Knock down laptop

wolvesinwales

They are also doing a Medion without the DVD Writer with similar spec as far as i can recall for £279 in store. Spotted in Canton, Cardiff yesterday.

nej

Lord_Chris wrote:

WHY DO PEOPLE NEVER LEARN?


YOU WOULDNT BUY BREAD OR MILK FROM PC WORLD, SO DONT BUY COMPUTERS FROM TESCOS OR WOOLWORTHS.

remember, with laptops, you get what you pay for.
when i worked in a pc repair shop we had dozens of tesco computers (desk and laptops) in which were often only a few weeks old.

BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

EDIT: ohh, and the specs are not at all good... an unbranded processor, 256mb ram? and only 40gb hard drive? for £300 i would expect it to be coated in gold.

Yes but I wouldn't buy a computer from PC-World either. I think if it went wrong you'd have a better chance of a refund from Tesco's. Pc-World are notoriously bad for that kind of thing.

And 40gb is plenty - depends what you want it for. For storing movies or vast amounts of MP3's it's no good. For word-processing, email, internet it's fine.

My work laptop has 40GB and I use it for all sorts of stuff, including software development and database stuff.

Lord_Chris

okay, in terms of hard drive, yes 40gb is fine, but ONLY for work processing and internet use. anything other than and your in trouble.

PC world was just an example, and in fact Tescos are notoriously WORSE when things go wrong.

because Tescos are not the manufacturer, and are therefore not the one with which you have a warantee, if something goes wrong with your computer they send it off, and you won't see it for a month, maybe longer... which, as everyone knows, would be extremely irritating with your NEW computer.

griff.

Well, I have a phobia of any pc with less than 512mb ram.

But that aside, I'm interested by the VIA C7-M Processor. One googled site says that it has good battery life and exceeds the performace per watt of the Pentium M...(mind you that was dated May 2005) so maybe good if you are looking to use the laptop a lot on battery and not connected to mains... but couldn't find many reviews about the processor other than that.

rdwarr

griff. wrote:

Well, I have a phobia of any pc with less than 512mb ram.

I wonder if there's a name for that
Seriously, my first PC had 128k RAM and worked fine!
These days 256MB should be OK for most home users but 512MB may be needed for developers/gamers etc. The main problem is all the XP parches which mean you can be using up 200MB befor you do anything.
Then of course we have Linux. The latest Kubuntu disc is free and contains everything a normal user will need (Internet, Office, Media etc.). It will work happily in most laptops without needing to edit settings manually.

Optimist

Lord_Chris wrote:

WHY DO PEOPLE NEVER LEARN?


YOU WOULDNT BUY BREAD OR MILK FROM PC WORLD, SO DONT BUY COMPUTERS FROM TESCOS OR WOOLWORTHS.

remember, with laptops, you get what you pay for.
when i worked in a pc repair shop we had dozens of tesco computers (desk and laptops) in which were often only a few weeks old.

BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

EDIT: ohh, and the specs are not at all good... an unbranded processor, 256mb ram? and only 40gb hard drive? for £300 i would expect it to be coated in gold.

Given that Tesco give a two year on site warranty on their PCs the customers who brought their PCs into your shop after a couple of weeks seem a little dense! Having just used this warranty with an 18 month old Tesco machine (PSU went) I can say it works.

rdwarr

I buy all my laptops from Comet. This is part of the same group as Woolworths so would have no qualms about buying machines from there if they had one I wanted.

sarabob

Lord_Chris wrote:

okay, in terms of hard drive, yes 40gb is fine, but ONLY for work processing and internet use. anything other than and your in trouble.

I'm sorry, but that statement is a load of tosh.

Video work, I'll give you, but for just about anything else 40gb is plenty until you start hoarding everything. For music, it's got as much space as a 30gb ipod left. For photos, you can get thousands of photos on there.

As for professional use, you'd easily fit a database, web server, compiler, development environment and a few VMs (virtual machines) on there. I just deployed a full dev environment in a VM in less than 4gb.

OK, so I wouldn't touch VIA processors with a bargepole (except the mini-ITX ones and then only because they're fanless) and I'd personally get the tesco one (for the warranty) or a dell one, but dismissing a laptop because it has less than 250gb of disk space is a little on the harsh side.

Edit: Oh, and games. But then *nobody* looking to play games should look twice at a cheap laptop.

carl_east

I second what has been said so far. The offers that Woolies have on are very misleading to the public. No wonder they're not as big as they used to be. You can get much better deals than this. Namely the Tesco and Dell deals. Always remember to use Quidco if buying a Dell.

Lastly, I'd recommend the Dell outlet website if you know a bit about computers. They have some great offers everyday. Although I'd say 80% of the deals aren't very good so you have to be early. They put them on any time between 12am and 12pm. But it's usually between 9am and 11am.

davilown

pks00 wrote:

That looks good. I dont know how well Medion are in terms of h/w. But for that price and spec, it doesnt look a bad deal
Hard disk is a bit small and slow also. No bluetooth or wireless but dont expect everything at such a low price like this.
Not bad for a 2nd laptop, I reckon its most ideal for teenagers doing their homework or going away to uni, or the person who uses computers occasionally.

For the same price you can get a better spec machine with wifi from dell. Not everyones cup of tea but for the majority of users who only use word processing, email and the internet, it's ideal

:beer: monster