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HP Elite 7000

The HP Elite 7000 starts at $799, but it has a lot of options so that price could get inflated easily.  Inside, you can get either an Intel Core i5 or an Intel Core i7.  There is a maximum of 8GB of RAM.  For your OS, you’ll get your choice of Windows Home Basic 32, Home Premium 32, or Professional in either 32 or 64-bit editions.  There’s even a XP option, a Vista Business 32 option, FreeDOS, and Novel SUSE Linux.  There are two hard-drive bays, three PCIe x1 full-height slots, and one PCIe x16 slot.  The Elite 7000 even has a virtual browser with Firefox running in a virtual machine preinstalled. 

Compaq’s 500B and 505B

These are low cost machines that could are positioned for small businesses.  The 500B starts at $359, the 505B starts at $409.  The major difference between the two machines is the processor.  The 505B comes with AMD Athlon II Quad, Triple, or Dual Core processors.  The 500B has either an Intel Celeron or an Intel Pentium-dual core.  They both have the same amount of expansion slots with two full-height PCIe x1 slots, one full-height PCIe x16 slot, and one full-height PCI 2.3 slot.  They also have 8 USB 2.0 ports and 10/100 Ethernet; 802.11b/g/n wireless is an optional component. 

Compaq Presario CQ4010

Compaq’s got one more low cost desktop PC.  This Presario CQ4010 starts at $309.99 and comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, a 2.30GHz AMD Sempron LE-1300 processor, 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM (with a maximum of 4GB), and a DVD burner with LightScribe.  This computer is not as expandable as the others with only one available PCI Express x16 slot.  There is another PCI Express x1 slot, but that is already occupied.  On the plus side, the desktop is glossy black and does not look like a super-budget desktop. 

Company Sites: [HP] [Compaq]