Even more Tuesday hardware bargains

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
No sooner that I had written that thecomputershop was selling the cheapest wireless keyboard/optical mouse bundle in UK that someone sent me a link to a similar bundle from Dabs.com, about a product in their dabsvalue range, the KBS-2548RP. Though featuring PS2 ports - which after all might be a better thing - you can free one USB port. This particular keyboard has a specificity, the numeric keypad is situated on the left rather than on the right of the keyboard, so that the mouse is apparently closer to your hand. The location of the numeric keys on a conventional keyboard could cause discomfort when working for a period of time since the mouse is further to reach. Some might adopt it while others will frown at the learning curve involved.

What's more interesting is that the pack includes NiMH rechargeable batteries, six of them, which should get charged while on the move. The keyboard has 19 additional buttons including a scroll wheel on the jeyboard while the mouse has the usual three buttons. Finally, working range is far greater than mine, approximately 8 metres through four walls. Overall, reviewers are very much enthusiastic about the product. At £16.50 all inclusive, you could not get worse.

A similar product with a more traditionnal setup, an innovative rechargeable receiver and a slightly better overall getup can be purchased for £22.

Someone on Gumtree.com is looking to sell two 16" TFT LCD monitors for £198, less than you would pay for a single 17" LCD monitor. Both are IBM 9516-+BXX 16.1" monitors. That monitor features a viewable screen area slightly less than a square feet which is still more than a tradtional 17" CRT monitor. Known as the Raven black multimode monitor, it weighs only 1.1KG and features a distinctively different stand as compared to current ones. Pixel pitch is only 0.25mm while standard resolution is SXGA - 1024x1280. The 9516 supports 16 millions colors and consumes approximately 55w, pretty much for a TFT screen, via its integrated power supply. Video input is a standard analog connections. Now, it would be a nice idea to buy both and set up a dual monitor configuration with a virtual desktop over 2560x1024 pixels. Depending on These monitors are at least three years old and probably at the end of their warranty life. They are IBM products though and have most probably served in the financial or health sector and therefore can be expected to be in pristine shape.

Now a quick look on ebay.co.uk revealed the ideal card for this couple. The Quadro 4 200NVS features dual 350Mhz RAMDACs, nVidia's Multi Display technology, 64MB memory and low profile form factor as well as AGP 8x support. Two DVI-DSUB-15 connections can be easily purchased on the net. Pulled from a Compaq workstation, the 200NVS borrows most of its architecture from the NV17 family, the ill-fated Geforce 4 MX family, which preceded the 200NVS by only two months. The same card is on sale for five times more at a leading online UK store. The card in itself has a black passive heatsink and is therefore quieter than most of today's card. Since it is based on the NV17, it lacks DirectX8 funationalities and vertex shader units of Geforce 3 to 5 cards. The memory on the card is rated 6ns. Overall, judging by the only review I have found for this card from tweakers australia, it seems to be a very good entry level CAD or 3D modelling card and won a 9.5 out of ten from that website. Performance wise, it beats the Millennium G550, its nearest competitor, handily by up to 400% in some tests.

Finally, to complete this special UK edition, we fly to ebuyer.com for a used Asus motherboard. This is not any Asus motherboard. It is probably the cheapest Athlon 64 board in UK at present. At £39.39+VAT. The Asus K7V/SE deluxe is one of the latest of the Asus Athlon Family which started nearly four years back with the K7M. Like the latter, it features a VIA chipset, the K8T800 in this case, supporting five PCI slots, eight USB2.0 ports and three DIMM slots supporting both ECC and Non-ECC memory. The K8V/Se which came first in a recent group test from PC Pro. It comes with top class specs: Wi-Fi slot for optional wireless LAN, Firewire, SPDIF Audio port with six channel audio, Dual native SATA RAID functionality, Gigabit Lan courtesy of the Marvel 88E controller. Also onboard are three Asus-only features: the Bios Voice Reporter, the Intelligent Q-Fan technology and Asus Crashfree BIOS2. With this kind of stuff, the K7V would be the ideal complement to an entry level Athlon 64 CPU. µ