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:

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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.

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