Fryday deals (or lack thereof)

For a weekend-before-black-friday, today's Fry's Ads have been particularly unappetizing. Even their budget offering of Sempron 140 and Motherboard at $59.99 ($49.99 after Rebate) pales in comparison with last week's Celeron E3200 deals. While a 2.7GHz single-core Sempron with 1MB Cache is pretty fast and energy effecient at 45W, it surely cannot match a 2.4GHz dual-core Celeron with 1MB Cache and the tests DO attest to that fact. HOWEVER, there are reports around the net which indicate that this chip can be unlocked to be a dual-core. Also, it seems to be seriously overclockable with some enthusiasts reports speeds comfortably above 3.6GHz. Note that this kind of unlocking or overclocking requires a much better board than that included in this deal.

The Mid-range offering of of Intel Core2Quad Q9550 and Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P for $270 ($250 after rebate) would be VERY interesting except for 2 factoids: First, Intel Q9xxx (or Q8xxx) series is now superceded by Core i7 and i5 series. In fact, you can put together a setup of Core i5 750 and Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 for the same price: $250. Second, though Fry's sells Q9550 at a higher price, Microcenter sells it for $170, which means that savings from this deal are just $20 - $40. Not bad, but not enough to make one opt for an older generation setup.

Added: This week Fry's seems to be running a bunch of great deals on refurbished Linksys Routers. Of particular Note are two:

1. Refurbished WRT54G2 at $19.99. WRT54G2 is a run-of-the-mill 4-port wireless router with one redeeming feature: It is capable of running DD-WRT (albeit only a micro version of it). DD-WRT is a Linux-based firmware that puts ANY ROUTER (that it supports) on steroids. I have tested WRT54G2 on DD-WRT. It is very stable, pretty fast and has a number of features not found in ANY routers aimed at SOHO market - meaning any router costing less than $150!

2. Refurbished WRT160N at $49.99. Looks the same as WRT54G2 (and a bunch of other Linksys routers. Can't you atleast change the color of the top shield or something?) but supports N with upto 300Mbps connections over wireless (but only 100Mbps on wired connections, go figure!). While I have not tested this personally, this router seems to have a good review over the intertubes and is certainly a recommended buy, but only if you HAVE to have N speeds. Otherwise, it is WRT54G2 with DD-WRT all the way! Code-Retard here gives instructions to install dd-wrt on WRT160N.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(Extremely) slow file copying/transfer over network from a Windows server to a Windows 10 client

Image
Background: I had switched all my machines (office, home, laptops, HTPC.....) to Linux a year or so ago because of frustrations over lack of privacy in Windows 10, random restarts, unpreventable wake-ups in the middle of night etc. However, it is not very practical to work out of a Linux box at office because I needed to maintain a laptop just for audio conferences over Lync, since Windows virtual guests could not prevent echoing on Lync connections. I eventually gave in, and moved my office machine back to Windows 10 (enterprise, domain client). This is when I discovered this issue: When I tried to copy files from a Windows file server, the speed I acheived was way short of 1MB/s, even though the Linux boot (on the same machine) could acheive a sustained transfer of 50-60MB/s from the same server. Frantic debugging and googling led to following steps (none of which worked): Change the hub/switch/router(s) between me and the file server Use a different network card Turn off on
Read more

HP G61-320US Notebook at $549.99

Image
What is so special about a 16" HP laptop ? Well...this is among the first wave of laptops based on Phenom II based mobile chips from AMD. And since there were no Phenom based mobile chips, these chips should make a great advance from already impressive Turion and Athlon Mobile chips like ZM-, RM- and QL- series. AMD based laptops For serious and semi-professional users, there is one major factor that makes AMD based laptops (or desktops) more attractive than Intel based ones: As a differentiating factor between their premium range chips and rest of the line (i.e. medium and value chips), Intel removes support for Virtualization Technology from all but the premium range chips. The result is that very few Intel based laptops below about $900 have Virtualization. In contrast, the only differences between premium range AMD chips and their rest of the line are the speed and (sometimes) size of the cache. You get ALL the functionality but at reduced speed. Till the days of XP and Vista
Read more

Fryday deals: cases and coolers

Image
There is not much in the way of great deals at Fry's this Friday. Here are a couple of minor ones, though. Cooler Master Elite 360 for $24.99 This case can be used as a tower or a desktop. It is also relatively skinny, as the cases go. That makes it ideal for a Home Theatre PC (HTPC). It is one of the very few cases that can be used for HTPC AND accept full ATX boards. There is a price to pay for it though! Assembling it is a bit of a hassle, but not too much. It is well built for its price and is reasonably quiet. It usually sells for $35 - $40, which itself is a good price. At $25, it is a really-good-price. For more information on this product, as well as reviews, trust NewEgg . KingWin XT-964 CPU HeatSink for $19.99 ($4.99 after rebate) This has to be one of the shortest heat-sinks with lateral (or upright) fan. There are two factors responsible for this: First, it uses a 92mm fan instead of an 120mm one. Second, the grilled body sits very low. It needs only about 5" cl
Read more