Daily Deals is having Catch-A-Thon again today! I was a bit slow posting about this as it has actually started 12 hours ago, and I have already posted in the OzBargain forum. However, since I have already covered their previous two Catch-A-Thon’s here in this blog, I might as well cover this one.

If you are not familiar with Daily Deals’ Catch-A-Thon, basically it is a one day sale where many past items from its sister site, Catch of the Day, will be featured here at the same low price.

I had a brief look at all the catch-a-thon items. All pretty good price, but none that I need. Check it out, and you might grab a bargain here. Sale ends mid-day on 16 March 2007.

Update: Looks like it has been extended til midday Saturday.

OO.com.au is currently running free delivery on every item, site wide, when you pay by PayPal. This deal ends Sunday 18^th of March at midnight.

That means you can save $7 if buy a small item like this 512Mb SD Memory Card, which is significant when the card costs only $14.95. Or $32 when you buy a large item like this 150 litre chest freezer that weights 44 kg.

Time to do some shopping.

Thanks to kati who posted on OzBargain about OfficeWorks‘ latest clearance sale, with everything from 50% to 70% off.

As I was more interested in cheap gadgets, so I browsed into the “Tech Products” category. Here are some cheapies that I have spotted:

O2 XDA II Mini SmartPhone $499

O2 XDA II Mini SmartPhone is one of the smallest Windows Mobile powered smart phone on the market today. It is a bit “old” — running Windows Mobile 2003 SE and PXA 272 at 416Mhz (about as fast as my Dell Axim x50), but is feature packed.

• 2.8 inch LCD with touch panel at 240×320 QVGA resolution
• Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900)
• Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
• Flash ROM: 64Mb, RAM: 64Mb
• Processor: Intel PXA272 at 416Mhz
• 1.3 Megapixel camera
• Bluetooth 1.2

OfficeWorks also throws in 256Mb SD card + 2x stylus. Cheapest on StaticeICE? $806. That makes $499 a real bargain.

Canon IXUS 750 Digital Camera $299

Canon IXUS 750 is a compact digital camera that has recently been replaced IXUS 70. It is very well designed, and certainly has Canon quality.

• 7.1 Megapixel CMOS
• 3x optical zoom
• 2.5″ LCD view finder
• Shooting video at 640×480 @ 30fps

Again, StaticICE gives me the cheapest price at $449. OfficeWorks is selling it for $299.

Note that some products are only available in some states. At this price, they won’t last.

Thanks to thanatos who posted this deal on OzBargain, BidMate.com.au (one of the few auction sites in Australia) is running a bargain exclusive to OzBargain — free fashion children watch, delivery included!

Linked watch is a children watch with Hello Kitty and green wrist band, but you can select pretty much any watch from seller “thecode”.

1. Register an account at BidMate.
2. Click on “Buy Out” on the watch!
3. You will get a notification that you have purchased the item, and you just need to wait for the offer message.
4. Seller will ask you via message whether you have got any promotion code — just reply with OZBW01.

Viola! Free children watch. Great for your own kid, or as a gift for family members or friends. Offer expires 27 March 2007, or when no watch is left.

Just saw it on Dell’s latest newsletter — Dell Inspiron XPS M1210 now starts at $1,799. It was still $2,000+ last week if I remembered correctly, and now they are running a special on this ultra-portable Core 2 Duo notebook.

You get —

It is small — just a bit bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. Weight 2kg. Also comes with a web cam built in. Dell outlet also has one XPS M1210 left (80Gb HDD but has DVD writer) for only $1,442 delivered — there were quite a few last week but I guess they were all sold out. Update: Sold out from Dell Outlet as well…

On the topic of Dell, there are also cheap 20″ and 22″ LCD monitors available this week. Time to upgrade my “old” 19 inch UltraSharp?

Don’t forget using a reward/cashback partner when you make a Dell purchase. Both OzRewards and BuckScoop are offering 0.75% cashback.

Deals Direct has free delivery on all its music CDs this weekend (10-11 March).

