How best to spend my £250?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

A blog comment from Sharpey made me think last night – every thought about my £250 PC has so far centred on a standard desktop machine. So why not ditch that and build a media centre instead?

The benefits seem numerous. Since the PC would be connected to a TV, I don’t have to bother with a monitor or speakers – which instantly frees almost £70 from my budget – and the motherboard I’d already picked out is mATX anyway, and so will fit into most of the cases I spent last night gazing at. It would also be full of Blu-ray technology to make movies look fantastic.

So, here’s my current shopping list:

(more…)

A complete PC package for £250? No problem!

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

I’m used to seeing all manner of PC systems turn up the PC Pro Labs. Some cost £3,000, others cost £600, and some choose to include a full range of peripherals – whereas others are simply towers of power that leave you to fork out for the extras afterwards. It really is a study in the sheer amount of variety that there is in the desktop PC market today.

Every machine that we review has two things in common, though: none of them cost £250, and not one of them has suffered the indignity of being thrown together by my unsubtle and leaden hands.

(more…)

Just in: Asus Nova Lite

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

No, it’s not the desktop version of the Eee PC, not yet anyway, but this little system is about as close as Asus has yet come to putting out a true low-cost mini-PC.

Called the Nova Lite PX24, it takes the design first used in the original Nova P20, and strips it down to a much more affordable level.

Cramming in a 160GB hard disk, DVD writer, 2GB of RAM and even an ATI RV620 graphics card – complete with HDMI and DVI ports – we were expecting a price higher than the provisional SRP of £300 inc VAT. An Asus rep also hinted that there may be an even cheaper version on the way, with an 80GB hard disk and with integrated graphics.

(more…)

To Eee or Not to Eee?

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I’m in something of a quandary. After seeing just how much work I can get done on the train – there’s an awful lot of time to be had in between businessman having fights with their portable bicycles and then hammering away on their Blackberries – I’ve decided to buy some sort of ultraportable laptop.

My motivation is that while I’d like to work on the train, getting anything done at the moment requires more effort than I’d like. Which, ideally, is no effort at all. At the moment, hammering out a review on the journey home involves lugging a (relatively) heavy laptop in an extra bag, with the respective power cables in case I decide to use it when I get home, too. I’d like to condense this down somewhat, and some sort of smaller, lighter laptop stands out, as I’d be able to slip it into my backpack with everything else.

(more…)