Medion MD98300 15.4" Multimedia Notebook - £459.99 @ Aldi

this is a translation of a review of the laptop in germany, hope it helps.

The cost-performance ratio of this Notebooks can be able to be seen. Unfortunately this time no DVD t map is present. The diagram map, which is applied with the support by to 320MB Turbocache, is also here again the weak point... ... it seizes it on the main memory of the computer to and with 1024MB RAM and the employment of Windows Vista can in certain ranges to bottlenecks come. Play-suited the Notebook is only due to it. Office work, InterNet, DVD films and treatment of pictures for the normal use, should be however problem-free with the MD98300 to settle.

Might make a good doorstop ??

Lots of cold votes, why? Voted warm, these Aldi deals usually come with shed loads of software, the hardware is fairly respectable, and a 3 year warranty included on a laptop not to be sniffed at.
I feel good value.

This is a quality laptop from Medion, a popular and reliable brand in Germany. Good price for this item, 3 years warranty, a dedicated graphics card, and 120GB HD.
What else do you people want for 460 quid???
Voted ++

Its £459 for a laptop which is only suitable for office/ work, and general internet surfing abilities.
If thats all you want a laptop for its fine, but you will get an XP laptop for like £300 or maybe less and it will be better performance-wise as its not hampered by Vista and will have a lot more software which it can use.

Oh and the hardware is awful, and the 3Year Warranty is a must if you want it to last the 3 years.

I got a desktop 3 years ago, and their service is god-awful.
Murder to get them out to fix it, and when they did it took them a Month every time since their engineers (In Glasgow at least) only work 1 day a week.
If you cant make that day, good luck waiting.
Also their latest desktops have been very dodgy.
Heard one of the recent ones had over 200 faulty motherboards, with no sign of them getting stock in at any reasonable time.
This will only be the numbers of people that got onto Medion for repair.
A lot used the 30-Day no-questions Aldi money back guarantee.

This Laptop specifically though.

It has 1Gb of RAM, and uses Vista, which will be awful as Vista shouldnt be used on machines with such low amounts of RAM.
The Graphics card is Turbocache, which means it used the system memory.
The RAM gets used as Graphics memory, so the hungry Vista will just totally eat up all the available RAM leaving the laptop essentially useless apart for use with the most menial of tasks, MS office and Internet Browsing.

speaking as someone who could reasonably be described as working in this filed.....if the sauce company counts lol...this spec, to be fiar, is not as bad as you seem to make out.

I would challenge you to find this spec for £300 with XP

AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50
Windows Vista Home Premium
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 graphics
15.4" TFT Wide XGA (1280 x 800)
1024 MB DDR2 667 MHz Ram with 1 free slot
120 GB S-ATA hard drive, 8 MB cache, , 5400 rpm
Dual Layer DVD-/-CD-Writer
6 -channel audio out (Analogue + S/P-DIF)
802.11b/g Wireless
Integrated 4-in-1 Memory Card Reader
10/100 Network
V.90 Modem incl. modem connection cable
Microsoft® Works 8.5, WinDVD, MediaOne Gallery, VideoStudio, PhotoImpact 12SE, Nero Burning ROM, Nero Recode 2
3 year RTB warranty
3 x USB 2.0
1 x Firewire
1 x VGA monitor out
1 x TV out,
1 x network (RJ45)
1 x express card sot 54
1 x modem (RJ11),
1 x microphone
1 x audio line in
1 x audio line out
carry bag
optical mouse

Fair enough the service rightly needs taken into contention as you say but like for like on spec this is pretty reasonable.

Also, Vista, just like XP, can be configured not to use loads of memory for flashy see through windows and pop up taskbar windows etc if you so wish although, as you rightly say, the gfx card will use system memory if it needs it. That said, it will only use if it is spare. If it is allocated and not free then it wont be touched.

Like I say, point taken on the support but not every customer can be kept happy - we certainly don't and we're a behemoth. That said, the spec is still decent for the dough albeit it isn't brilliant.

http://uk.aldi.com/images/data_produ...c89ff5e6fd.pdf

this pc will run vista perfectly with no problems... gaming no... aero no

I didnt say you would get a similar Spec PC for £300, i said you would get a similar or better performance wise XP pc.
It doesnt need to be great, and can be lower Hardware Specced, but it will still hump this Medion.

