Hardware buys of the day

USA
Nothing seems to come free in life except when you live in the USA. On dumpinggoods.com, they are literally giving out a Pen-Keyboard with Digitising tablet. The catch? There's no catch except perhaps that you will have to pay for the posting and packaging (around USD 8) and the whole thing connects via an old AT connector (not PS/2 or USB - you can look for a converter). The keyboard is made by YTG though that model (SK-32H) is not available in the website. The keyboard itself appears to be a little bit design-dated but is new and has an ergonomic palm rest. It does not have the "windows" key but does have a digitizing tablet installed (albeit a small one - 78mmx51mm) complete with a two-button stylus pen. What would someone do with that keyboard? First application, digitizing your signature or scribble anything, then why not try to replace your mouse? Be quick as only 41 are left. You can order two at the same time. µ

France
We always find good one-off things on Ebay. In France, an Intel Xeon 3.066Ghz is offered for sale until this evening at €380 (instead of the usual €550). They are normally sold around £339 in UK, or $399 in the US. Note that the model on sale is a 512K, 533MHz FSB model. It does offer some very good performance at that price, especially when considering that it can be paired as very recently shown in Tomshardware.

Two CPU and a motherboard like the Asus PC-DL Deluxe would cost you less than a single P4 Extremely Expensive CPU . Reviews are available here and here. µ

Singapore
Sony has launched its new Sony DRU-700A dual layer dvd writer and the guys from hardwarezone, have brokered a deal with Sony Singapore to sell the first double layer DVD writer for SGD299 (about £100). UK price is around £150 and in the US, $199. The DRU-700a is a fine DVD-writer with an ace in its sleeve. Apart from writing CD-R at 40x and DVDs at 8x, it supports dual layer writing (DVD+R/DL or DVD+R R9) and offers a total capacity of nearly 8GB. Granted the media is not already here (not at all!!!) but paying a very small premium for futureproofness is not much to be asked. Reviews can be found hereand here. The official webpage is available here. µ

UK
The price for this component seem to be abnormally low but anyway, you can always try to buy it. A 180Gb, 7200rpm, 8Mb selling for £46.80 is cheaper than anywhere else in the world, including the US. Available here, it is a full thirty pounds cheaper than comparable offers on ebuyer for example, leading to a stagerring 26p per gigabyte. The Nikimi XW1808A seems to be a first class hard disk drive either a refurbished Western Digital or a Maxtor with an access time of 8.9ms and a full one year warranty. For your information, Nikimi is the world's leading brand of refurbished storage drives. Oddly enough, Nikimi does not seem to be present in the US. µ

If you do know about any special offers in any of these countries, please let me know.