Sunday's Hardware Buys

UK
Someone on Gumtree.com is selling a Toshiba Protege R100 laptop for £470. The same laptop sells for a hefty £1200 in Singapore - although accompanied with a Combo Drive. In UK, prices are north of £1400. So this must be a bargain for a laptop that is hailed as the new Libretto and has only one year under its wing. It is powered by a Pentium M 1GHz and shouldered by the 855PM chipset and an Intel WiFi PC card - hence making it a Centrino Laptop. Graphics are handled by a Trident XP4m32LP graphic chip with 32MB dedicated memory and a 12.1" XGA screen. Other than that, you will find 256MB RAM and 40GB hard disk for storage.

The autonomy of the Protege R100 is slightly longer than two hours but with a total weight of 1.1 KG, this is a forgettable shortcoming. However, the laptop normally ships with a second battery - I cannot confirm if gumtree.com classified ad will include that power battery. But with it, autonomy will zoom to nearly seven hours. Designwise, the R100 is very solid - the casing is made up of magnesium. The screen is nothing short of superb with bright colors and fast response time - games will feel snappy with the help of the Trident. Notebookreview managed 47fps on QuakeIII and a 5000 3dmark 2001 points on batteries. Finally the same reviewer gives two thumbs up for the quality of the keyboard which he considers as the best laptop keyboard he ever used. The operating system provided is Windows XP Professional. Connectivity is assured by two USB 2.0, PCMCIA slots, a modem, NIC module etc. An external floppy disk drive is provided as is an external laptop case. No optical drive though. We might suggest an external USB2.0 DVD writer from BenQ available at ebuyer.com for £100.

Singapore
Fancy a two-in-one laptop for less than £500+VAT? The Prestigio T200 laptop is just that, available for S$ 1719 from d-nexus.com. It is a VIA-based laptop with a twist.... literally. Besides being the usual notebook, you can convert it in a matter of seconds in a Tablet PC. Supplied with 256MB memory and a 20GB hard disk, it is fitted with a VIA 1Ghz processor. I could not confirm whether it was a true 1GHz or one of those Gigapro 667MHz processors. Chipset used is a CLE266CE, a modified version of VIA's ageing Pentium III processor.

The chipset provides with an integrated S3 Graphics Unichrome graphics module as well as 5.1 SPDIF enabled sound. It also has integrated LAN, 56K modem, two USB 2.0 ports, twin speakers and microphone. The 14.1" screen supports XGA and as one can guess is pressure sensitive. One PCMCIA slot and one card reader are provided. The Prestigio is quite heavy at 2.4KG and thick at 3cm and would find its place at ease on a table rather than cradled in your left arm. Performancewise, don't expect the moon with the Prestigio T200. Even though it comes with Windows XP home preloaded, it would barely exceed a Pentium III 600Mhz. Last but not least, the laptop comes with a free carrying bag but does not come with any drive - floppy or optical. Anyhow, despite these limitations, the Prestigio T200 is one of the very few affordable Tablet PCs.

USA
As strange as it may sound, I never covered newegg.com, considered by many as the best online retailer. They have truly exceptional offers in their refurbished section. For example, they are selling a refurbished ECS SIS755-A socket 754 Athlon 64 motherboard for only $55 - around £26+VAT. Based around the SIS755 chipset, it features two DIMM slots, support for four ATA devices and two Serial ATA drives - which can be RAIDed. Add one AGP slot, one CNR and five PCI slots as well as eight USB 2.0 ports and you will have a very good platform for an entry level Athlon 64 "Sempron" system.

Furthermore, the SIS755-A features onboard 5.1 channel sound module and fast Ethernet LAN, both from Realtek. Performancewise, the SIS755 is/was considered as the best performer of the first Athlon 64 chipset generation which includes the nForce and VIA's chipset. Although that particular board has almost no overclocking feature, it is still very much stable and while it won't earn rave reviews, it is still as cheap as chips. Which is why tbreak says of it that "clearly, this board is not targeted towards the enthusiast who likes to overclock their system to the max or someone who wants every single feature built on the board. The ECS 755-A2 is a motherboard that provides all the essential features with good performance and great stability at a very reasonable price."

France
Ebay.fr has one of the first generation slim PC on auction, currently standing at 55 euros. The Microstar MS6215 is the perfect barebone for the cash strapped student. It is a socket 370 - FCPGA 2, supporting PIII 1.13Ghz- mini PC with a 90W power supply and has integrated sound, video and LAN - courtesy of i815e - two memory slots, two PCI slots, two PS2 ports and two USB ports are available in front.

It is delivered complete with manuals, driver CD and cables. In fact, it is a new model. Its size is really diminutive - 30x32x7.8cm only, not much larger than some photo albums. It has two 3.5" as well as one 5.25" bays but no drives at all. A good buy though. µ