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Indeed it's likely some silly "Enterprise" thing, another example is the huge mark up on desktop touch screen monitors or worse, TV sized touch screens. Albeit, some "commercial displays" are special ones with extra brightness making them suitable for outdoor use. They cost as much as a motorcycle but there's a significant feature at least.

Now if you don't care about a giant dumb screen, there's a large market for PC monitors and this one is cheap for instance :
http://www.ebuyer.com/744722-b...

From a cursory look, there are even 32" 1080p PC monitors at low TV-like prices. I wasn't expecting them! Biggest 16:9 are a couple 43" 4k (might be using the same panel) and a couple 40" ones.

tl;dr Check the consumer PC monitor market scaling up in size.

RAID cards often use a semi-functional token to enable write caching. To cache safely requires the controller incorporate a battery, which is commonly sold separately. No battery, no caching - it's a technical problem, can't be overcome. The non-technical limitation is that the batteries (In Adaptec, anyway) have a cryptographic chip in them that authenticates to the controller, so you can't just stick in any li-ion cell in - and those batteries are sold at a ridiculous price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/702930-l...

It's a fee to unlock the write cache feature, disguised as a functional component.

I bought a BD-DL writer for my NAS when I built it 4 years ago. It was a bit under £50

You must have got a very good price on it then, because even today the typical price of the cheapest Blu-Ray writers still hovers around the £60 mark and they've been stuck there for a long time now. In fact, that's the problem, prices gradually fell for a while... then they didn't.

The media is very affordable now- you can actually get packs of 10 discs for the equivalent of 27p each- but while £60 for a drive isn't much if you *really* want one, it's still too expensive to be a "no brainer" replacement for a DVD writer (*) for customers who might go for it if it was only a few quid extra- in much the way that DVD writers did when they got to be only a few quid more than a CD writer. Even a £40 premium on a computer (**) is a big increase on a low-end model if the person really isn't *that* bothered about Blu-Ray anyway.

Personally, I could easily afford to go out and buy a £60 Blu-Ray drive, but I'm not really into films, 25GB really *isn't* that big for data storage or backup any more (it's piggy in the middle between the stuff I can store on DVD-R and stuff that needs HDD capacities) and I don't even burn many DVDs these days. Why bother?

(*) eBuyer are selling an LG *writer* for under £12!
(**) I suspect most of these people would only be upgrading their drive as part of a new computer, probably a laptop. I'm assuming that £40 would be the bulk wholesale price differential- ironically, since that's still too expensive to include a BD writer in the cheapest laptops, I suspect manufacturers would probably market it as a "premium" feature and increase the price *more* (to make a profit-increasing virtue out of a drawback).

Here's a decent 480GB SSD: http://www.ebuyer.com/284750-ocz-480gb-agilitry-3-ssd-agt3-25sat3-480g

It now costs 347.64 pounds ($557.55) but I recently paid 290 pounds ($465) for it! So you can get really decent-sized quality SSDs if you shop around.

I don't really think that the ability to take pictures is a useful reason for banning smart phones, if I worked for you and really wanted your information and I had physical access to the documents do you really think a ban is going to stop me? Even supposing that your building is super secure and has guards with metal detectors and authority to search people (which I'm pretty sure most places don't) and could catch everyone who attempted to bring a smart phone into the building i doubt they could catch everyone with cameras these days. a 5 second search on a website that's not even specialised in spy equipment turns up a key fob camera and a spy watch camera both of which can probably get through a standard security check without problems. http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=spy+camera So you've just wasted everyone's time for no appreciable gain in security, yay!

You can easily get 16:10 1920x1200 monitors for a fraction of that price, e.g. this Samsung one. That site alone lists 14 models with that resolution.

They're on pre-order here!

You will NOT find a woman who would be alright with a "wedding Youtube upload". The fact of getting a tangible product is just as important as the content being provided.

I don't see that this is a big issue. An external DVD writer only costs about £20 and if all you are using it for is burning copies of the final product for clients then it makes sense to have it as an external drive rather than adding to the weight and battery drain of the laptop itself.

