Traditionally, computer bazaars have the best deals for the last day, when retailers clear their stock at low, low prices. This is when the crowds rush in.

When I went down today to Comex at noon, and the crowd was already building up. Some good buys/price drops include:

1. D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N router – S$169
No need to trade in your router, no need to bargain. You can even get a pair of (presumably cheapo) speakers for free when you buy one of these mean fellas that can handle loads of Bit-torrent downloads. Original price was S$189 if you trade in an old router.

I had written just last week that some retailers were keeping their new Centrino 2 laptops for the Comex show, even though the faster, energy-saving portables were already ready to be sold.

Well, sure enough, the likes of Toshiba and Fujitsu went out in force with their new lappys at the tech bazaar at Suntec City this weekend.

For example, Toshiba’s Portege M800 line (with 13.3-inch screen) and Satellite M300 (14-inchers) got a Centrino 2 refresh, with new P8400 and P8600 processors and Intel 5100 Wireless N built in. There is also the faster in-built 4500MHD graphics that comes with the new Intel GM45 Express chipset.

Anyways, here the deals/gadgets that caught my eye at the show.

(1) The Ultimate HP Student Offer (but they were willing to sell to this 39-year-old as well) at Booth 8428 level 4

It’s the new HP Pavilion dv5-1034TX running on Centrino 2 with a 512MB GeForce 9600M GT graphics card, Vista Home Premium, 15.4 inch WXGA screen, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, DVD-RW, 6-cell battery, integrated TV tuner and webcam going for S$1,699. It’s simply the cheapest Centrino 2 laptop with a decent graphics card for gaming that I saw at the show. The entire booth only sells this single product. Make sure this is your benchmark model when checking out a new laptop.

(2) The Lightpulse pen at level 6 Convergent Systems booth

This is a really cool gadget. it’s a pen with a built in mic and recorder. As you take notes, you are also recording what the speaker is saying. Now every word that you type is bookmarked to the corresponding portion of the recording, think of it like every word you write is an automatic bookmark.

Visiting the big IT fairs today is very different from the experience 2-3 years ago. The last few tech shows (we have four every year, one every quarter, in Singapore which coincides with the school holidays) has become a lot more complicated and a lot more competitive.

Brands generally don’t set up their own booth and instead work with their resellers. It’s not a problem when there are 1-2 resellers representing each major brand at the show but when there are five different resellers within a 30 feet space representing the same brand, its a major confusion.

That was the case with one Acer booth where there were like Challenger, Harvey Norman and three other retailers all selling Acer laptops at the same booth. They all wore the same uniform, booths looked identical and sold the same packages and deals for the “official” deals listed on the brochure but each also had their own special deals (which is usually not on the brochure).

The jam started from as far back as SCGS along Bukit Timah Road and by the time I hit Nicoll Highway at 2pm yesterday, loads of cars were queuing up to turn left into Suntec and Marina area.

I decided to make a U-turn and head for Shaw Centre, my “secret” car park with plenty of lots whenever I wanted to avoid the crazy car park queues at Suntec, Millenia and Marina.

To my horror, the car park at Shaw was full and I had no choice but to make another run – this time to Raffles City. Phew, there were still 40 or so lots left although they were filling up quickly as well. Above is the car park sign board just outside Suntec City at about 2.15pm yesterday as I was going to Comex.

Good news for content-starved high-def TV (HDTV) fans. History Channel is going to be shown on HD for StarHub cable TV viewers from September 1, bringing with it programmes like Dogfights and Cities of the Underworld, whose computer graphics will really get a boost with the better clarity on HD.

The new channel will join the four existing StarHub HD channels Discovery, National Geographic, Sports HD and MediaCorp’s HD5. This brings the total number of HD channels for cable customers to five, the cable operator said on Tuesday.

It also said it would start renting out HD set-top boxes for S$6 a month, which will sound sweet to people who have previously stayed away because they had to buy the HD box (S$48 to S$100 when you sign up for a contract).

Yeah, you read that right. MSI has come up with a mobo that has twice as many slots for memory modules than the average mobo out there.

Four slots on the P45-8D, dubbed “Memory Lover”, supports cheap DDR2 modules and the other four slots support newer DDR3 modules.

Okay, that means you only still have four slots at any one time. But MSI is touting it as a board that gives more flexibility to people transiting from one type of memory to the other.

It’s a nice thought, this mobo based around Intel’s P45 Express chipset. But you wonder if it is not cheaper to junk your old RAM and board when the time comes and just go with a new board when prices for DDR3 come down in future, and they are coming down faster of late.

Nokia today launched a couple of new N series multimedia phones, including the candy-bar N79 (above right), which the company is holding up as the smallest N series model so far. The Finnish phone maker also launched the N85 (above left), an update of sorts to the popular N82 multimedia phone.

As with other N series phones, the N85 comes with a 5-megapixel lens with Carl Zeiss optics and LED flash, as well as A-GPS to help you find your way around town. It also lets users geo-tag their pictures, an increasingly useful tool in these social networking-mad times.

The N79, which is thinner (but still pretty thick when put next to an HTC Touch Diamond or Samsung Soul), also has much of the same features, including the 5-meg camera and A-GPS.

It’s been more than a month since Intel launched its Centrino 2 platform, which includes CPUs that are faster yet use up less battery. Yet, you’ll probably be surprised that there aren’t that many models out there in stores in Sim Lim Square and Funan the DigitaLife Mall.

The reason, as Techgoondu found out during Sim Lim/Funan geek walkabouts the past two weekends, was because retailers were holding out for this week’s Comex tech bazaar at Suntec City.

Instead of pushing out new models, which are already announced to the press and on their websites in the past couple of weeks, manufacturers don’t have their stocks out in force in the shops yets.

Apple is hit with a lawsuit in the United States, from a woman who is alleging that the iPhone 3G’s performance and reliability has been subpar. (source: Ars Technica)

According the widely reported story, Alabama resident Jessica Smith bought her phone after being bombarded with iPhone ads on TV, radio and print, and is less than happy with Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign.

“One could barely turn on the television without hearing that the new iPhone 3G was ‘twice as fast for half the price,” went the complaint.

However, when she got her wonder-gizmo, she realised her data link, e-mail, SMS and other stuff were slower than expected. She even said there was an “inordinate amount of dropped calls”.