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Is this Lidl PC a good spec ? (1 Viewer)

tuftyhill

Well-known member
I am looking for a new PC to replace our old 550Mhz - 16GB (Hard Drive) - 128Mb RAM system.
I saw Aldi had a similar PC last year and that apparently got good reviews, now Lidl are selling one but I've not heard if they are any good or not.
It has AMD Athlon 3400+ 2.2 GHZ Processor, Hard Drive - 300 GB Capacity,
- 1.024 MB PC3200 DDR-400 RAM, Toshiba - DVD-burner and CD-burner
- DVD-Multinorm and dual-layer-technology for up to 8.5GB = up to 240 minutes recording time on one DVD of note.

Lidl PC

Could anyone with a bit of PC knowledge check the spec out and see if it is a good deal or not.
Or if anyone has previously bought one of these from Lidl in the past.
 
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tufty said:
I am looking for a new PC to replace our old 550Mhz - 16GB (Hard Drive) - 128Mb RAM system.
I saw Aldi had a similar PC last year and that apparently got good reviews, now Lidl are selling one but I've not heard if they are any good or not.
It has AMD Athlon 3400+ 2.2 GHZ Processor, Hard Drive - 300 GB Capacity,
- 1.024 MB PC3200 DDR-400 RAM, Toshiba - DVD-burner and CD-burner
- DVD-Multinorm and dual-layer-technology for up to 8.5GB = up to 240 minutes recording time on one DVD of note.

Lidl PC

Could anyone with a bit of PC knowledge check the spec out and see if it is a good deal or not.
Or if anyone has previously bought one of these from Lidl in the past.



I have seen these before at LIDL. There not bad but you can get a lot better and cheaper from mainstream shops now ie. Curys Dixons Pc World etc..
Or Buy Computer Buyer mag they have some great deals in .. hope this helps.
 
Just fixed the link and given it a quick look over, Paul.

I'd say it was a pretty good deal, seems like decent spec./components; the software package is good but don't forget to budget for a monitor (if you need one).

I doubt that many of the Dixons Store Group 'offers' would match this one! Comes with a three year warranty as standard.

Andy.
 
tufty said:
I am looking for a new PC to replace our old 550Mhz - 16GB (Hard Drive) - 128Mb RAM system.
I saw Aldi had a similar PC last year and that apparently got good reviews, now Lidl are selling one but I've not heard if they are any good or not.
It has AMD Athlon 3400+ 2.2 GHZ Processor, Hard Drive - 300 GB Capacity,
- 1.024 MB PC3200 DDR-400 RAM, Toshiba - DVD-burner and CD-burner
- DVD-Multinorm and dual-layer-technology for up to 8.5GB = up to 240 minutes recording time on one DVD of note.

Lidl PC

Could anyone with a bit of PC knowledge check the spec out and see if it is a good deal or not.
Or if anyone has previously bought one of these from Lidl in the past.

The price looks okay but I think you coulid get that spec for ~£700 from companies such as Evesham, Mesh, Carrera etc and they usually get good reviews from the computing press. The only problem is that you have to wait a week or so while they assemble your PC, but on the positive side you can configure it yourself and omit anything you don't want. Then again you might like the idea of buying from a local shop.

Tiny seem to do okay deals too.

If you do go elsewhere, then I would recommend making sure that the PC is expandable i.e. has enough sockets.

The motherboard should ideally support SATA as that allows you to add lots of hard drives if need be. Without SATA you are limited to 4 drives i.e. CDROM, DVDROM and hard disk. Even better make sure it comes with a SATA hard drive rather than the standard PATA one. (The Targa has SATA.)

Also make sure your board has plenty of memory sockets. Adding memory is the easiest way to boost performance for memory intensive apps such as Photoshop. Some boards only have two memory slots, so if you already have 1MB, and want to expand to 1.5GB, you'll have to discard/sell one 512 MB memory card and insert a 1GB one, rather than simply add another 512MB memory card. That means that expanding memory would be expensive. The LIDL advert mentions the motherboard so you can check how many slots it has. (Some years ago I bought a DELL that was limited to 512MB total, and I had to dump the machine as that was not enough for Photoshop. Otherwise the machine would have been okay. )

Leif
 
Leif said:
Tiny seem to do okay deals too.
If anybody ever asks my advice on which computer to buy I always start by telling them never to buy a PC from a compnay whose name begins with the letters 'TI'.
 
hollis_f said:
If anybody ever asks my advice on which computer to buy I always start by telling them never to buy a PC from a compnay whose name begins with the letters 'TI'.

