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

["John Andrews" <groups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul

I'm interested in this PC! Can I ask what type of audio? I.E. coax, spdif,
and does it support dolby digital?
You mention a wifi card, does it have network on board too?

Thanks in advance (credit card at the ready)

-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Paul Gordon
Sent: 27 August 2005 15:41
To: UKHA_D Group
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Media Centre PC for <=A3300

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 overall
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
cards...

There's a full-size IEEE1394 (Firewire) port on the back, and a
mini-firewire 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
plastic 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
FD=
D
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
popular a couple of years ago, but it is still reasonably small.. (It was
the smallest machine that PC World sold at the time...

HTH

Paul G.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf=20
> Of White, Peter
> Sent: 26 August 2005 22:11
> To: UKHA_D Group
> Subject: [ukha_d] Media Centre PC for <=A3300
>=20
> With all this chatter about Xbox 360, I was thinking about trying
out=20
> Media Centre (and selling the iMac, it just ain't for me!).
>=20
> Does this seem like a good deal, in terms of getting something I
can=20
> play with and understand how good (or bad) MC is?
>=20
> http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=3D1954
> <http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/detail.asp?ProductID=3D1954>
>=20
> Thanks
>=20
>=20
> Pete
>=20
>=20
>=20
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20