£799.99 Powerhouse, $29.99 s478 Barebone Kit, PC G3-type casing

Check this Guide to Daily Bargains columns herebefore continuing further.

IF YOU know of any good value IT sales (auctions, rebates, one-off, clearance, surplus, classified ads) going around in the United Kingdom, France, USA or Singapore, don't hesitate to contact me, at least 24 hours before the sales end.

UK
Thanks to Gareth and Mathew for this one. Aldi is selling some IT stuff as from the 27th of December. The one that caught our eyes, literally, is a £799.99 monster. This laptop is made by Gericom and is powered by a Pentium M Processor, the 735 which runs at 1.7GHz which has a 400MHz FSB and a huge 2MB cache. It comes with 512MB of PC2700 DDR memory and a 80GB hard disk drive running at 4200rpm. What more, you get a mobility Radeon 9700 with 128MB of dedicated memory. It is attached to a 15.1-inch SXGA display which has a slim bezel and provides you with absolute visual comfort.

As a Centrino certified model, it also carries an Intel Pro/Wireless LAN chip, the 2200, which is compatible with 802.311b and g versions. The rest of the configuration is pretty standard. A four-in-one card reader, two internal speakers and one microphone. The DVD writer provided is a multiformat one capable of 4x writing on DVD+R and 2x on DVD-R. Other featires include three USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire, a PCMCIA Type II card, wired Ethernet, Line out and Mic in, S-Video etc. The software package ain't bad as well with Windows XP Home, MS Works 2004, Pinnacle Studio 8.6, DiVX Pro, Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD, Norton Antivirus and the drivers CD.

The laptop comes with 24 months warranty including pickup and delivery and 24 months all risks insurance. As for the battery life, Aldi quotes a maximum of six hours in the Mobile Mark battery test, thanks to an 8-cell Smart Li-Ion battery. The same model debutted in September at £999.99 - a £200 slump in 100 days only. To pu things into perspective, the same money buys you a Tiny laptop with a slower processor, half the memory and the hard disk capacity, an integrated graphics module and a warranty and a software module nowhere near what Aldi is proposing.

USA
Looking to build a pretty cheap computer? Just buy a CPU, hard disk and drive and plug into this dream Wintergreen Socket 478 barebone kit from Tigerdirect available at a shocking $29.99 after $140 of rebates. The barebone include almost everything for a debutant computer. It has a motherboard, a 52x32x52x CDRW drive, a modem, a 300W Power supplu, a mid tower casing, keyboard, scroll mouse and speakers. The motherboard is an ECS PM800-M2 motherboard which features the VIA PM800 chipset.

It supports, 800MHz FSB and Hyperthreading and has two DIMM memory slots, and three PCI slots plus one CNR one and four ATA device support. As it integrates everything onboard - sound, LAN and video, you don't have to add anything more. Fortunately, should you try to improve things there is an AGP slot available. The sound part consists of a Realtek solution supporting AC97 and up to six channels. Interestingly, at this price, you get two S-ATA headers, allowing you to connect two SATA drives, supporting RAID 0 and 1 and up to eight USB 2.0 ports, two of which are directly accessible from the front.

The motherboard is an mATX type, therefore, leaving ample space for air circulation. You get Nero burning software, installation guides, a bag of extra screws and a RJ11 cable. Add 256MB of Tigerdirect's Ultra PC2100 memory - at $19.99 after rebates, an Intel Celeron 2.66Ghz for $79.99 and a 60GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 hard disk drive at $39.99 after rebates, and you will probably have the best value for money entry level rig around.

France
Progestion has G3-type casing available for your PC for only €57.90. The B952 is available either in black or in silver. Like the G3 casing, it has four handles - these are in metal rather than in plastic and keep the computer well above the surface. It has four external 5.25-inch bays and one 3.5-inch - you do however get five internal such bays.

What sets it apart from other casing apart from the brushed aluminium finish is the presence of perforations in the sides of the casing to allow air to circulate while you will find dust filters inside the casing itself, which are removable and washable. Moreover, you also get s strange looking air supply plastic purple chinmey which goes on top of your motherboard. Other features include a 480w PSU, two front USB 2.0 ports, one front Firewire and audio ports, two fans and a screwless design. The casing is manufactured by MaxInPower. µ