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Jack Says:
Trends & Prices in Phuket's Computer Market
Seldom seen but often heard Club member Jack gives us his two cents' worth for March 8th, 2011
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A few things I've come across lately.... The new B3 stepping P67 / H67 chipset MoBos have started to appear in Phuket. Gigabyte seems to be the first with one H67 and one P67 Mobo for sale. Price is marginally higher. JIB staff had no clue of there having been a flaw in those chipsets. Didn't even bother to ask Banana IT staff. These staff are low-paid clerks at their first jobs, not expert IT guys. The new Core i3-2100 is also in shops now @ Bt 4450. It's a Dual-Core, 4 Thread CPU. NO unlocked K model to be expected for Core i3, thus it's no longer possible to do affordable Overclocking. 4 GB SO-DIMM RAM modules are here. They cost about Bt 1500 and though nobody seems to know about them, when asked at JIB or Banana, they admit they have and can order them. It's a perfect upgrade for a laptop from the standard 2 GB to 6GB, assuming of course that someone had the foresight to have already installed Windows 7's 64 bit version. Banana IT seems to only install the 32 bit version of Windows 7. I've given up ontrying to explain the difference to them. Those I've upgraded seem to require same speed RAM – i.e. can't mix DDR3-1066 with 1333. This didn't use to be a problem with DDR2. Have people check their RAM module first before they buy an upgrade. CPU-Z is a painless way to do it. New AMD C-50 APU (Fusion) equipped netbooks are here. Bought one yesterday and everyone raves about them. It's Dual-Core 1 GHz but almost outperforms the 1.5 GHz N550 Atom. The integrated ATI 6250 Graphics is vastly superior to Intel. Bought one for a friend yesterday – the Acer One AO 522. Upgraded RAM to 2 GB (ordered 4 GB and it works with 4 GB). Cost Bt 9600 incl VAT. Has a 10.1" 720p HD LED screen (1280x720) and runs both 720p and 1080P HD movies like a dream. Has HDMI output too. Installed Win 7 Pro 64bit without problems. Scores 1575 on 3D Mark 06 so it's good for some 3y old games too. Quite incredible from a small netbook. I'm impressed. |
Some best deals IMHO in Laptops as of now:Standard notebooks ACER AS4738-382G50Mnkk/C050 i3 380M 2.53GHz. • 14.1 • 2GB/1066 • 500GB • DVD • GMA Bt 13,900 LENOVO Z460 (59070739) i3 390M 2.66GHz. • 14 • 2GB/1066 • 640GB • DVD • GMA Bt 14,900 ACER AS4745G_524G50MN/2030 i3 2310M 2.10GHz. • 14 • 2GB/1066 • 500GB • DVD • GMA Bt 18,900 Netbooks ACER AOD522-C5CKK/C006 AMD C-50 1.0GHz. • 10.1 • 2GB/1066 • 500GB • ATI 6250 Bt 8,990 LENOVO U160 (59054391, 59054392) i3 380UM 1.33GHz. • 11.6 • 2GB/1066 • 500GB • GMA 16,900 LENOVO U160 (59067717) Brown i5 520UM 2.24 GHz • 11.6 • 2GB/1066 • 500GB • DVD • GMA BT 18,900 QuadCore Sandy Bridge ACER AS4750G-2414G64Mnkk-C004 (Mesh Black) i7 2630QM 2.0GHz. • 14 • 4GB/1066 • 640GB • GT 540M Bt 25,900 That last one is an incredible deal. Laptops with that level of CPU and Graphics performance used to cost Bt 80k+. Just make sure it's with a B3 stepping chipset so you don't get saddled with one of the flawed Intel chipsets shipped earlier this year. Prices off JIB's website. Just thought these could be of interest to you Computer Clinic folks in Phuket. Most news I get off www.PCstats.com, which is just a portal but has a good variety of not-too-technical articles (unlike anandtech). Check back for next week's report. |