Extracheap hardware buys o'the'day

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.

UK
If you are looking for the cheapest DVD Writer in the UK, then you can be pretty sure to find it at ebuyer. It is actually stocking the Liteon SOHW 1213s Liteon SOHW 1213s for only £28.99+VAT, not much more expensive than the drive we had some weeks ago from morgancomputers. Except that this one is new.

The drive is a dual format dual layer DVD writer supporting up to 12x; and for those who did not know it, Liteon is one of the major optical drives manufacturers. It also integrates some pertty cool Liteon-only technologies - Smartburn, to avoid buffer underRun error, automatically adjusting writing strategy & running OPC to provide the best burning quality. Also in the specs list, Smart-X function which adjusts CD-DA/VCD/DVD data extraction to a fastest allowable speed according to both data request rate from host and disk quality and last, the VAS system which reduces vibration and noise during recording and reading. The drive uses a Sanyo Pickup and third generation chipset from Mediatek. It has pretty good specifications like a 2MB buffer and a 48x CD recording speed so that you do not need an additional recorder.

It also comes with Powerdvd 5 and Nero oem suite 3, which includes Nero Express 6, included and a Nero media player as well as two blanks.

Interestingly, the drive is shorter than most other drives which means that there is less chance of it blocking your motherboard in a small minitower casing for example. Xbitlabs says of it "The SOHW-1213 is a workhorse that provides an opportunity to estimate the quality of the written discs and has good technical parameters, although in an unassuming design". We would advise you however to update the drive's firmware to the latest September version to use it optimally.

USA
I am presently carrying a sub laptop in my bag and must agree that sometimes, mobility is much more important than performance. In fact, most of the time, it comes third after autonomy. If you're looking for an affordable sub-laptop in the US, then, head for computergeeks where they are selling an Averatec XP-M 2000+ laptop for only $779, use PW code at checkout to get free shipping.

The Averatec 3225HS is a powerful notebook and it is equipped with the Low Voltage Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2000+ CPU for maximum efficiency. Powernow technology ensures that you get optimum performance with greater power management boosting battery life up to 200 minutes hours.

At only 1.2 inches thick, and around 4lbs heavy - this super slim notebook features an integrated DVD+CD-RW combo. Now you will be able to watch DVDs and burn music without the hassle of a bulky external drive or a docking station. Built-in 54g Wireless with dual antenna allows you to surf the web 5x faster than with 802.11b. Greater speed - improved reach - and added security makes it ideal for home - businesses or local hotspots.

With other features like a built in combo drive and 40GB of hard drive capacity - the Averatec 3200 series makes mobile computing a breeze. It has a XGA 12.1-inch TFT screen with integrated everything - video, sound, LAN and modem. Operating system is Windows XP home while Norton Utilities 2004 is also provided.

France
The cheapest Geforce 6 family member available in France is the aLeadtek Winfast PX6200TD which was launched at the beginning of this month. It is based on a Geforce 6200 running at 300MHz and 128MB DDR - no GDDR3 - memory clocked at 275MHz. The graphic card uses a PCI Express x16 bus and will provide with DVI, S-Video and the usual VGA connections. At €99+VAT, it is by far the cheapest PCI platform Geforce 6 card available. It should provide a very good performance boost over the ATI Radeon X300 and X600 range. The card features a small heat sink fan which covers the GPU only - as usual, and the card does not have any superficial features - in fact it is one of the rare cards I've seen lately featuring the traditional green PCB.

The card is a apparently a full version one which means that you should get Winfox II, a DVI to VGA converter, Cult 3D, Muvee 3 auto producer, SplinterCell pandora Tomorrow and Prince of persia - The sands of time. And actually, some of you had a try at changing the 6200 to a 6600. Hardwaredeluxx succeeded in enabling four pixel shaders to a total of eight and overclocking the card to 375MHz/580MHz. The result was a magnificent 20% boost, well above a 6600 card. If you have bought a PCI Express PC and want to change the card to something more powerful or if you want to build a cheap PC based on the PCI express platform, you cannot go wrong with this card. µ