HP Pavilion p7-1167cb

HP Pavilion p7-1167cb

The HP Pavilion p7-1167cb ($899.99 list at Costco) is a desktop tower bundled with a 25-inch monitor - a perfect buy for users looking to replace their dated home PC and display. If your needs lie in day-to-day productivity and media-intensive tasks, like encoding a video for your smartphone or editing images in Photoshop, I'd put my money on the Pavilion p7-1167cb's Core i5 processor. Add to that the p7-1167cb's sweet price tag and faster processor, and the Editors' Choice for midrange desktops. The Pavilion p7-1167cb has the same black aluminum chassis and glossy plastic front panel as most other towers in the Pavilion line, like the p7-1067cb ($999.99 list, 4 stars). Accenting the entire structure is a light at the top of the face panel; it glows a white/blue color when the system is on (it glows orange when the system is asleep). There's a sliding door on the front panel that conceals an audio and mic jack, and two USB 2.0 ports. At the top is a series of media card slots (xD/SmartMedia, CompactFlash, SD/MMC, and Memory Stick), and finishing off the feature selection in the front of the chassis is a DVD+-RW (with LightScribe). The back has four USB 2.0 ports, audio-in and -out, a mic jack, Ethernet, and VGA and DVI-D video outputs. The system also comes with integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi.