There’s an exclusive offer of 10% off Dell selected desktops and laptops when you purchase over $1,999, for the first 100 customers only. That’s 10% off on top of Dell’s already amazing discounted price. Here’s the coupon code:

39142DBF5B6F

Offer ends 26 Oct 2006. Too bad it does not include 30″ displays.

Aldi Australia‘s latest surprise buy has welcomed the BBQ season — Hooded 4 Burner BBQ with side burner for $199, Hooded BBQ Cover for $19.99, BBQ 3 piece toolset + apron for $12.99, and 9kg gas cylinder for $34.99.

We actually bought a similar 4 burner BBQ + side burner set earlier this year from Big W for $269, and we still haven’t used it. It is currently boxed and sitting in the guest room. We were hoping to use it after clearing up the garden, but due to some issues with renovation, designer/builder, construction form to the council, etc it is still a mess and we just kept on procrastinating. And now you can buy a similar BBQ for $70 less. We thought we got a good deal, but obviously not.

D’oh.

Anyway, at least we can go and buy that cheap hooded BBQ cover. Even then we are not sure whether we can take ours out from the box and use it this summer. Sales starts from Thursday 26 October.

Big W sale! In their latest catelogue, front page shows an “Aiko” 81cm/32inch LCD TV for $998. That has been the price range for cheap 26inch LCD TVs for a while, and now 32inch are at the same level. Specs from the catelogue:

• Quality LG-Philips widescreen panel.
• Resolution: 1366×768 pixels
• Brightness: 500cd/m²
• Contrast: 1600:1
• Response Time: 8ms gray to gray
• HDMI with HDCP support
• PC multi-media input

Very cheap for a big LCD TV with HDMI inputs.

Jumba, the web hosting company that hosts this site, is having specials through out this week!

• Tuesday: 50% Off Hosting for NEW Customers!
• Wednesday: $26.95 .au Domains!!
• Thursday: 10% Off Day
• Friday: Pink Day!

Do check out the fourm for details. Also a word from Joseph that the 50% off hosting for new customers has been extended to today! That’s an amazing 50% off from already incredibly cheap price, hosted on either their Canberra, Melbourne, or US Dallas servers.

For today .au domain is also selling at $26.95 — even cheaper than IntaServe‘s deal! Too bad that I’ve just bought a .com.au domain from IntaServe last week :(

Sorry that there’s only 3 more hours to go before this deal finishes. Should have visited their forums more often :)

I am a lover of cheap guitars. I can proudly say that all my guitars at home were under 400 bucks. Well, except for that Seagull solid-top accustic and my Jackson Dinky that was stolen from me a few years ago. But cheap guitar does it for me, as (1) I am cheap (2) I suck at playing guitars.

Now, how about a free Strat-look-alike electric guitar when you buy a 5 piece drum kit from Deals Direct?

Now you can buy 5 piece drum kit package in either wine red or pearl white from Deals Direct, before tomorrow 18^th of October 2006, and get a free strat clone electric guitar posted to you separately. Here’s the terms and conditions.

Go and grab a cheap bass guitar from SoldSmart, invite some friends over, and your neighbour will start to hate you :) Otherwise an electronic drum kit (SoldSmart, $299) might be a better choice.

Got an email yesterday offering me a new credit card (don’t you all get these ones all the time?), but this one has a nice reward system. Somehow BP and Citibank are teaming up together introducing this new BP-Citibank MasterCard, which (1) gives big saving on fuel purchases in BP (2) gives small percentage cash back on other purchases (3) has a low interest on balance transfer (4) use this link to get $50 BP prepaid card.

I was very tempted to apply yet another credit card. But after reading the fine prints and thinking through, I don’t think it justifies. Let’s look at this deal.

• 5% off your petrol and everything else you buy at BP

  What else are you buying from BP? Hmm. Nothing. I don’t buy grocery in petrol stations unless in very urgent circumstances. That leaves 5% off petrol purchases, which equals to around 5-6 cents per litre these days, up to $15 saving a month.

  Not bad. However I am currently using our Coles Source MasterCard, which gives us 4 cent docket + 4 cent mail-in coupon discount per litre from Shell. That’s 8 cents per litre saving! Procedure is a bit more complicated as you need to remember to keep the shopping dockets and coupons, and have to make $30+ grocery purchases from Coles, etc, but so far we have no problem getting 8c/litre off everytime we go and fill up at the pump.

  5% off will only win out if the petrol price raises above $1.60/litre. Or if BP Ultimate is your fancy (I know some people do). Otherwise stick to Source MasterCard with Shell.