We have previously discussed Deals Direct’s music CDs here, concerning how legitimate they are as they were imported from (possibly) China. I guess the conclusion is that they are legit as you can freely sell imported CDs.

That does make their CDs quite cheap this weekend — $9.95 with free delivery.

100 Big Coupons is a comprehensive directory of online shopping coupons. It has coupons for many top retailers in the United States, and its goal is to help online shoppers to save big.

Yet there are already many coupon sharing sites with similar goals, and what makes 100 Big Coupons different? From its about us page:

100 Big Coupons was launched with a few key concepts in mind. One is there are minimal banners and advertisements that will be found throughout our site. Another key concept in the design of 100 Big Coupons was to make the site as fast loading and easy to use as possible.

Looks like minimalistic design plus good usability are what it tries to differentiate itself. Is it so? How useful is the site? Any relevance to us the Down Under shoppers?

Continue reading »

It has been a while since I last wrote about printers. After all, who really rely on the dead trees anyway? Oh wait. I am applying for automatic direct debit to pay for my credit card bill today, and I have to print out the form, sign it, and mail it back. Ink on paper is still relevant today.

Two laser printer deals have been posted today at OzBargain. First of all we have Samsung ML-2020 for $99.95 from Deals Direct. According to Samsung the RRP is $229.

Then we have Brother HL-2040 (thanks to kogi who submitted it). It is on special at Dick Smith Electronics for $89 (RRP $199 according to Brother Australia).

Both are mono laser print for those on a tight budget. Both speak proprietary printer language, but both has support for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The question is, which one? Let me draw up a comparison table.

¹ It says 2400×600 but tech spec says HQ1200dpi.
² Printer comes with starter toner that is only fit for 1,000 pages.

Hmm. They look about the same. If I am to pick one, I might have to go with DSE’s Brother HL-2040 simply because my previous experience with Brother — I have a 7 year old HL-1260 that is still printing after countless number of toners. Sorry Deals Direct (which I am a good supporter of), but Dick Smith just had a better deal :)

OneItem.com is yet another one deal a day website — like Zazz, Catch of the Day and SnapItUp — but with a twist. First of all, it actually has two deals everyday. Secondly, the products are specifically for babies and toddlers, or rather — they are for those keen new parents who are looking out for bargains. It was just launched end of last month, and it has already posted quite a few interesting deals.

I will have to stress that OneItem.com is indeed Australian. It might have a dot com domain name, but all prices are in Australian dollar (GST included), and the site is hosted on Destra’s servers in Sydney. I guess there are many great shopping sites out there that are Australia-focused. However with a .com instead of .com.au, it does drive away many potential customers.

Personally I think having a baby/toddler oriented one-deal-a-day site is a brilliant idea! Because,

• It stands out from all other gadget-oriented sites with cheap imported toys.
• Parents are not as cheap as computer-nerds, and they are certainly more willing to spend.
• Baby items have good margins.

I know because I myself have a 2 1/2 year old, plus the second one coming either this or next week. However we rarely shop in places like BabiesGalore because they are just way too expensive. Also we are fortunate enough to inherit many things from friends :)

Back to OneItem.com. I have briefly sampled the price of some of their products over the last couple of days. Possibly due to my lack of knowledge on how much these things actually cost in shops like BabiesGalore, I did not find them cheap, i.e. not at the price point that I am willing to buy. However, they do look like good quality stuff, and I (actually my wife) have known many mums who will be more than willing to get these quality products for their kids.

So there you go, another websites to keep keen parents awake past mid-night.

Jaycar Electronics might not be the place where you find the cheapest gadgets, but it is one of definite site to go to when you want to build your own gadget (yup, I know there are quite a few real engineers out there!)

For the month of March, Jaycar is running a March Madness promotion, where all items attract a minimum 10% off!

From their website:

Enjoy a minimum of 10% off on ALL items from 1^st to 10^th March and Up to 50% off selected items for 30 days. Applicable to Australia and New Zealand only.

