent PC and runs all the software I want to run (including software development tools and games, in addition to web & email, etc.); however, this computer has some bad enough quirks to make me not want to buy another one of these.
I'll start out with the good things about this computer:
- It's fast, and it has tons of RAM and hard drive space. Having a quad-core CPU really helps with multi-tasking and CPU-intensive software that can take advantage of more than 1 core (i.e., making use of multi-threading). Even if AMD may be falling behind Intel these days, I think they still make a very good CPU. Also, 8GB of RAM as standard is fairly rare these days in a desktop PC and is more than enough for what I need. The RAM is decently fast, too (DDR2-6400). The hard drive is also fairly large: 750GB is more than I would expect in a desktop PC at this price.
- The video card (Nvidia GeForce 9500) is decent for gaming. I'm fairly familiar with gaming video cards, and as far as Nvidia cards go, I'd have preferred a 9600 or 9800, but Nvidia's 9500 card is still fairly good and runs all the games I enjoy pretty smoothly. It's nice that it has 512MB of RAM, too. In addition, the video card has an HDMI output, which I think is a nice touch - from what I've seen, that is still fairly uncommon for desktop video cards.
Overall, I think the combination of the video card, quad-core CPU, RAM, and hard drive space is a very good value for the price of this PC.
Now, onto the bad stuff:
- The USB interfaces may be somewhat unstable in some circumstances. One time when I plugged my USB printer into one of the rear USB ports, the computer rebooted.
- The microphone inputs are unacceptable, in my opinion. I like to occasionally voice chat with people over the internet, and the microphone inputs are unsuitable for that. My voice is masked behind a lot of noise using the rear mic input, and if I use the front mic input, my voice isn't picked up at all. I also like to occasionally record music on my computer, so the audio inputs on this computer are definitely not adequate. For voice chat, I ended up buying an inexpensive USB audio adapter for its microphone input, and it works well (it's one of these: Syba SD-CM-UAUD USB Stereo Audio Adapter, C-Media Chipset, RoHS).
- After only 2 months, the video card fan in my PC started to vibrate loudly. This is something I find pretty annoying, and it's disappointing that it started to happen so soon.
- The motherboard's PCI Express is not the newer 2.0 standard. This could be a limiting factor if you ever decide to upgrade the video card. Many new video cards support the newer PCI Express 2.0 standard; they are backwards-compatible with PCI Express 1.0, so they would still work with this motherboard, but they would not be able to take advantage of the PCI Express 2.0 specs.
Hare are some of my miscellaneous other thoughts:
- The flash card reader is a nice touch. I have a couple devices (digital camera and a music synthesizer) that use flash media, and it's nice to be able to plug the media into the reader in this PC to copy the files off. My digital camera uses only USB 1.1, so this PC's built-in card reader is faster.
- This PC has bays that support HP's Pocket Media and Media Drive technology. It looks like these are hot-swappable hard drives designed by HP, but I had never heard of them before I bought this PC. With USB hard drives and flash drives, I'm not likely to use HP's media/pocket drives, so these are insignificant to me.
- This PC lacks a reset button. I realize the same effect could probably be done using the power button or unplugging the PC, but it's nice having a reset button in case the computer ever freezes up and you need to do a hard reset. Besides, a reset button is standard on many PCs, so it just seems odd that HP would not include a reset button.
- The power supply lacks a hard power switch. Again, this is something that I think is nice to have and is included on many power supplies, so it seems odd not to have one.
- The DVD burner does not seem to work with TDK double-layer media. I have a spindle of TDK double-layer DVD+R media that I had used with my old PCs; however, the drive in this computer always gives burning errors with these discs. I've found that Verbatim double-layer DVDs work fine in it though.
Personally, I am disappointed in the negatives that I have pointed out. The video card fan vibration is particularly annoying. I give this PC a 3-star rating for its overall value (CPU, RAM, hard drive space, and choice of video card), but I can't give it more than that due to the negatives.
Normally I like to build my own PC, but I was in a bit of a financial bind, which is why I bought one of these. If you're in the market for a PC, I'd recommend you look elsewhere or build your own PC if you are savvy enough. Unfortunately, I think the reason many of these name-brand PCs have become as cheap as they are is that some of the components they use are cheap and are lacking in quality.
Edit (May 3, 2009): I contacted HP customer support about the video card fan noise and asked if they would send me a new video card. They agreed and shipped me a new video card at no cost to me via FedEx, complete with a pre-paid shipping label that I could use to ship my old card back to them. I received and installed the new video card on April 28, 2009. So far, the loud vibrating noise has not returned, and my computer is actually quieter than it was before. The new video card still says on it that it's revision 1.0, but it has a blue fan shield rather than a black shield, which suggests that they may have updated the cooler/fan design on the card.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
m9550f suits me, March 17, 2009
I just wanted to give you a little feedback.
My M9550f came in a nice sturdy unmarked package. Everything was there. So far everything has worked flawlessly. I'm leaving it on to burn-in. It is very quiet and plenty fast for my main two applications (Adobe Lightroom and Canon DPP). My peripherals all work flawlessly with it - better than with my previous (xxx) computer. The included HP software works well and is helpful. I've used it for help a couple of times.
