Aldi laptop - any good?

wazza

http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/2827_10747.htm

does it come with a 3 year warranty?

coffee_prince

The specs are very good, yeh.

I'd research medion as an actual company, to see how their products fair in terms of support and breakdown.

I'm sure its probably manufactured in a factory similar to other companies and just slapped with a brand on it

My brother has a Medino desktop, has had it for 5 years and its still doing well...

Warrenty, I don't know.. not psychic. But a lot of these supermarket laptops are cheap because they don't offer a long term warranty

KingL

FWIW the link at the bottom of the offers page goes here
http://www.medion.com/ms/aldi/md97760/uk

...and the Service tab on that page says.
MEDION offers a 3-year warranty on its notebooks at no additional charge - and exceeds most suppliers by 12 months.

---

edit: although looking at the medion shop website - the nearest currently available equivalent (model P6613) detailed description says 12 months...

.

Strider590

£500 for a notebook? doesn't that seem a bit steep?

Have a look at Dell or something. They do 17" notebooks for around £400 and they'll be a bit sturdier than the Aldi jobbies.

sillygoose

Strider590 wrote: »

£500 for a notebook? doesn't that seem a bit steep?

Have a look at Dell or something. They do 17" notebooks for around £400 and they'll be a bit sturdier than the Aldi jobbies.

Sturdier? thats a bit of a sweeping statement. I have had several Dell notebooks, some excellent, some diabolical!

Without inspecting it I wouldn't dismiss Aldi electronics on preconceptions, often their stuff is brilliant, some not good - I doubt this is made in the same factory as the cheap baked beans!

To the right of the picture is a sign saying 3 years warranty!

You can buy it, and (carefully!) try it - if you don't like it you can take it back within 30 days and get a refund. Built into Aldi policy.
http://www.aldiwarranty.co.uk/download/66880_Leaflet_NoTicks.pdf

Lum

In my experience the build quality of Medion kit tends to be a bit hit and miss.

None of them are as tough as, say, a Thinkpad, or one of Dell's business class laptops (Lattitude), but they shouldn't be much worse than one of Dell's consumer class laptops (Inspiron). However personally I wouldn't touch an Inspiron with a bargepole lest it fall apart on me.

If you're the kind of person who buys a laptop and leaves it on a desk for 90% of it's life then it should be fine.

The spec is rather nice with only the low screen resolution causing me any concerns. Whether this will bother you depends on how many apps you like to have open at once. Only one or two and you'll be fine.

One last concern, the laptop has 4GB of RAM. Nothing wrong with this but they pre-load the 32bit version of Windows Vista, which is incapable of using all that 4GB of RAM (you'll see at best 3.5GB on that machine, probably lower). They do at least include the 64bit version on a CD for you, but in order to get the most out of this machine you'll be needing to reinstall Vista the moment it arrives. Personally that's something I'd do anyway because all manufacturers pre-load the machines with crap that they have been paid to put there (eg. trial versions of Norton) but not everyone likes to do this. In any case the fact that they didn't bother to load the 64bit version just smacks of a lack of attention to detail. Again you might be fine with the 32bit version and may not have ever noticed the missing memory until someone pointed it out. Especially since SP1 for Vista made it start lying about the memory as MS were getting sick of support calls about this very issue.

DCodd

Lum wrote: »

In my experience the build quality of Medion kit tends to be a bit hit and miss.

None of them are as tough as, say, a Thinkpad, or one of Dell's business class laptops (Lattitude), but they shouldn't be much worse than one of Dell's consumer class laptops (Inspiron). However personally I wouldn't touch an Inspiron with a bargepole lest it fall apart on me.

If you're the kind of person who buys a laptop and leaves it on a desk for 90% of it's life then it should be fine.

The spec is rather nice with only the low screen resolution causing me any concerns. Whether this will bother you depends on how many apps you like to have open at once. Only one or two and you'll be fine.

One last concern, the laptop has 4GB of RAM. Nothing wrong with this but they pre-load the 32bit version of Windows Vista, which is incapable of using all that 4GB of RAM (you'll see at best 3.5GB on that machine, probably lower). They do at least include the 64bit version on a CD for you, but in order to get the most out of this machine you'll be needing to reinstall Vista the moment it arrives. Personally that's something I'd do anyway because all manufacturers pre-load the machines with crap that they have been paid to put there (eg. trial versions of Norton) but not everyone likes to do this. In any case the fact that they didn't bother to load the 64bit version just smacks of a lack of attention to detail. Again you might be fine with the 32bit version and may not have ever noticed the missing memory until someone pointed it out. Especially since SP1 for Vista made it start lying about the memory as MS were getting sick of support calls about this very issue.

Good post lum: Medion chassis can bend, but if it will spend most of its time as a desktop replacement then this should be fine. However IMHO this will run warm and so you should make sure that it has good ventilation around it! i.e. laptop stand or the like to allow airflow around the unit.

totalsolutions

Read the reviews in PC mags at WH Smith.