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I was out and about this afternoon at Tuen Mun Town Centre checking out the latest gadgets.

One shop was selling an iPod mini for ~HK$2,400. Go next door to Fortress and you can buy a 3rd generation 15GB iPod for about the same price. Go two floors down to Broadways and you can get a 4th generation 20GB iPod for about the same price.

Saw a guy picking up the latest JNC 20GB jobbie at Fortress. I can’t understand why anybody would want a JNC versus an iPod, but then it’s a free society. For that matter I can’t understand why anybody would want to shop at Fortress.

The Lady’s Topcon 17” LCD panel is again shaking like Elvis. The 1 year warranty period has expired, and I have also run out of patience with this POS. Broadway is selling a Philips 17” LCD for HK$3,050 (both VGA and DVI inputs no less!) with three years’ warranty, and 24 months instalments w/ a Standard Chartered credit card. I’ll first put the Lady onto my spare Viewsonic 17” and see how she likes it.

At the other end of the mall the Chinese Club is selling this for ~HK$600, without any memory. Throw in a 2.2G CF form factor hard disk, and the whole setup is closer to HK$2,000, for which one can get a HOT iPod mini with twice the memory, so this is not very competitive. Having said that, after checking out the specs, this little beast has a 95dB S/N ratio, which beats a bunch of reputable iRiver MP3 players’ 90dB S/N ratio by a healthy margin.

The Chinese Club is also selling a bunch of 3MP Ricoh digital camera, the Caplio G4wide for ~HK$1,200 and the Caplio RX for ~HK$2,200.