Special US hardware buys: Part 1

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.

The Fujifilm A340 is a graceful 4MP digital camera camera at a rock bottom price. It would normally sell at $199.99 but tigerdirect has it on $179.99. But that's not all, for a limited time, you can get a free - after rebate of course, three of them - C84 Epson coloru printer. The camera is classified as an entry level one although its specs do not say so. it has a 3x optical coupled with a 1.7x digital zoom. Its LCD monitor is a 1.5in TFT one and a 16MB xD-Picture card is included. The camera does not have internal memory on its own.

The maximum image resolution achieved is 2272x1704 pixels. Image Format supported is JPEG only rather than RAW or TIFF for example. The camera can also record small 320x240pixel AVI movies. Pros include its simplicity of use while its USB 2.0 interface will ensure that movies and photos alike are quickly transferred to your PC. The only memory card supported though is the newer xD format which is more expensive than other ones.

When compared to its predecessors, it offers an improve power consumption, more intuitive controls as well as faster operation times. As you might guess then, it id destined for novices rather than for semi professionals looking for more control. Steve Digicam says of it, "the A340 will make a good choice for those who want an inexpensive 4.0 megapixel camera that performs well outdoor. Its 4M/Fine images can produce high-quality 8x10-inch prints".

As for the colour printer, it might not be the best one around but the C84 sure whips some entry level colour printers. It features borderless, 5760x1440 dpi inkjet printing at a speed of up to 22ppm in black and 12ppm in colour. It has both parallel and USB connectivity for maximum compatibility as well as individually replaceable ink for those to add economical flexibility. The C84 is also compatible with the new Durabrite range of ink which yields rich and vibrant colour and is fade resistant as well.

Cnet was so impressed with it, it received an 8/10. The printer is said to be economical on ink, very fast as well as being smaller than some of its predecessors. printer ehads though are not replaceable and might lead to clogging. Thumbs up though.

Also on ebay, that little gem, literally. The MSI MEGA (MSI Entertainment and Gaming Appliance) 651. This unit comes with a small form factor Pentium 4 400/533 FSB motherboard, stylish solid aluminum case, power supply, specially designed processor heatsink, 6-in-1 Card Reader, on board modem and remote control. Add your CPU, RAM, drives, and TV capture card to build the Ultimate Home Theater PC. Specs are as follows, support for 400/533Mhz FSB P4 processors, SIS651 chipset, two DIMM sockets, one AGP4x and one PCi slot, four USB2.0 as well as two Firewire ports, onboard modem and an integrated Realtek ALC650 sound chip. The MEGA 651 also has a Realtek LAN NIC onboard as well as two SPDIF ports. The unit is brand new and comes with 12 months of warranty on parts and labour. The PSU is a little feeble at 200W and might not be advisable to use with a powerful graphic card. Before I forget, you also get a very stylish FM tuner and a radio antenna bundled in. The price of the unit, £125 here.

On my right, a quad opteron server encased in a 2U chassis. It features four AMD Opteron 844 running at 1.8GHz with one full MB of cache. The motherboard used has four PCI-X slots as well as two GbE ports and one additional Intel Dual GbE LP Lan card. You also get four Corsair Samsung 1GB sticks, two Maxtor 18.3GB 15000 RPM SCA hard disks configured in RAID-0 as well as a 700W PSU.

The whole thing for a cool $7000. The price includes three year parts overnight replacement, system assembly and burn-in as well as a slew of other things. For your information, the four Opteron processors cost a cool 725 while the Quad Opteron board costs at least $1542 bringing the total of those five components to around $4,500. Quite a feat. On my left though lies another even more formidable beast, an Octo Xeon system.

The Dell PowerEdge 8450 comes with eight Xeon 900MHz Processors. They are mounted in a 7U chassis with three 750W hot swappable PSU's. At $6250, they cost even less than you thought, especially when you factor in those eight processors, each coming with 2MB of cache. The unit price of each is $489, bringing the total to nearly $4000.

As for the motherboard, I haven't even found it on the internet. In addition, you get two bay hot pluggable SCSI backplanes, two 36GB 10,000RPM Ultra 320 SCSI hard disk, 6GB ECC SDRAM, a top of the range PERC 64-bit PCI Dual Channel Ultra160 SCSI RAID controller with 128MB cache, a pair of Symbios Dual Integrated Ultra-2/LVD SCSI controllers, Intel Dual Port Pro 100+ server ethernet adapter and last but not least, 90 day warranty. The unit is refurbished as you might guess. A New Quad Xeon processor with Xeons 2GHz cost more than twice the price with the same configuaration. Grab it here if you have the money, the space and a 208V socket. µ