New Aldi PC

Zanzibar

Should be fine for every day but you can tell it's a mega cheap motherboard the fact it has to PS/2 ports on it.

That doesn't mean anything - good gravy - all HP and Dell business PCs still come with PS/2 ports (and parallel and serial ports) and you can hot swap them on most (how often would you need to anyway). PS/2 is useful when you need a spare and you only have older bits floating about.

It's not for gaming and will perform poorly in that area.

This is better than anything at this price. You usually only get an integrated solution at the level.

But you dont get the 1Kg of solid gold with this one I will admit...

MVC

Cardew,

The system may have firewire (IEEE1394) that has not been listed in the advert. The photo of the front panel shows a blanked off space for one.......which kind of suggests it ain't fitted to this model.

The good news is that Firewire cards are easy to fit and should not void your warranty (but do check with Medion).

Windows doesn't need driver disks or anything special - just plug and play.

Expect to pay under 35.00 for a good one.

Ti (Texas Instruments) Firewire or IEEE1394 based cards are the best. ADS PYRO cards have these chipsets but they do cost more.

The cheap cards (tenner 'ish) have VIA chipsets which may work but can cause problems.

I'd rather buy a 2nd hand Ti based card like a Pyro than a new Via based card. I have solved a lot of capture/editing/export issues by swapping out Via cards for Ti versions!

HTH

Inactive

I bet they have all gone by midday.;)

John_Gray

Inactive wrote: »

I bet they have all gone by midday.;)

There will be queues well before the store opens. They tend to have very small numbers - six in my store for the last PC on offer (September).

See the posts on the Medion forums...

RobTang

patman99 wrote: »

Seriously though, it may be possable to fit an I5 or I7 cpu to the motherboard as and when you need too.

I5s and I7s run different motherboards to the Q8300 in this machine, in fact I5s and I7s (generally) don't have the same type of motherboards either.

ddoris

As usual ,with dell etc.also, the motherboard is classified !

JasX

glosman555 wrote: »

I notice it has 6 empty card slots on the back, would the M/B have room for another 6 cards.

Don't count on it, a large number of slots is standard for cases (probably linked to ATX standards) but generally the max number of case slot is not supported by the motherboard.... and thats before you start asking weather the spare slots are PCI, AGP, PCIe x1? x4? x8? x16?

still looks a very reasonable buy for the typical home user

Cardew

Zanzibar wrote: »

It even has hot swap disk bays.

Sounds irresistible!

Err what do they do?

If I get an external HDD I can download documents etc to it from my old PC and and presumably transfer these fairly easily to the new PC?

However what about programs for printer, Internet Browser etc? Or is it better to find all the old disks and install?

turbobob

Yes transfer of files is easier with a external HDD. Run "Windows Easy Transfer" from within Windows 7 on the new PC and should be self explanatory.

With luck Windows 7 will support your printer out of the box. If not then download a suitable driver from the manufacturer. I prefer the built in ones as they don't come with all the rubbish that often accompanies manufacturers drivers. It comes with IE8 but use whatever browser you prefer.

busenbust

Three year warranty is the icing on the cake - if they live up to it