I called it 'entry level' because it's the cheapest computer that Apple sell.

Ok, let's try something else. How about something which owes nothing to Apple manufacturing like, say, a hard drive. One drive is much like another, really. Interchangeable, so long as the numbers match. So, how much does Apple charge for one of their drives with an Apple sticker on?

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC730ZM/A?n=internal&fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&s=topSellers
£254, for a 7200 2TB 3.5". How much for a 7200 2TB 3.5" at ebuyer?
http://www.ebuyer.com/319641-barracuda-2tb-sata-3-5in-7200rpm-64mb-6gb-s-in-st2000dm001
£89.99.

Those are perfectly equivilent, interchangeable parts.

No, they are not. And either you know it, or worse, you are unable to ever understand why. Read the fucking description.

BTW, a similar drive by HP is also cheaper than the Apple drive: by £2.03 - I wonder why you didn't pick that instead.http://www.ebuyer.com/280186-hp-2tb-sata-7200-hdd-we464aa

Basically these days "Core" is Intel's mainstream and high end brand. Everything from about $120 up is branded Core. Pentiums are their budget brand, the $60-100 range. Celerons are their extreme budget brand. $40-50 (only sold to OEMs).

Good grief, Intel's marketing department really needs a good slapping.

Their brand positioning used to make sense when you knew that Celeron was their budget line (though sometimes quite decent) and Pentium-XXX (later replaced by Core-XXX) the standard midrange, with Xeon for servers.

So when they brought back Pentium, I was confused until (as you say) realising that it was meant as a kind-of-lower-priced line, but not as cheap as the Celeron (*). Confused partly because they still had the Core 2 (**) then i3/i5/i7 lines as their mainstream brand which Pentium used to represent.

In other words, they brought back the Pentium name due (presumably) to some vague consumer recognition, but not for what it was used before and for some vaguely-defined semi-budget segment.

Worse, it isn't even necessary because the current "Core" line is split into i3, i5 and i7, which is an easily-understood hierarchy, and along with the "Celeron", there's absolutely no need for another damn confusing name.

*Now* they're making things even more of a cluster**** by using the Pentium name on low-end *server* (not mainstream) processors.

Please note that I'm *not* talking about the underlying architecture, which marketing doesn't necessarily follow, and which the man on the street probably doesn't care about much. I'm simply talking about incompetent marketing and positioning in that there are a mess of names that no longer represent their intended price segment and/or use clearly.

Then again, perhaps confusion is the aim of the game, as it makes it easier for sales people to bamboozle the public and upsell more expensive CPUs than they need? But I suspect not.

(*) You say that Celeron is now an ultra-cheap OEM-only thing, but I can still apparently purchase boxed versions here and here, for example.

(**) And while I'm here, "Core" and "Core 2" were absolutely stupid choices for a processor name, as "core" already had a technologically-defined use we all know well, and "Core" (the name) was thus guaranteed to confused anyone not in the field, e.g. a dual-core Core, etc. etc..... "Core 2" was even worse, as it's going to get easily confused with "dual core" and terms like "Core 2 Quad" (i.e. a four-core "Core 2"!) are just a confusing mess for Joe Public. I know of at least one alleged computer technician (i.e. someone who *could* be expected to know this) who thought that "Core 2" in itself meant that it was a dual-core processor! I'll give them a free pass on the fact that the original "Core" line didn't actually feature the "Core" architecture, as I was complaining about bad marketing, and marketing doesn't normally mention internal architectures anyway.

What I want to know is what other computers one can get for 349 pounds.

Most things on the first few pages here, if you want a reasonable idea of UK pricing. As far as I'm concerned, considering its specs (and the clearly problematic requirement of an entirely constant internet connection, making use on the move somewhere between uncertain and impossible) it costs at least twice what it would need to in order to be competitive.

That said, Google's product development seems to be pretty good; I know I made a good few complaints about Android when I first saw a G1, but a few years down the line I'm happily using a relatively cheap and capable HTC handset, so maybe the Chromebook Mk. 3 will manage to impress me.

