Pros: Quad core processor; Noteworthy specs; Abundance of ports; HDMI out; Value for money
Cons: Better if Medion added more RAM to make the unit run faster
Product rating:
"$999 Quad Core Beast Sold By Aldi"
By Mendelson Tiu | Published:08/08/2008
Aldi is probably the last place you will go to if you are looking for a new workstation. Which is fair enough I suppose, as a lot of users only visit this supermarket to do their groceries. But Aldi’s latest offering, the Akoya MD8390 from Medion, is by far one of the best desktop PCs you can find for its price.
Click to enlarge
For $999, you get a well-specced PC with an abundance of connectivity ports that is ready for just about any home or office task. Although one may argue that a similar box with the same specifications can be built at a cheaper price, you would have to resort to purchasing the parts seperately and building it yourself. And for some people, that is just not going to happen.
This box comes with an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 2GB of RAM, an Nvidia graphics card, a 500GB drive, and comes with just about any computer port you can think of.
Pressing the Connect.XL button up front reveals two USB ports, a headphone and microphone jack, Firewire, and three slots for all current flash memory cards (SD/MMC/MS, CF, SM/XD). The back of the unit hosts PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard, six USB ports, Firewire, Ethernet port, Line-in, Front line-out, back surround line-out, side surround line-out, centre/subwoofer line-out, S/PDIF out COAX and Optical, as well as an HDMI, DVI-I, and S-Video out. Medion has even included a wireless mouse and keyboard to the mix, allowing users to type freely.
Not that great Pros: pretty silver colour
Cons: Noisy, Runs very hot, audio connections already broken, no warranty assistance
Purchased when it first hit the streets, figured I could run my Blue-Rays on it with my large telly. Cannot, my fault, its only a dvd player. Tried to link it up to my harmony remote control, could not do that either. I have run out of hard drive space and need to constantly delete and copy stuff back to the meagre hard drive, not much space there. Tried overclocking it, but the cheap ram will not allow it to be pushed. My eeepc is more capable.
By Bateman
Exceptional Pros: Quick, well priced, all the bells and whistles
Cons: none
This computer from Aldi is fantastic. It is well priced and does everything it says on the box. I note Jimbo's review, but couldn't disagree more. There is a 2 year warranty on the computer and the hard drive is 500gigs. For the price, at the time it came out, it couldn't be matched. It has ample room for additions and I leave my computer on all the time and have never a problem with it overheating. I would implore everyone to buy this computer.
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