Which PC to buy?

bat999

Donnie wrote: »

Acer M1610 £250 Cheap and cheerful. Will easily cover their needs and leave you with £150 to spend on extras.

This item is
REFURBISHED! 12 MONTH GUARANTEE

hethmar

debrick, save getting confused and running all over the place, this is a nice computer - lovely actually -for £349 Im sure its all your parents will need as they are unlikely to be gamers or downloading a lot of itunes Do check if you can get even further discounts though. Have a google for Dell discount codes and also see what quidco.com gives on cashback for Dell purchases. When you order make sure you get things like the speakers and keyboard with the puter. (I say that because I forgot to order speakers when I bought mine two years back from Dell. I rang them up and THEY apologised to me for the salesperson not pointing out the omission when I ordered - they sent me the speakers for zilcho)

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Desktops/desktop-inspiron-545/pd.aspx?refid=desktop-inspiron-545&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1

Donnie

bat999, are you just wasting bandwidth with your postings? Interestingly enough, the font that you posted is exactly the same size as it is on the website, so difficult to miss.
It's an Argos Return, has a 12 month warranty and costs £250; leaving one with up to £150 for an all in one printer, speakers...

The OP can choose the way the way to go. We just post the options.

Donnie

This one is much better, at £273.

You can even get a system with a BluRay drive for £324

yorksrabbit

Be wary of Dell "discounts": Dell probably spends more time trying to finangle smoke-and-mirrors deals than it does actually building computers.

Currently Dell has a "special discount" offer of £107 off its XPS 430 desktop, with the "standard" delivery charge of £20 waived.

If you spec it up to include a sound card, the "specially discounted" price today -- £107 off, plus £20 off the, er, £20 delivery -- is £668.98p.

If you forget about "special discounts" and special codes and coupons and simply go to the main website, the Dell 430 XPS as per above is. . .

£669 including delivery.

Thus: the latest Dell "special offer" equals. . . 2p.

Dell Outlet used to be good -- once upon a time -- but no longer.

Despite the daft fol-de-rol the site makes about having to use captchas in order to buy your "amazing" Outlet bargain, fact is Dell flogs out its (allegedly) refurbished units to the trade for re-sale on places like eBay.

So no, and contrary to its website protestations, it has no qualms at all if you're a trader and want a minimum of 10 units -- fair enough, but why the pretence about protecting 'individual customers'?

As to buying 'em on eBay, there is the trader's mark-up to consider but along with that is the benefit of lengthy onsite warranties -- which Dell chuck into trader deals but certainly don't throw to its much-prized individual customer.

Were I buying a new PC for older generation users, I'd just pop along to my local Tesco and get the cheapest there. If it doesn't work, Tesco will instantly exchange it because they're too busy flogging chicken & rice to worry about tecchie stuff.

As for eBay: tread with care (the usual caveat.) And as at least one eBay trader is re-selling US, not UK, Dell computers, with return-to-base warranties that will cost a small fortune in international Fedex charges, then make sure first that the "Dell refurbished" you might be buying is Dell UK, not Dell USA, refurbished.

Re Tesco: a mere £279 gets something called a Medion Akoya complete with what I think is 32-bit Windows Vista and 4GB of RAM which only a 64-bit operating system can exploit to the full but hey, the older generation is unlikely to be playing Crysis flat out. It runs a basic dual core Intel processor (and thus makes a complete nonsense of Tesco's gibberish about it being a "power computer") but then the OP's parents are probably not into multi-tasking and so definitely don't need a faster Core 2 Duo or, worse, the Quad four.

As a desktop PC, in that particular configuration, the Medion has obviously been put together to a brief devised by Tesco's sales department, because no computer engineer would contemplate it.

But does that mean it's crap? No. It isn't. Though the 4GB RAM is total over-kill, better that than under resourcing on memory.

I'd buy it tomorrow, but also pay the cheapo £30 extended warranty price Tesco is charging because at around £300 all-in for three years of decent home computing for people who aren't bothered about frames-per-second gaming and graphics accelerators and all the rest of the hoopla , it's a sensible value-for-money buy.

Oneday77

I am glad to see the 'older generation' has less requirements of their PC than mere young to middle aged humans.
Medion really do build their machines to a very low specification and quality. You would want a new keyboard and mouse straight out the box.
The posted Ebay sales are actually directly from Argos so you know exactly who it is. They can't list returned internet purchases in their latest catalogue that's all.
OP - Stick with a brand you know and from somewhere you have experience of shopping from or know people who do. The only must is avoid out PC World.

Donnie

yorksrabbit wrote: »

Be wary of Dell "discounts": Dell probably spends more time trying to finangle smoke-and-mirrors deals than it does actually building computers....

Good post, though you didn't mention that the Tesco machine doesn't come with a monitor. That would add another £100 or so.

choppy007

I agree Dell systems suck, they are such bad builds, always have lots of problems with them and customer services is annoying!


and this is coming from someone who works in IT!

I try stay with HP of desktops and Toshiba on laptops, i know they slighty more expensive but i think it is worth the extra cash!

well thats my opinion