Mode: HP Pro 3000 Small Form Factor PC
Rating: 7 out of 10
Price: $1459 inc. GST
Web: www.hp.com.au

Business PCs are all about providing managed performance, however with its wide array of peripheral options including multi flash card support, you’d have to wonder just how many CIOs would want a suite of systems that offer users this much opportunity to plug things into the network.

Still, the Pro 3000 has some neat features. It starts with a quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor at 2.66GHz and 4GB of DDR3-1333 memory.

Storage is thanks to a 500GB Seagate ST3500412AS SATA2 hard drive and HP-branded TS-H653R DVD burner. Although the case can be stood vertically, it’s virtually impossible to use the optical drive this way safely as the drive is a regular desktop model with no clips to hold the disc in place.

The unit comes with Windows 7 Professional or you can downgrade back to Windows XP Professional SP3 (both are 32-bit versions only).

The other interesting feature is the ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card – not so interesting in itself except for the rare DMS-59 display connector on the back. HP supplies its 22-inch widescreen LA2250wg LCD monitor in this $AUD1459 price tag and needs to – the DMS-59 connector won’t take a standard DVI plug without a converter cable.

Basically, the DMS-59 allows you to twin DVI outputs to connect up two LCD monitors digitally to the card, a feature well suited to financial applications.

Overall application performance is pretty decent, scoring 431.6 on our TechBench multimedia benchmark and on par with systems built around Intel’s Core i3 530 dual-core desktop chip.

For overall value, we think the HP Pro 3000 is on a par with the Lenovo ThinkPad A70z. But to get the most from the quad-core processor here, you’ll need applications that specifically support multi-core processors, otherwise the quad-core CPU will be mostly wasted.

The Pro 3000 isn’t latest technology given its older Core 2 Quad processor but for applications where having multiple monitors with digital video quality is important, the Pro 3000 is pretty much set to go straight out of the box – provided you have the right monitor.

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