Sunday's Daily Hardware Buys

WHY HASN'T Sony made more of the Minidisc, the floppy disc replacement, long long ago? Any idea, just mail me with your comments.

UK
Imagine that you have just enough money to buy yourself a socket A motherboard and left with just enough money to buy yourself a decent processor. Asrock has come forward with a model which allows you to upgrade your socket A motherboard to a socket 754 one. Unfortunately, only one Asrock motherboard, the Asrock K7 Upgrade 880+ allows it. At £29.62+VAT, it is not expensive.

Buying this one and a AMD Sempron 2300+ processor will cost you only £68 VAT included. The board features a KT880 chipset which supports DDR400 and Dual Channel technology. The rest of the specs list is fairly standard. Four DIMM slots supporting 4GB memory in all. On top of that, the motherboard has three PCI slots as well as two AGP8X slots, one for the socket A on the board itself and one for a daughterboard which we will see later on. On top of that you get a CMedia CMI9761 audio module which is 5.1 capable. The Cmedia solution is probable the worst one, lagging behind solutions offered by Realtek, VIA and Intel.

Other spec info include Ethernet LAN ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two SATA connectors supporting RAID 0/1 and JBOD. You also get two ATA connectors supporting four IDE devices. One intriguing thing also is the size of the BIOS, 4MB, compared to the usual 2MB. Last but not least, you get the associated overclocking goodies provided with all Asrock motherboards. Asrock has a Flexible'n'Easy CPU upgrade interface using the Asrock 754Bridge upgrade module available at SpotonUK for only £20.56+VAT making a socket 754 upgrade from only £50.16+VAT.

Basically it is a daughterboard that plugs into a specific slot on the motherboard. It is powered by a K8T800 chipset and has its own DIMM slots. Moreover, it supports Hypertransport and AMD Cool and Quiet technology. Also nothing prevents you from overclocking it. Finally, OCWorkbench has tested it here and says that Asrock plans to release a socket 939 upgrade for your socket A. One of the most important aspects that might get improved is the availability of compatible motherboards. Should the idea be extended to other brands, it will prove to be an absolute winner and a cash cow. µ

France
Wanna buy a cheap but powerful lappy in France, then you do have some choice. On my right you have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo K7600 featuring the AMD XP-M 2600+ with 256MB memory, a 30GB hard disk, a CDRW/DVD combo and best of all, a large 15in XGA LCD display. There is no floppy disk drive though and the video card is a lousy S3 Prosavage 32MB one with a TVo. Chipset used is a Via KN266 one which provides LAN and Sound function as well as video. You also get four USB 2.0 ports, a 56K modem, a single PCMCIA Windows XP Home with SP1, MS Works 7.0 and integrated speakers. Otherwise, the K7600 seems to be pretty much what you would expect from an entry level laptop. As an end note, it comes with a Li-Ion battery and weighs in at 2.9Kg only.

On my right, you have the still unnanounced Acer Aspire 1355LM 30 which features all the goodies present in the Amilio K7600 plus one notable plus - it does come with a dual format DVD writer. On the minus side, it is almost 1Kg heavier and has a more conventional NiMH battery giving it an estimated battery life of 60 minutes, if you are lucky enough.

Basically though, it means that you have to choose between better mobility and less shoulder pain versus the flexibility of a DVD writer. µ

USA
If you can live with some of its shortcoming then you will love the Polaroid Juke Jam PDP 600. It is twice the thickness of a normal iPod thanks to the 2.5in hard disk used. But it overcomes this shortcoming by the mere fact that it comes with a 20GB hard disk compared to lesser amounts. Also the PDP600 costs a shockingly low $157 at ecost which is substantially less than what you would expect from Apple for example. The 20GB iPod retails for almost twice the price at $294.

Bear in mind that if you do not like the supplied earphones, nothing prevents you from getting a free Sennheiser HD 437 headphone or a MX300 earbuds. And as most readers here know, Sennheiser is nothing to wink at. User interface and ease of use score highly in the list of things to like with the PDP600. You might not love the weight and size, but you sure will love the exhorbitantly large screen - 42x61mm,the simple search tool as well as the buttons and the small joystick. It uses a USB2.0 port which move data at a not-so-slow 2.5MB/s.

The battery life though is a complete let down with a fully charged 1400mAH battery capable of only five hours although a Li-Ion battery. It supports MP3 and WMA formats and yes it does have a Digital Radio Tuner from which you can record. You can also record from the line in and it can also act like a voice recorder. Other interesting stuff include Mac/PC compatibility and a 16MB anti shock buffer.

Moreover, a firmware upgrade as well as some tools are available here. Now if you can grab one of those IBM 80Gb 2.5in hard disk with a 8MB bufer at only $132 from here. you would get four times the storage of the iPod for the same price. A good deal. µ