Phillips Media Centre PC's for peanuts!

gazbert_2

Awwwwww.......Must reeessssiiiiisssstttttttt.......................

Broke_Bloke_2

Other Half bought a full-price one yesterday from PC World :-(

The DVD Writer appears to be a bit temperamental- seems to only like DVD+ and not + or - as the box says.

The paperwork sucks- unless you want to spend ages figuring out the nice pictures and why you have paperwork for other machines.

Having said that, if it works ok, and no reason to doubt it, a good machine- all I've heard from TOH is 'wow'!

asot

Definately good prices for these machines compared to what they usually retail at. I would warn people to be a bit cautious in buying these machines though as they have received quite a few bad reports. When I was unfortunate enough to work at PC World part time they were the desktops with the highest level of returns.

djblamire

Anyone know which version of Media Centre is included - as it may be the old one (It doesn't say).

Daniel

golddustmedia

MORPH3US wrote:

That £399 Philips looks ace to me, is it any good? I wanna be able to play decent new games!

M

I bought the £299 one from PC world about 2 weeks ago and wrote it all up on the "quick grab it while you can" section.
It's an excellent PC.

ALSO, I showed on the thread £15 for quidco, £15 NHS discount making it £270.
Then the video memory turned out to be 128MB not the 256MB on the website so complained and got another £40 back in vouchers. TOTAL COST £230 !!!!

It's a totally excellent PC with brand name parts and a 12 month warranty.

tempuscat

Coming belatedly to this could I mention eBay (no-oo-oo!, I hear you say) where media centre PCs are concerned?

We hunted around for a decent media centre PC for our son's birthday last year but retailer prices were beyond our pocket. But then we discovered that Hewlett Packard had (and presumably still has) its own 'store' on eBay UK.

Normally, we wouldn't buy any high-price tecchie stuff on eBay, it seems too much of a risk, but dealing directly with the manufacturer was a different matter. Hewlett Packard was at that time auctioning (not 'Buy It Now') a dozen media centre systems from 99p, all of which it claimed were 'factory refurbished' and did not include, for example, software suites and a second, plug-in 160Gb drive. No matter. We bid to half the value of the identical unit on sale at that time in our local Dixon's, and won. The price was £370 plus £30 P&P.

When the unit arrived (within 48 hours) it showed no sign at all of ever having been used or being 'refurbished'. Everything was absolutely mint. The box was full of unopened, brand new software. And the 'unavailable' plug-in second drive was, indeed, there. The unit came with a 12-month RTB warranty.

Our son has been delighted with the system and it's worked flawlessly since first switching on. The only downside to this is that we did feel a bit guilty: by buying direct at an auction price from HP, we didn't buy from our local Dixon's. Two months later, that Dixon's branch closed down and 14 people were thrown out of work.

So yes, there's definitely a 'cost' to Internet buying after all - even if you're not the one who pays it (though in this case, Hewlett Packard must've known it was undercutting its own retailers by trading on eBay?????)

poopscoop

timmo44 wrote:

Also, be warned when entering PC system deals on here. You will nearly always get a handful of replies from IT techies usually stating something like:

'I built a better one than that myself using only my left hand in the dark while juggling chainsaws and it only cost threepence ha'penny WITH a 32" 0.0008 nanosecond response time flat screen, 4 terragigabyte RAM and a built-in time travel drive.' Bless 'em.

Thanks :-)

That is so true. Like they're so superior :rotfl:

ScreechXL

Ordered the £299 version on Sunday (obviously used a load of discount vouchers) arrived Tuesday. Excellent!

Unit came with new version of Windows Media centre 2005 and remote.

Also came with the wireless keyboard and mouse (it wasn't supposed to).

I haven't plugged it all in yet but am impressed with all the features especially the composite A/V connections (red white yellow) behind a hidden panel on the front along with firewire, USB 2.0, microphone and earphone connections and another panel with a 7in1 media card reader.

Although the graphics card isn't powerful, it is passively cooled and therefore silent, and has VGA, DVI and s-video outputs.

So far I am very impressed with the spec and how it looks. Let hope the performance and reliability match up!

debs626

ScreechXL wrote:

Ordered the £299 version on Sunday (obviously used a load of discount vouchers) arrived Tuesday. Excellent!

Unit came with new version of Windows Media centre 2005 and remote.

Also came with the wireless keyboard and mouse (it wasn't supposed to).

I haven't plugged it all in yet but am impressed with all the features especially the composite A/V connections (red white yellow) behind a hidden panel on the front along with firewire, USB 2.0, microphone and earphone connections and another panel with a 7in1 media card reader.

Although the graphics card isn't powerful, it is passively cooled and therefore silent, and has VGA, DVI and s-video outputs.

So far I am very impressed with the spec and how it looks. Let hope the performance and reliability match up!

Where did you buy yours from? Dixons, Currys or PC World? Just curious as the wireless keyboard and mouse may swing it for me!

Oh and could you PM me the codes you used ........... would greatly appreciate it, well my credit card would! Thanks in advance.

greyster

daleuk wrote:

OR isnt this better value? then spend the extra on upgrades?

http://www.ebuyer.com:80/UK/product/102939/rb/20432483096

Definitely not ... after all the discounts. Thats a celeron process for starters and only half the ram.

Nothing wrong with it but in comparison to the above PC, its not in same league.