Fujitsu Minitower PC Base / XP Home / 512 MB - £200 inc VAT

RockSteady_3

biglugs wrote:

If you're going to say that about graphics cards then you certainly shouldn't be pushing any PC offers. Almost every bit of kit, including the PC itself, will be next to worthless within 3 years, and pretty much less than half the price in about 2 years. All you can do is try to guess what you are going to do in the next 2-3 years and buy the cheapest machine for that.

Hmm, methinks you hit the nail on the head AND may have missed my point at the same time. Let me try to clarify.

If playing high performance games is paramount, buy a state of the art leading edge or bleeding edge PC with all the gadgets. These depreciate the fastest at first then level off and fall into line with the rest.

If playing the odd game and surfing / running office apps is your bag then just about every PC built in the last 5 years or more will do it at varying levels of efficiency. In this class you go for the best value. Best value (that meets requirements) = spec / price.

I don't need to spend half or even a third of the cost of my PC on a graphics card I don't think I will use.

And my point about graphics cards is this :

A premium card is just a premium card until it gets superceded. Therefore it loses money faster then a middle of the road job. The more leading edge, the faster the drop. Same goes for PCs.

Therefore, a decent PC at a good value price loses less in the short and long term as it cost proportionally less in the first place.

My dad uses a W95 Pentium 120. He refuses to change it as it does everything he needs. He can't justify the cost of upgrading or replacing.

Personally, I like to keep 'just' up to date, not in front. My frame rates may not be so good and I get less lighting effects than spending £100 more, but hey, I occasionally play for the suspense or thrill, and would enjoy it anyway. I find my imagination is sufficient to fill in the detail that Mip-mipped z-buffered, interpolated 24 pipeline GPUs with double overhead cams miss out.

Me buying a top range card would be like getting a 4.2 litre petrol engine to drive across London at 12MPH. Maybe if money was no object! A 2 litre tdi is more than enough.

mistry_2

TheoP wrote:

That raises a good question; is it better value to buy the machine above, which is a second user refurb with 6 months warranty @ £249, or the new one of higher spec CPU/HDD (but lower graphics) & 12 months warranty £25 less? Surely the brand new celeron is a better deal?

Is it a higher spec HDD? Although it has a greater strorage it will undoubtably be only 5400 spin, which means it's slower, if performance is an issue then I'd go for a smaller faster HDD. Also the processor is a Celeron Prescott, which I believe are better then the standard Celeron as it support Hyper Threading ( means your processor can do more at once, I'm sure someone can confirm). And you also get a TV tuner as well as a on-site warranty, not one where you have to send it back.

The PC's i've brought have always come with lots of software not just Windows, I'm guessing they don't advertise that in case any of the disks are missing.

It's worth a look to compare if nothing else.

RockSteady_3

mistry wrote:

Is it a higher spec HDD? Although it has a greater strorage it will undoubtably be only 5400 spin, which means it's slower, if performance is an issue then I'd go for a smaller faster HDD. Also the processor is a Celeron Prescott, which I believe are better then the standard Celeron as it support Hyper Threading ( means your processor can do more at once, I'm sure someone can confirm). And you also get a TV tuner as well as a on-site warranty, not one where you have to send it back.

The PC's i've brought have always come with lots of software not just Windows, I'm guessing they don't advertise that in case any of the disks are missing.

It's worth a look to compare if nothing else.

Mistry, you seem to be mistaken and you haven't read all this thread. Where are you getting this spurious information from? This thread is about brand new PCs in Fujitsu sealed boxes? Not refurb, not second user, not opened, not anything except new. No missing disks? Some of the units being compared are graded refurbs, but not the units I am refering to.

The Celeron D346 in these is a prescott, at 3.06G.

Intel Celerons do not support Hyperthreading. But the D346 does support EM64T 64bit extensions, if in the correct motherboard.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=163828

The 200GB HDD in these is a 7200RPM, I called to check. Can you still get 5400RPM 200GB drives now?

The warranty is one year onsite with Fujitsu so it double length, no sending back, where did that come from?

Also, a 6200SE with TV out IS NOT a TVtuner! It is a TV out connector. Most PCs have it now, not that it is of much use.

So, I think that is about game, set, and match.

Anyway, now I have got the side off, it has 4 SATA connectors, a floppy connector, an internal Firewire header as well as an external, a digital sound output SPDIF and it has 6 USB ports! Not bad. All the disks are there, fully sealed!

mistry_2

Chill out dude.

I was only throwing something into thread to give people ideas of what else is out there.

OK, I was wrong about Hyper Threading, and the TV tuner. but this is a discussion board!! Game set and match, !!!!!! - Grow up

Tallyho_2

buglawton wrote:

Now this is real moneysaving talk! BTW do you play any heavy duty games on your Scaleo P - how does it measure up?

I don't do games at all so I can't comment but to me the specs are top notch so maybe it is a good machine .

RockSteady_3

mistry wrote:

Chill out dude.

I was only throwing something into thread to give people ideas of what else is out there.

OK, I was wrong about Hyper Threading, and the TV tuner. but this is a discussion board!! Game set and match, !!!!!! - Grow up

Oh don't take it so personally, this wasn't about you. The somewhat topical tennis reference was aimed at the comparison of the two systems, not about your opinion versus mine.

Don't you like tennis?

RockSteady_3

Maybe not the correct forum for this but is it related to these PCs and cost.

This PC has a Super Multi Drive that writes Dual Layer. Does anyone know what the best media to use for price and compatibility with other devices is, + or -, and dual layer or not?

Do TV DVD players read these?

buglawton

I am also curious as I have not had a DVD-RW until this Fujitsu - maybe have to go over to the techie forum.