e machine with dual core pentium £269

kevinyork

bongo wrote:

If you can only afford £270 for a computer then fine this is for you but if you can strech to £350-400 then you can find machines twice as good as this and you will not regret having missed out on this so-called bargain. You get what you pay for....

Not helpful. This is a post about a specific PC that is a very good price for the specifications that it has. Sure someone will have a requirement from a PC that this doesnt meet so will look elsewhere but for 80% of PC buyers this is an excellent all round spec. You cannot however compare it to one that would cost £100-£150 more. Of course you can get a better machine if you spend quite a lot more but for someone with under £100 to spend this is about the best deal around.

Stageshoot

I'd like to know if it has a DVi output

No it does not as it has on board graphics, but I have the VGA output feeding a 40in LCD TV at full 1366 resolution and its working really well

My TV has 2 HDMI inputs so so I was looking at buying a PCIs Video board with DVI or HDMI but to be honest the VGA at full 1366 is working so well I most probably will not bother


hope that helps

And as for the OS Question,

It comes with XP Media Centre Edition, not XP Home..

Midnight_Tboy

cheers again Vicky.

normally a VGA would be fine, but my 50" sony bravia has its VGA port taken up by my 360 (and my xbox1 is using the compenent port up for 720p in XBMC).

so ideally a DVi option would be best for me, seeing as a can then plug it into the HDMi on the tv without having to swap wires all the time (unless I buy a KVM switch of course)

I'm still toying with 3 possibilities tho....

a) that pc that you have for 270. Its not available locally however which brings the price up to near enough 290 give or take.

or theres this machine b) http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=353930&tab=specification

Its available locally, so the cost difference is approx £60. However it does have DVi, a faster AMD Athlon 64 x2 processer, and 250gb of SATA HD. Oh and also firewire. So that extra balances itself out. I've yet to manage to find out however if it has a DVB-T tuner or if its analogue.

my 3rd option, C).... I have a very old case from an athlon 1400 machine, which I presume will hopefully support uATX. Buying a fairly decent mobo (so can make sure plenty sata ports etc and not a custom made restricted one (with a fairly ok built in gfx card as I'm not a pc gamer just a vid freak), good quality 600w PSU, digital tv tuner, 250gb sata HD, 1gb ram stick (as opposed to the stores 2x512 combos leaving room free), and either the AMD Athlon 64 x2 or the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 chip.

Those parts to go inside my existing (albeit old) case, the cost comes to 320 delivered. Not much of a saving as such, tho at least it is definately a freeview tuner, and I know the case doesnt have any custom parts which could be a pain in the future, and a better PSU hopefully offering more reliabilty longterm.

The rest of the parts, dvdwriter etc I'd be stripping from this pc before I sell it on.

Of course seeing as I'm trying to budget after the xmas bills, I can always omit the TV Tuner and new HD (reason being is this pc has an intermittent problem - trying to work out if its the PSU, mobo or the HD thats failling (hd makes clunking noises before locking up - but could be the result of underlying problems), then potentially add them later. Knocks that price down another 80quid to £240

gazbert_2

brad wrote:

It is nice to see Gazbet above has illustrated what a good deal this is. I am not sure if he has included the cost of Vista Home Premium which must be worth a few quid.

I actually included XP MCE 2005 edition which is slightly cheaper but includes a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium.

abomb1969

I ordered one last night, and added an ipod with free delivery which gave me free delivery for the PC. I will return the ipod, and save £17.99.

Mind you I got an email saying I had an item out of stock, probably the PC. The Aldi spec is looking better by the hour to me, 800mb fsb, 2meg cache, sata.

bluetillidie

hi i have seen something alot better than this,

staples online are offering a dual core pc by hewlett packard with dvd/rw and a geforce graphics card mines is about to be ordered.

extonjoe

bluetillidie wrote:

hi i have seen something alot better than this,

staples online are offering a dual core pc by hewlett packard with dvd/rw and a geforce graphics card mines is about to be ordered.

HAVE U GOT A LINK PLEASE:D

fishing-girl

http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?CatIds=1319%2C1868,1346&webid=VF385802&affixedcode=WW

cvsmjd

The Staples machine is £112 more expensive than the Comet machine - and has no TV card or Windows remote -

With the £112 you would be able to buy a graphs card !

ms2005

Midnight_Tboy wrote:

cheers again Vicky.

normally a VGA would be fine, but my 50" sony bravia has its VGA port taken up by my 360 (and my xbox1 is using the compenent port up for 720p in XBMC).

so ideally a DVi option would be best for me, seeing as a can then plug it into the HDMi on the tv without having to swap wires all the time (unless I buy a KVM switch of course)

why don't you just buy a VGA-DVI adapter then. Less than a fiver on the bay or even maplins etc