Do you want an Asus Eee PC or an HP mini?

That seems to be the choice that Sitex shoppers are being asked to make by SingTel and StarHub, as the two broadband operators slug it out in an increasingly saturated broadband market.

Counting personal broadband services like 3.5G offerings, Singapore has a residential broadband penetration of 93 per cent.

What do SingTel and StarHub do then? Tie you in with ever more attractive deals, of course!

Do check out Part I, Part II and Part III of Techgoondu’s coverage at Sitex ‘08 if you haven’t, where Alf did a bang-up job covering most of the stuff. Here’s my additional two cents:

Sitex isn’t a show just for electronic gadgets it seems. I saw cars, handbags, exercise equipment, and even one booth selling spa treatments(!).

The Awesome Threesome at Sitex

Besides the usual TVs and laptops, there are other little bargains to be had at Sitex.

We seem to have forgotten that printers were once the thing to buy at these shows. Visiting the HP booth brought to my attention this nice little gem of a colour laser printer.

The Color LaserJet CP1515n costs a nice S$479 and comes with networking and 96MB of RAM for faster printing. Compared to a slightly cheaper S$379 LaserJet CP1215, this one seems a better deal with all the added features for a SOHO. Oh, and there’s free delivery for these colour lasers (they’re damn heavy, after all).

HP Color LaserJet 1515n

Okay, on to the other Sitex show bargains on the first day.

One tempting deal comes from Samsung, which is selling its new 14.7-megapixel NV100HD camera for S$599, with loads of freebies thrown in. 3 x 4GB SD card, card reader, 5-in-1 cleaning kit, extra lithium battery, tripod, etc and etc, anyone?

This nifty little number (see below) also shoots HD videos and has a nice 28mm wide-angle lens. And it also has a handy 3-inch touch-screen as well. Besides the wide-angle option, this is a worthy update over and seems a better buy than Samsung’s own S$549 NV24HD, which comes with an older 10-meg lens but better 24mm wide-angle.

Samsung NV100HD

The lelong has begun anew today, with the last of the quarterly computer bazaars being held at Singapore Expo.

What’s the lowdown on the best deals this year? Well, despite the economic downturn and Sitex being usually smaller than the other shows earlier in the year, the halls are chockfull of bargains for those looking for TVs, cameras or memory cards.

Crowd at Sitex 2008

But first, make sure you get in early, and I don’t mean in the afternoon.

Dropcast is the first DS game made in Singapore, released in Sept 2008 by Mikoishi. Unfortunately, it was released to very little fanfare here and abroad.

The curse of the indie company is that they have far less resources than the big game publishers, and often the public’s perception of indie games is that they are light on production values.

Luckily, with Dropcast, this isn’t the case. This head-to-head super collapse variant didn’t skimp in terms of art design and music. I’m not the biggest of puzzle fans, and sure, the game is a retooled variant of a popular game, but I think Dropcast is worth a look.

Core i7-965

It’s been said that recessions come and go but life goes on at Sim Lim Square, that six-storey techie haunt in Singapore, for those unfamilar.

The best evidence comes from the way PC buffs snapped up Intel’s new Core i7s, as they hit the stores late last week.

So popular are these Core i7s that the supporting high-end DDR3 modules are near sold out. Popular retailer Cybermind, for example, now has stocks for only 3 x 1GB DDR3s from Corsair (S$255 with bundle). The 3 x 2GB packs (S$499 with bundle) are already sold out.

This is the final wrap-up to our Techgoondu LG TV contest. Please check Part I and Part II if you’re interested in the whole process!

The 42-inch LG LCD TV (model 42LG70YR)

It was a democratic decision by the goondus.

Some of the votes were really close, and it could easily have been a different result. But in the end, we only had one TV to give away, and we had to pick one winner.

Congratulations to Mr Kelvin Kuan from East Coast, who will be the new owner of the 42-inch LG LCD TV!

Yup, scary stuff but the venerable PC Magazine will ending its 27-year-old monthly print magazine. The last issue is on January 2009. Interestingly this magazine managed to move 70-80 per cent of its revenue and profits to its Web version over the last few years. The mag hit a high of 1.2 million in cirulation in the 90s but has dropped to about half of that this year.

Starhub Hubstation HD

Somehow we didn’t catch this piece of news last week, but it’s still worthwhile to mention that StarHub has a new Hubstation PVR that now does HD as well.

This is indeed good news for HD buffs who want to also record their favourite programmes on TV. Previously, there was the useful Hubstation PVR which did not do HD and the HD box which did not have a PVR. Now the Hubstation HD gives you the best of both worlds.