My best value PC tips (esp Currys/Dixons/PCWorld

Magic_Time

Having spent the past month researching the purchase of a new PC, I thought I'd share some tips that might save you some time & money!

First of: I spent a lot of time trawling sites like Mesh, PCSpecialist, Evesham, Aria etc.... all the well-known companies you might expect to undercut the big high street names. (Oh, and I checked out most of the sellers on ebay too.) And although I found a lot of offers that looked pretty good at first sight, they usually weren't so impressive by the time you'd added on the cost of VAT, a monitor, Windows XP software, and maybe a couple of hardware upgrades.

So I found myself looking more and more at Dixons, Currys and PCWorld (which are all part of the same group, of course). It's no secret to MSE users that there are discounts to be had at these stores (e.g. DCBYAW is worth 5% off, and Currys had a 10% off weekend recently). So they can be very competitive. However, there are some things to look out for:

1. I was looking mainly at Advent PC's (the group's own brand) and there seems to be a strange hierarchy between the 3 sites. PCWorld carry mainly the newest models (with "02" as the last 2 digits of the model number); Currys carry a more slightly older models (last 2 digits "01"); Dixons carry the oldest models (last 2 digits "19"). The "01" models are OK, but the Dixons ones, although the specs look reasonable on the surface, feature older versions of the Pentium 4 processor and slower memory (PC2700 RAM). Yet they're still as expensive as the newest models at the other 2 shops - AVOID!

2. The specs given on the stores' websites don't always tell you everything you might want to know. You can research the range in much more detail at the group's support site, PCservicecall.co.uk - just browse through the different models in the Desktop PCs section. This is where I spotted the slow RAM used in the Dixons models - worth a look!

3. Make sure you look at base units as well as PC & monitor packages. Bizarrely, the difference in price between a PC without a monitor and the same PC with a monitor can be much more than the price of a monitor! (What seems to happen is that the price of a base unit drops while the packages stay put.) To compare, just do a search for the model number. An added benefit of this phenomenon is that you can choose your own monitor rather than being stuck with whatever model they've thrown in.

4. My personal "best buys": depending on what spec you're looking for, the Advent T9002 (£479), T9102 (£649) and T9202 (£899) - all without monitors, by the way - have all been reduced at Currys recently and look like pretty good value to me.

I was looking for a high-spec machine and went for the T9401 (£979) during the 10% off weekend... yes, it was still a lot of money but I'll be damned if I could find another PC with a 3.6Ghz processor, 1024Mb RAM, 2 x 250 Gb hard drives etc. for under £1000 anywhere else, let alone under £900!

Oh, and by the way... various companies (e.g. morgancomputers.co.uk, sterlingxs.co.uk) sell refurbished Advent machines very cheaply. Just be aware that they aren't brand new... they could have been in use for a while and returned under warranty. Sounded a bit risky to me, but they still come with a year's guarantee... maybe a bargain for someone!

Hope this helps...

George_Bray

Quote: "My personal "best buys": depending on what spec you're looking for, the Advent T9002 (£479), T9102 (£649) and T9202 (£899) - all without monitors, by the way - have all been reduced at Currys recently and look like pretty good value to me. "

Aldi sell an incredibly high spec PC from time-to-time (worth waiting for) at only £399 INCLUDING VAT, I understand. It has absolutely everything as far as I can tell, and more than enough processing power for even the greatest computer nerd.

Pray, tell me how a true Money Saver could ever justify spending sums like £479, £649 or £899 (perhaps before VAT?)?

Regards
George

Magic_Time

Aldi did indeed have quite a high spec PC by Medion available recently (not sure if it's still available), but it cost £699, not £399! And like the PC's I'm talking about, it came without a monitor.

From what I remember it was pretty comparable to the T9102 mentioned in my post, which is £50 cheaper to start with (at the web exclusive price of £649 - store price £779). If Currys do another 10% off event you could pick this PC up for £585.

All prices quoted include VAT.

How can I justify spending these sums? Because as I explained, I have done a lot of shopping around, including Aldi's PC, and I came to the conclusion that the price/spec balance of these PC's was hard to beat.

If you can beat it, great - but please check your facts on price and specs before scoffing at my suggestions. I'm only trying to help!

