HP Pavilion p6787c-b

HP Pavilion p6787c-b

The HP Pavilion p6787c-b ($1,149 with two monitors at Costco) is in a category of one: It's the only dual-monitor desktop system that's available in a big box retail store. People who do a lot of multitasking, especially when working with digital media (photos, videos, music) will enjoy the extra room for toolbars, extra wide documents, or even HD video playback while you're working in the other monitor. The p6787c-b is a variation of the HP Pavilion p6700 series we've seen before. It's a tower PC with room to expand, but the looks are a little different. The front panel is metallic gray instead of the glossy black we've seen on previous HP desktops, though the sides are still matte black. The front panel slides down to expose two USB 2.0 ports and audio jacks, and there are bays for two optical drives below the 15-in-1 digital media card reader. On the back, there are 4 more USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, more audio jacks, a digital audio port, and an HDMI and DVI port (on the ATI Radeon HD 6450 graphics card). Notably missing are eSATA and USB 3.0 ports, which would be important to a multimedia enthusiast or digital artist since these interfaces are much faster than the included USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces when transferring large files.