The only negative is the confusion caused by it assuming (on install) I don't have a service provider and its almost insistence on me selecting one. I think it should assume I have one and then provide suggestions if I don't.
Anyhow it's a great computer. I haven't seen anything out there nearly as nice for the money. I did see a review by "a reviewer" saying I should pay $600 more to buy a Dxxx that had nowhere near the features (just a faster CPU). The reason the reviewer gave was that you got 15 months of Norton vs 6 wks and it would read Blueray disks. The M9550f reads Blueray too! 15 months of Norton is a definite disadvantage (I prefer my own antivirus and don't way to prebuy) and writing to Blueray is not important to me. So, I wrote the reviewer off.
Addendum: A couple of weeks have past and the computer is still doing great. I added a 2nd internal hard drive. The drive cage was easy to access. The HD was easy to install and connect. The computer wiring was neat with everything in its place. No wiring mess at all - unlike the PCW reviewer claimed. Also, the DVD door has not hung once.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
"Total Care" to a certain point, May 12, 2009
I bought this item on January 19th 2009. It never worked right with the first indication being it wouldn't wake up from sleep mode without a hard restart.
In the 3 months I had this machine it was sent back to HP to be repaired 3 times each time spending countless hours with tech support and trying to decipher the foreign language of the Tech support person, making the experience even more frustrating. the Hard drive the video card and the CPU all blew up in that 3 months. The last time the computer only ran for 2 hours before it blew up.
I again called HP tech support and told them I wanted a new one and don't want this one back, the person said he "have supervisor call you back in 2 hours" No one called back. When I tried to contact them again they must have had my account flagged and would not talk to me anymore, just put me on hold for 4 hours at a time. So "Total Care" was only if you don't want a new one after 3 tries to fix it.
The good news is I was able to get my money back from the seller
I did some research and talked to a friend that works for a processor company in New Mexico. What he told me was HP only buys refurbished components from their suppliers (China parts assembled in Mexico) and is why they can sell the Computers cheaper than most. The reason they don't have to tell you that is the parts were refurbished before it was a computer. This explains the problems I had.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Good product, software concerns, March 24, 2009
Received as a Christmas gift and coming from a 2.4 ghz machine with 256 ram it is hard to make a fair comparison. The machine operates so fast that I have had no problems playing graphically intensive games for long periods while still operating 5 other programs in the background and little to no slowing.
Added a wireless HP printer and external hard drive and everything was plug and play accessible as was my ancient flash drive.
Now, making the switch from Windows XP to the 64 bit Vista I found many problems that mostly came about with Internet Explorer. Until Flash that is....
Currently there is no Flash 10 support for 64 bit systems. Firefox allows you to run flash applets and such in 32 bit mode and for me this is not a problem since Firefox is my browser of choice but for those of you who wish to used IE and run flash the ability to run IE in 32 bit mode is sketchy at best, often crashing the entire system.
Now, using the windows toolbar. Anything that requires Flash again requires you to run in 32 bit mode and to date for me all it does is crash.
So as far as the machine itself it is a resounding 5 stars, for the software included I would put it no higher than 2 stars.
There is more issues with programs and the 64 bit mode but they are many and often related to games and programs not keeping up with advancing technology.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Has everything I need and is fast., February 8, 2009
I just bought this computer from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It arrived on time in good shape. Set up was easy with no issues. I researched various computers and found this HP was the best priced for what is offered. I was especially interested in the HDMI out and the built in wireless card. I running it direct through a cable modem now but I may move it to the bed room and run it from my home network linked to a HDTV at some point in the future. I was primarily interested in a Media Center PC configuration that offers the flexibility to go wireless. I was not interested in a TV tuner. Other HP models offer this option for a few hundred dollars more. This one has plenty of power and speed. It runs quite and cool. The quad core processor should handle my needs for years to come. I am very satisfied so far.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Dual Monitor Display Issues, August 6, 2009
This review is from: HP Pavilion Elite M9520F Desktop PC (2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Processor, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB Hard Drive, Blu-ray Drive, Vista Premium) (Personal Computers)
The machine works well, and enough people have reviewed it that I will focus on a particular video display problem that you are likely to encounter with this, and perhaps other HP Media PCs. If you try to play DVDs and Blurays onto a second, shared LCD monitor (typically this would be your lcd tv) connected via the HDMI port,you will have a good chance of your display being totally corrupted on that display. It will play fine on your primary DVI connected monitor, but when you try and view it instead on the second, HDMI connected one it will likely be just a field of static. This may not happen the first time you try this, but as soon as you run say Windows Media Player, your codecs will update automatically and you will be unable to view it.
HP technical support was completely useless in debugging this problem, don't bother with them. The problem that causes this, as far as I can ascertain, is the inability of Vista, the bluray player, the drivers and codecs all properly communicating with each other the various security/copywrite permissions that need to happen in order to play video on a dual monitor set up.