You can find their sale items in PDF form here.

ToysOnline.com.au has a great range of toys for young kids and infants, and is currently a store-wide 15% off special!

We’re offering a massive 15% OFF our entire range, including toys, games, hobbies, arts & crafts, baby gear and outdoor toys. There are NO exceptions. It’s on now! But hurry it ends at midnight Sunday 11 March 2007.

To take this offer, use the following coupon code during checkout:

aut15

You can use this code as many times as you like. Also note that you can get free delivery for orders over $150.

9malls.com is an online coupon/shopping website. From its About Us page:

9malls.com online shopping mall is dedicated to providing its visitors with coupons, coupon codes, special offers, discounts, and shopping information that will save users money and enhance their on-line shopping experience.

From its “About Us” page, it also details what sets 9malls.com apart from many other online coupon/shopping websites on the Internet today. Basically 9malls.com’s goal is to be “the top coupon and most informative coupon shopping site on the Internet”, and unlike many of its competitors it is willing to list websites and coupons that are not affiliated with them, i.e. they will not get a kickback if you click through a link on their site and then make a purchase.

Continue reading »

Thanks to maria for posting at OzBargain. Microsoft Australia has a special university student offer on Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate — only $75 for life-time license, or $25 for one-year license, if you are a current enrolled student.

Microsoft have even set up a website about it — ItsNotCheating.com.au. Don’t worry about that dodgy looking guy at the front-page — you can get MS Office at that great price, legally!!

To buy, you have to select your university from a list of available unis, and then provide your university email addresses to “prove” that you are really an enrolled student. You are not getting some “student & academic version” with limited functionality — you are getting the ultimate edition with answer to life, the universe and everything!

This offer commences on February 26 and all purchases must be made by May 28 2007.

Too bad that (1) I am not a uni student (2) I’ve been a StarOffice/OpenOffice.org user over the last 10 years.

Quite a few interesting deals from Deals Direct‘s “Month End Madness Sale”. Big LCD TVs are always good measure of how yesterday’s luxury items are getting ridiculously cheap these days. Here we have Mitsubishi Diamond Digital 68cm Widescreen LCD TV for $799 (OzBargain entry here). Yup. The same company that used to make Zero carrier-based fighters, but I strongly suspect that these LCD TVs are made in China, and are much less lethal :)

They are WXGA resolution (1280×720) making them suitable for high definition. 550 cd/m² brightness and 600:1 contrast. 2 year limited on-site warranty.

Their Conia 80cm/32in LCD TV has also reduced its price to $999. It features a 1366×768 LCD panel, 8ms response time, HDTV compatible, 550cd/m² brightness, 1000:1 contrast and 12 month warranty.

I guess these are older models as they don’t support HDMI input, which means while they provide a great LCD panel, they might not be suitable to watch HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs that might employ AACS encryption (i.e. features that really annoy consumers but are required by the content publishers).

Update: Just saw their Highlander 32″ LCD TV for $899, and it has HDMI audio/video input. Cheap!

On the hand we have Strathfield‘s latest catalogue — “March Madness”. It features Shinco 66cm LCD TV (at the bottom left-hand corner) for $799 as well. It features a 1366×768 high definition LCD panel from Samsung. At least Shinco has got its own English website, although I suspect its speciality might be in air conditioning.

However, most importantly, it is fitted with a HDMI connector so you can connect your HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player to your sub-$800 LCD TV. Although an HD-DVD player can easy cost more than $800, and over $1,000 for a Blu-Ray drive…

As postd here, Daily Deals has a 5% off site-wide sale this weekend, 25-26 February 2007.

You need to use the following coupon code when you check out:

5%off

A very nice discount in a shop that already sells discounted items! We are looking at some of the vacuum cleaner as our 8 year old vacuum is really broken, and worst of all, the paper bag has become very hard to source. Some of their bagless vacuums are quite cheap — except the delivery is on the expensive side ($25 to Sydney Metro, ouch!).