And the mother board you buy will be similarly locked

no they are NOT AC scaremonger... i have
http://www.ebuyer.com/267772-asus-p8z68-v-pro-z68-socket-1155-8-channel-hd-audio-atx-motherboard-p8z68-v-pro
ad it boasts a funky range of features including /uefi and guess what???? you can disable secure boot!
so basically you talk crapioca or just make assumptions without any actual knowledge and spout....... crapioca

Really? They are paying £145 a year for a TV licence (they are paying for their TV licence right?) and complaining about paying a one time purchase of ~50 quid* to get 3 converter boxes to use their TVs. Maybe it is annoying for them, but either they care enough about watching TV to buy the digital STBs or they can save themselves £145 a year by giving them up. It really isn't that big a deal.

*If they head on over to eBuyer they can pick up three of these, which not only work as a digital STB, but also give you the option to add USB storage to record TV and play back video/audio files and view pictures on them, and when you buy 3, you are spending enough to qualify for free super saver delivery which makes the total cost a little over 50 pounds. And in case you are wondering I'm not trying to shill for eBuyer or the manufacturer of this product, I just found it doing a quick search, there are other options which may be even cheaper if you don't want the media/recording functionality.

£200 is the price of the cheapest rubbish laptops with Celeron processors, new. You can get netbooks for a little less. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/240873 That one is £278, but I'm too lazy to shop around for a really cheap one.

Exactly!

I know it's UK prices, but you are getting seriously ripped off.

Well sure YOU DO, but your Gran still has a 5200 with "Turbo memory" (actually that's only 3 years old, she probably has worse).

What year are you living in?
1: Turbocache didn't exist until the 6100.
2: The 5200 is seven years old
3: You can apparently still buy them: eBuyer Link

Well a quick check shows that you can buy 1 TB 2.5" disks easily: http://www.ebuyer.com/search?page=1&store=2&cat=4&subcat=2274&ca76=1000

It's scary how close they are to the capacity of desktop drives (which are currently only available up to 2 TB).

Over recent years Solid State Drives (SSDs) have moved from luxury to affordable additions to one's PC

When I can get a 1TB 3.5" SATA drive for £61.33 (approx $94.58), I'm not sure how something which is 42 times more expensive can be considered "affordable".

Maybe I have a different definition of the word.

And for UK buyers but with Linux-preinstalled: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167153

A shame that you (presumably) couldn't buy it with Linux preinstalled (UK store) (even if you change the distribution, it helps show there's demand for drivers etc).

You seem to live in a different part of the world from most of the rest of us. Or even on a different planet. Did you miss all that about MS charging PC makers full retail price for Windows unless the maker installed Windows on every PC they made?

No. But I don't see why that would support the idea that a vendor who only ships PCs with Windows on would be expected to refund the full value of a retail box - we know they're paying below the market rate. In any case, I can fully understand dislike of MS bribing box makers to stick Windows on every box they produce, but I really don't see how this translates to me (or anyone else) being forced to buy a PC with Windows installed on it.

It would be helpful if you could give us some pointers to where bare PCs with mainstream hardware could be bought in the UK.

In the UK, overclockers do some, but don't seem to have a search-by-lack-of-OS option, Ebuyer do, er, two. There're places like http://debianshop.com/ who do ship an OS but it's a free one. And there are some real-life shops who will do it, too (well, they sell hardware and charge on top for the OS, but if you don't want the OS they don't sell you it).

I've not checked the hardware specs, but it's hardly likely to be any more peculiar than Dell's.

The only way I know to get a bare PC is to build it yourself, and that's what I do. MS would like to take a tribute even from the likes of me though - on the assumption that I pirate their crap.

Sure, they'd probably /like/ it, but they've not done anything to me personally to infer that I owe them any money for not having bought any of their software.

Addendum:
Saying "SKU number" is likely incorrect, as MS uses alpha-numeric SKU codes, not purely numeric codes. It wouldn't be redundant even if it was correct, as SKUs can be anything.

For examples of MS's SKU codes:
scan and ebuyer.

