ALDI- Medion laptop €800

looder

MEDION® AKOYA® MD 96640 multimedia notebook
each €799.99 *

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All-round Entertainer with Extended Endurance

High performance Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T5550 (1.83 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache, FSB 667 MHz)

Gigantic 320GB hard drive capacity

Massive 3GB RAM for resource intensive application and multi-tasking

NVIDIA® GeForce® 9300M G for powerful graphics performance (based on PCI-Express technology with 128MB GDDR3 memory)

High Speed Wireless LAN next generation 802.11 n-Draft with up to 300 Mbit/s.1

Integrated Bluetooth® v2.0
Connect a range of household media products to your new Medion® Akoya® notebook wirelessly using pre-installed Bluetooth technology.

Incredible features

15.4" TFT WXGA Widescreen Display 1280 × 800 pixels, 16:10 cinema format
Integrated VGA webcam with microphone
HDMI-out for connecting to a big-screen, HD-Ready TV
eSATA port the high performance standard to connect external hard drives with the fastest possible transfer rate
Biometric fingerprint reader for ultimate data security
8× Multi-Standard DVD/CD Writer with DVD-RAM and Dual Layer compatibility2
6 channel surround audio out (analogue + S/P-DIF)3
All the support you need
36 month manufacturer’s warranty. MEDION offer a telephone support hotline charged at National Rates and a return to manufacturer service for repair.

LINK : http://www.aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/58_5769.htm


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Are Medion reliable?

This seems like a bargain to me, same spec on Dell website, comes in at €1200 or €1300

it's in on Thursday by the way 8th of may

Corkey123

Yeah seems good value alright except

Why a the DVD RAM drive?

Would you need a hard drive that big on a lappy?

Redisle

There is a thread about this here too.I don't know if its really great value. I know someone looking for a laptop and they asked me about this and I told them I didn't think it was great value.
Just comparing it to a Dell Inspiron 1525 of evalue code NPIE5-N0552508

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5550 (1.83 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2
OS: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English
1 Year Base Warranty
15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display with TrueLife™
MEMORY:2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
HARD DRIVE:160GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
GRAPHICS CARD: Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
OPTICAL DRIVE: 8x DVD+/-RW Optical drive, including SW
PRIMARY BATTERY: 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion primary battery

This Dell Costs 549 at the moment with free shipping. It has the same processor as the aldi one, Same Resolution Screen. There are a few differences of course. The aldi one has a dedicated graphics card, the dell has integrated (not capable of recent games), both have hdmi out. The Aldi one has a bigger hard disk but I don't see why anyone would want to store that much data on a laptop, The disk in the dell is plenty big IMO, I have a 250gig in my laptop and I use less than half of it. The aldi one has a Biometric fingerprint reader but tbh those things are more trouble than they are worth. The aldi one has a webcam but this can be added to the dell for an extra 30.The dell does lack bluetooth but again this can be added for an extra 40 ( or about 5 for a stick from ebay).
Finally the aldi one has an eSATA port, but I can't see many everyday consumers making use of that anyway, although it is a nice feature.
I would imagine the Dell laptop also has better battery life than the aldi since the battery dosen't have to power a dedicated graphics card.

The Aldi does offer a 3 year warranty but I saw a few people mention this isn't all that good in the other thread. The aldi laptop isn't worth an extra 250 over this dell tbh.

Ivan

I'd say 1GB of ram, 160GB of hard disk space and a whopping graphics card as a massive difference between this and the dell piece of junk.

This laptop is a steal at this price. That graphics card is quite tasty, especially in a laptop. This is Desktop specs for desktop price but in laptop form. Thats always going to be worth it, imho.

corkproducers

Ivan wrote: »

I'd say 1GB of ram, 160GB of hard disk space and a whopping graphics card as a massive difference between this and the dell piece of junk.

This laptop is a steal at this price. That graphics card is quite tasty, especially in a motherboard. This is Desktop specs for desktop price but in laptop form. Thats always going to be worth it, imho.

I'd have to agree with you,

3 times the memory, twice the amount of disk space, a REAL graphics card?

Seems worth it imo, was surprised the aldi one had 3 gbs when i saw it first, too many places still selling one gig of ram in new laptops.

And i could easily fill that hard drive too.

AlmightyCushion

Ivan wrote: »

I'd say 1GB of ram, 160GB of hard disk space and a whopping graphics card as a massive difference between this and the dell piece of junk.

This laptop is a steal at this price. That graphics card is quite tasty, especially in a motherboard. This is Desktop specs for desktop price but in laptop form. Thats always going to be worth it, imho.

The graphics card in this laptop isn't very good at all. It's comparable to the 8400m (I remember reading that they are actually the same card, not sure if that was true though) which was a fairly rubbish card. Not really capable of running new games that well (still better than integrated stuff though).

It's not desktop specs for desktop prices. You could build a desktop for €800 with a quad core, 4GBs ram, 750GB hard drive and an 8800gt which would wipe the floor with this laptop.

The specs for this laptop are pretty decent. The e-sata port stands out as it normally is only on higher end laptops (though you can get an express card that will slot into your laptop that has an e-sata port). It's an alright laptop for the money but it's by no means brilliant value.

