Acer Aspire M1640 Desktop with 16" Widescreen Monitor - £197

I almost made the very same thread this morning, but stopped when I saw someone had made one a few weeks ago (albeit, it was this and the laptop in one deal)

Have some pics;





Obviously the specs are not earth shattering, but under £200 for a desktop AND a widescreen monitor.....bargain in my book. Celeron 440 is based on the 65nm Conroe core and runs at 2.0ghz.

Loads in the Cardiff Gate store, all at the end of the aisle as you walk in.

It seems a little churlish to critisize a complete PC systems for £197, but I would like to point out the following for anyone planning to buy this:

The screen is advertised at 16" (which is small enough anyway) but it is actually a 15.4" ( or maybe 15.6") screen.

This is the size of a small laptop screen. So before buying go to any shop that sells computers and LOOK at a 16" (or 15.4") screen and decide if you want to spend all your time on that.

I saw a similar size one in Tesco's the other day and could not believe how small it was.

(I also have to say that 512Mb of memory is on the low side and Vista will probably perform VERY badly with 512Mb of memory, particulalry if it is sharing it with the graphics). I am surprised ANYONE sells a Vista computer nowadays with only 512Mb of memory in it.

Think this is probably end-of-life stock as Acer do have models with better specs.

Bargain for someone who just wants a PC for basic internet and office! Could maybe do with 512mb more ram, but what's that? Another tenner?

Bargain!

Better to buy a second hand good computer than this, surely? Celeron processor, tiny hard disk, small screen, no dvd writer, small amount of RAM - apart from being new, it's difficult to say this is anything than a bit of a rubbish computer.

Rather than second hand how about this new for £199 (admittedly with no monitor)

Same Acer model (M1640) but with:

Much better processor
Twice as much memory
Hard disk twice the size
Vista Home Premium rather than Home Basic
DVD re-writer

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143129

You could probably buy a decent second hand CRT monitor for £10 (people can hardly give them away nowadays)

That will give you a MUCH better computing experience

Or even this Dell posted recently, good system unit for less than £200 (in fact for the money one could say great system unit)

Good processor
2Gb of memory
250Gb hard drive
Vista Home Premium

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/25213...=252131&page=2

Freecycle used to be full of CRT monitors to give away.

Saw same machine setup in Asda.Through the side you can see it has an empty agp slot and a spare memory slot so is easily made more usable.Monitor is small though ,but in a cute way ,and only has a dvd rom not writer but can grab a writer for £20 anywhere.

Why slate this, not everyone who needs to use a computer will be computer geeks and need top RAM and HDD size or DVD Writers, this is perfect for my parents, they run their own business, they need a computer to generate invoices and write letters!

For them this is perfect, and just a 10 min drive to asda to pick it up!

BARGAIN!!! HOT

Not everyone is confident enough to open the box & add memory especially those new to PC's, which would be the target market for this system. Vista with 512Mb is next to unusable, a lot of people who buy this will be regretting it.

Agreed, the problem is the techno crowd who spend so much time playing with 3DMark they believe everyone under the sun needs Quad-Cores and 3gb's of POWA!!! My mum and brother have had the same Dell for about 3 years now, Celly 2.8, 256mb and 40gb HDD and for what they use it for it suits them perfectly. Some people just want a machine to surf the net, chat on MSN and do very basic office stuff, and for £200 you have everything you need for that in the box, not to mention a warranty.

People looking for something for the kid's room, or just something to surf/type on will be more than happy with the machine.

Cheap, and at least it is new, all in a better value than much of the second hand junk that gets posted, it's Acer which is no special brand, and if you don't expect much from this as it is a lot underpowered, and do little more than web and word processing then it will fill a gap in a desk, but nothing to get excited about, when amazing offers get posted on this site almost on a weekly basis!

One of Mike T's Dell offers recently posted,
eg. http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/25213...p-base-2ghz-d/
with the eBuyer 77 quid monitor that has been posted here yesterday
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/25299...een-tft-monit/
would come out at under 80 quid more, but be a LOT more powerful, bigger screen, more space, all in much more up to date, and would constitute a bigger bargain and FAR better value, but I suppose if you haven't got the extra money, and can put up with the day BEFORE yesterday's spec, then fine, but I wouldn't waste my money.

It might well be a fair price, but it's just another under powered PC... Lack of RAM, slow processor, small hard drive (and it will be split 50/50 with an Acer partition which doesn't help).

Steve

As an Acer owner, I'd not recommend them. Good price as always, but the build quality on their laptops is attrocious. This is personal experience (myself and two friends), I'm sure others will disagree. My laptop is literally falling apart, but maybe their desktops are better made.

£197 though? You have to vote hot.