If you are going to turn all the shiny Vista bits off, then whats the point?
You'd be as well with a cheap an cheerful XP machine with on-board grphics etc.
Cheaper and will do all the same things this will, since this Medion cant do anything intensive, rendering it a bit mince.

If you have to turn down the allocation, and cant use anything that requires graphics, then why buy a laptop with a graphics card?
You will be able to do the same things with on-board and hence a lot cheaper, when this ethos is used across the board when shopping for a laptop.
The Go 6150 is on-board i'm sure anyway. Just an Nvidia offering.

PC World have a Compaq for £399 with the only real difference being it's 80Gb hard drive and 128Mb 6150 Graphics (not sure if its Turbocache) but since you cant actually use the 320Mb on the Medion its pointless.
If PC World have it cheaper it goes without saying, someone else will rip this price apart.

The warranty may appear to be a strong point although a family member purchased one of the laptops around Christmas and it totally died within 3 months. It then took nearly a month for them to fix and return the laptop! One of the major problems in buying hardware from Aldi is they do not stock them 'full time' like true electronic retailers so could not offer a direct exchange if you wanted one, only a repair or refund.

I'm not at liberty to comment on the price, as I don't really keep track of the AMD systems, however what I will say is it isn't the best time of year to buy a laptop IMO as there is no 'big reason' to buy one and therefore the promotions on them will be less than at a peak time, such as Christmas.

Technology prices are dropping faster than ever before

P.S. I will say that my body will be waiting outside Aldi next Thursday morning in the hope I can bag a 4gb Toshiba USB pen and a USB freeview stick

I was going to get to Aldi early on Thursday to buy one of these laptops but am having second thoughts.

I have an Aldi bought Medion MD8383XL desktop PC, bought 2 years ago that I have been happy with (Pentium 4 HT 3.4 Ghz, 250 Gig HD, 512 mb Ram, Nvidia Geforce 6610XL graphic with 128 mb, loads of software etc etc)

I wanted to buy a laptop and network the two, but I was having concerns about buying Vista, as I would much rather have an XP system to match my desktop.

I was also having concerns about the Nvidia Geforce Go 6150 that doesn't have any of its own memory, and uses ram (turbo cache). I like to play games like Call of Duty and Splinter Cell, but from what I have read this Aldi laptop wont cut it.

Does anyone know where I can spend about £450 and get somehing with XP and a decent video card that I can play games on as well as do the usual home office type stuff on.

It seems that XP laptops are in short supply...... or perhaps I haven't looked in the right places.

I have just registered so be gentle.

This one will play those games, but probably not particuarly well (just like a GMA900 will play NFS:U2, I don't know why I tried but I did). If you want to play games on your laptop you will be sacrificing battery life (my Acer 5685 gets 3-4 hours) and paying ~£200 extra for the priviledge. However, I can quite happily play Company of Heroes, C&C3, and Battlefield 2 at native screen resolution. The 6150 might be able to play these at 640x480.

I would prefer a Laptop not made by Medion! Some of the worst customer service Ive ever encountered. Rude staff who dont give a damn and thats if you can get through to them in the first place! I know its my own experience and others will no doubt have a different experience but I can still feel my anger built up from the months I had to deal with this company!

It'll run Aero just fine and the idiot saying you can't run Vista with all the shiney in 1GB has clearly never used Vista.

However it's not a great deal. PC World had an HP/Compaq for £400 over the weekend that was all but identical in spec and obviously a far better brand, and if you're prepared to go to £500, Dell will do you a massively superior Inspiron with a proper Intel Core 2.

Em well Dudley thats 2 of us said it.
Scraping by on minimum isnt how a OS should be used, otherwise you cant run anything on your PC, so its a bit daft saying it will run when you cant actually do anything on your PC apart from sit and look at the desktop.

I have that, or whats left of it.
VERY surprised if you havent needed to call Medion out, that PC was murder and most everyone has had some part burn out. Ive had them out quite a bit lol.
If the fan is noisy by the way, you can call them and complain and they will fit you a new one. The main problem the 8383 had was the fan was like a jet engine. And most the components overheat since air circulation is nil lol.
And if you want a Graphics card upgrade, they will either come out with a 6700xl, or an 7650GS. You need to break it first, the fans burn out a lot