While Medion's buy-in-bulk-sell-for-cheap business ethos will frustrate smaller computer manufacturers looking to put their stamp on the market, consumers will see its sporadic price-sensitive offers as prime bargain material.

The latest cheapy to hit the street is the incredibly priced Medion MIM 2220, which is only available through Woolworths and Medion's online shop.

At £399.99, it's amazing that Medion has actually been able to make a profit at this price. However, the trade-off for the buyer is a collection of lower-specified components.

For example, at the slow-beating heart of the MIM 2220 is an Intel Pentium M 735A processor that runs at a clock speed of 1.7GHz.

Then there's a wimpy 256MB of DDR2 Ram (that can be expanded to 1GB) and a 40GB hard disk that will cater for only the smallest of multimedia desires. In fact, it's only just powerful enough to run what Windows Media Center has to offer.

There's no dedicated graphics card, as Medion has instead opted for Intel's onboard graphics.

Let's not kid ourselves though, this is a £400 notebook and nobody can expect it to perform like the latest and greatest. So what exactly are its uses?

Well, if all you want to do is browse the web, write emails, tinker with office documents and burn some DVDs, the MIM 2220 will be perfectly capable.

It comes with a multi-format DVD-writer, 802.11g wireless and the usual array of sockets; three USB, FireWire, VGA out, TV out, modem, Ethernet, headphone/microphone ports.

The keyboard and track pad are standard fare and nothing to write home about, while the 15.4in WXGA screen is pretty flimsy and lacks high-contrast colours or anti-glare features.

Along with Windows Media Center Edition, it comes with Microsoft Works 8.5, Cyberlink PowerDVD 6, Nero Burning Rom 6 and Recode 2-DE; trial versions of Office and eTrust Antivirus are also thrown in.

By visiting a special Medion website, users will also be able to customise the notebook's lid with their own photograph for £45.

Although this notebook lacks power, it still represents good value and will appeal to light computer users or students wanting a computer to do research and write essays on.

An additional TV tuner must be bought to make use of Media Center's PVR features, though.

Also consider:
Hi-Grade Ultinote D6000_1602
Intel's new Core 2 Duo processor powers this portable Media Center

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