Sundae's Cream'and'Easy Hardware Buys

Singapore Creative Labs has come forward with yet another iPOD wannabee music player. The Zen Touch however bears some distinctive features that sets it apart from the competition. Available at S$499, it comes with one Creative Labs Optical mouse and five free songs to be downloaded. With its 20GB hard disk, it can store up to 10,000 songs and has an incredible 24 hours battery life at 128kbps MP3 and 33% more if move down to 48kbps. The really groovy gimmick though is the touch pad control which can be used for fast scrolling.

Use an up-down movement on the horizontal touch pad to navigate through the files. Signal-to-Noise ratio is up to 97dB and it features a FM radio, voice and FM recording. USB2.0 is used for faster transfers and a four-band equalizer lets you morph your music to your will. The Zen Touch will fit in your pocket at less than 200g. The screen used is a 160x104 pixel resolution blue backlit LCD.

The Older Nomad IIc DXT200 on the other hand, costs only S$ 49 but on top of being a MP3 player, it is also sold as an English learning device and an E-dictionnary. With its LCD screem, it shows entire English lessons to assist you while learning. The progressive adjustable speaking speed and repeating mode help will please even the most reluctant language learner. You get load of other useful language learning options like cards and magazine.

Obviously, it will appeal more to Chinese learning English rather than the other way round. Also on the description list is a FM tuner with 32 preset station, 64MB internal memory and one Smart Media slot, USB interface, Voice recording, WMA and MP3 compatibility. Everything is powered using two AAA NiMH batteries provided, which allow for up to 10 hours of playback.

UK
No fear of second hand? Then try the Biostart iDEQ from Dabs. This SFF Barebone is certainly the cheapest socket 754 barebone in UK at £96.97 all inclusive, compared to a new price of more than £150. Note that the product comes in a tatty box and has been used. While manuals and software are included, it is missing the back plates and the cables. The 200P comes with a pretty impressive configuration.

An Nforce 3 150 chipset, two DDR400 slots, one AGP and one PCI slot, SPDIF I/O, two Firewire and four USB2.0 as well as loads of other IO ports. On top of that it comes with an ATA and a SATA controller, the latter supporting RAID. Audiowise, the Realtek ALC650 provides with 6-channel. Last but not least, the system has a Gigabit ethernet port. You have access to two externally available bays and one internal 3.5" bay.

Note that the SFF comes with a Linux Multimedia Player called Studio Fun. Overclocking options are above average for its category with both DDR and CPU voltage settings. AMDZone likes the look of the Biostar and is happy of the availability of space for two hard drives which makes RAID setup easy. But it has apparently more to do to improve on sturdiness and performance.

USA
The price delta between Athlon and Athlon 64 motherboards has almost disappeared. It is now possible to get a nForce 2 motherboard for $29 and a nForce 3 one for only $39. The Gigabyte GA-8K8VT800 is based on the VIA K8T800 chipset and sells retail for $88 at newegg. Far from being an entry level component, this motherboard comes in an ATX format and therefore has ample functionality onboard. note however that you get the board alone, no manual, utility CD, back plane or cables.

This is not really a problem since most geekers will have spares for these. The board comes with five PCI and one AGP slot, three DDR slots instead of the usual two, two IDE controllers and two SATA controllers - which can be RAIDed. Also in the package, eight USB ports, onboard Audio and onboard Ethernet controller. Want to instill new life in your old Athlon rig, then try to upgrade your motherboard. If like me you are still using a KT266 chipset based mobo, it does make sense to change to a nForce2 one. Biostar - again - has the M7NCD on sale for $29 only.

It is also a barebone motherboard but like the above but do come with the five PCI slots. Unlike many evolved nF2 motherboards though, you cannot change the multiplier and only three front side bus settings are provided with no increments - like a switch rather than a dial. Two DIMM slots are provided and the rest is pretty standard. CNR slot, four EIDE devices support, six USB, 6-channel sound, LAN, CPU and AGP voltage control etc.

As the cheapest Nforce2 board around, it perfectly fits the bill as a no-frill, stable AMD XP platform. Try to update the BIOS though as it seems that this can add some functionalities to the board.

France
Wanna cheapo laptop in France? How about a second hand Ebayed Compaq Armada M700 powered by a Pentium III 1GHz processor coupled with 576MB memory for Eur 569 only, £386. It has a 20GB hard disk, a large flawless 14.1" monitor and a DVD drive. The battery still seems to be OK and a modem and a LAN port are provided.

The machine should be enough for students and even. You'll need however to swap floppy and hard disk around. At 5.1 pounds, it can be placed in the thin and light category. Video is powered by an ageing ATI Rage Mobility with 8MN memory. That laptop is still on sale in the US for $2527, four times its French price. Ooh la la and zut alors.