Tesco takes fight to Sainsbury over Medion PCs
Clubcards at the ready
In the supermarket game, one-upmanship is common and anything one chain does is invariably imitated by others. So following the launch of a Medion 17in dual-core notebook at Sainsbury’s stores, Tesco has begun offering a Medion desktop PC for around the same price.
The Medion 6486, which is sold with Microsoft Vista Home Premium edition, has a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of DDR 2 memory under its bonnet. A 500GB hard drive is also built in and graphics are delivered via Nvidia’s GeForce 8500GT card.
Medson 6486, available in a Tesco near you
A dual layer DVD-ReWriter is included and wireless networking is possible over 802.11 standards b and g. The Medion comes with two USB 2.0 ports, one headphone and one mic-in jack on its front fascia, amongst others, while at the back there are a further six USB ports, two eSATA and 1GB LAN. An unspecified format 8-in-1 memory card slot also features on the machine’s front.
A wireless keyboard and wheel mouse also come with the system, as well as a remote control. The Medion 6486 PC will be available in Tesco Extra and Tesco Homeplus stores, plus its website, for £550 (€816/$1,095).
COMMENTS
Medion PC's
We have three Medion's bought at Aldi 2 years ago - they're used in business and for games, so live a hard life, in use 12hrs a day. They've been rock solid, and survived the video cards being upgraded about 12mths ago.
There is a downside, and that is they have 3.4ghz chips which run hot, so the fans are noisy if you work the machine - not a problem web browing, but noisy when playing games.
All in all however, darn good value and we will consider buying the Tesco machines if we can check noise levels.
Medion quality
Funny, I've bought quite a few Medion items in the past (as have several people I know) and not a single problem. Depends whether you use it as per the instructions or whether you p**s around with it.
Mind you, Vista would put me off a bit....
No monitor.. hmm?
I am quite supprised there is no monitor, but if you go into your local Tesco Extra they all have a selection of monitors on offer so it isn't that much of a problem.
Aldi
Like stuart meadowcroft said, Aldi have been selling Tevion and Medion gear for years. Not only that but their Medion 8824 desktop PC, not unlike the £550 6486 listed in the article is a mere £399 at Aldi.
