Any opinion on the Aldi / Medion PC Base Station next Thursday

alun4

Aldi are selling a Akoya MD 8830 next week for £399.99

Intel 2 duo processor E4500 2.2 ghz
2mb L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB

2GB Ram

S-ATA 500 GB Hard Drive

Vista Premium
NVIDEA Geforce 8600 GS Graphics with 256mb, 1 x DVI Out, HDMI Out

Two in One TV Tuner
Multi format CF/DVD Burner

Intergrated Wireless LAN 802 11N Draft

Plus software

I need a new PC for home entertainment and love the idea of being able to download from iplayer and transfer onto DVD ?

Is there anything out there better ?

buglawton

Which iplayer? BBC Iplayer? If so the content will be viewable for x days or weeks then be locked. Unless you know some really good hacks in which case you could use an old XP PC with 1GB ram that will perform just as well as the new Akoya and do the same thing.

If your old machinery is really expired then go for it anyway - though IMHO you really need 4GB of memory if you plan to use Vista for lots of media type stuff.

BTW for real future proofing, the new PC should have a Freeview tuner built in not a an old UHF analogue one.

Welliesorter

alun4 wrote: »

I need a new PC for home entertainment and love the idea of being able to download from iplayer and transfer onto DVD ?

You won't be able to do that, at least not without breaking the DRM on the iPlayer programmes first.

The TV tuner on this is DVB (Freeview) so it would be possible to transfer programmes recorded off air onto DVD. Obviously you need a good TV signal for this. I don't know if the included software is capable of this.

The PC does look a good buy but I'm not the best person to judge. Any PC looks a bargain to someone who bought theirs more than a month or two ago.

Edit: I can't see any mention of a keyboard or mouse so you may have to budget for those separately if you don't want to re-use your old ones.

mostly

its not a bad price, not that great either. Although i think you do get a 3yr warranty which shouldn't be sniffed at.
Pretty crap for gaming tho, if thats your bag.

uktyler

mostly wrote:

its not a bad price, not that great either. Although i think you do get a 3yr warranty which shouldn't be sniffed at.

I would look elsewhere, we had Medion products, and the customer service is a joke. The three year waranty is about how long you will be on hold for on the 0870 number when you try to get it repaired!

emmaroids

well it looks ok ish, but as its from aldi you can assume its gonna be cheap and nasty.

totalsolutions

It's a base station, no keyboard/mouse/monitor, just the PC box
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_5061.htm

espresso

totalsolutions wrote: »

It's a base station, no keyboard/mouse/monitor, just the PC box
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_5061.htm

No it's not see the full spec here.

:rolleyes:

totalsolutions

yes saw that too, but it did say base station in the first viewing....

buglawton

Aldi used to have a a good reputation with it's computer products as it operates at a very thin mark up margin. Where did that go?

russ_gillespie

I would stear clear. These cheap manufacturers always boast a good spec, but it's usually because the components are from cheaper, lesser known manufacturers, and more likely to fail within the lifespan of a PC.

Sometimes you'll get a good deal that big supermarkets will sell at a loss, but I doubt this is one of them.

Russ