What's wrong with Tiny?

I always advise against Dell due to my nightmare experiences with their appalling technical support when I received a damaged item. However, at least 5 of my colleagues bought laptops from Dell despite my warnings and they've had no problems. PC World magazine used to do user surveys of PC suppliers. Maybe they, or another magazine, still do. I think that would be the best way to gain a balanced opinion.

Leif
 
Leif,

Tiny/Time have a very poor reputation - bad enough to get themselves featured on BBC Watchdog last week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/thisweek/index3.shtml

Dell are excellent if a user wants a perfectly good "out of the box" solution and isn't worried about upgrades - you've been unlucky there.

I see the Lidl machine as being very good for the money - better than the stuff that you'd get from the High Street for the price, and I reckon your local corner-shop PC builder would be hard pushed to match the spec for the money.

There's a 3 year manufacturer's warranty thrown in for nowt with the Lidl machine - you'd pay dearly for that at PC World, and having had bad experiences with corner-shop builders myself, I regard that as a worthwhile plus.

TBH I think the £699 machine they're selling is even better (no AOL preloaded!), but it's not available in Cheshire...
 
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I've bought two pcs recently a Dell for myself from Dell outlet (which is an online source linked to the main Dell website). Basically, it's pcs that were returned by buyers. They are very good value and come with 3-years on-site warranty.
The other was an Evesham, higher spec. I couldn't afford the equivalent Dell. But it's been absolutely brilliant so far. I had a problem reading floppy disks but Evesham sent me an email about how to alter the CMOS settings; and since then it has worked fine.
I had a Tiny once, and had a good experience, but it was when it was a much smaller company. Since then they've merged with another co. and opened up lots of high street outlets.
PC World do some good deals on-line; if you want a Korean assembled computer. I couldn't vouch for their servicing standards but I doubt you'd get the three years on-site deal that Dell offer without paying quite a bit.
Ken
 
blythkeith said:
Leif,

Tiny/Time have a very poor reputation - bad enough to get themselves featured on BBC Watchdog last week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/thisweek/index3.shtml

Dell are excellent if a user wants a perfectly good "out of the box" solution and isn't worried about upgrades - you've been unlucky there.

I see the Lidl machine as being very good for the money - better than the stuff that you'd get from the High Street for the price, and I reckon your local corner-shop PC builder would be hard pushed to match the spec for the money.

There's a 3 year manufacturer's warranty thrown in for nowt with the Lidl machine - you'd pay dearly for that at PC World, and having had bad experiences with corner-shop builders myself, I regard that as a worthwhile plus.

TBH I think the £699 machine they're selling is even better (no AOL preloaded!), but it's not available in Cheshire...


Keith: A few years back a colleague had the same problem with poor suport from Dell so I am not alone. Mine arrived damaged (broken monitor) and it took a week to replace it. They refused to deliver to my work place so I had to take an afternoon off and lose some wages. The replacement was handled in a very 'brutal' manner by the courier and I am amazed it survived. In order to get the replacement I had to use Dell support lines. I spent in total several hours on the phone, on hold, waiting to speak to someone, paying a phone bill. On one occasion I was told to wait, and after 45 minutes someone in the US answered and told me that they do not offer support on a Saturday so I should hang up. And yet they put me on hold. I wrote to complain and was offered 2 more years free support which was worthless. My colleague's experience was not dissimilar. I would not touch Dell. Do you have something to support your opinion that Dell support is good? A user survey would do.

I am a software engineer, as are my colleagues. They all tell me to avoid Dell PC's because they use non-standard motherboards. I could not believe that mine was limited to only 2 memory slots, and a maximum of 512MB RAM. However, they do have a reputation for decent quality components. Mind you some of the cheaper Dell TFT's are awful: one we have at work has a strong pink cast. (That's not so surprising. When I look at LCD displays in Comet, they all seem to show totally different colours, with a range of strong colour casts.)

Dell laptops must be good as 4 colleagues bought one in the space of 2 years.

I'm not sure if your were suggesting that Mesh, Carrera etc were corner shop builders. They are not. They are large operations and sell a lot each year and are recommended by various PC magazines. Because they assemble on order, you can get the latest components at decent prices. Shop bought PC's might sit in a store for months, hence you are buying something that was assembled months ago. I certainly would not buy from a small 'corner shop'.

The 3 year warranty might be useful but only as long as the owner does not add anything inside such as extra memory, a PCI card or a second hard disk. Opening the box will invalidate the warranty. My PC came with a seal which I broke on unpacking the box so that I could install a TV card and a second hard disk from my old PC hence I broke the warranty terms. The alternative was to pay an outrageous sum for someone to install the items for me to preserve the warranty.

