Wednesday's Daily Buys [Er, it's Tuesday Desiree]

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. µ

What a laudable initiative from AMD then, to auction five Prescott survival kits on Ebay and give the receivings to a Charity - in this case Family Eldercare. Could have been Ferrari, but caritas begins at home, init? Two hundred of those kits were manufactured and as you may guess, they have gathered a lot of attention. Gosh, even the INQ has written about them weeks ago!! The kit includes an oven mitt to protect you from the heat generated by the Prescott processor, a USB fan to keep you cool, a pair of ear plugs to mitigate the noise generated by the Prescott cooling fans, A CD to back up your files just in case your hard disk gets contaminated - currently shipping versions of Prescott do not have virus protection technology enabled. Other things that might be included in version 2 of the box includes a stick-on badge "Slightly cooler than the Sun" or "Dying breed, please conserve", a broken thermometer, a music CD containing the twelve best Prescott Fan tunes. Also included are 32 bit blue candies Anyway, it is only humour for a good cause. I cannot wait for Intel to launch something similar say, on the K6 family. AMDzone, which was able to review one of those kit some times back suggest tat a similar Survival kit for the Apple PowerMac G5 2.5Ghz might include a wetsuit, squeegee, special waterproof turtleneck, and a one use disposable time machine to the year 1984". Currently bids for the Prescott survival kit are at $136.61.

One Inquirer reader pointed me to Creative Labs' refurbished products webpage and I was quite surprised at some of the prices there. Not only is VAT included on all prices, but delivery is free and with parcel tracking. For the benefit of our readers, Creative's refurbished products and their fantastic prices will be covered over a few days. For £34.90 all inclusive, Creative is selling the 3DBlaster FX5200 PCI featuring the entry level GeforceFX 5200 aka NV34, the 0.15 micron, 45 million transistor little brother to the FX5900 and the likes. With 128MB DDR memory running at 400MHz and a core speed of 250MHz, it surpasses by a significant margin similar offerings at this price from ATI. With DirectX9.0 support, 4 pixel per clock rendering engine and Nvidia's CineFX engine, anyone aspiring to play even latest games at reasonable resolution will be satistied.

On top of that, the FX5200 PCI features a integrated TV encoder and has a TV Out. Performancewise, the 3DBlaster 5200 is one of the most powerful PCI contenders around. Even if this interface has fallen into oblivion, many older computers - those without AGP - will get a welcomed boost with it. Unfortunately, there is no confirmation whether it has a 64-bit memory path or a 128-bit memory path.

Maxdata might not be a well known brand in UK, but it is mighty powerul in Europe and in Germany especially. Marcopoly.com has one of its laptops - the M-Book 1200X - on sale for €959.90 with free shipping. (roughly equivalent to £540+VAT). For this money, you get a Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, 256MB system memory with up to 64MB to be shared with the S3-Unichrome graphics module - hence it is an easy guess that the sub system is managed by a VIA Chipset, probably a KM400 - a 40GB hard disk drive, four USB 2.0 ports as well as PCMCIA, Firewire and parallel.

But the three really interesting bits added are a multi card reader, a 15-inch TFT screen, quite a feat at this price and a DVD-writer on top of that. Windows XP Home and Works 7.0 are the only two software bundled with that laptop and it also comes with the usual modem and network card. It is heavy though at nearly 3.5KG and will not win any price for sheer sexiness but the overall impression that follows this laptop is one of conservatism. Note that it has no floppy disk drive and no casing but the price does include one year onsite warranty and one year return to base warranty. The nearest configuration obtained in the UK with a slower CPU and minus the DVD writer was a £565+VAT laptop. Anyone find something similar, just mail me the link.

Someone in Hardwarezone.com's classified ads section is flogging an 18-months old Olympus E10 digital camera, the latest one featuring the "pixel mapping" firmware. The item comes in its original package with lens hood and cap, software CD, documents and manuals and remote control as well as a 16MB Smartmedia card. For s$750 - around £200+VAT and debatable - , it seems to be quite a bargain. The E10 is built like a tank and cost around $2000 back in December 2000 when it was introduced. It featured some exciting specs like a fixed 4X optical zoom lens with real mechanical zoom and fly by wire focusing, a true viewfinder and last but not least, it was the first true four megapixel digital camera available. For a price slightly more than an interpolated four megapixel camera, you could get yourself the real thing. Being classified as a Digital SLR - Single Lens Reflex - Camera, in other words, as a prosumer item, just beneath the professional thing. For an elaborate explanation of the SLR technology, point your cursor to [http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/photo_world/kumon/01e.htm]. Amongst other things that separate this man's toy from boy's ones are a compact Flash/PCMCIA type two slot, a sturdy aluminium chassis and a heavy body - more than 1 KG, an impressive array of features and settings and finally the ability to store image in RAW format with a 10-bit color depth. It would not be fair to judge that camera on those few lines. An ecstatic buyer wrote that "it is a serious photographic tool, and many serious photographers are going to see this camera as the next logical step in their digital photography evolution. Pro features, four megapixel images, solid construction, and cutting edge design for two thousand bucks is going to sell a lot of E10's."

That ecstatic buyer needs to go back to school, that is if he's got there yet, in terms of her or his apostrophes, that is! µ