Daily hardware bargains

UK
At CPUcitystore.co.uk, you can find a very peculiar CPU, the AMD Athlon XP-M 1500+ (1.333Ghz clock speed) for sale at £25+vat, making it the cheapest AMD Athlon socket A CPU on the market. Launched in March 2003, it is based on the Thoroughbred core (128KB L1 cache and 256KB L2 cache, half that of the latest Barton core) and is an unlocked mobile processor, dissipating a maximum of 45w while consuming only 1.45v. You could expect it to be a prime candidate for overclocking and you'd be right. The multiplier (10x) and the front side bus (133Mhz) are low by today's standard. People all over the internet have tried and tested this new overclocking kid. Micromart's Jason D'Allison achieved 2.4Ghz at 1.85v. With some more exotic cooling and more tweaking, 2.5Ghz or more could possibly be achieved. Bit-tech's forum has some models having achieved 2420Mhz, grossly equating to an AMD XP 3400+. As Jason puts it, this MUST be the best processor bargain of the decade. Just grab one of these as they are available, buy a brand motherboard (Abit, Asus or Microstar) and overclock it like crazy.

France
Mistergooddeal.com has an Epson CX3200 multifunction printer for €89 (around £50+vat). It is a refurbished product but is covered by a three month guarantee. Although it is an 18-month old product, the CX3200 has some very good features: 5760x720dpi resolution, up to 14 ppm in draft and black. The printer engine use is based on the C80, the ex-top of the range printer from Epson. As for the scanner integrated, it is an A4 flat model scanning at 600x1200dpi. Although it is quite bulky, the CX3200 is build like a tank, simple to use and finds its place easily in a SOHO package. The CX3200 can be used on its own even without the computer. Moreover and perhaps more importantly, the costs of Epson consummables is one of the cheapest with the wide availability of chipped refills.

Singapore
Again on Hardwarezone's classified ads, one can find a cheapo IBM laptop (the A20m 2628) for only S$450 (around £140+vat). With a battery lasting for at least two hours, the laptop features a Mobile Intel Celeron 550Mhz with 128Kb cache onchip, 128Mb PC100 memory and a 6GB hard disk drive. The specs also include a 12.1" SVGA TFT screen powered by a 4Mb video module, a 56K modem, LAN socket as well as two PCMCIA Type II slot, a SB Pro compatible sound module supporting three audio jacks, stereo speakers and a microphone. The A20m was placed as an entry level, affordable notebook. It is slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper and weighs less than most of the newer Desknote. This IBM model would probably match entry level desknotes based around the Gigapro CPU at a much lower price.

USA
Ebay.com always has good deal over ex-top of the range servers. For example, you can get a Data General Aviion 70875-XE server for around $400. What is it? A Quad Processor featuring FOUR Pentium II Xeon 450Mhz with 512KB cache each. 512Mb memory are installed with twelve empty memory banks still available and six SCSI hard disks are present, totalling 54Gb secondary storage. Powerwise, three 400W power supplies are present and the casing seems to be able to withstand an atomic explosion. In addition, usual stuff like a CDROM, modem, floppy drive and LAN connection are present. Still more hungry? Opt for another tank-like ex-corporate server, with four Pentium III Xeon 550Mhz with 1MB cache per CPU, 2048 memory and 54Gb hard disk for £500. This one additionally comes with a Mylex SCSI RAID card, three PSU's and two LAN controllers. µ