The only solution I have found that works, and believe me, I tried many, is to install Slysoft's Anydvd (HD version). This program strips out the different protection schemes from the videos and allows them to play correctly on dual monitor home theater setups with a computer monitor and an HDMI connected tv. I hope HP and the rest of the industry figure this out and standardize HTPC protocols so the consumer doesn't have to deal with these ridiculous issues.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Great box - but video card failed, May 25, 2009
After about three days with this PC I started to hear a brutal grinding sound. Investigation revealed it was the video card fan. I called support and they (eventually) sent me out a replacement card that is working silently as it should.
Other than that, I am really happy with this PC. I have upgraded to Vista Ultimate to get the various features not turned on with Vista Home Premium, but that's mostly for work. The quad core CPU runs without lockups of any other odd behavior and 8GB of RAM is enough for me.
I was concerned the video card would not be able to handle gaming. But I am playing City of Heroes with graphics maxed and it runs very smoothly.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Core2 Quad Media Center PC as advertised with very reasonable price, May 1, 2009
UPDATE:
Customers planning on upgrading to Windows 7 should be aware of the fact that this Core2Quad Q8200 Intel CPU WILL NOT support Windows XP running in Virtual Mode of Windows 7. This could be a real deal breaker for those who plan to get away from Vista and benefit by running Windows XP in virtual mode. Most people purchasing this level machine are willing to upgrade the video cards, tuners and other small hardware, but very few will want to upgrade the CPU on such an inexpensive machine.
This HP meets all the RAM and OS requirements for running Windows XP in virtual mode while using Windows 7. This Q8000 Intel CPU does not! It is possible that Intel may change the design of the Q8000 series to support this Windows XP virtual mode after May 2009.
This could be a real deal breaker for some. I wish I had purchased a Q9300 series or other Intel or AMD CPU machine which specifically supported this feature in Windows 7.
I will now have to dual boot Windows XP and Windows 7 or Vista on this machine, or go to a backup machine. Dual booting instead of running Windows XP in virtual mode can be problematic. If you intend to get Windows 7 (and I think almost everyone will run away from Vista as soon as possible), AND you want to also run your Windows XP programs and hardware while in Windows 7, make sure your AMD or Intel CPU supports this Windows feature. Those who do not intend to run Windows XP in virtual mode under the new Windows 7 OS will be content with this rig.
Windows 7 64bit Ultimate can be had free (for one year)from Microsoft, along with the supporting Windows XP virtual mode for those CPU's supporting. Windows 7 (which could be called service release 3 of Vista)will be a must have to all who plan on abandoning Vista itself.
On a positive note, I found the free 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate easily installed, found all drivers and even the new TV/FM tuner and other hardware I added to this machine better than Vista itself! I even get better reception and more HD TV channels over the air than I did using Vista on the same computer with the same antenna! The Windows Media Center "set up" under Windows 7 and many changes and new features correct many problems and deficiencies of Vista itself.
I have not otherwise altered my initial review which follows:
Purchased at J&R, although I spent much time reading these Amazon reviews first. J&R price and Shipping was great as always. Had concerns because there were many complaining about fan noise of the NVidia GForce 9500GS. Had no such problem, in fact this box is the most quiet I have ever had.
I have always built my own PC before. After a week at Newegg and Tiger Direct, I found I could not possibly buy the parts separate and build a similar machine without paying over $200.00 more and expending the labor to assemble it.
This is at the low end of HP's Media PC's. HP Media PC's with AMD CPU's are of course less expensive than Intel Core2 HP has the largest selection with the most varied prices of Media PC's by far. With 8 Gig RAM, 64bit Vista OS this box can do all your home office chores as well as serve as an inexpensive Media Center.
Yeah Vista is slow and a pain. And there are some additional Vista compatibility problems with runing a Vista 64 bit instead of 32 bit.
However, when you weigh the advanced Vista features (search, Windows Media Center support and a few other Vista OS advances) Vista still comes out better than Windows XP for a new computer with new devices and maximum RAM and 64bit. This is especially true when Windows 7 will be available for free for a year starting May 5 2009. Keep Windows XP on your older backup machine, or dual boot Vista and Windows XP until Windows 7 is released.
This is not a "gaming machine." This was the only HP I could find with an old PCI slot to fit my Digital TV/FM Tuner. I just added the tuner, a blu ray player, and this HP works perfectly.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
HP makes computers like GM made cars in the 1970s, June 17, 2009
I bought this computer from Amazon, and I could never get the computer working. I ran every diagnostic on the computer I could. The machine was whisper quiet and seemed to run like a bat out of hell. However I could not get Windows to boot up on the PC. I even did a complete factory re-install of Windows and that did not work. Now I'm going to have to take the computer back to the UPS store and pay for shipping until Amazon gets the computer back and gives me my money back.
HP seems to have ZERO quality control about their systems. Very disappointed about this order I did.
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This product
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$1,444.00 $1,349.78
In stock. Processing takes an additional 3 to 4 days.
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