Aldi laptop Thursday - opinions please

donny-gal

Aldi have a laptop on offer on Thursday
http://www.aldi.co.uk/
http://www.medion.de/md98300/uk/flash.html
for more detaills

Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50
Huge 120 GB hard drive capacity
Massive 1,024 MB DDR2 SDRAM memory
NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 6150 graphics card
15.4" TFT Wide XGA display featuring 1280 x 800 px.
16:10 widescreen format for optimum DVD playback and usability.

It has a firewire connection for downloading my mini-dvd camcorder recording, which I was looking for general used, MS Office, photos, editing our home videos, music.

I would welcome your opinons as to its value for money, or any other I should consider?

Thanks
DG

albertross_2

http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_6400.html

http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_1501.html

PS the office on the aldi deal is a trial, but it comes with works

Icon_3

There have been a couple of posts about this and opinions are split.....
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=444280&highlight=ALDI

Three three year warrenty looks good but if you include it on the Dell it only comes to about £20 more.

donny-gal

Exactly my problem, I have had a Dell laptop at work for 4 years worked hard with no problems, used mainly with a docking station, but at home I have had Medion desktops, again with no problems and support when (rarely) needed. The Office is no problems as I have 2003 and happy with that version, will need it minimally in retirement I think! The Photo/Sound software looks quite good and I think it will get some music use.

What about the AMD/INTEL question, though I had read that the AMD ran cooler?

allanmc

I work for a large IT company and I fix PCs and laptops for a living. From my almost 20 years experience, you are getting a lot of PC, with 3 year support, with the Aldi Medion. From reading the specs, it should do what most people will require it to do without any problems. Forget about the AMD/Intel question as, for most users, a processor, is a processor. As for the Dell, well I suppose it's OK, but I am not sure I would particularly recommend a Dell over any other brand. To be fair, Dell have done well in recent Which? magazine surveys for reliability and customer recommendation. Tesco are currently selling Gateway laptops which look much prettier and seem very reasonably priced. http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-4601.aspx £600 for a very well spec'd machine, that shouldn't have performance issues for years. Spend a wee bit more now and get a machine that should, all being well, perform well substantially longer than a £400 laptop. Be warned that these Gateway PCs only have 12 months warranty. Medion’s included 3 year support is desirable as laptops can be very expensive to repair due to them having many bespoke parts only available from the manufacturer.

Rules of thumb for a purchasing a decent laptop (or PC for that matter) for a normal punter looking for a reasonably future proofed PC to use computing tasks with Microsoft Windows (in order of desirability):
1. Get as much memory (RAM) as you can afford.
At least 1Gb for Vista and 512Mb for XP, but I would really double that if you can.
2. If you are looking at a PC with my minimum RAM recommendations make sure that there is a spare slot to upgrade the memory later. If there is not a spare slot you will have to remove the memory that it came with to allow you to upgrade. This precaution will halve the cost of any future upgrade when your PC starts to struggle through lack of memory, as it surely will.
3. Get as big a hard disk as you can manage. Start at 80Gb, but the bigger it is, the less chance there is of running out of disk space. After you have put all of your photos and MP3 collection on your disk, this will really help with your PC's performance as windows requires a bit of elbow room on your hard disk to do it's business.
4. Try to get a machine that does not have shared, or integrated, graphics. This is not vital but be aware that shared graphics steals RAM to do it's business. This has an impact on what is available to Windows and your other applications. If your object of desire has shared graphics get at least 2Gb of RAM for Vista and 1Gb for XP.
5. Get as new, and as fast, a processor as you can. This is my last rule as a fast processor is wasted if you haven't got a decent amount of memory, and a reasonably big hard disk, for Windows to rattle about in.

These 5 rules will ensure that you PC will be able to perform at a pretty good level for a reasonable length of time. It is difficult to specify exactly how long, but most of the issues that have killed poorly spec’d PCs over the years have been addressed. If you are a serious gamer or want to edit video you would need all of these things and add a serious graphics card.

I think the Aldi Medion laptop ticks most of the above, but you will need to double check for yourself. From the Medion website, I think it has a spare memory slot and it would be worth upgrading to 2Gb of RAM to compensate for the shared/integrated graphics.

Other things to consider:
Wireless enabled? The current wireless standard is 802.11g. The next standard will be 802.11n but it has not been fully ratified yet. Laptops labelled with preN or Mimo may work OK with 802.11n, eventually, but should work OK with the current 802.11g and earlier 802.11b and 802.11a standards. In a normal size house, of normal construction, 802.11g should be OK. If signal range would be a problem, you should maybe look at a PC with one of the newer standards. Please note that you would need a new wireless router that matches, exactly, the wireless specification of your laptop to derive any benefit beyond 802.11g. If your router is an 802.11g device, then your new laptop with it’s fancy new wireless will connect as an 802.11g device.

Bluetooth enabled? Do you need to speak to Bluetooth mobile phones, printers etc?

DVD drive or DVDRW drive? Do you want to create CDs and DVDs? If you do you will need the DVDRW drive.

USB ports? Get a PC with at least a couple.

LAN/ethernet port? Do you ned to connect to a wired network/router?

Modem? Do you need to dial up over a normal phone line?

Battery life?
Screen size?
Weight?

robowen

Thanks for that info, allanmc :beer:
Its what I've thought all along...get as big a HD as you can, as fast a processor as you can and as much memory as you can.

Ive been looking at getting a new laptop before I go to australia...they're not as cheap as everyone thinks over there.
Trouble is, I'm stuffed if something goes wrong with it, unless they have the same parts to repair it with.
You hear stories of people saying they took other electricals, or cars and cant get parts for it.
Rob