Special Ebay Hardware Buys

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.

From towns to dried mud and rotten bananas, you can find almost everything on ebay. For our fellow readers however, ebay is the perfect place for the refurbished or second hand bargains - forget about new items here - and hard to find components.

On Ebay UK, bitzotech offers some interesting deals. With nearly 4,500 customers in the past few years, it has specialised in refurbished parts. One of the products that caught my eyes is actually a bundle costing only £45 all inclusive. The MSI XP KT3 Ultra motherboard bundled with a Hercules ATI Radeon 8500 graphic card beat similarly priced solutions from PC Chips or others, hands down . The KT3 Ultra 2 is based on the KT333 chipset and supports Athlon Processors up to 2600+ - 266MHz FSB. On top of that, it has three memory slots, one AGP 4X slot, five PCI and one CNR slot. The rest is pretty standard - four USB ports, 5.1 and integrated Realtek-powered sound which supports Dolby and DTS decoding. The motherboard is well laid out with plenty of space around the socket. If you are on a budget, hate integrated board and need a motherboard from a brand name, then you can't go wrong with the MSI board. The board comes with a 30 day warranty and complete with the retail box. The Hercules ATI Radeon 8500 card has 64MB DDR memory and was one of the most sought after graphic card some two years ago.

It has shown its age but still does manage to beat handily almost all entry level cards around including the likes of the Radeon 9200se or the Geforce FX 5200. For the price, I will assume that it is the FDX8500LE which is slightly less powerful than the 8500. It features a 250MHz core, HyperZ II and Smartshader technology and a hardware DVD decoder. Memory is set at 240MHz, slower than the 275MHz of the normal 8500. For those looking for DVD playback, the excellent Rage theater will help even the slower processors. Largely on par with the Geforce3 Ti 200, you won't regret investing in it. All in all, the bundle easily tops all offers available at this price be it from nForce2 motherboards or for others due to its sheer specs and for its performance.

On ebay.com, you will find 10 Compaq Ipaq computers for $1250. These machines use Intel Pentium III 800Mhz processors, have 128MB memory and 10GB hard disks. They all have onboard network card, sound and graphics. On top of that, they have 2 USB ports but no OS, monitors, modem or CDROM drive. Keyboards and mice are included. All in all, they would be ideal for someone looking to start an internet cafe or for those looking to build a cheap mini supercomputer à la Beowolf using commodity hardware and software and using standard technology such as Ethernet and IDE. Thei small size make it easy to store them in a small cupboard. This particular iPaq desktop features traditional legacy desktops. It improves on maintenance since it elimites ISA/PCI slots and focuses on USB only. The innovative Compaq Multibay enables hot swapping of slimline drives but at a cost.

An Athlon 1.4GHz processor is still a good deal even though it is a little bit outdated. On Ebay.fr, one laptop based on this chip is on sale for 699 Euros, less than £400+VAT. It strongly ressembles one member of the Desknote family from ECS, the A929 v2.0. It has 256MB memory, a 14.1" TFT screen capable of displaying XGA, a 40GB hard disk drive, a DVD-ROM/CDRW combo - 8x24x10x, a fax modem, 802.11b Wireless Lan and Wired LAN thanks to the SIS961. It does not have a floppy disk drive though but with four USB 2.0 ports and S-Video TV-out connector, it does provide good upgradability. Soundwise, the Deskbook offers a headphone jack, one mic-in, SPDIF output and AC97 sound compatibility handled by an ALI M1535+ controller. Two high quality stereo speakers are available. No Operating system though and Shared memory for Video - through a SIS740 chipset. The latetr has a built in SIS315 graphic core supporting AGP4X and TV out function via the SIS301LV chipset. Interestingly, it offers two year warranty. Unlike some other desknote, it comes with a Li-Ion battery meaning that it will have a fairly good autonomy. The laptop weighs in at 3.18Kg but is quite sturdy and its black casing will fit a professional environment.

Another laptop special from ebay.com.sg, an laptop is on bid as from S$ 999, less than £250+VAT. In USA, the same laptop is on sale for more than $2000. For that you get an IBM X22 laptop with a Pentium III-M 800MHz, 256MB memory, a 20GB hard disk, a 12.1" XGA TFT screen with an ATI Radeon Mobility graphic chip with 8MB dedicated memory, PCMCIA, LAN and a compact flash modem, 2 USB and serial ports. Even more interesting is that the battery is still fully functional holding up to three hours of charge and warranty going to August 2005. Finally, you get Windows XP and a wireless 802.11b card. The notebook is infact a sub laptop with a titanium casing, only 3.5Lb and no floppy. Called the Cadillac of Laptops, it is viewed by many as one of the better sublaptops on the market even though it features a Pentium III laptop. As someone said, you never get fired for buying an IBM. µ