Sunday's 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. Also, yesterday, I misspell gumtree.com website's address... Sorry for that slip.

UK
This must be the cheapest 21-inch monitor in the UK at £33.19+VAT. ACcomputerwarehouse.com is selling this superb Cornerstone P1500 monitor. It is a B-grade item which means that they might have slight cosmetic damage (such as security tags removed), not cleaned or very slight scratches on the screen but which do not affect the function of the monitor, the stand is supplied but not the power lead. The P1500 is part of the Cornerstone's professional range and is indeed a very capable monitor going up to 1600x1200 pixels @ a rock stable 80hz. Novice graphic designer will love its 0.22mm dot pitch while its dural input monitor will definitely allow those who want to connect two computers to a screen without using a KVM. As for most monitor of this category, the screen is anti-glare/reflective and coated with anti static material. Finally, digital controls allow you to control precisely display parameters. Note however that the monitor is very heavy at 36Kg and if you do not collect it, the final price including P&P brings the total cost to £66. An Epinion user says of it that "after having used the monitor day in and day out for over a year and a half I realize that this is truly an excellent purchase. I couldn't give it a higher recommendation". µ

US
Over at Newegg, they have a Gigabyte K8VT800M motherboard for only $35 (around £20+VAT), which is probably the cheapest Athlon 64 motherboard available anywhere in the world. Even though it is a refurbished model, it has some pretty good specs. First of all, its size: it sports a Micro ATX form factor, pretty impressive for such a new socket. Then the technology: based around the Via K8T800 chipset, it has two DIMM slots, four IDE connections, two SATA connectors, 1 AGP slot and three PCI slots. Ports of aplenty with more than 15 including eight USB 2.0 and two Firewire. Interestingly, the K8VT800M has two 4MB flash ROM bios and surprisingly no integrated graphics. Moreover, it has integrated 5.1 channel sound (supporting Jack Sensing Function) and LAN courtesy of Realtek. Furthermore a post in a thread in Hardocp mentions that later Gigabyte motherboards (including this one) might have hidden chipset features, while the web has unfortunately apparently no reviews of this board. The K8VT800M might be the right component to start building your budget Athlon 64 rig. I frankly did not think that 64-bit computing is going to be called budget so soon. µ

Singapore
The Microstar MSI X52AP SATA Combo Drive is gradually appearing in Singapore. It is a 52x24x52x+16x Writer available at S$ 105 in most shops. It features changeable multi-face panels, ABS (Anti-Bumping System) Technology, Serial ATA interface (black, silver and blue), Superlink to prevent buffer underrun and a 2MB Buffer together with Hyperguard to reduce coasters. As you have probably noticed, the X52P is perhaps the first non-hard disk SATA peripheral. Hence, jumper setting is no longer needed and airflow inside the systm is much improved. On top of that it supports Mount Rainier technology which makes it natively drag-and-drop compatible with Windows XP. Lastly, the drive is noticeably smaller than other similar optical devices which allows it to slot into small spaces (SFF for example). Another interesting feature is the Live Update 3 application thourgh which your components can be updated. Mind you though that it is not compatible with all chipsets and since it is a RPC-II DVD-ROM drive, the number of times you may change regional code setting is limited to four. µ

France
Portables.org has a Compaq Armada 1570 laptop for sale at € 299 euro, around £170+VAT). Powered by a Pentium MMX 200Mhz processor, it has 32Mb EDO memory, a 2GB hard disk, a 12.1-inch passive matrix colour screen with a 2MB graphics controller, a CDROM drive and floppy disk drive. Moreover, it has a 56K modem, Nickel Metal Hydride battery and Microsoft Windows 95 OS. No LAN or USB ports though .The laptop will be ideal for the student short on budget. Website browsing will probably be painfully slow while Office applications should be limited to 10-year old software like Office 95 or Corel Draw 4. µ