RE: [ukha_d] Media Centre PC for <£300

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Pete

This system is the one my parents bought back in January from PC World, at
=
the then (what I thought was a good) price of =A3599 without a monitor.

It's not a bad machine, - they've had a HDD failure, but that's just luck
o=
f the draw I think, - and not indicative of anything relating to the
overal=
l quality of the kit.

At that price, I'd say it's a bit of a B.... B.... Bargain! (TM)

It's only got a single analogue TV tuner in it, and IIRC no spare PCI
slots=
as standard, however, it does have a modem and a WiFi card both taking up =
a PCI slot each, - both of which I've removed from the machine, and if you
=
don't need those devices (and who needs an analogue modem in a desktop
PC?)=
then you could easily free up those slots and put in a pair of freeview ca=
rds...

There's a full-size IEEE1394 (Firewire) port on the back, and a
mini-firewi=
re port on the front and 4 USB2.0 on the rear, and 2 up front.

The whole front panel is a mirrored with proper mirror glass (it has a
plas=
tic film on it which you should remove for the best appearance).

The entire right-hand side (when upright, as in the illustration) is a
push=
-to-open flap, behind which resides a memory card reader (there's no FDD
on=
this machine), plus the usual array of ports; USB x 2, Firewire x 1, and a=
full set of audio ports.

The top left part (when upright, as in the illustration) houses the
optical=
drive, which also has the same mirrored glass fascia (when closed you can'=
t actually tell it's there), which is a multi-format DVD rewriter (might
be=
dual-layer as well, - I can't actually remember for sure, but I *think* it=
is...)

It's a fairly deep case - not as small as the Maplins book PC's that were
p=
opular a couple of years ago, but it is still reasonably small.. (It was
th=
e smallest machine that PC World sold at the time...

HTH

Paul G.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> White, Peter
> Sent: 26 August 2005 22:11
> To: UKHA_D Group
> Subject: [ukha_d] Media Centre PC for <=A3300
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> With all this chatter about Xbox 360, I was thinking about trying out
> Media
> Centre (and selling the iMac, it just ain't for me!).
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> Does this seem like a good deal, in terms of getting something I can
play
> with and understand how good (or bad) MC is?
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> http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=3D1954
> <http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=3D1954>
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> Thanks
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> Pete
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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