Both have the MS SKU code of "79G-00007", so it's the exact same product, being sold by two different stores.

Along with:
scan
ebuyer
SKU: W87-01076

and:
scan
(apparently not sold on ebuyer)
SKU: 9QA-01757 ... that covers all of the first group characters as possibly being alpha.

Does that help?

Addendum:
Saying "SKU number" is likely incorrect, as MS uses alpha-numeric SKU codes, not purely numeric codes. It wouldn't be redundant even if it was correct, as SKUs can be anything.

For examples of MS's SKU codes:
scan and ebuyer.

Both have the MS SKU code of "79G-00007", so it's the exact same product, being sold by two different stores.

Along with:
scan
ebuyer
SKU: W87-01076

and:
scan
(apparently not sold on ebuyer)
SKU: 9QA-01757 ... that covers all of the first group characters as possibly being alpha.

Does that help?

TBF i recently used a 256MB machine and i could run email(kmail) & a browser(FF3) just fine, unfortunately i had little need for office app use so stuck with OO which made stuff painful, but I'm sure if id looked around something like abiword+gnumeric would have been usable. When ram is available programs SHOULD use it Firefox (~180M) and ktorrent(~120M) are using more than 256M on my machine atm, however I know for a fact that i ran them on my old machine and had no problems.

And yes, as another poster already mentioned, not all older machines can be upgraded (especially notebooks), and memory for older machines is a LOT more expensive than a burger lunch.

How old? I upgraded the ram on my an old acer-travelmate (the machine with 256MB ram (or 128 i never remember)) with DDR2 off ebuyer (Where 512mb is currently £2, which isn't even enough for a nice burger)while 2GB@£15.78, perhaps if you want to buy a single stick of 4GB ram you'll have to fork out enough for a meal (£146.96).
even older DDR(1gb@£30) or SDR(512M@£45) is closer to a burger, than a meal for 4 (unless you take you consider burger king a restaurant!)

Maybe I'm missing something but I bought a Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB card for £57 (about $89) and I consider that budget.

So far it's been able to handle most of the stuff I've thrown at it, albeit not at the highest possible resolution - but then I've only got a 17" monitor.

he said older not used. An older cpu is still as safe as a newer one

he said older not used. An older cpu is still as safe as a newer one

If I want a decent Mac (i.e. one that can have a sensible monitor, not some oversized widescreen thing) then I'm stuck with a Mac Pro at ~£1800. Failing that then if I go for the iMac and want to upgrade my computer I've got to throw my screen out with it! That's a large price slapped on just for having a Mac.

£400 for a Mac Mini with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM and only 80GB of disk space? How about a 2.4GHz Quad Core with 3GB RAM and 500GB of disk space, plus keyboard and mouse? And that's just the top result on the "home PCs" page.

The lowest iMac is £800, or I can get a 'styled' Sony with a slightly slower processor, twice the memory, twice the hard disk space, a BluRay drive, and a graphics card with twice the memory (and, being a #600 instead of a #400 it may be better anyway) for £690 and then slap a sensible monitor on top like the 19" Samsung I just bought for £120.

If that's too odd for you then for £675 you can get a quad-core machine at 2.8GHz per core, four times the RAM, four times the disk space, four times the memory on a 9800GT graphics card and a faster optical drive. Again, slap on a decent monitor and you're looking at a similar price for far better specs.

That's just a quick scan of eBuyer, but IMO those Macs don't look too competitive in price vs features against some off-the-shelf jobs. Given that they've got a Vista license included (which isn't cheap and is probably comparable to an OS X license) then it does look like you get "less plus a label" for more with your Mac.

If I want a decent Mac (i.e. one that can have a sensible monitor, not some oversized widescreen thing) then I'm stuck with a Mac Pro at ~£1800. Failing that then if I go for the iMac and want to upgrade my computer I've got to throw my screen out with it! That's a large price slapped on just for having a Mac.

£400 for a Mac Mini with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM and only 80GB of disk space? How about a 2.4GHz Quad Core with 3GB RAM and 500GB of disk space, plus keyboard and mouse? And that's just the top result on the "home PCs" page.

