Pavilion Slimline s3624uk Review & specs

I've had my share of clunky, ugly PCs over the years. It's about time computer manufacturers started giving some though to the aesthetics of their products. HP have been making high quality PCs that also look good for some time now. And it has to be said that the HP Pavilion Slimline s3624uk really does look the part.

The front panel is sleek glossy black with silver that will look good on anyone's desktop. And there's a especially good-looking on button that lights up a bar on the face plate too. The other thing you notice about this PC is it's tiny footprint. The PC measures only 27.6 cm high by just under 324 cm long. So you won't have to hide it away under the desk and forever be bashing your chair off it.

Enough about how it looks - has it got any oomph under that glossy case? The performance on offer from the from this little PC is surprising considering it's size. The processor is the AMD 64 Athlon x2. And the s3624uk comes with 2GB of (super-fast) DDR2 ram, so Windows Vista runs smoothly and without any problems.

Speaking of Vista, the operating system here is the Home Premium version (which I would recommend to all users above any other version). But, unlike a lot of recent computers, should you want to put XP on at any time, you can do so. The HP website will even give you directions on how to do so.

There's oodles of space thanks to the 320gb hard drive. Another surprise is the number of ways you can connect your gadgets and media to this PC. The s3624uk boasts 6 USB ports, a handy 15-in-1 card reader and a quick-n-easy headphone jack on the front of the case. Another likeable thing about this PC is it's built-in b/g Wifi , saving you having to run a cable to your router. But, if you still want to do this, there's the usual network port too.

The PC is ready to go out of the box and really doesn't take any setting up. It's also suitable for anyone new to computing. And the memory, processor and graphics card are all upgradeable should you need to in the future. Although, to be honest, this PC is easily powerful enough to last for a very long time as it is.

In short, the s3624uk is a powerful PC that's also compact and very easy on the eye. Now lets get into the specs:

Storage 320 GB SATA 3G Hard Disk Drive (7200 rpm)

Communication Ethernet 10/100BT integrated network interface
Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g

Video NVIDIA® GeForce™ 9300 GE with PureVideo® HD technology
(DVI/VGA port, HDMI port)
256 MB dedicated memory

Sound High Definition Audio 5.1

Ports 1 external optical drive bay, 1 internal HDD bay, 1 Pocket Media
Drive bay
1 PCI-E 16x low profile
1 PCI-Express 1x low profile (free)
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 in front)
1 FireWire®-IEEE-1394 ports

Dimensions Out of package107 x 352 x 276 mm