By the way, a correction: the T9202 is still £979 at Currys - go to PCWorld to find it for £899.

culpepper

Well a true money saver would build their own which is what we have been doing for a few years.
Some of the ones we have seen in shops have been very limited in upgradability.
We bought my son a tiny computer about 5 years ago and when we wanted to upgrade it ,realised it had only 2 memory slots ,no second hard drive slot and they had soldered a plate over the PCI slots.We did manage to get the plate off .
By the time it was all sorted we could see how simple they are and went for a self build.Will never buy another off the shelf.

ArsenalFC

Well a true money saver would build their own which is what we have been doing for a few years.

Not everyone can build PC. If the OP can build his own pc then he would have no need to buy a pre-built machine. Peeps in this forum always help one another and should not knock other people or suggest that they are not a money saver.

tr3mor

anyone can build a PC, it's just as easy as lego!

Edinburghlass_2

Personally I would try and find a local person who can build to your spec. I have dealt with the same local person for years and as he knows what I will be using the pc for he can build to suit my needs.

Once you find such a person, they are worth their weight in gold. Thanks Mike and Mark :-*

George_Bray

If you can beat it, great - but please check your facts on price and specs before scoffing at my suggestions. I'm only trying to help!

Please accept my sincere apologies. If the Aldi price is £699 rather than £399, my whole argument collapses. You are right and I was wrong. Good luck with your search.

I have previously built my own PCs and perhaps, at price levels around £699, I still would. But I was thinking (incorrectly) that at £399, you couldn't match a deal like Aldi's.

My rationale in the DIY upgrade approach is that many of your existing components can be 'carried forward', e.g. in my case the full tower cabinet, large fast hard drives, DVD writer, floppy drive, 400w power supply, video card, sound card, broadband network card, modem card (seldom used), etc.

To upgrade my Althlon 1200 Mhz to match computers like you have found, I would presumably only need to purchase a new motherboard, processor, heat sink and fan, and new style memory (irritating given I have over 750Mb of perfectly good old style memory, which would then become useless). I could also buy a cheap all-in-one card reader.

The other advantage of computers like you mention is that they have quite a lot of good software loaded, especially Windows XP. If I upgraded from Win98 to XP it would cost me a fortune!

What do you think? Is there still mileage in a DIY upgrade approach like I suggest?

Regards
George

Magic_Time

Thanks for the support AFC, I appreciate it!

I did explore the "build your own" route but personally I found it to be a bit of a red herring. For instance, to build a machine with more or less the same specs as the Advent T9102 with components from advancetec.co.uk - which I don't think is particularly expensive - you'd need:

ADVANCE INTEL LGA775 UPGRADE 7 ......ABIT M/board- P4 3.4 CPU + Fan - Case
£270.00

512MB PC3200 DDR DIMM MEMORY [MAJOR]
£43.00

MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME OEM
£54.50

250GB MAXTOR SERIAL ATA DIAMONDMAX 10 7200RPM 8MB CACHE
£95.49

ARTEC 16x 48x DVD ROM DRIVE BLACK [OEM]
£14.50

LITE-ON 16X SHOW-1633S DVD± R/± RW DUAL LAYER RETAIL BOX
£39.99

SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON X600PRO 256MB DDR PCI-E +DVI +VIVO RETAIL
£89.95

AVERMEDIA AVER TV203 WITH REMOTE
£31.95

A4 TECH WIRELESS KEYBOARD + MOUSE PS/2 [BLACK/SLIVER]
£17.49

Subtotal
£656.87

VAT
£114.96

Total
£771.83

That's £120 more than you'd pay for the T9102 at Currys even without using a discount code! So don't just assume building your own PC will be cheaper.

The point about upgradability is important, but you'll need to think about this if you're choosing a motherboard & case just as much as you will when choosing an off-the-shelf PC.

Of course, building your own might be a good choice if you've got very specific requirements. If you're no good at Lego, though (!), be aware that many websites will assemble a machine for you, based around components you've picked out, for around £25 - £50.
 

mhuk

I can self-build but I also CBA... especially when I can get a Dell P4 2.8 160G etc +17" CRT with vat & delivery for £257

Magic_Time

George - not deliberately ignoring your last post, I hadn't read it when I started typing mine. Apology happily accepted!

I've not explored upgrade options because my current PC is so antiquated I ruled it out straight away. If you've already got a decent hard drive, video card etc. it might well make sense for you - but what looks like a few new components can add up to quite a lot (see last post!), and newer components may be better than your existing ones (e.g. does your DVD writer support dual layer discs)? And you're right about the cost of new software - for me that's exactly the sort of thing that makes some "off-the-shelf" PCs look like quite a good deal!

Good luck!