HP P6-2378 AMD A8 8GB 1TB Desktop (Refurbished) for $329.99 + $5.00 shipping

I bought a refurb HP desktop for my wife in early January from Microcenter. Took it home, hooked it up. We noticed a "kickstand" underneath the keyboard was missing, so she couldn't prop it up. We called and went through hours upon hours of being on hold, dealing with clueless CSRs, etc. Then when they confirmed that it was under warranty, they said that the missing part wasn't covered under warranty and that I could get it replaced by buying an extended warranty. It's a five cent piece of plastic. After much arm twisting, they finally sent out a replacement keyboard.

On the computer side of things, IMHO, it's slower than it should be (i3 2nd gen with 3.0 or 3.2 GHz --if I recall correctly -- with 8 GB of DDR3 memory). Also, it tends to rarely, if ever, do a clean restart (i.e. it just hands with a spinning circle during the shutdown screen to the point where you have to hold down the power button and force it to power down).

If this crap keeps up, I'll be giving 'em a call and having them fix it/change it out completely.

If you bought it from MC, wouldn't you deal with them first before trying to deal with any warranty hassle?

Okay - stupid question here. I've always thought that the DVI-to-HDMI cable was not a good as the HDMI-to-HDMI cable. Does the DVI carry the audio too?

I use a DVI-to-HDMI cable on my desktop, but I use the audio-out ports to some Bose speakers. If I use the HDMI cable, it uses the monitor speakers, which aren't as good. I'm probably doing something wrong there.

So - bottom line - is using the DVI-to-HDMI cable as good regarding the quality of resolution and sound?

Just asking 'cause I don't know.

DVI does not carry audio. That is why HDMI was created; to provide digital video and audio in one cable.

Not true. Many of the newer video cards support audio over DVI. I have an older 560 TI and a 560 that both support audio over DVI. And to the previous posters question, hdmi and dvi should give the same quality signal. You can run either one though and just set your computer to output audio through the 3.5mm jack and not hdmi or dvi if you want to use your external speakers. To do this, just right click the speaker icon in the taskbar, click on playback devices and set your output accordingly.

He was correct. DVI does not support audio. It isn't a matter of how new your card is. HDMI was the successor to DVI due to DVI having no additional channels besides RGB (digital and analog), clock syncing, and a +5v for detecting wake state. DVI will not be able to support more than this without a change of form factor due to having no spare pins. If you find a connection claiming to be DVI and is also supporting audio, then it is either wrong or not actually DVI.

I bought a refurb HP desktop for my wife in early January from Microcenter. Took it home, hooked it up. We noticed a "kickstand" underneath the keyboard was missing, so she couldn't prop it up. We called and went through hours upon hours of being on hold, dealing with clueless CSRs, etc. Then when they confirmed that it was under warranty, they said that the missing part wasn't covered under warranty and that I could get it replaced by buying an extended warranty. It's a five cent piece of plastic. After much arm twisting, they finally sent out a replacement keyboard.

On the computer side of things, IMHO, it's slower than it should be (i3 2nd gen dual core 3.3 GHz -- with 8 GB of DDR3 memory). Also, it tends to rarely, if ever, do a clean restart (i.e. it just hangs with a spinning circle during the shutdown screen to the point where you have to hold down the power button and force it to power down).

If this crap keeps up, I'll be giving 'em a call and having them fix it/change it out completely.

These sound like purely software issues. Why not just reimage it and be done with it?