Redisle

I made my last post with the Average college student in mind tbh. Chances are this is the kind of audience that would buy this aldi laptop.For someone like that it wouldn't be worth an extra 250 over that dell.The most they would be doing is Office/web/streaming etc.
They would hardly notice the difference between 2gb/3gb ram.

I can't see the point in having such a large harddrive in a laptop anyway. Imagine someone using the laptop as their primary computer and dropping/losing it.There goes 300gb of data. Fair enough, that person would be pretty stupid not to have backups, but in reality there are a lot of people who don't backup their machines.

If someone was going to get a laptop with a dedicated graphics card for occasional gaming this wouldn't be it anyway. As someone else said that card isn't all that great. I have a 8600M GT in my dell inspiron 1720 and that does most of average games these days. I paid 850 for my laptop a few months ago.

Ivan wrote: »

I'd say 1GB of ram, 160GB of hard disk space and a whopping graphics card as a massive difference between this and the dell piece of junk

I don't see why you automatically assume the dell is a piece of junk. I have two dell laptops in my household and I have never had a problem. They both do the job just fine.

The tax man

but I don't see why anyone would want to store that much data on a laptop

Handy for Bank of Ireland employees.:rolleyes:

chris1970

Nice one tax man, bio metric be the job for BOI, good laptop for everyday joe's, many couldn't be bothered with dells,making up the spec's, aldi's medion wears it heart on its sleeve, no messing...

who_ru

er what's an esata port?:o

spina1

RedIsle, I went through dell's options and configured it as close as I could to Aldi's offer and came up with €957, you missed the 3 year support and quite a few other things.

So be fair and compare like with like.

Dell would be at least €150 more expensive than this offer.

I think that I am going for it as having experienced Dell's back up service and Medion's, I would choose Medion any day.

looder

spina1 wrote: »

RedIsle, I went through dell's options and configured it as close as I could to Aldi's offer and came up with €957, you missed the 3 year support and quite a few other things.

So be fair and compare like with like.

Dell would be at least €150 more expensive than this offer.

I think that I am going for it as having experienced Dell's back up service and Medion's, I would choose Medion any day.

I was thinking my €1200 or €1300 was a bit much

I was using the XPS and I added in office (doesn't come with Medion by the way) and a few of the accessories that come with the Aldi one

bk

chris1970 wrote: »

Nice one tax man, bio metric be the job for BOI, good laptop for everyday joe's, many couldn't be bothered with dells,making up the spec's, aldi's medion wears it heart on its sleeve, no messing...

Yes, I have that on my laptop, it is perfect security, it is so good, I can't even get into my laptop!!!

This biometric stuff is useless, it doesn't properly scan your finger most of the time.

BTW it is easy for a thief to bypass this and your windows password with a Linux or Unix boot disk and read all your files. Only if you are using special encryption software like Bitlocker or Truecrypt will you data be really protected.

majiktripp

I agree with Sugarman, have seen first hand a number of Aldi/Medion and Lidl/Targa laptops go tits up after less than a year. There "3 year" warranty is a joke, a collect and return service most times where it can take upto a month to have it returned to you. In my case it was a faulty flickering backlight that would give you seisures looking at it. 2 attempts to repair made but never fixed it. Took a written letter, several emails,phone calls to Targa in Germany before they finally issued a cheque...to Lidl....where I then had to return to get my money back. Only positive was after 6 months use they did give me a full cash in hand refund.
But for groceries yes, lidl and aldi are fine.

TerrorFirmer

Good paper spec's but a lot of the extras, realistically, aren't going to be utilized by most people. E-Sata, HDMI, Biometric....

The 9300G is ok, but it's a rebranded 8400GS that you can get much cheap in the Vostro range, so people justifying that as a particularly strong selling point could do much better elsewhere.

I actually reckon it's a great laptop for a certain user (like myself) that plays some games, does a lot of downloading, regularly has their laptop hooked up to their tv, utilizes connectivity a lot, and so on.

For the average person it doesn't offer much, as the core of the specifications could be gotten cheaper from Dell without the unnecessary extras.

Soarer

MartinCorcoran wrote: »

Yeah seems good value alright except

Why a the DVD RAM drive?

Quote from the website:
"8× Multi-Standard DVD/CD Writer with DVD-RAM and Dual Layer compatibility2 ".

So I make it a dual layer DVD, CD, DVD-RAM burner. Correct?

As an extra, I'm like TerrorFirmer in that I reckon this laptop will suit my needs. Won't be gaming (use my 360 for that), will be downloading a fair bit, as well as doing projects and stuff for college.
I'm looking to upgrade my desktop, but don't think I want to get another desktop. And considering my current setup consists of a single core 1gig AMD processor, 512mb ram, 64mb graphics card, and 2 x hdd's (1 x 8gb, 1 x 40gb), I reckon this thing will be like a Veyron in comparison!

WHIP IT!

