HP announced an affordable PC package for students, parents and families preparing for the back-to-school season. For $499, consumers can purchase a Compaq Presario desktop PC, a 17-inch CRT monitor and an HP Deskjet printer.

The back-to-school bundle includes a Compaq Presario S4000V desktop PC with JBL Platinum speakers, Compaq CV7500 17-inch CRT monitor and HP Deskjet 3420 color inkjet printer. The Compaq Presario S4000V desktop PC features an Intel Pentium 4 2.2-gigahertz processor; 128-megabyte PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory; a 40-gigabyte UDMA hard drive; a 48x CD-ROM drive; two IEEE 1394 FireWire ports along with Integrated 5.1 capable sound and a 4x AGP port for future graphics expansion.

This system comes with Microsoft Works, Microsoft Money 2003 and Encarta Encyclopedia. The S4000V also is configurable from HP with faster processors, additional memory and other enhanced options, at an additional cost.

The HP Deskjet 3420 printer outputs up to 10 pages per minute in black text and up to eight pages per minute in color, and produces photo-quality output with up to 2,400 x 1,200-dpi color printing on premium photo papers.

The PC package is available now for $499, after $150 in mail-in-rebates ($50 per item), and can be purchased direct from HP. Shoppers also can visit an HP or retailer branded store kiosk located in nearly 20,000 retail locations to order this PC, monitor and printer package. In addition, HP is offering free ground shipping, for a limited time.

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