We're used to seeing computers getting smaller, faster, better. But what about when things don't seem to change on the outside; should we still expect them to change on the inside?

I hope so. At least that would be my experience with recent systems from Hewlett Packard. About a year ago, I forked over a couple thousand dollars to purchase a new Media Center PC from HP. It was fully loaded, with a 300 GByte disk drive to save those TV shows I expected to record and 2 Gbytes of memory and a high end graphics processor because I wanted the system to easily run Windows Vista, which was expected "any day now" at that time. It was still in my family room running Windows XP when I received a review unit of Hewlett Packard's m7680n Pavilion Media Center TV PC. So I plopped the review unit down near my computer.

At first glance, it looked like it would be more of the same. The case was the same size and color. The monitor was identical to mine, and the switches, ports and lights even looked the same as my PC. But the differences became evident quickly. All it took was doing the same task on both machines -- and doing it at the same time.

The task I undertook was to archive several years of my radio show, "Megabyte Minute." Doing so took a couple steps, none of which took much time. Pop an audio CD containing 10 one-minute shows in the CD drive; then there's ripping the audio -- ripping means copying an audio CD into a computer-readable format; then, combining the audio files and burning them onto a single DVD.

Since both computers were configured adequately for all parts of the project, it would be any easy comparison -- which I figured would not show much difference. But the m7680n ripped the CDs at double the speed. By the time I got the second disk into my PC, I had completed two on the m7680n.

The m7680n is equipped with a Lightscribe DVD burner, so if the DVDs are Lightscribe enabled, you can label them in the drive by flipping them over and using software that comes on the system. You don't need paper labels or a special printer. (See my previous column about Lightscribe drives to learn about the pros and cons of the technology.)

The m7680n can act as a digital video recorder and a TV. Equipped with standard Microsoft Media Center software, an analog TV card and plenty of disk space, you can record your favorite TV shows as you work on other tasks; then watch them at your leisure -- even starting in the middle of a program; then catching up to the live broadcast by skipping through commercials.

With the robust configuration featuring 2 Gbytes of fast memory, a large 500 GByte disk and extras such as wireless keyboard, mouse and DVR remote control, the system should run any version of Windows Vista -- even the Ultimate Edition.

Hewlett Packard has a tendency of cluttering its home PCs with lots of low value extra software and extra interfaces. But not this system. It contains several titles that come in handy for multimedia work as well as Microsoft Works for entry level word processing and other office-like applications. But the desktop and Start menu are clean and free of the useless extras.

The base configuration for the Pavilion sells for around $1,100.