Would people expect this laptop to sell-out quickly on the day? As in, queueing round the block, frenzied shoppers the way they sometimes do get when Aldi has a decent offer?

realcavanman

Picture in advert shows 'Works 9' included and Nero 8.

Package also includes DVB-T TV Tuner

Soarer

Check here for full details

HashSlinging

Pardon my ignorance, but dont dell take weeks to build there laptops, or could I order one now and have it in 5 days max.

IF they cant I'll be buying this laptop.

The_Conductor

WHIP IT! wrote: »

Would people expect this laptop to sell-out quickly on the day? As in, queueing round the block, frenzied shoppers the way they sometimes do get when Aldi has a decent offer?

In all fairness- queues for the higher priced items are always a lot more subdued (most people don't have EUR800 randomly available to buy gadgets with at will). Further- to be quite honest, its not the worlds best laptop- I wouldn't necessarily see it as a bargain.

With regard having to wait weeks for the Dell laptops- there has been problems, notably with getting supplies of some of the components (the largest manufacturer of Lithium-ion laptop batteries in the world burnt down a few months back, and there were also issues with custom paint jobs). If you stick with a standard spec machine- it should be shipped promptly- if you modify it 3 ways to kingdom come, be prepared for a short delay. I got a nice new Inspiron off them delivered 4 days after I ordered it (I'd love a shiny new XPS with all the bells and whistles, but it can wait).

S.

WellyJ

That Geforce card seems to only be available with 64MB, so one wonders where Aldi are getting the 128MB spec from.

Also, it gets a 3D Mark 06 score of 1600.....

Not great,

Depends what you want it for i guess, its still very cheap for the RAM, HDD and processor.

TerrorFirmer

WellyJ wrote: »

That Geforce card seems to only be available with 64MB, so one wonders where Aldi are getting the 128MB spec from.

Also, it gets a 3D Mark 06 score of 1600.....

Not great,

Depends what you want it for i guess, its still very cheap for the RAM, HDD and processor.

It's a rebranded 8400GS with lower power consumption, the reference for which was 128mb gddr3. where do you see that it only comes in 64mb? it's also miles better then any integrated video, and well capable of playing call of duty 4 and bioshock at low-mid settings. I dont know what else you'd expect from an 800 euro laptop considering its crammed with other good extras (hdmi, esata, tuner, etc)

judging it on 3dmark scores is a waste of time. the fastest mobile card, which is enough to run any game at highest settings at high resolution, gets a score about 50% that of the best desktop card, for example. I only get 3,5k on my laptop, a pathetic score by desktop standards, no probs running cod4 at 1280x800 med-high settings though. Even the Go7600GT, last years performance mid range mobile card, gets only about 1.6-2k in 06.

Soarer

Was just looking at the connections on this machine, and it doesn't appear to have a firewire port. I'd need one of those to transfer from my hd camcorder to the machine. So I think I'll have to give this a skip.

But now that I've got my head around the fact that I'm gonna buy a new machine, can someone recommend a similar specced machine? I'm willing to spend up to €1000 (maybe a small bit more if it's worth it).
Was looking at the XPS's on Dells site, but I don't know if an XPS is worth the difference over a "normal" Inspiron.
All help appreciated.

Edit: Just found the code that gives 10% off XPS's over €899, so gonna snoop.

Soarer

Decided to go for an XPS M1530.
Seems to be of a higher spec, but more accessories come with the Medion, so traded the accessories for spec.

Best of luck to anyone that purchases the Medion.

majiktripp

Well after all the debating did anyone spring for one of these today? Were there any queues?

DonFred

Ah i decided to give it a miss, will look around again!! Specs seemed decent though.

The_Conductor

No-one was even looking at them in Aldi in Lucan. No queues whatsoever. They did run out of golf balls though

BostonB

HashSlinging wrote: »

Pardon my ignorance, but dont dell take weeks to build there laptops, or could I order one now and have it in 5 days max.

IF they cant I'll be buying this laptop.

Depends on the model. If you want to save money and get it fast, get it from the outlet. When theres an offer on.

spina1

I bought one and happy so far.

I did have to ring the medion helpline though as the Specs said the mouse would be wireless and it wasn't and as I am a leftie and all the usb ports are on the right it was a pain.

Medion have one in the post to me, no problems. I have dealt with them before and they are good.

nice little web cam software as well.

Nalz

Have probs with the sound. Posted it here. Anyonelse experiencing this ?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055293288

InDublin666

Just bought one... It's the best I've had to date. And I'm well impressed with the specs and the performance. I'm mainly using it for running virtual PCs, but I'll make sure I get the most from it. This machine is amazing. I log on with finger prints. I am an IT consultant etc. and I will have no probs filling the disk, the 3gb RAM is just what I need, I priced the same specs in alot of places, and with this one I got what I wanted and alot more. I couldn't believe there was one left today, someone had arranged to have one one held and was 2 days late coming back and paying lol... Dell??? this thread is about the Medion, some of u guys must work for DELL lol... I've had most laptops that have been around for the last 20 yrs... DELL has not impressed me... I have several DELLs.. Thay do what I got tham to do, but I've never had so many extras, I'll be busy for a long time just familiarising myself with them all... )