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Cheap 16X DVD writers, cheapish 18-inch TFT, cheapo IBM laptop

2 October 2004
DABS HAS some seriously good deals in the pipeline. Just subscribe to their weekly newsletter to get a taste of it. For example. they are selling a 1GB SD memory card for a mere £46.80+VAT. Another astute deal is that 16x Dual Format DVD writer from Asus at £42.55+VAT. Supporting Flextralink buffer underrun and flextraspeed optimal writing, it provides with bleeding edge technologies at prices that undercut its nearest rival by a hefty 15%. In fact, it is the only UK DVD writer with these specs under £50 all inclusive. It includes writing software and yes, it is dual layer.

Another head turning deal comes from ebuyer. It is selling an 18in LCD TFT for only £199.99 which is a landmark price. 18-inch provides you with slightly more viweing surface than the old fashioned 19-inch CRT monitor. The GNR EZ18a is a ground breaking product. Coming with a surprising three year on-site exchange. It is very cheap indeed - you can get two of them for the price of one similar HP 18-inch TFT monitor for example or if you want you can pay nearly twice the price to get the same item.

Nonetheless, its specs are in line with the competition - a response time of 25ms, a contrast ratio of 350:1, Maximum resolution of 1024x1280, Analog D-sub connection, an external power supply, a grey enclosure and a rather large bezel. All in all, a worthy machine. There is no review for this product on the internet but it should not be long though.

Cybermind is selling a strange looking digital camera. The Ennyah DV310 comes from a relatively unknown asian company that however manages to produce a very large range of products, ranging from Digital Cameras to Video cards and DVD writers. The DV310 has the shape of one of those trendy clamshell mobile phone except that there is no phone to speak of. It does not take much space - 57x28x95mm - and weighs next to nothing at 102g. You can therefore easily slip it into your pocket. It does however have an impressive spec list. A 3MP CMOS captor producing a 6.6 MP image file by interpolation - I know it is bad, but still it is a welcome goodie. It is complemented by a digital zoom of 8x. It also doubles as a digital video camera supporting video frame rate of 640x480pix at 30FPS in MPEG4/AVI. You have three resolutions levels for you still pictures, all of which are in JPEG. The most basic should provide you with good internet quality. There is also one 1.5in LCD display and surprise, surprise, it records file in stereo. On top of that it has a burst mode and has a SD/MMC memory slot with 16MB internally. Interface provided is USB2.0 - instead of the usual slowish 1.0 - and video out.

Quite a surprising combination for such a small digital camera which also comes with a flash and a microphone. You can see it here. Cybermind sells it for S$289 and it comes with a free 256MB SD card from Kingston.

With the launch of the 3DMark 2005 benchmark, the ATI XX00 family has had a much welcomed boost after the DOOM III debacle. In France, the cheapest X800 Pro card comes from Pani and it is the award-ladden Powercolor X800 Pro - R42-PD3B. The latter comes with 256MB GDDR3 memory, DVI and TVO ports. The card itself is quite large with a massive HSF covering the GPU and part of the memory. Its core/memory speed is 475/450. So good was it that our own Fudo tested it some time back - in July. Apparently it does ship with a very good looking bag. Most interesting is the fact that there exists some king of modding competition over the internet.

One of them, at Rage3D spans over 34 pages here. Basically, you can get the X800Pro to X800XT - enabling the remaining four pipelines through Bios and if you are daring enough to play with pencils then try the pencil mod and you might even overclock your baby to 570MHz/590Mhz getting yourself more than 13K 3dmark. Anyway, bag yourself a real deal with this card. Its 3D score even non modded is 40% more than the 9800XT it replaces and since its overclocking and modding capabilities are well known, it does make sense to invest in it. The price asked for - Eur 363 around £210+VAT. The price of a 9800Pro in the UK.

Tiger Direct is offering an irresistible bundle buy by means of the old-fashioned rebate. For only $475, get yourself a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T20 laptop and a Lexmark X1150 all in one inkjet. The latter is a fully featured 4800x1200dpi printer capable of photo quality printouts. It also doubles as a worthy 600x1200dpi printer. This opens a door of opportunities. For example, you can do colour photocopies, or send faxes. It has a USB 2.0 port as well as easy easy access buttons. The T20 on the other hand is a good old Pentium III 700MHz laptop. The CPU is a P3M which should provide you with more autonomy than others. It comes with 128MB of PC100 memory and a 12GB hard disk. On top of that you get a DVD ROM drive as well as a floppy, both of which are swappable. The integrated graphics is a Save S3 IX8+. Nothing to shout about even in Quake. It comes with 8MB memory which is just enough to use on the 14.1in LCD XGA display. Communications include an integrated modem and LAN. At 5.2Lbs, it won't be a pain on your shoulders though. However its expansiion is slightly limited. You get only one USB port and one S Video out. That's it. The OS supplied is Windows 2000. µ

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