Info and forum posts by 'Walpurgis'

£700 Aldi PC next week

Aldi`s latest PC go on sale next Thursday (25th) for £699.99. As ever, the specs are impressive: 3.4GHz Pentium 4; Pioneer dual-layer DVD writer; DVB-T digital TV tuner with remote control; 250Gb hard drive wiith 8MB cache; built-in wireless LAN and Bluetooth; 512MB memory; SCART TV out; 9-in-1 memory card reader; Microsoft Works Suite 2005; etc

BUT

Initial reports from Germany, where it went on sale yesterday, say it is extremely noisy, which is rather disappointing for a multimedia PC. A lot of German buyers seem to be returning their PCs. There will probably be fixes to reduce the noise, but these may invalidate the three-year warranty.

This review (translated by Google) seems to indicate that it is the noisiest PC they have ever tested.

http://*******.***/5w24r

Other drawbacks seems to be a high current consumption and the rather stingy amount of RAM included.

Details should appear in the Aldi UK Web site later today.

RE: Sat nav for £270 at Aldi

The software will navigate you via "the major roads of Europe". You can buy extra street-level maps for most European countries.

If you do a lot of European travelling, it may be worth spending a bit more to get a forthcoming PDA which has a built-in GPS antenna and comes with street-level maps of 16 European countries. Unlike the Aldi, which you can only use in a car, you should be able to use the Navman all-in-one GPS-PDA to guide you as you walk around the centre of Rome or Paris (or anywhere else in Europe). And when you do use it in the car, you will need fewer cables - just the power lead.

www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=113072

There`s more here (under Products):

www.navman.co.uk


BTW, if you do find any of the packages still in stock at Aldi, you can make a quick buck - they are selling for around £350 on eBay (which is still £50 less than Halfords charges).

This item was edited on Monday, 24th May 2004, 21:50