My HP Pavilion 9870 was a spacious tower with lots of expansion room. That's why I bought it. Today I was looking at the internal hard drives and am so sorry that my old Pavilion is gone, because these are definitely the right price for expansion. My new HP CPU is at least three inches shorter than the 9870. Others like the HP Media Center with two vertical rows of equipment, really hog the space and wouldn't fit any more drives or devices than the Pavilion a820n does. My compromise, since I otherwise like the layout of the new HP, was to purchase an external 3.5" hard drive enclosure. I'll still have to attach it with a USB plug, but I can put a great big internal drive in it. This will serve as my "expansion slot" (I haven't bought a drive for it yet). I have the 120 gig external drive (I got it tonight) that may go back in a week or two, box unopened, and be exchanged for a 200gig drive and I'll pay the difference. That will be my backup. The insurance company is so screwy--I'm afraid they'll dock me more than the value of the 120 gig drive if I try to upgrade now. So I'll get the cash then take the unopened drive back (within the reasonable exchange period) for a tradein.

SRS