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HP makes glorious, slick multimedia machines, such as the Pavilion dv7-2185DX, but we’d still trade its quad-core CPU for a full HD 1080p display and Blu-ray. Few makers have the art of making upscale-looking 17-inch multimedia computers down to a science like HP does.

Lots of RAM and a massive drive ; slick, engaging design ; discrete graphics ; quad-core CPU. Screen resolution is low for the price ; no Blu-ray drive.

The formula reputedly works, as the basic look and feel of this line hasn’t modified much during the past many rounds of updates, and the HP’s multimedia Pavilions still share important features like Altec Lansing speakers, HDMI outputs, and touch-sensitive media control buttons, with mirror-finish accents.

The $1,299 HP Pavilion dv7- 2185dx is now considered a reasonably pricey PC, with average costs dropping across all categories, so it wants some top-end features to excuse the cost. To that end, it contains a quad-core 2.0GHz Intel Core two Quad Q9000 CPU, 6GB of RAM ( plausibly a new standard for $1,000-plus systems ), and a fast 500GB 7,200rpm drive. If you have an interest in using the system for gaming, as well as media playback, the 1GB version of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 within the HP dv7 is completely fine for main line gaming, and we topped fifty frames per second in Imaginary Contest three at a 1,440×900-pixel resolution.

The Sony Vaio had a 512MB version of the same card, for a lower, but still reasonable, refresh rate. Another retail computer in the same price range, the Asus G71GX-RX05, has the newer, and stronger, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M, but also suffered from some heat-related issues that adversely influenced long gaming sessions ( According to Asus, a BIOS fix is coming shortly ).