Cheap flash drives, cheapest 1GB CF

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
It might be small, very small but it is quite powerful. The Louis Design Labs E504X Mini PC M-series weighs in only at 950g, much less than many sub laptops and at 157x146x45mm, is not much larger than a pack of CD cases stacked one on the other. You won't find much information if you look on this baby over the internet except if you look elsewhere.

At Atoz for example, you will find the same product, just rebadged as the EZGo. In fact you can find a fairly good review at Digit-Life. It comes in a smallish black casing and is powered by a Pentium IV 1.8Ghz coupled with a SIS650 chipset. On top, a distinctive air vent allows the CPU to be cooled efficiently. The particular product on sale at £200 also features 512Mb memory - which comes as SO-DIMM module, a 20GB hard disk drive - which appear to be an IBM travelstar drive running at 5400rpm, two USB 2.0 ports, two mini-Firewire, IR, 10/100MBps Ethernet connection, a CDROM - nothing prevents you from upgrading to a 2.4x Dual Format DVD-Writer for only £85 - as well as the usual S-Video and AV-Video ports, microphone/line-out port and a 56K modem. The system comes with no floppy disk drive, manuals or drivers.

You should also be able to overclock the P4 to 2.4GHz by changing the FSB from 400MHz to 533MHz. What will you be able to do with it? Well, if you have a TFT screen, you'll be able to hide it just behind. Therefore, rather than buying a laptop for example. Take that one, overclock it a little bit, get yourself a slim DVD writer and you'll have a very powerful portable computer for under £300. Shame though the expansion options are very limited. µ

France
USB drives are rapidly ending the reign of the floppy as a viable storage media. Several high capacity types are available in France. LDLC has three interesting USB 2.0 models. The first one is a 2.2GB drive which is hard disk based rather than Flash. It probably uses a Cornice micro hard disk. Although the price is cheaper at Eur 150, it is bulkier and small file transfer seems to take more time. The second model is a 90mm flash drive which seems more like a Wringley chewing gum than something else. It has a capacity of 2GB, enough for a 90 minutes DVD quality film and costs only Eur 179.

If you still need even more capacity then either buy two of the above or get yourself this 4GB thumb or flash drive which shares the same format as the 2GB one only more beefier and more expensive at Eur 499. On the other hand, Topachat has a 1GB USB drive for only Eur 94. Who needs floppies now? µ

US
You still have some hours to get yourself this dirty cheap compact flash card. Thanks to Stefanish Brian for this one. Buy.com has a 1GB Compact Flash card retailing for $49.99 after rebate which expires on the 30th September. So basically, you have until tonight to complete it.

What can you store on 1GB of memory, well loads of thing. For example, 200 MP3 songs, one thousand photos - if you can still get hold of a CF-enabled Digital camera. Also ending today is a $75 rebate on an emachine PC bringing the price down to $424.99. The T2865 sports an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ with 512MB DDR PC2700 memory, a spacious 160GB hard disk drive and most interestingly a dual format DVD writer and a CDRom drive. The E2865 is build around a nForce2 board therefore as you might expect, it also comes with four PCI slots, 5.1 Realtek sound chip, Geforce 4 MX420 graphics and LAN support. Other peripherals include a scroll mouse, an internet keyboard and two speakers. You will also find a floppy disk, six USB ports, a seven-in-one media drive and five audio jacks. µ

Singapore
The Archos AV400comes with a 80GB hard disk drive and a large 3.8in TFT LCD screen - with a resolution of 320x400 pixels at 262,000 colours . It allows recording up to 320 hours of TV programs or video content - equivalent to 160 full length movies - from a TV, VCR or cable/satellite receiver using the TV cradle. Program recordings can be done directly using the Recording Scheduler which controls the VCR or Set-top box tuner. Interestingly you can move it around and its lithium-ion battery allows you to enjoy 270 min of video playback.

Want to listen to music? What about 1200 hours of music? Still photos, almost a million of them can be stored. On top of that, other compatible files include MP3, WMA, DiVX, XVid and WAV music files. You also have a loads of AV conenctions - Composite video, Earphones, Compact Flash Type 1 slot, SCART I/O, SVideo IN/OUT, built-in microphone and speaker. The price asked though is hefty at S$ 1399. µ