loving the alien.....

Yep, I picked mine up this morning. Here's a review from pcmag.co.uk:

So where to start on this lengthy roll call of qualities? The Pentium 4 processor is a good place. Although it's not the very fastest chip in Intel's line-up, the 3GHz clock speed puts it at the top end of processing prowess. Similarly, the 512Mb of memory is fast becoming standard-issue on PCs at this price level, but to label the amount average would be to misstate its usefulness. In our exacting labs tests, the machine turned in a performance that bordered on superb. Moving down the list of specifications, the Titanium 8080's 160Gb hard disk is generous, while the graphics card, a Radeon 9800XL from ATI, is one of the very latest available. Take a deep breath, though, because we've barely begun.

DVD-ROM drives are familiar in new PCs these days and DVD-writer drives, too, crop up with regularity. However, the Titanium 8080 includes both DVD-ROM and DVD-writer drives, the latter being a multi-format model from Pioneer. In other words, rather than being restricted to one or other of the main recordable DVD formats (the rival 'plus' and 'minus' standards), owners of this Medion PC will be able to read and write both.

Below these two optical drives on the machine's front is a plastic panel: depress the top of this and it slides down gracefully to expose an excess of connectivity ports. As well as affording easy access to common connections, such as headphone and microphone sockets, this bay has slots for the most common memory card formats - a delight for digital camera owners. In addition, this panel sports a couple of FireWire connectors and three of the Titanium 8080's seven USB 2 sockets (the remainder being situated around the rear).

Remarkably, thus far we've covered barely half of the Titanium's notable features. Continuing, we find a combined TV and FM-radio tuner card, meaning the PC can receive and display television broadcasts and tune in to the wireless. Talking of wireless, Medion has fitted the computer with the very latest in Wi-Fi, 802.11g, which supports fast network speeds up to 54Mbit/s.

As we're running out of space we'll strive to squeeze in mention of the machine's other fancy features, which include a cordless keyboard and mouse and a stack of pre-installed software applications. The 2004 edition of Microsoft Works Suite, Nero Burning Rom 6 and Power DVD 5 top off this fantastic package.


Not bad for £750 ;-)