Hardware Buys around the world

France
Whatever way you turn the figures in the storage sector, one thing remain, SCSI are at the top of the tree as far as performance is concerned. Low CPU overhead, ultra fast access time, easy daisy-chaining and high sustained transfer rate still remain in the the realm of SCSI world. The only thing that escaped it was the price. Micronov in France is selling a Seagate SCSI hard disk from the Cheetah Family with a 73Gb capacity for only €99 all inclusive. Now this equates to around £40 excluding VAT, cheaper than normal IDE in UK! It comes with a 3 month warranty and is obviously a pulled disk. The Cheetah family uses the GMR technology as well as Partial response/maximum likelihood read channel electronics to achieve excellent performance. Also the hard disk features a wide Ultra160 SCSI interface which guarantees sustained top transfer rate. This is what you want in a workstation. More importantly, it has a spin speed of 10,033 RPM with an average latency of 2.99ms only and an average seek time of 6.15ms. Obviously, the more expensive item would probably be your controller card. Storagereview has this to say on the LP model (not the LC one though). "It's also the first drive to break 50 MB/sec when it comes to sequential transfer rates? quite important to some users. That this performance comes combined with the proven technology delivered by Seagate over five successive generations makes the package even more attractive. The 73LP is an easy choice for anyone who needs top-rate performance without the constraints of a 18 (or even 36) gig limit." µ

UK
You do have some old hard disks that you would like to would like to use as hard disks or back up? Have any old CDROM drive that you occassionally use on your main computer. Or perhaps you would like to watch DVD on your lappy but do not want to fork out your precious money on an external one. What to do? Enter the one-of-its kind USB2.0 to ATAPI/IDE cable with Power Supply from Ebuyer.com, from the Extra Value range to be more precise. In a nutshell, it allows an internal IDE device to become an external device connected at USB2.0 speeds (provided of course that the client is USB2.0 enabled). At £25, it allows you to do some exciting things that as described above. It is for these reasons that it got itself a 4.5 star out of 5. Reviews were ecstatic about its ability. Recent Windows OS see it as a normal external HDD and DVD-Writing is possible. As for transfer rate, expect around 12 Mbps. It does even support Ghosting under DOS and is a dream working with its plugging in capavilities. Bear in mind though that it is only rated 1.5A. An excellent accessory overall which will allow you to swap around any internal storage component quickly and easily. µ

Computergeeks
How much can you get a 3.2 Million pixel brand name camera for? The Kodak CX4310 from the Easyshare family is being sold by computergeeks.com for $99 (around £50) and was exclusive to Walmart chain. It is a 1 yer factory reconditioned camera. It sports a maximum pixel resolution of 2080x1544, well enough for a full A4 printout of your photos. It has an optical viefinder, and 16Mb Internal memory. Also of interest is the NTSC/PAL video out. Unfortunately, you don't have any optical zoom, only a 2X digital one. The focal length is equivalent to a 35mm, has a SD/MMC slot and it comes both with a flash and a LCD screen. It is a very stylish camera which feels and acts like more expensive competitors at twice the price. You can also buy the docking station to facilitate image printing and transfers. You can get some samples of the camera on pbase.com. Accuview says of it that it "represents an excellent value as an entry level digital camera. It focuses on the things that count most, taking high quality photos that are rich in color and accurate to the eye." µ