Hello Folks,
Just wondering... Cakewalk really plugs the HP workstations right here on the Support section of the site. Sounds like they work flawlessly.  So why are more people not using them. I noticed that they are the only PC's certified on that "other DAW'S" site as well. Read that as AVID. The z210 or now z220 can be configured fairly reasonably so I am curious as to why they don't get the nod here. I was thinking of the Z210 with a Zeon and maybe a M-audio 2626 or a MOTU 8 PRE. Anyone using that combo? Any comments out there?

What is generally on the Avid site, for ProTools the last time I looked, were high end workstations and the listings for many were outdated.  I have PT MP9 and also had a 30 day trial version of PT10.  Most of the comments I saw on the ProTools forums also suggested the Avid listing was outdated. 

This is not to say they won't work, just there are many others that will work or maybe even work better.  

HP tends to be over priced compared to other offerings. also not designed for audio as a pro daw builders system would be
Avid qualifiing is well a joke.
HP sends them systems for free they qualify them.. in order for anyone else to get qualified you have to give them the systems..
there is a tad more to it than that..

"Workstation" is a very ambiguous term. In practice it can apply to any PC that has way more resources (especially in video and memory) than would interest a purchasing agent buying office machines. Many of the professional and  home built DAWs mentioned on this forum would qualify as workstations if they were made by a major brand assembler. There is probably nothing wrong with the HP workstations referenced on Cakewalk's page. They report very good success with the high end unit they used at shows. It is not clear if they did any tweaking for improved audio performance on their machine. It is unlikely that HP does such tweaking on the off the shelf models. I did not even bother to look at the prices. Have you?

How do the Sweetwater creation stations stack up?

there are several better options... 
google "compare sweetwater rain pc audio labs"

Thanks to all that have responded. I am sure, as Scott had said that a PC built by a experienced DAW builder would yield much better results than an off the shelf workstation. The Creation Stastions fall into that catagory as well. I have seen some very reasonable prices on the lower end workstaions all the way up to "un-obtainable" on a toyed out HP Z800. In that case, I think you are much better off talking to Scott or Jim to have them build up a slick machine all tweeked for "your" needs. I was unaware of the politics involved in getting your product certified. I guess I was just caught up in Cakewalk's plug on the lower end HP's and thought more folks would have jumped on the "company's" recommended DAW. That being said, I have a chance to obtain a workstation with enough processing power for much less that I could build one from scratch when throwing in the cost of the operating system. I can also vouch for the robustness of the HP workstations as the company I work for uses them for CAD and Unigraphics. These machines are left powered up and crunching data from the time they are first plugged in. No Failures...and no I don't work for HP. LOL!!!! Thanks again for all that commented. Keep it comming.

I'm a retired LAN/WAN Network and hardware help desk manager.  I was the regional network manager out of Kansas City for the entire mid-west for a large federal government agency.  The HP computer equipment we had wasn't all that great.  The most reliable was the IBM equipment (it was pricey but it just worked).  The equipment in my shop ran 24/7.  I had the gateway (access point) for all the field offices in my support area into the agency's nationwide private network system.  I had equipment from multiple vendors at my central site, just as we had multiple vendor equipment at the field offices (e.g. the LAN servers were from one PC vendor, the workstations were from another PC vendor).