A Gift For Someone I Love. Review on HCL Beanstalk

What better gift I could think of giving to my wifey darling on our First Marriage Anniversary ??

She had been behind me for either buying a laptop or a desktop for so long, as I work in a night shift and it would be great if both of us can stay online together. Moreover my elder bro is in Malaysia and he usually comes online when its evening out here, I had been doing some research on both the segments but then somehow decided against a Laptop for home than a desktop as I am a bit of a careless guy when these things are concerned as you can easily locate a glass full of water / coke / coffee very near my desk.

I always wanted a HP Desktopfor home but then when I met HP guys I was a bit surprised by the prices they were quoting for their desktops as I could have bought a Laptop of some other company at that price what they were quoting for a Desktop, Lenovowas way too high on prices and very less on Functions, Zenithwas not my cup of tea, LGwere never good in PC making than TV and home electronics, so Finally after lot of research and development, selection and rejection, confusion we settled for HCL Beanstalk.

Wifey always wanted to have a black PC than having a traditional white one And fortunately Beanstalk comes in Black and Silver Cabinet, Pure Black Monitor, Black Silver Mouse and Keyboard too. Even the speakers provided in this deal are Black too.

Configuration of the PC is as following:Intel Pentium 4 processor 506 with 64 Bit Technology (2.66 Ghz, 533 Mhz FSB, 1 MB cache) 256 MB DDRAM 80 GB SATA HDD Intel Extreme Graphics Controller Integrated 6 Channel Audio Internet / Multimedia Keyboard DVD Writer 56 KBPS Modem and an inbuilt LAN Card A couple of USB ports XP Media Center 2005 Edition Anti Virus for XP 1 Year onsite maintenance 17'' CRT Color Monitor

Free Additional Accessories provided with this machine:

2.1 AVS 300 Altec Lancing Speakers with sub woofer

15 in 1 Card Reader

Wireless Multifunctional Keyboard and Mouse

HCL Headphone with Mike.

1000 Games DVD

This comes with two recovery CD’s, which contains original licensed version of XP Media Center Operating System. I always wanted to have a media center PC as a lot has already been said about the features Media Center offers, I am looking forward to recording a lot of songs, videos, Movies and the upcoming world cup matches too and burn DVD's so that I can cherish them later - if India Wins the World Cup.

I would love to experience recording / pausing live TV as they show it in the ads, looking forward to it quite soon as I have already spoken to HCL guys for Hardware support too - I believe that would cost something in the range of 5-6K for TV Tuner Cardand Remote.

A couple of things I liked very much about this PC. One of them was the Wireless Multifunction keyboard and mouse. With a single click you can Open Word / Powerpoint / Excel, Media Player, Inernet, Search, Outlook, Volume Controls etc through the keyboard's top menu keys. I am sure about one thing that a lot of us guys love to keep their feet on the table while working on a pc - at least at home - if not all at least I love doing that - now this wireless keyboard offers me that thing very well, as I can move anywhere in the range of 5-6 feets from the pc without disturbing the connectivity. Moving left or right to watch the TV is also fine with that. Mouse also works from quite a distance - that’s good, One negative attached to this is the batteries with the key board and mouse as I dunno how long will they last but it wont matter as long as its useful to me. They do run on a battery saving mode too as if you don’t use them for about 5-10 minutes they switch themselves off and you've got to click to switch them on before using them again.

The Altec Lancing speakers with sub woofer produce awesome sound, the two cute tower speakers and one big woofer, which you can put either on floor or below the computer table - gives quite good sound output. Watching the downloaded videos / mp3 is really a fun with this. High definition graphic controller gives extra clarity to pictures / videos / DVD's. I have put in something like a 1000 pictures taken by my digicam in different folders in my pictures and we run them as a screensaver, that looks awesome as and when it starts running on idle situation, wifey loves the shots of cool kids I have shot with my cam on random basis. Putting all of my 1500+ MP3 songs on Media player and play them on shuffle mode is something I love doing pretty often these days.

Although the software provided with the DVD writer (Sonic) is pathetic at least in comparison with Nero, I am quite used to Nero these days - will get a copy from office.

HCL Support and serviceis good too as the day I bought this, they delivered it same day (It was a Sunday) and the guy came in behind to install the same. Apart from the usual Installation he gave me MS office, 1000+ Recipes and a couple of more games and stuff like that. Built the partition as per my instructions, suggested me to upgrade the RAM for better functionality ASAP.

Its a good bargain at that price, I will recommend HCL Beanstalk for a Home PC.

Ratings and comments are more than welcome as always.