Buy a $30 phone PDA

UK
Tired of sitting in front of your beige mini tower PC? Sick of waiting for Windows XP to boot? Upgrade your Pentium II to a Quad Xeon machine, the Compaq Proliant 6500. Granted you would probably need Windows 2000 Advanced Server to ever play on it but with an impressive list spec list, you surely would try Linux on it, wouldn't you. Of course, it is an auction being currently held on ebay here. At the time of writing, it is being offered for £112 only. You get four Xeon P3 500MHz, most importantly, each CPU features two MB of cache.

You also get 1GB of Reg ECC memory, a Compaq Smart Array 3200 RAID controller with 56Mb cache and a battery backup. The storage is complemented by a 18.2Gb SCSI hard disk, hot pluggable of course. Want more information to salivate? You get four hot plug Redundant PSU and four redundant fans, a Netelligent 10/100TX PCI UTPO controller, Compaq diags, floppy and CDROM. You will have to add VAT and postage to the price afterwards. And yes, you would probably store that baby under your table rather than on it.

For your information, that same system has been tested here at webhostingtalk and it seems to handle web queries much much better than most system in the same price bracket - as one could have guessed.

USA
Looking for a cheap PDA and a cheap cellular? I mean very cheap. The Kyocera QCP-6035 might be what you want. It is a Smartphone based on the Palm OS 3.5 and basically is a Palm Vx with an antenna. Same 8MB memory, same screen size. It's about one inch taller and half a inch thicker than the handhelds. You get all the goodies that are normally associated with the oder generation PDAs like the Address, Datebook, memo pad, to do and also a welcomed Voice recording option.

The flip pad covers the large touch screen. it is not compatible out of the box with Mac and is hard wired to Sprint PCS cellphone network. At $29.99 though it does make a cheap PDA. If yourself or your friends are capable of unlocking that celllphone, then you will have got yourself quite a bargain. Surpluscomputer says of it that it is a little bit sluggish and lacks some Palm hardware add-on compatible with that smartphone.

Another product that might get your head turning is the Yo Fun 100 MP3 player. It is a versatile MP3 player which includes 128MB memory. At $32.99, it is quite affordable and uses only one AA battery. As you might guess, the player can also be used as a mobile storage. It is build by Kaser corporation and though it is cheap and simple to operate, it seems to have a buggy firmware - which can be upragded nonetheless - no backlight or belt clip. Compatible with MP3 and WMA, it does have a SD/MMC slot. Surprisingly this model can sync with MS Outlook, at least according to Surpluscomputers' website.

Singapore
If you want to surf the Internet in Singapore, then you might buy yourself a Inet.Box which is a rebadged Teknema Internet TV licensed to Daewoo. At S$28, you get a wireless keyboard and a remote control and for those who want to dabble in some experiments, it is the ideal ground. Bsasically, it is a set-top box that was built more than seven years ago. The unit has a parallel printer port and other useful ports. It seems that the unit is not ISP-locked and that you can used it with basically all ISPs. In a nutshell, you can connect it to your television and access the internet from your armchair or your couch.

The main problem that may arise comes from the fact that you are viewing webpages on a TV screen and that some pages might not appear properly. Also the modem speed is limited to 33.6Kbps. You can get more information about this model by directing your mouse to here. Still if you want to buy a cheapo gift for your grand parents so that they can go on the internet. The unit is sold in Singapore by Cash.

France
Saint Song Latte. Quite a strange name for a computer product. It is a barebone PC which is competing for the role of the world's smallest P4 computer. It is powered by a SIS651 chipset and as such comes with the integrated SIS305 graphic module. It can accommodate up to two DIMM memory slots but without any space for PCI or AGP cards. It also has an integrated AC97 compatible sound module plus a modem as well as four USB ports, two Firewire ports and Ethernet LAN.

You won't be able to plug in standard hard disk - only 2.5-inch hard disks will do. Also, there is only one 5.25-inch bay free and a feeble 120W power supply. On the plus side, it does support hyperthreading, S-Video, SPDIF ports, TVO and is easy to carry around. The demanded price? €149 at LDLC. The need for such a system however is hampered by the availability of cheaper laptops with potentially better performance. Good only in certain cases. µ