I have just acquired a base-unit from Comet. It is a Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 3800+ system (no monitor). It has one gig of RAM and a 160 GB SATA drive. Lots of ports including firewire plus 9-in1 multicard reader, DVD burner etc., I think that the card is an NVidia 6100. It has Windows Media Centre, burning software etc., You do get a keyboard and mouse and the sale price was £299.00.
This was an impulse buy (only a few left locally). I am soon going to have to replace my ageing but trusty Casablanca Avio editor on a tight budget. This new machine will only be used for editing and burning DVDs. Over on Ebuyer it appears that a lot of people seem to think that this system was a bargain at £329.00 plus carriage - that is if I have obtained the same model! It is an Acer T180 DC. Someone commented that he could not build a machine for that price.
Hope this may be useful to someone.
There's always going to be a "better deal" than the one you bought - especially when you ask on a public forum.
The main thing is that you got a reasonable deal from a local supplier (you can't exactly walk into Ebuyer to complain!).
I've always been a bit wary of Media Center Edition of Windows XP - simply because it's not always "offically" supported by editing applications - that doesn't mean it won't work!
Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done & don't listen to anyone who says different :D :D :D
Gavin
not bad.
i'm hoping to build a p4 core duo with 1 GB ram etc for about 400.00
i want a pure number cruncher for xvid encoding ...........
your machine looks good for most things .......
Hi Gary,
Would you not be better off with a Core 2 Duo based pc? I posted a similar thread here:
http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=40518
and thanks to the excellent advice from Ray L and Jim Blacklock I am thinking of making a purchase here: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html
sorry , i meant a core 2 duo .... i already have a dual core p4d.
Which Core 2 duo are you considering?
having read this
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2014653,00.asp
and this
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/95964/intel-core-2-duo.html
i may go for any of them ......
but probably the 6400
Not tempted to up the ante and go with 4mb L2 cache that the 6600 and above provide?
i need to keep machine to £400 if i can .... it will be a pure number cruncher ......
i need to feed it mpeg2 ( dvd offair recordings ) and get 2 pass xvids out other end asap