prebuilt dell or mesh ?

devlee

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hi

i've had my toshiba 46wm48p for a year now and i'll like to connect a pc to it that is capable of smoothly playing hd material; also need to burn home vids to dvd

my budget is around £800; i'm not too keen on building a pc, nor am i bothered about having a flash slim case, or a super quite machine

i've got a couple of specs from dell & mesh and i was hoping that someone could tell me which is the better

my main concerns are ...

[1] the video cards .. are they gonna be sufficient ?
[2] do i really need MCE ?
[3] are the machines gonna be faster enough ?

and if i added another £100 to my budget .. which components should be upgraded

appreciate your comments

devlee

costs inc. vat, delivery & standard warranty

DELL Dimension 5150 (D03512) £781

Base Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 640 with HT technology (3.20GHz, 800MHz fsb, 2MB cache)

Microsoft Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2

Memory 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 400MHz [4x512]

Monitor Dell E196FP 19" Midnight Grey (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor

Video Card 256MB ATI Radeon® X600 HyperMemory graphics card

Hard Drive 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst cache

CD/DVD Drives 16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives

Sound Cards Sound Blaster® Audigy 2 ZS (Dell), PCI w/Dolby Digital, 7.1 speaker support & IEEE1394


MESH Matrix Premier (05) £741.82

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ with HyperTransport Technology

Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

ASUS A8N-VM - Nforce 410 PCI-Express Mainboard - Micro ATX

1024MB DDR400 Memory - PC3200 (2x512)

200GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer

SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW

512MB DDR2 nVIDIA GeForce 7300GS - TV out- DVI - PCI X (256Mb SMA)

19" Viewsonic VA912 Digital & Multi Media Flat Panel Display

5.1 Channel Surround Sound Audio-SoundMAX (on-board)

Firewire PCI Card - adds IEEE1394 Connectivity to your PC
 
Do not touch Mesh !

But would recommend Dell (good quite machines suitable for HTPC).

Think the Dell spec is better too.
 
Avoid Mesh. I didn't know they were still going. I know several people with them in the past and they were dreadful machines.
 
Steer clear of Mesh. I've had the misfortune to be sucked in by their marketing gimmicks ! Absolute rubbish PC's....avoid !:mad:
 
I'm sorry, but I've got to go against the last few posters... I know 4 owners of Mesh PC's and they have had nothing but happy running with no problems at all.

I'd personally advise to steer clear of Dell systems if only for the fact most of the important parts (like PSU for instance) are proprietry designs so upgrading is usually a none starter. If you don't think you'll ever want to change anything then this obviously won't be a problem.

Hope this helps.
 
Same here, if you ant something built to spec rather than just off the shelf I've always found Mesh are pretty good.

saying that you'd save a fortune if you just built it yourself
 
Do you have to have 19" as you want to connect to your TV.
The Dell looks good, especially with 2gb RAM, it should be easily able to rund HD Material.
Whether or not you need MCE is upto you, look at its features and see if you like it, like PVR, etc.

And I think sound of fan is quite important, as some PC's if they dont have silent fans, can be a real headache especially playing HD material.
 
Not an expert but had my Dell for over 4 years done a few minor upgrades and the kids use it everyday. Done basic video editing and now it can make DVDs.
Just my thoughts:).
 
Yeah if you dont need a monitor why not try the Dell outlet store you can pick up a similarly specced machine for around the €694.00 about £476.00 you can always add on the xtra's urself This 1 is on there @ the moment!I've never heard of Mesh pc's before!
Operating System: Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
Memory: 1G Memory, 2 X 512mb (400, 512)
Hard Disk Drive: 160GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
160GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive #2
Video: ATI Radeon X600 256MB HyperMemory
Modem: V.92 Data Fax Modem Ire/Spn
V.92 Modem Data/Fax/Voice PCI UK
DVD Drive: 16 X DVD +/- RW
Software: Dell Media Experience 3.0
English - Adobe Reader 6.0
Microsoft® Works® 7.0
Dell Support 3.0
Image Restore Utility
MISC: Dell Enhanced USB Multimedia Kybd
Photo Shop Photo Album (5.22) - trial version
Doc Dimension 5150 ENG/UK Cord
Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Entry Mouse
 

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