• 1% off everything else you buy anywhere

  1% rebate on everything! Yeah!! It is capped at $600 a year, but seriously, I don’t see myself rocking up $60,000 a year on my credit cards. My current NAB Visa Mini also has 1% cash back but capped at a relatively low $10 a month, but so far it works fine for me. Moreover, BP-Citibank MasterCard has annual fee $79 + $30 per additional cards, whereas NAB Visa Mini is only $19 with free additional cards.

• 6.9%p.a. for 6 months for all balances transferred

  … and a ridiculously high 17.95% afterwards. I always pay my credit card bill in full, so no thanks. I have to say that credit card is the worst way to borrow money because of the high interest. Use a credit card for convenience and associated rewards’ sake, but don’t use it if you might have difficulties to pay the bill in full at the end of the month.

Any other good rewarding credit cards that I should consider?

Dell is now selling their beautiful 30 inch LCD display for AUD$2,199 delivered. Hmm. I guess there does not exist a thing called “too big” for monitors, for a computer programmer like me who spent 15 hours a day in front of one.

And it is not a “TV-grade” 30″ big LCD. If you search one places like StaticICE, you’ll find 30″ LCD panels selling for around the same price that Dell’s 3007WFP. However, they are all low resolution units with terrible dot pitch at 0.50m. With resolution as low as 1280×768, those big 30″ LCD are probably only good for watching DVDs — then you can buy a standalone 30″ LCD TV for a bit more than AUD$1,000.

Dell 3007WFP however, runs at 2560×1600 at 60Hz with 0.25m dot pitch. They call it WQXGA, but I’ll say it is huuuuge! Other properties are:

• Contrast ratio: 700:1
• Brightness: 400cd/m2
• Ports: DVI-D with HDCP, 4x USB 2.0, media card reader

It does require a nice graphics card to use it though, but imagine how many xterm screen you can put on it (which is where I spent most my time in these days, including typing up this post).

The only comparable LCD monitor that I can find is 30″ Apple Cinema HD Display, which I suspect is using the same LCD panel, as they have the same specification. But you have to pay AUD$3,199 for Apple’s brush metal Cinema Display. $1,000 for the metal enclosure and extra firewire ports? You be the judge.

You’ll never have enough digital cameras, and sometimes I found having a cheap digital camera to carry around is very useful. You can always use the camera on your phone (unless you are like me who is still using an ancient Nokia with monochrome screen), but the shots are usually not satisfactory.

Aldi Australia is having this week’s special buys, and their $99 Traveler Digital Camera looks like a great throw-around camera to me. 5 megapixels. 1.5″ LCD view finder. 16Mb internal memory and 4x digital zoom. Powered by 2x AA batteries and comes with 3 year warranty.

Hopefully it takes SD cards, though it’s not mentioned on the product page.

Another cheap buy from Aldi’s latest special would be this mini wireless USB mouse for $20. It’s a typical RF wireless mouse, but a mini version for notebook users/travellers.

The Aldi sales start on Thursday 19 October 2006, while stocks last.

I think what excites me is, that there’s going to be a new Aldi store close by. Vivian went to Eastlake shopping centre last week (less than 1km from my place), and the old Franklins is shutting down, and will be replaced with a new Aldi store. Great news (for those live in Kingsford/Kensington/Eastlake/Mascot area)!! The Franklins is pretty much redundant anyway as there’s also a Woolies in the same shopping mall.

Aldi is going to open a new shop in Pacific Square Maroubra I heard. Suddenly there’s going to be two new Aldi’s around the place I live. Hmmm :)

Sorry I haven’t been blogging here for a while. Some virus is going around in Sydney I think as my whole family were sick (and are still sick), and I just could not get into the blogging mood because of all these headaches. Quite a lot of people around me (work, church, etc) are coughing — not sure who caught the bug first.

Also I have been hacking up a small search site, around the idea I talked about last month. A simple site that does price comparison on pharmaceutical products. And here you are:

Here it is!

Well, it looks pretty no-frills at the moment, and it probably will stay this way for a while. Currently I am indexing 4 online pharmacy sites, but a few more will be added later this week/early next week. If you know or operate an Australian online pharmacy/chemist site, and would like me to look at it, please contact me using the form here.

Have fun!

Sarah Stokely again wrote an excellent article on how to buy PC parts from online stores that don’t ship to Australia, and in this case especially applying to online shops in the states that will only ship locally and/or will only accept American credit cards.

I suggest everyone to check out her guide on getting those cheap gadgets to ship to here, the everything-is-expensive land.

And the usefulness of that article will only be amplified with all these bargain hunting websites that are only focusing on the US market. By the way, ProBargainHunter seems to be a very informative blog site on the bargain hunting scene in the states, written by someone who actually created one of those sites.

