£48 Nforce4 mobos and other bargains

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
Looking for a new digital camera this Christmas? Then look no further. At £99 inc. VAT, it is the cheapest brand named 4MP (million pixels) digital camera. At the moment, the only other similar camera sporting somewhat similar features is the Concord IQ4360 from Argos. The Finepix A340 Zoom is sold by fujifilm through its own refurbished digital camera shop. It is a stylish and easy to use camera offering very high quality quality resolution with optical zoom lens and one touch operation.

This camera is perfect for the beginner who demands a greater level of detail. The A340 as a maximum resolution of 2272x1704 pixels which in theory gives 3.87MP but somehow, Fuji made it to the 4MP barrier. It can record mini soundless films in AVI format. The storage media used is XD Picture card. The camera comes with a 16MB card, enough for 25 images at medium resolution. The camera has a Fujinon 3x optical zoom lens with a 1.4x digital zoom on top - quite a rarity at this price.

It has inbuilt autofocus and red eye reduction and its TFT LCD monitor is bright enough to watch your photos at 1.5-inch. The FinePix A340 Zoom is perhaps the best blend of simplicity and performance in the FinePix range. With a very high effective pixels count and an equally performin Fujinon zoom lens, the A340 Zoom has all the features needed for producing great images.

It builds upon the award-winning range of Fujifilm digital cameras with its long battery life, PictBridge compatibility for direct PC-free printing and video out socket for direct viewing of your images on a TV screen. The FinePix A340 offers four scene position modes to ensure great images are always achievable, even for the beginner. With settings designed for Portrait, Sports, Landscapes, and Night, the FinePix A340 has a setting for all eventualities. Designed to place the minimum amount of complexity between you and a great picture, the FinePix A340 has a fast start-up time of 3.3 seconds to make sure you are not left waiting for the camera to take a picture.

What Digital Camera gave it a 82% mark and said that it "has kill-simple usage with programmed AE exposure with a 64-zone TTL exposure meter for really very accurate exposures. The focusing system and 3x zoom lens get you as close as 10cm. This is all in a body that looks more expensive than it is. The rather neat touch of a brushed metal band around half the camera gives a nice cool feel to it and the controls are large and well placed.

Its focal performance is really rather good and it is easy to scan through the modes and functions. Results in all kinds of lighting conditions were good. This may be a budget model, but it's a good start for the novice."

Try to get a cheap nForce 4 board and you'll be in pain. The UK even beats US at this price. The Foxconn NF4K8MA-KS is so new that even foxconn website does not carry it - when it want to function properly that is. At £48+VAT at microdirect, it is sure to be an instant hit. Details are scarce though. Some specs follow - nForce 4 chipset, PCI-x onboard, socket 939, onboard VGA, mATX format, Realtek Gigabit LAN, four SATA, one PATA and eight USB 2.0 ports, two PCI slots, one PCIe X16 and one PCI-E slots, two Dual channel DDR400 DIMM sockets and 5.1 audio.

Yeah, it is still an entry level motherboard as it has no RAID support and only two DIMM sockets. NVIDIA nForce4 MCPs include the ICSA-certified NVIDIA Firewall solution that protects your PC from unscrupulous hackers and malicious spyware while connected through a fast Gigabit Ethernet interface to the Internet or a LAN. Buy one if you can.

USA
Amazon is selling Averatec AV5500-EA1 laptops for as cheap as $679.99, after rebates. Averatec's AV5500-EA1 offers the power of a desktop without all the bulk, and is a great choice for a portable notebook for the home or for a small businessperson on the go. It features a vivid, bright 15-inch screen--great for watching videos or number-crunching spreadsheets--and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive. Other features include a battery-saving AMD Sempron 2600+ processor, 40 GB hard drive, multi-format memory card reader, Firewire port for connecting your digital camcorder, and a TV-out connection for hooking up to your TV.

The 40 GB IDE hard drive is on the small side compared to other notebooks. However, it does offer a decent enough capacity for storing documents and productivity software for road warriors--but not enough for much multimedia storage. The 1.83 GHz AMD Sempron 2600+ processor is good for everyday computing tasks for home and small business users. And with AMD's low-voltage PowerNow technology, you'll experience extended battery life for more productivity when out and about.

The combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive can write and read CDs at 24x and rewrite at 10x speeds. It can read DVDs at 8x. This notebook features an 86-key keyboard that offers the functionality of a full-sized 101-key keyboard and a two-button touchpad pointing device. It has an SiS Integrated Ultra256 video/graphics card with 64 MB of shared video RAM, which offers relatively strong 3D graphics rendering. Other specs include integrated audio card and internal stereo speakers, three USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire, TV Out, PCMCIA, and headphone jacks. Integrated components include a memory card reader, a modem and a Network card. The 6-cell rechargeable lithium-ion battery has an average battery life of 180 minutes. Software included in the package are Windows XP Home and MS Works 7.0.

From Circuit City comes the Western Digital WD1200JBDRTL which boosts a spacious 120GB capacity, an 8MB data buffer and data lifeguard software which offers shock protection tools, error detection and repair features and drive-management diagnostics. The price? Only $49.99 after $50 rebates. The drive got 320 ratings which earnt it on average 4.5/5 for ease of use, eprformance, ease of installation and cost benefit. The drive comes with a one-year warranty. µ