£129 17-inch TFT monitors, Altec Lansing speakers... and more

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UK
Aria has done it again. It has lowered the price of their best selling 17-inch TFT screen to a shade under £129+VAT. This is substantially less than what many competitors charge for their 15-inch screen. The Arianet Premium-Plus TFT silver has two inbuilt speakers and feature a refresh rate of 16ms, ideal for those gamers out there as well as a 0.264mm dot pitch.

Its low price means that it makes more sense to buy two of those than a single 19-inch TFT screen. It has a resolution of 1024x1280 pixels, so that coupling a pair of these would give you a virtual desktop spanning over 2560x1024 pixels, ideal for Digital Video or Spreadsheets. The Premium Plus can be wall mounted and carries a three year warranty - it is a standard class 2 panel, meaning that it must have more than three dead pixels or five dead sub pixels to be classified as faulty. The LCD panel has an industry standard brightness of 260cd/m2 and a contrast of 400:1.

Its silvery finish will do no wrong whether in a posh office or in your lounge. Connection type is a standard D-Sub. Buy one or two if you can and enjoy the ride. Even you miss out on this one, then you can get this one from Microdirect which is more or less the same as Aria's. The MD L1715 costs £129.25. Furthermore, the screen can apparently be rotated and tilted. Last but not least, get a 1.5% off using rpoints.com to bring the total to £127.31+VAT.

USA
One free advert for one of the most user-friendly American company. Computergeeks has launched a new way of selling exceptional bargains. There are four periods each week where you can realise some serious savings. The first one is the daily Green Light where prices on selected products drop for a limited time only. You never know when these specials will be posted and how long they'll last. So basically, the best way to do it is to visit their website as often as you can. All specials will have limited quantities, when you see the green light, just buy as fast as you can. Along the Green Light, there is also the Midnight madness on Mondays 11:00pm to 03:00am, Thursday Sunrise Savings from 03:00 to 7am and Sizzling Sundays from 16:00 to 20:00, all of which are US Pacific Time hours of course.

And guess what, Computer Geeks are one of the rare online US companies who include international shipping as standard. Many other IT companies all too often consider international buyers like an annoyance rather than a boon. Thumbs up to Computergeeks.
If you are an Ebayer looking to get a quick good deal. Try this one. A $650 laptop is not supposed to be cheap but this one is a real steal.

HottixUSA is selling a used Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, apparently in perfect working order and great cosmetic condition - one little scratch on the outside, no scratch inside, or on the screen, no dead pixel. On the inside, you get a Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor - No Celeron, 1GB memory, a 40GB hard disk drive and a DVD/CDROM combo. The 15-inch XGA TFT screen is controlled by the onboard Intel 845GM chipset.

The Inspiron 1100 uses a Sigmatel C-Major chipset for Audio, a Connexand one for its modem and Broadcom as Network Controller. Other specs include two USB 2.0 ports, a PCMCIA slot, one Firewire Port as well as Windows XP home edition as well as Office XP Pro. You do also get the system Restore and Driver disks included. Even though it is supposed to be Dell's entry level laptop, it did not fail to impress reviewers at Zdnet which gave it a "very good" rating of 80%. Pity though there is no wireless connectivity.

Singapore
The Altec Lansing GT5051 is a genuine 5.1 surround sound system with a twist. The rear speakers sit on top of the front speakers, so there are no rear speaker wires to deal with - ingenious. Altec Lansing's patent-pending side-firing Surround technology enables vertical stacking because it provides the reflected surround sound that makes music or sound effects rich and immediate.

Hence you have a real 5.1 system confined to the space occupied by a 3.1 system. Other marchitectures include Dual-Mode Selector - each listening mode is specially engineered to provide outstanding performance. The use of the 6-Channel Surround Mode with a 6-channel sound card to thrill your senses with the vivid, panoramic experience of true surround sound. Use the 2/4 Channel Mode to enjoy immersive six-speaker sound from any source - CD players, MP3 players, or your standard two or four-channel sound card.

The GT5051 also has multiple input options - Connect a computer, a portable audio device, and a DVD, TV or Gaming Console all at the same time. Last but not least, it has a nice headphone jack and is provided witha remote control. The price also is affordable at S$229. µ

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