I guess one thing lacking in the article is, how would custom and GST be part of the formulae when goods are shipped into Australia? Someone want to do some research for me? :)

DreamHost one day sale promo-code:

To celebrate nine years in the hosting biz, we’re having an absolutely CRAZY one-day-only sale! TODAY! This offer is good for accounts that sign up on October 3rd, 2006 before 11:59 PM PDT only! Don’t miss the boat!

Sign up for any of our hosting plans TODAY using either the one or two-year prepay option and use the promo code “9999“. You’ll get an INSTANT discount of $99.99 off your bill!

What’s more is that they have increased their storage 10 fold, and doubled monthly data transfer, i.e. “you’ll never use all that space and bandwidth”. It would be once off so better be hurry if you are looking for cheap shared web hosting.

Too bad I am already with DreamHost (for the past 12 months).

Jaxx wrote in forum about this coupon code that can get you 10% off from Sony Style Shop.

SSHUG06OFFER

When you type in that promotion code into their input box, it tells you that it’s a “Huggies offer: 10% off selected products”. Sounds pretty good to me. It expires on 31^st of January 2007.

However, let me remind you the $100 dollar off coupon which is great if you need to get anything $300 or more. I actually put in both code and Sony Style Shop displays both promotions together. I wonder whether you can apply both code at the same time (10% off THEN $100 off from a PSP Value Pack – $259.95, yum :)

Zazz! is selling 400Gb Samsung SATA drive today, and surprisingly it hasn’t yet sold out at 3pm. I probably won’t buy one as I have heard too much news from my friend working at Samsung warranty claiming unit in Sydney. However, just in case you have missed out the opportunity to expand your massive storage collection, BulkBuy.com.au has got a deal on Seagate Barracuda ST3500630AS 500GB SATA drive — $289 including GST and delivery. That’s at least $40+ cheaper from other retails.

• Model Number: ST3500630AS
• Interface: SATA2
• Speed: 7200RPM
• Capacity: 500GB
• Cache: 16MB

To order, you need to join the BulkBuy forum, and participate in the poll. I don’t think I am planning to get one myself though as I find difficult to even fill up the 80GB drives at home.

Update: Now I know how much more we Aussies pay for hard disk storage. Same 400Gb Samsung SATA drive is on sale at CompuUSA for USD$99.99, which is less than AUD$133…

eBay Australia has just launched DoorOne. Looks like it is another price comparison site that is affiliated with Shopping.com, which is another eBay company.

At DoorOne.com.au, our mission is to save shoppers time and money by making online shopping simple. In today’s cluttered online world, smart consumers demand simple and easy comparison shopping features that save them time, take the stress out of online shopping, and lead them straight to the products they’re seeking.

It certainly looks like a well polished site, and very easy to use. It has a comprehensive shopping category. It’s great to have another price comparison site for the bargain hunters in Australia.

DoorOne/Shopping.com relies on affiliation model with the merchants. They sign up to the merchant program, and pays a fee whenever a shopper visited them through a click from DoorOne.com.au. CPC rate is actually not bad comparing to advertising through other CPC/CPA networks, and those who come are probably keen shoppers who have already gone through the price comparison. Sounds like a very good model with the merchants, but it does put off those who offer bargain basement price but not willing to advertise, i.e. those “really cheap” shops.

I’ll keep DoorOne.com.au on my bookmark next time when I go shopping.

Kmart‘s Markdown Madness sale starts tomorrow, Thursday 28 September 2006. It is worthwhile to actually use available online tools, like price comparison websites or Google to do some research to make sure that the price has indeed been marked down, as sometimes they aren’t as cheap as they claimed to be. It turns out some items from Kmart are indeed good value in their latest sale. Here’s some examples:

On page 11 of the catelogue they have this Magnavox 26inch LCD TV at marked down price of $899. Pretty standard for that 26 inch panel — 1366×768 wide screen, 600:1 contrast and 500cd/m2 brightness. Probably a better panel than similar priced TV listed on Deals Direct or OO.com.au. Moverove, Magnavox is actually a brand with its own website, has its Australian distributor and product page.

Magnavox’s 32 inch/80 cm LCD TV is also on sale at $1,299.

On page 10, Canon PowerShot A430 has been marked down to $179. Well, not exactly cheap when you do a search, but there is a bonus camera bag valued at $29.95, which makes it quite a good deal, especially if you prefer your local Kmart store than online shops.

I reckon A430 is probably one of the best digital camera under $200, and it produces surprisingly good quality photos with its 4MP CCD, 4x optical zoom and Canon’s DiG!C II imaging processor. Lots of good reviews online which I won’t repeat them here.

Kmart Markdown Madness starts tomorrow and ends on Wednesday 4 October.