ALDI Medion Akoya MD 96970

Been faithful – I bought it about 3 years ago, and at first it didn't have a lot of use. Then I began using it on a more regular basis until I noticed the unit becoming quite hot until it shut down. Investigation showed the cooling fan had stopped working. Having tech qualifications, I decided to order and replace the fan myself - not a job for the faint hearted! From Ebay I sourced a fan obviously rescued from a wrecked laptop and after about eight hours of my time had the unit up and working again. In the last year it has had a deal of work including video editing, and has performed well. Had high storage and connectivity specs for the time. LCD screen too shiny and narrow field of view

Terrible – I have had this laptop for 2 1/2 years. It has broken several times (around 4) and I have had to wait 6 months at times for it to be returned. So in actual fact I have probably used it for less than a year. I am extremely disappointed with it having spent more on this piece of junk than I would for a Macbook Pro. What's more, my brother had the same problems with his which stopped working even before mine.

Each time it was "repaired", it wasn't properly repaired. I think 6 months of waiting for a repair is totally ridiculous, and the Medion Help Desk was absolutely hopeless. There are several problems with this terrible product. The Targus chargers that it comes with are absolutely useless. I have used 5 different chargers now in the space of 2 years, and the latest one has just broken once again. These chargers cost around $100. There is no reason for the battery not charging, one day it will be happily charging and then the next day I will feel an extremely hot plug at the back of the laptop and then, pulling it out and allowing to cool, it will not charge when re-inserted, no matter how many different positional variations you try. I have always taken very good care of it (after realising how exceptionally sensitive and delicate it is) and have always left the battery charger in the correct condition.

The semi-protected area where the fan escapes erodes very easily, after just a few months many small black parts began to fall off with little use. The finger pad wore off on both mine and my brother's laptops after a mere few months without excessive use, so externally as well as internally it looks like a hot mess.

Another problem I had one day was the screen decided to turn grey and divide in half, so I could see everything twice. This problem took several months for Medion to fix and send back to me. But they did not fix the other problems such as the battery charger as it was apparently not under warranty, because I had replaced the original charger that came with the laptop (even though it was exactly the same product).

I cannot stress enough to you that this is a terrible, overpriced pile of junk that will leave you completely disappointed and feeling very frustrated.

If you buy this product I am certain you will soon feel ripped off and very angry like I do. Umm..can't think of any right now. Overpriced, and just doesn't work?

Excellent – Good value for money. Great for multi-media; I use the HDMI output into a 46 inch HD LCD TV. Wireless network works great at 54 MB, will upgrade my router to N. Hard Drive is larger than most laptops in the market, great for movies. Fast enough to run Windows 7 in VMware in the Vista OS. Better value than other brands in the market at the time. Good clear screen. Battery giving 2.5 hours using the 'Balanced' plan.

Keyboard is large compared to some other brands. Anti-virus software had to be uninstalled to get Windows updates to install.

MS vista usable but will install Windows 7 as soon as it's out.

I have a personal dislike of trial software, ended uninstalling all of it.