Leif
 
Leif said:
I am a software engineer, as are my colleagues. They all tell me to avoid Dell PC's because they use non-standard motherboards. I could not believe that mine was limited to only 2 memory slots, and a maximum of 512MB RAM. However, they do have a reputation for decent quality components. Mind you some of the cheaper Dell TFT's are awful: one we have at work has a strong pink cast. (That's not so surprising. When I look at LCD displays in Comet, they all seem to show totally different colours, with a range of strong colour casts.)

Dell laptops must be good as 4 colleagues bought one in the space of 2 years.

The 3 year warranty might be useful but only as long as the owner does not add anything inside such as extra memory, a PCI card or a second hard disk. Opening the box will invalidate the warranty. My PC came with a seal which I broke on unpacking the box so that I could install a TV card and a second hard disk from my old PC hence I broke the warranty terms. The alternative was to pay an outrageous sum for someone to install the items for me to preserve the warranty.

Leif

Dell have, in the past, used non-standard motherboards (and PSU's); as far as I can tell, this stopped some 5 years ago.

I have a Dell laptop, three and a half years old. I've never had a problem with it (it runs the full suite of 3dMark05 tests, I've seen gaming machines more than twice as powerful that are only capable of running a quarter of these tests).

Opening the box should not invalidate any warranty, unless you break something whilst doing so. Dell happily supply full stripdown details for their machines. I don't often recommend buying extra warranty (over the standard 1 year), better to save your cash for upgrading.
 
It's a shame Tiny have a bad reputation, I checked their site out and they do have some base units with good spec's.
I actually have a Mesh PC bought 6 years ago, apart from the usual Windows 98 niggles it's been a brilliant computer but it's showing it's age now with all the Photoshop stuff I do on it.
I'm looking for 1GB RAM, a huge HD ideally 300GB and a DVD writer, and obviously a fast processor, it seems like the AMD Athlon 64 is a good one to go for. I will use the monitor I bought with the original Mesh system it's a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 710 and is fantastic, a TFT would take up less room but isn't required at the moment.
Does it matter what type of graphics card to get regarding Photoshop editing, I'm not going to be using the PC for gaming.
I will check out Mesh's site again and configure one to suit my requirements to see what sort of price they can do it for.
Another thing worrying me about the Lidl one is the 3 yr warranty, as it's a German make (I think) where do I return it in case of problems ? I'll have to ring Lidl up to see about that query.
 
tufty said:
I am looking for a new PC to replace our old 550Mhz - 16GB (Hard Drive) - 128Mb RAM system.
I saw Aldi had a similar PC last year and that apparently got good reviews, now Lidl are selling one but I've not heard if they are any good or not.
It has AMD Athlon 3400+ 2.2 GHZ Processor, Hard Drive - 300 GB Capacity,
- 1.024 MB PC3200 DDR-400 RAM, Toshiba - DVD-burner and CD-burner
- DVD-Multinorm and dual-layer-technology for up to 8.5GB = up to 240 minutes recording time on one DVD of note.

Lidl PC

Could anyone with a bit of PC knowledge check the spec out and see if it is a good deal or not.
Or if anyone has previously bought one of these from Lidl in the past.
We have the Aldi PC and it's truly excellent - it's made by Medion. The Lidl sounds similar - check it has a top graphics card, though, as that's often where corners are cut. The Aldi had the latest graphics card from nVidia, a superb TV card, 240Gb fast hard drive, Bluetooth and WiFi. Two years warranty as well.
 
Andrew Rowlands said:
Dell have, in the past, used non-standard motherboards (and PSU's); as far as I can tell, this stopped some 5 years ago.

I have a Dell laptop, three and a half years old. I've never had a problem with it (it runs the full suite of 3dMark05 tests, I've seen gaming machines more than twice as powerful that are only capable of running a quarter of these tests).

Opening the box should not invalidate any warranty, unless you break something whilst doing so. Dell happily supply full stripdown details for their machines. I don't often recommend buying extra warranty (over the standard 1 year), better to save your cash for upgrading.

Dell still use their own design of motherboards if the two machines I use at work (5 year old P3 and a 3 month old Xeon) are anythng to go by.

My main gripe against Dell is the awful technical support (experienced by a colleageue too) and (in the case of my machine) the built in obsolescence. I have in the past found it hard to get information about a machine from Dell.