The lowest iMac is £800, or I can get a 'styled' Sony with a slightly slower processor, twice the memory, twice the hard disk space, a BluRay drive, and a graphics card with twice the memory (and, being a #600 instead of a #400 it may be better anyway) for £690 and then slap a sensible monitor on top like the 19" Samsung I just bought for £120.

If that's too odd for you then for £675 you can get a quad-core machine at 2.8GHz per core, four times the RAM, four times the disk space, four times the memory on a 9800GT graphics card and a faster optical drive. Again, slap on a decent monitor and you're looking at a similar price for far better specs.

That's just a quick scan of eBuyer, but IMO those Macs don't look too competitive in price vs features against some off-the-shelf jobs. Given that they've got a Vista license included (which isn't cheap and is probably comparable to an OS X license) then it does look like you get "less plus a label" for more with your Mac.

If I want a decent Mac (i.e. one that can have a sensible monitor, not some oversized widescreen thing) then I'm stuck with a Mac Pro at ~£1800. Failing that then if I go for the iMac and want to upgrade my computer I've got to throw my screen out with it! That's a large price slapped on just for having a Mac.

£400 for a Mac Mini with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM and only 80GB of disk space? How about a 2.4GHz Quad Core with 3GB RAM and 500GB of disk space, plus keyboard and mouse? And that's just the top result on the "home PCs" page.

The lowest iMac is £800, or I can get a 'styled' Sony with a slightly slower processor, twice the memory, twice the hard disk space, a BluRay drive, and a graphics card with twice the memory (and, being a #600 instead of a #400 it may be better anyway) for £690 and then slap a sensible monitor on top like the 19" Samsung I just bought for £120.

If that's too odd for you then for £675 you can get a quad-core machine at 2.8GHz per core, four times the RAM, four times the disk space, four times the memory on a 9800GT graphics card and a faster optical drive. Again, slap on a decent monitor and you're looking at a similar price for far better specs.

That's just a quick scan of eBuyer, but IMO those Macs don't look too competitive in price vs features against some off-the-shelf jobs. Given that they've got a Vista license included (which isn't cheap and is probably comparable to an OS X license) then it does look like you get "less plus a label" for more with your Mac.

Here you go: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114048

That's why they sell USB serial ports nowadays :)

AMD decided to price match Intel? I thought it was the other way around. Here in the UK at least you can get a quad core 6600 for £164.99. That's the CPU I use and I reckon that it's the total sweet spot for price/performance, plus you can overclock it about 40% using stock cooling. AMD have had to slash prices to compete on price/performance, leading to their current woes.

In fact looking at the AMD page on ebuyer they have great cheap AMD dual core chips. If I were building a nice but cheap system for friends/family I'd probably go with one of those AMD's unless they wanted to play the latest games. Then it'd be Core2 all the way.

I think you've got it exactly the wrong way round. Intel moved in on AMD's market, not the other way around.

Good comments - yes, access to trade pricing helps + I started im IT around the same time as you. If you consider you can get an HP Proliant server chassis with a 3 year next business day warranty for £190...

(HP ProLiant ML110 G4 Xeon 3040 1860-2MB/1066 Dual Core, 1x512MB, Non Hot Plug SATA 160GB, DVD/CD-RW, 3 Year Next Business Day Warranty): http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128282 ...then speccing up a server + spare chassis for around £500 using decent kit is perfectly feasible.

Didn't notice the TV tuner[...]It's a vital point I overlooked.

I wouldn't call 10 quid vital.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123327

Well,

Maybe there's a bit of irony in the fact that 50% of our mail servers are Acer Altos servers running CentOS 4 or CentOS 5 - OK, fair enough I had to install Linux myself.

It is, however, possible to get some low-end machines with SUSE pre-installed:

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/128595
"Esys Computer System Celeron 2.66GHZ 512MB 80GB 2MB 16X DVD Rom. Linux"

But this seems more of a means to avoid a "M$ tax", although you do get a passable general desktop for £145 including VAT (no monitor).

