$1499 17-inch laptop for sale, cheap 19-inch LCD, £24 ATI AIW card

US
Newegg has a long standing deal over a LCD PC fpr $890. Those all-in-one which were meant to conquer the world not so long ago. The Uniwill - not to be confused with Rosewill brand from Newegg - L373N1 is a barebone PC hidden behind a 17in TFT monitor standing firmly on stylish stand.

It is powered by a SIS651, most probably, as it supports CPU up to the Northwood 3.06GHz, hence 533MHz FSB compatibility. It has two SO-DIMM accommodating up to 1GB memory and accepts 3.5in HDD. Other notable features include the presence of an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 with 64MB memory, 2.1 stereo sound with 5.1 external output support, a TV tuner, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, a 56K v.92 modem as well as wireless connection courtesy of a 802.11b mini PCI card.

You also get a 6-in-1 media card reader, a PCMCIA port, one SPDIF, one Firewire, four USB 2.0 and an antenna in. Basically as you can see, it is a LCD TV Tuner fitted in a computer or vice versa. Some people would say that it makes more sense to buy a laptop and fit it with some components and the bill of material would still match that LCD PC and be more flexible.

Compare that with this $1499 HP Pavilion notebook, $600 more than the barebone PC. The Pavilion is powered by a Pentium IV 3.2GHz and has 1GB under the hood and a whopping 80GB hard disk, larger than some desktop one. Even more, you get a DVD writer to burn DVDs and to watch any movie you like. You also get to watch all your films on a 17in TFT screen powered by a Geforce FX Go 5700 with 128MB memory. Sound is delivered using two Harman Kardon speakers. You also have a 5-in-1 digital media card reader and the laptop is also wireless ready thanks to an integrated 802.11 b/g Wireless LAN together with an integrated modem and wired Ethernet LAN. Note thought that there is no floppy disk drive but four USB ports as well as Firewire connectors. Frankly speaking, there is little reason to go for the All in One except if you and some want to watch telly without seeing that keyboard. µ

UK
Nineteen inch TFT monitors' prices are dropping, drastically. Ebuyer, which just announced that they have scrapped their phone support, has the Acer AL1912 TFT monitor for only £222.31+VAT. As one would say, once you view this LCD you will find it very difficult to return back to a smaller screen.

For gamers, the screen is a 16ms screen and works excellently with games. A 19in TFT LCD is equivalent to a 21in CRT monitor. It has a 0.294dpi pitch as well as a superb 500:1 contrast ratio. Native resolution is 1280x1024 which is just a notch above the standard working resolution of many offices, SXGA.

There are no speakers and the design is spartan to say the least. For the price of a good 17in monitor, you get a worthy 19in one. Definitely recommended. Note that the LCD screen does not have a DVI input which might put off some people. The screen weighs in at a featherlight 5.5Kg - compared to the usual 40Kg of a similar sized CRT. Last but not least, it consumes a fraction of their power consumption at 48W, much less than most household bulbs.

I am sure that some of you have faced this situation. You have a computer with an integrated video module and you are looking to upgrade the latter to something better without breaking the bank. We're not talking of playing DOOM III games but of older and less demaning games. One of the cheaper solutions is to get yourself a PCI graphic cards; The Connect 3D ATI All in Wonder 7500/VE is available at scan for only £23.95+VAT, which is not that much expensive.

You get a GPU which is substantially better than a SIS315, the Intel Extreme Graphics or the S3 Unichrome which are usually found in integrated chipsets. The card is in PCI format, which means that you can plug it in almost all computers. It has 64MB BGA memory clocked at 250MHz, a Theater 200 decoder, a 125 channel Stereo TV Tuner, TV-On-Demand and Pinnacle Studio 8 software.

Technically, it is DirectX7 compatible with a 2x3 architecture. Firingsquad previewed the card some time back and found it to be extremely silent and that the card was easy to overclock; from 260MHz/250MHz to 300MHz/290MHz for the core/memory respectively. The card, for example, achieved a respectable 60fps at 1600x1200 in Quake and 36fps at the same resolution in UT2003. µ

France
Oldies are perhaps goodies especially when the price is right. On Priceminister.com, which is somewhat like Ebay, someone is selling an old IBM Thinkpad 600, once the flagship of Mighty Big Blue. For Eur 130, you get a Pentium II 233MHz with 32MB RAM, 3.2GB hard disk, a 24x CDROM, Windows 98SE, Modem, a non-usable battery as well as a 13.3in active matrix TFT screen powered by a 2MB Neomagic graphic card and supporting XGA resolution.

A modem is also provided as well as a USB port. Slightly larger than an A4 sheet, is only 35mm thick and weighs in at 2.3Kg, it comes with two speakers and integrated microphone. The Thinkpad 600 had a launch price of $2799 and will still serve any cash-strapped French students looking to use a usable computer. µ