Acer Aspire T650 - a decent choice?

My laptop's cooling system has finally packed in, and because of two reasons:

• Sony charge £200+ VAT for repairs before they even do anything to the machine
• In the year and a half I've had it, I have never used the laptop outside of my house

I am thinking of replacing it with a cheap desktop rather than another laptop. After some research I am just about settled on an Acer Aspire T650 (primarily because I can get that [£390], plus a 19" screen [£100], for under £500). I'm not worried about the specs - Pentium D 890, gig of RAM, Radeon X1300, it will have no problems running Guild Wars.

There are two things I am concerned about though:

• It is running XP Media Center 2005. Do I have to use the Media Center GUI all the time, or can I use 'ordinary' Windows and just run the Media Center program when I want it? (like Vaio Zone on my Sony laptop)
• Will the reduced size of the case (it is designed as a media center) allow enough cooling for gameplaying?

Can anyone who has run GW on a Media Center answer these questions? (or if you know of a better desktop for under £400 (or £500 with monitor) then I'm all ears). Thanks

As far as i know, you cant. However i have never used Media Centre so dont quote me if im wrong..

Dont see why it should affect gaming, but the Pentium D's do run quite hot at full load, this is a minor issue though, because a good (cool) room temperature should mean you will be fine.

Ugh. I was afraid you'd said that. The MS MCE website didn't say anything about disabling it, but I was hoping I might be able to. Ah well, I'll get something else (or maybe see if someone else is selling the same PC with ordinary XP on it)

Again, thanks for the info. My overheating laptop is running a Celeron D, so I might try and avoid the Pentium D if I can.

EDIT: To cut a long story short, I've now found other PCs within my price range without MCE and with Athlons instead of Pentium Ds. Thanks again Veneficus

Seems like a decent enough system, but i'd advise against the pentium D the benchmarks aren't really good. Also remember that you get what you pay for so don't necessarily expect high end performance from your computer, but it sould work nicely anyways.

tijo is right, pentium D is crappy, either amd or core 2 duo's. the D is the netburst crap isnt it?

I'm not really expecting high performance from it - it is replacing a Vaio K415b (with a Radeon IGP345) so as long as it can play Guild Wars I'm happy. I'll avoid the Pentium D though - given my experiences with the Celeron D I am wary about any problems with Intel processors

EDIT: Thanks for your help everyone, I've finally found a system within my price range, that has:
Athlon X2 3800+
1Gb RAM
250Gb SATA hard drive
512MB Geforce 7300GS (PCIe)

I think this should be capable of doing Guild Wars, and it doesn't have any problematic components (Pentium D, integrated graphics etc.)

What exactly concerns you about MCE 2005 if you don't mind my asking? The only difference between Windows XP Pro and MCE in terms of user interface is "Media Center" in the Start menu.

Otherwise, they are exactly the same. Disable the Media Center junk in msconfig if it really bothers you. Delete the desktop shortcut and choose Display --> Properties --> Windows Classic and you won't be able to tell it's MCE at all.

Regarding the Pentium D, it'll run GW just fine. Yes, it runs hotter than a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 2X. So what? It shouldn't matter at all unless you want to overclock it, and there's no reason to do that with this system, even if Acer's BIOS allows you to overclock (which I doubt).

In terms of perforamnce, I don't think the AMD system you are looking at will wildly outperform the Intel platform, because the CPU isn't going to be what limits gaming performance on these rigs. The bottleneck in either instance will be the GPU. Given that, I'd prolly lean toward the first system, cause I like the X1300 a lot more than the 7300.

So you can just use an ordinary start menu instead of the TV-style media interface? That makes my choice a lot wider.

Have you thought of building it yourself? You can save a lot of money that way and probably get better parts. Most basic systems are plug and play, and putting a PC together is not as daunting as people think.

If you don't want to try, I might recommend you go with a boutique over in Europe similar to CyberpowerPC and iBuyPower. They tend to be high quality, low cost solutions.

Cheers, Rahjmeister.

Can you see anything in the user interface that would make you think this is MCE and not XP Pro SP2b?



In terms of GUI, they are identical except for the MCE add-ons, which you can disable if you want.

CyberpowerPC have a UK arm, but they're actually quite expensive (like a lot of US companies that set up over here, their prices are significantly higher than the GBP conversions of their US prices)

Yeh, I know, which is a pity. Like I said, similar boutique.

Ah, learnt another thing then if the GUI of WMC is the same as XP


I mentioned about the Pentium D running hot, because its notorious for it, same with the prescott core. The fact that the first computer was also in a mini-media case means that air ventilation is less than a larger case, meaning the Pentium D would be even hotter at full load .

That looks fine btw, however like others said, you can get way more for your money building it yourself.
Or if your not too affray with doing that, buy the parts from reputable online shops and take it down to a local computer shop, im sure they will put it together for a small fee... Even then you will still be saving on what you will pay for a prebuilt computer.

Hope this helps.

I am actually warming to the idea of building the machine myself. I'll look at various tutorial sites and see if I would be able to cope with it. Whatever I eventually go with, I now have a much better idea of what to look for.