This Thursday in Aldi..8820 Multimedia PC Base Station

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lamb

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Anybody got any opinions on this machine..looks a pretty good spec for the money..



Windows® Vista™ Home Premium Operating System
Windows® Vista™ Home Premium delivers enhanced productivity and entertainment at home and on the go, making it easy to enjoy digital photos, music, TV, games and movies, while providing a whole new level of security and reliability (including improved, customisable parental controls) on your desktop and notebook.
Productivity – Windows® Vista™ makes it faster and easier to get started, find and manage information on your PC, and get more done.
Communication – Windows® Vista™ includes new communication tools like Windows® Mail® and Windows Internet Explorer® that help you stay connected to the people and information you care about, wherever you are.
Photos – quickly find and share your photos using great tagging and search tools in Windows® Vista™. Produce great prints and videos using built-in editing tools and keep your memories safer with easier back-up options.
TV & Movies – enjoy your favourite digital entertainment, including live or recorded TV and movies, with the immersive Windows® Media® Center experience in Windows® Vista™ Home Premium.
Gaming – gaming packs more punch for every level of player with Windows® Vista™. Rich parental controls and jaw-dropping 3D graphics makes it easier to install, find and play your favourite games.
Music – Windows® Vista™ delivers your music your way. With Windows® Vista™ Media Player 11, choose the way you sort your collection, view album art thumbnails, and sync to your choice of portable devices or online music services.
Intel® Pentium® D 915 Dual Core Processor 2.8GHz, 2 × 2MB L2 Cache with 800MHz FSB
What is Dual Core? Two processor cores work within the same processor to increase the performance of your PC. Dual core technology means that several demanding applications can be run at the same time, allowing your computer to think as fast as you can multi-task.
Huge working memory – 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM with 533MHz 64 bit.
Massive hard disk drive capacity – 250GB SATA hard drive 8MB cache, super-fast 7,200rpm. Store over 75,000 digital photos (3MB per photo) or over 55,000 MP3 songs (4MB per title) or up to 150 hours of TV recording (depending on quality).
NVidia® GeForce™ 7300 SE graphics card – 128MB memory with DVI-I, D-Sub VGA and TV-out. Supports up to 384MB graphics memory thanks to NVidia® TurboCache™ technology.
Multi format CD/DVD Burner – Supports all the usual CD/DVD standards, including dual layer DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RAM.
8 channel High Definition audio – Enjoy amazing digital Home Cinema surround sound. Use in conjunction with a suitable speaker set. Fast Ethernet on board 10/100 MBit/s (DSL ready).
A world of television – TV Tuner for analogue/digital TV (DVB -T)*.
 
Also, from looking in the booklet at the weekend, I don't think that a monitor is included in the price
They have 17" monitor for ~ €169 on the same day
 
Yeah, but what about the processor? Minimum 800MHz, the Aldi base station only seems to have 533MHz.
 
According to that table on the BBC website, half gig is the minimum, I was going by that -eta: sorry, I see what you mean now, I read your post wrong

CCOVICH said:
Yeah, but what about the processor? Minimum 800MHz, the Aldi base station only seems to have 533MHz.
Click to expand...

that is the memory speed
the processor speed is :
Intel® Pentium® D 915 Dual Core Processor 2.8GHz, 2 × 2MB L2 Cache with 800MHz FSB

 
I see-I wasn't aware that there was memory and processor speed.

Ok, so it looks like it would be pretty good-I suppose it would be better if they just included the Basic Vista and not the Premium version.

Thanks for your help.
 
CCOVICH said:
I see-I wasn't aware that there was memory and processor speed.

Ok, so it looks like it would be pretty good-I suppose it would be better if they just included the Basic Vista and not the Premium version.

Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

The Basic version really is very basic. It doesn't include the new Aero user interface. You're better off with Home Premium. Microsoft seem to only offer Home Basic in order to have a lower entry point.

You will need 2Gb of memory to run Vista smoothly.

Note that there are no speakers with this system.

To be honest, while it does look like a good spec, when you add in a monitor and speakers and upgrade the memory, you are up at a grand. You can get a very good Dell for a grand. I'd probably upgrade the processor as well if you want a Home Media system - check out the an Intel Viiv processor which is supposedly better for PC/entertainment convergence.
 
Monitor is not really an issue as they already have a flat panel. Ditto for speakers (which they don't use anyway).

Home media won't really be an issue either.

But thanks for the advice on the memory.
 
Blinder said:
Also, from looking in the booklet at the weekend, I don't think that a monitor is included in the price
They have 17" monitor for ~ €169 on the same day
Click to expand...
No monitor included - that's why they state "base station" on the offer. This lack of a monitor is pretty standard with the Lidl/Aldi PC offers. They usually sell monitors at the same time separately (as in this case).
 
CCOVICH said:
My dad is interested in this package and I am curious as to whether the memory is suffucent to give decent performance with Vista.

According to the BBC, maybe not.
Click to expand...
Ideally you'd want to run the Vista Upgrade Advisor on the PC to check but (a) from what I've read the results of running this tool can sometimes be a bit strange and (b) it's hardly practical to do this before buying. So unless you can do this after buying and then bring the PC back if it doesn't suit your Vista needs then I'm not sure what you can do... For what it's worth 1GB is probably the mininum memory that you will need for Vista in Aero (fancy graphics) mode but you might get away with less in basic mode. And you'll need powerful graphics processing (good graphics card with a fast graphics processor and lots of graphics memory) too. Not to mention several GB of diskspace for the operatin system alone!
 
Yeah, the diskspace won't be a problem-the base station above comes with 250GB which will be more than adequate to run Vista and meet their storage needs.

Would the graphics card above be sufficient? Would it make sense to buy this base station and then do a 1GB RAM upgrade (I don't see any mention of expansion slots above)


A Dell with similar specs (and no monitor), but with the recommended RAM would cost around €1000 based on my calculations.

ClubMan said:
For what it's worth 1GB is probably the mininum memory that you will need for Vista in Aero (fancy graphics) mode but you might get away with less in basic mode.
Click to expand...

Can you switch between Basic and Premium modes in Vista?
 
CCOVICH said:
Would the graphics card above be sufficient? Would it make sense to buy this base station and then do a 1GB RAM upgrade (I don't see any mention of expansion slots above)
Click to expand...
It's hard to say for sure. The 1GB could be sufficient for many purposes. As for upgrading you'd need to know how many memory slots there are and how many are used by default. As you probably know if they are all full then you'd have to ditch (sell hopefully) some or all of the preinstalled RAM in order to make room for higher capacity components.
Can you switch between Basic and Premium modes in Vista?
Click to expand...
Not sure. Sorry.
 
Can you switch between Basic and Premium modes in Vista?
Click to expand...

If you mean can you disable the high-end Aero interface (thus making it perform better on mid-range hardware), yes.

You can upgrade the memory later if it turns out to be insufficient. If you follow the Aldi links to the manufacturer's site, it says

Huge working memory:

1024 MB DDR2 SDRAM with 533 MHz 64 Bit
( 1 slot free for upgrading)
Click to expand...
 
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