thank god we have some sensible people on this thread again !!
Now how about some green !

Also anyone who is going to buy this remember Aldi ONLY takes CASH or DEBIT CARD, so make sure you have the money on sunday !

I still have the Medion laptop (probably the first laptop Aldi sold in the US) from maybe 4 years ago (2.4 GHz). It is still working fine. I needed a new battery so I called Medion and they sent it asap. Actually, Medion was probably the first company where I didn't get the phone-runaround but was immediately connected to a live person (about a year ago). I don't know how much the battery was, but I know it was way cheaper than the battery for the Sony laptop we had before. I also broke the E on my keyboard and Medion replaced it free of charge way past warranty.
I also bought the first Aldi desktop PC which is also still going fine (replaced the video card though). Of course neither still has the specs worth mentioning, this is just to show that Medion is not crap like eMachines. I too would take a Medion over a Dell anytime.

The reason why I generally prefer Medion is because they have higher quality components and not that generic OEM crap that most HP/Dell/Compaq have. As someone mentioned before, it has a much better graphics chip than any equally priced laptop you'd find at Dell.
If you start with the cheapest Dell, change the CPU to the T5800, change Vista Home Basic to Premium and the RAM to 3 GB, you are at $699.
Now, that means you only get:
Vista Home Basic vs. Vista Home Premium
1 year warranty vs 2 year warranty
Intel X3100 vs. NVIDIA® GeForce® 9300M
160 GB HD vs. 320 GB HD
15.4" w/ 1280x800 vs. 16" w/ 1366x768
802.11g vs. Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N
2 ch audio vs. 6 ch audio
10/100 Ethernet vs. 10/100/1000 GBit
No biometric fingerprint scanner
No mouse
No bag
No numeric key pad
No HDMI out
(not a single component is better than the Medion)

The reason why Dell is in the top list is just a matter of quantity and availability, not quality.
Anyway, I don't work for Aldi or Medion, but I have two Medion computers that are good machines, I have had contact with the support which was great - so I'd recommend it. And if I had the money right now, I'd buy one.

BTW, I think the reason why they don't mention battery life is because a 16" laptop is usually not made for mobility. No "mobile warrior" would want to travel with a 16" machine so while it is a laptop, it is still more targeted at stationary users.

I am looking to buy a laptop and this seems like a decent deal. I called Medion
support and did get thru to a live person almost immediately. A very nice guy with
a British accent answered several questions about the laptop. The warranty covers
everything normally covered, and they pay shipping both ways if it needs service.
The laptop is made in Germany, buy he didn't know what chassis it was built on,
such as MSI, Clevo, etc. The main drawback in my opinion is there doesn't seem to
be much in the way of user support groups, such as there is for Asus, Toshiba, etc.
All the software on the laptop is the full versions, except for MS Office and Bulldog
Internet Security, both are trial versions, 60 days and 90 days respectively. I will
go by Aldi Sunday and look at it, but not sure I will buy. Maybe if Aldi has a good
return policy, like 30 days, I will take a chance. Thanks for the heads up on the laptop.

Anyone know the speed of the Hard Drive? , and speed of the Memory?

Ok, I just got off the phone with Medion, the memory is 800 mghz, but she could only give me a model # which I looked up and is a 5400 SATAII.

SAldridge said:Well, the Medion website says it is a Western Digital 320 GB Hard Drive, which I think is good. German Aldi has the P6612 (vs. P6611 in the US). They have a faster processor, but the rest seems to be similar. They list the hard drive as "Western Digital WD3200BEVT-22ZCT0". Nothing about the RAM speed though, just DDR2.

Interestingly, I just went to Medion and searched for P6611 and I see Bluetooth drivers (Bluetooth driver of the P6611 MD 97090 model series.) - but it doesn't say anywhere that this laptop has Bluetooth, does it? That could be a nice surprise (http://www1.medion.de/downloads/index.pl?op=detail&id=6752&type=treiber〈=us)

Bluetooth would be great. I went to the download page you mention hoping to download the manual. I was wondering if the p6611 has an empty drive bay for a second hard drive. No manual was listed, and the files are dated 10-18-08. This must be a new page, maybe for a new laptop. If it is a new laptop I wonder why it isn't Centrino 2. Why release a new laptop with older technology?

Well, it is a budget laptop nevertheless, with a sub $700 price tag. I think you get a lot for the money, and most budget/mainstream laptops don't have the latest CPU technology - if they would, who'd buy the $1000+ laptops? You get a very good graphics chip, a large hard drive and a lot of little niceties.

The European version P6612 on the other hand has the P7350 and a little more RAM - but it also costs £579.99, 799,– resp. which is $1000
I believe the 3 years warranty is some EU regulation, and it also fits the much higehr pricetag.

I tried that on the last laptop and it didn't work for me. At my 3 area stores, they were all gone fast

In my oppinion, or experience, you really have to be there when they have 1 left in stock in the specific store. I don't believe they stock much - one of the price policies.

If you don't care whether you get it or not, it's worth a gamble, just be prepared that it is very likely you don't get it...(probably depending on neighborhood)

The stores are opening soon !

Don't forget to take CASH !

Also, the Aldi 2008 TOYs will be available from next wk. These are all big brand toys.
I was going to post a seperate deal thread but some fools here just dont understand the difference between quality and quantity so I am not posting it.

Wii bundle with 4 games is a decent deal, DS is available also and wow wee dragon fly for $22 is better than RadioShack deal.

Here is some info:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9300M-GS.9452.0.html

I guess it always depends on what you are planning to use this for. You can connect it to your HDTV with the HDMI so that would be my biggest plus. It seems to play games but the latest and greatest well, but it is not a gaming laptop.