DVD/CDROM drives are readily available in SATA variants:

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/cat/CD---DVD-Drives/subca t/DVD-RW-SATA-Drives

Dell will still sell and pre-load XP OEM while you can buy OEM cds from Ebuyer. Plus any large organisation worth their salt will have a multi seat agreement with Microsoft. It's not an issue for anybody if you actually think about what you're buying and what you are going to use on it.

And for Britishers, http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html ?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=1 19303&_LOC=UK gets you an X1950Pro with 512Mb for £90, some pence and free delivery. I was looking forward to trying Hellgate/Bioshock with a DX-10 card but will stick with 9 until some sort of sense can be made of the new cards.

1. Completely untrue. My machine runs Areo, all systems go on my trusty GForce 6600 - a budget DX9 card I bought well over 2 years ago. Also, don't forget, you don't have to run the Areo UI if you don't want - it's merely a GUI enhancement. You can indeed switch back to the classic Win2k interface if you so wish.

2. 256Mb ram as an average? WinXP would be sluggish on that - where did you pluck that figure from? Also, Ram is cheap - case in point - http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/91121/rb/26862385 408 - a 1GB stick will set you back just under $80 in UK prices.

3. The points you raise sound to me like FUD, it's nothing personal, but I simply don't agree with the specifics you're coming out with. I personally will avoid using Vista until I have to as a primary OS, but not for hardware reasons.

SP1/2 & mature drivers will finally get this beast off the ground. And thank god too; Windows has needed a good tweaking and tuning for, er, ever - and although Vista is far from perfect, it's finally heading in the right direction if you ask me.

Yep, you can buy them here.

So is my Atari 2600. http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/115992/

It would appear that I am unable to purchase anything even vaguely technical without it simply failing to work. I cannot remember the last time I purchased something and it just worked first time, straight out of the box!

If anyone wants to test any new piece of hardware or software, just send it to me and I will find some way to make it not work!

I am, as usual, really disappointed, because the technology offered so much and has (as usual) delivered so little (well, delivered nothing actually!).

It can get put away with the pile of other things I have purchased that don't work!

I'll stave off the urge to exclaim "Bullshit!" in case there is something I am missing:

http://ebuyer.com/UK/product/98442/rb/19065232550

Dual Layer, +R(W), -R(W) for 25 quid ($40ish?) - what am I missing? I've had one for about 2 years, and thy were only 50 quid when I bought that one.

As mentioned there is Knoppmyth.

Personally, i installed ubuntu on a VIA EPIA mini-ITX board, and grabbed the precompiled .deb packages linked from the myth site.

I had a Kworld DVB TV card the cheapest i could find, and it just worked. zero setup for the card, just had to get myth to scan for channels (just like when you get a new TV).

Presumably knopmyth does more than save you 5mins selecting and installing the myth .debs?

Ages ago I bought a 128MB version of this

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html ?rb=14814500263&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV 3&product_uid=51193

I see that Sony has just done something similar

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/ces/live-from-ces-so ny-microdrives-146637.php

My drive lives in my wallet. Not as geeky as hanging it around my neck, but it got admiring glances when I used it and it was always with me.

I've hardly used it lately as most files can go in email these days. I used to back up some of my files to it, but I have other methods now. There's a few Windows utilities on there for emergencies.

Not in stock right now, but I recently bought a 20cm SATA data cable for 33 pence here in the UK from Ebuyer - they have other cables (longer ones usually) at, oooh, 60 pence or more. SATA cables are *everywhere* (and very cheap) now, hardly surprising considering that all new desktop drives seem to be SATA.

...it always is. It's a good rule to live by and the same applies offline as much as it does online. I'd rather buy from a trustworthy online store or shop such as Amazon than save a few pounds. The cheapeast is rarely the best, hence why I will never shop with Ebuyer in the UK again. I'd rather pay for customer service I know I can trust than just be fobbed off all the time and ultimately end up out of pocket.

And, no, it'll be used to rip my entire CD collection to MP3's before you ask...

And, no, it'll be used to rip my entire CD collection to MP3's before you ask...