They are not sealed, so Dell probably do not care. I have a Fujitsu Siemens that was sealed and to install components I had to break a plastic seal, and invalidate the warranty. I think most people would be better off avoiding a machine that arrives sealed.

Reliability of Dells seems okay as long as our company's IT department doesn''t go near them.

Leif
 
We use Dell at work and they've been the best PCs we've ever had!
In the past we've had Gateway and Tiny ( not for long - they were crap).

I have a Dell and and been very pleased with it. Check out their website for latest deals. Last week they had a decent spec PC for £321 inc VAT and delivery - and it was Pentium4!

You'll have to play about with customising the PC on-line (the price quoted usually incldes 3 year collect warrenty, but if you settle for one year return-to-base, this'll know £100 off the price!)
 
Leif said:
Dell still use their own design of motherboards if the two machines I use at work (5 year old P3 and a 3 month old Xeon) are anythng to go by.

My main gripe against Dell is the awful technical support (experienced by a colleageue too) and (in the case of my machine) the built in obsolescence. I have in the past found it hard to get information about a machine from Dell.

They are not sealed, so Dell probably do not care. I have a Fujitsu Siemens that was sealed and to install components I had to break a plastic seal, and invalidate the warranty. I think most people would be better off avoiding a machine that arrives sealed.

Reliability of Dells seems okay as long as our company's IT department doesn''t go near them.

Leif

Hi Leif,

I can understand the 5 year old machine being non-standard (but I've not seen a PIII that was, unless you're referirng to the small footprint machines that use laptop CD drives - they're no different to machines from IBM, HP/Compaq etc.); what's non-standard about the Xeon?

I've heard that Dell Support has been flakey in recent years; the best way to obtain help from them (so I've heard) is to use the online live help on the US site. I've always found all the info. on their machines quite easily. Add-ins and spare parts are readily available from Dell so there should be no warranty problems opening the case.
 
Andrew Rowlands said:
Hi Leif,

I can understand the 5 year old machine being non-standard (but I've not seen a PIII that was, unless you're referirng to the small footprint machines that use laptop CD drives - they're no different to machines from IBM, HP/Compaq etc.); what's non-standard about the Xeon?

I've heard that Dell Support has been flakey in recent years; the best way to obtain help from them (so I've heard) is to use the online live help on the US site. I've always found all the info. on their machines quite easily. Add-ins and spare parts are readily available from Dell so there should be no warranty problems opening the case.

The Xeon board is a Dell design. It is huge. The monitor adaptor is non-standard i.e. DVI (maybe this is becoming standard?) which caused problems as someone lost the adaptor, and a replacement had to be ordered from Dell and that took two weeks to arrive. If they publish the motherboard specs online, then that allows us to see the number of memory slots etc, though I must admit I could not find that info via the UK site.

Dell add ons are very expensive. When I looked to expand the memory and disk, Dell wanted to charge twice the usual price so I went elsewhere e.g. Crucial. I think they play on some peoples fears of buying possibly non-compatible items from other sources.

You might well be right that Dell online tech. support is good.

In my experience the net is improving customer support, in part because consumers now have space to air grievances if a company messes up.

Leif
 
Leif,

DVI is the latest standard, been around a few years on Workstation cards (and most Gaming cards); adapters are available from most online suppliers for about a fiver.

I never buy add-ons from Dell, always cheaper to buy 'standard' components from elsewhere.

The Dell US site has a Forum if you need to use that for anything (lots of good info there).

Let me know some details on the Xeon when you get back to work - I'll see if I can dig out some info on it for you.
 
Andrew Rowlands said:
Leif,

DVI is the latest standard, been around a few years on Workstation cards (and most Gaming cards); adapters are available from most online suppliers for about a fiver.

I never buy add-ons from Dell, always cheaper to buy 'standard' components from elsewhere.

The Dell US site has a Forum if you need to use that for anything (lots of good info there).

Let me know some details on the Xeon when you get back to work - I'll see if I can dig out some info on it for you.

Not sure why you want to know but I think it is a Dell 670. We need dual processor machines as we use a real time extension to XP to control telecoms hardware. XP on its own is not real time.

Leif
 
Leif said:
Not sure why you want to know but I think it is a Dell 670. We need dual processor machines as we use a real time extension to XP to control telecoms hardware. XP on its own is not real time.

Leif

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ws670/en/index.htm

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/ws_670?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz#tabtop

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/search?board_id=pw_upgrade&submitted=true&q=670

Just trying to help, Leif; I've built dual Xeons so I know a little about the subject.
 
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