Bargains in the hardware basement

USA
Compusa has a refurbished home PC - the Compaq Presario s6900NX base unit - at only $580 including shipping instead of the usual $1300 pounds. What makes this PC special is that you get an Athlon64 3200+ instead of the older generation Pentium 4 or the Athlon XP. Mind you that Athlon comes with a full MB of cache instead of the Newcastle's Core 512KB. It comes with half a gig of PC3200 memory and a huge 160GB 7200rpm hard disk. Still not content, then, enjoy the smoothness of writing your DVD+R's at 8x using the embarked drive. Additionally, a 48X CDROM is provided if you want to rip some of your audio CDs.

Surprisingly, for that price, a Geforce FX 5200 graphic card with 128MB is provided. The FX5200 supports DirectX 9.0 and while it is not going to win any benchmarks, it nails its immediate competition easily - the Radeon 9200SE or the Geforce MX440.

Many connections are provided - five USB 2.0 ports, parallel ports, TVO and DVI ports, Firewire - you name it, the s6900NX has it. Other communication tools provided include a modem and an Ethernet card. The computer is build around an Asus nForce 3 150 based motherboard with integrated AC97 6-channel audio and two free PCI slots. Of the three external bays available, none of free whule one out of two internal bays are free. The only software available is the Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. And before I forget, a floppy is also provided. The next cheapest similar system was a $679 system on ebay without Windows OS and with a CD Burner. Grab this one while it is still available.

UK
Last time we had a deal - the Orite VC3210 from Aria, the guys there stealthily upgraded the price from £49 to £79 on the same day, not a good way of making business.... Just keep us informed if the same happens this time around.

You won't get cheaper than that. The Umax Astrapix 640 is a 3.2MP CMOS sensor which uses hardware interpolation to reach five megapixels. Its price is only £38+VAT, grab some while you can. The Astrapix 640 has an onboard memory of 16MB and has a SD slot. Apart from that it can record video movies in AVI mode - 320x240 at 15fps. Four AAA batteries are needed and the camera will connect to your PC on a USB port. The camera is sold under the Yamada brand. I am currently using the Astrapix 550 camera which seems to be better than that but at a higher price.

The Astrapix 640 has a 4x Digital Zoom, saves to a JPEG format and has a 1.5" TFT LCD display. Furthermore, it is compatible with both Mac and Windows and Linux drivers are present on the net as well. Qualitywise, well, you can't expect it to beat cameras with better lenses or optical zooms. Samples of images taken using Umax Astrapix digital cameras can be found here.

Finally, a web search brought forward some interesting facts. The camera is a twin sister to the Orite VC3240. The latter boasts a 1/2in Omnivision 3610 Progressive CMOS, Genius 5 Glass - 5G with ME shutter. It has a built-in Microphone and records in 8KHz and 8 bit. Last interesting bit, it has a TV Out so that you can view your photos and videos on your telly.

France
It is a very difficult task to beat LDLC's prices on its Biostar iDEQ cube. At €149, it is very cheap indeed - the next cheapest at topachat costs €50 more. The iDEQ 200V is a mini barebone based on a KM400 motherboard with two DIMM slots. The graphics controller - Via Unichrome - is integrated but an AGP port is provided. Additionally, one PCI slot will make sure that you do get good value for money. What's more, you get a 5.1 sound channel module - Cmedia CMI 9739A, with SPDIF IO, two Firewire and four USB 2.0 ports. Two SATA and two IDE connectors are provided. Three bays are provided with one 200W PSU powering all the components. A custom heat sink assembly is provided not unlike Shuttle's ICE. Overclocking is supported but it will be done at the expense of the system's temperature and internal noise. From a user's perspective, it seems that the iDeq 200V is even more silent than Shuttle's machine. Cables are well laid inside and SATA cables are even provided. You will be able to place large video cards inside, like a Radeon 9700 or a Geforce Ti 4200.