This page is dedicated to any good deals that I find or hear about.  It is not limited to just the UK so if you see any deals on IT kit that you think others may also benefit from then please leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list. 

Also, if you are a hardware/software distributor and can offer TechHead readers a discount or similar on your products then please drop me a line and I’ll forward it on.  Check back as this list will potentially change regularly.

ps. Let me know if you find any of these discount codes of deal have expired – I will try to monitor them as best I can.  Thanks.

____________________________________________________________

BenQ G2420HDBL LCD LED 24" DVI Monitor – £115.99 inc. VAT

Not a bad price for a 24” LED TFT from eBuyer. Click here for more detailshttp://www.ebuyer.com/280920-g2420hdbl-24w-lcd-led-1080p-dvi-blk-9h-l3xlb-qbu.

- Max Resolution: 1920 x 1080
- Image Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
- Response Time: 5 ms
- Signal Input: DVI-D, VGA
- Features: Senseye 3 Technology

____________________________________________________________

Acer H274HL 27" Class Widescreen LED Monitor – 1920 x 1080, 16:9, 100000000:1 Dynamic, 5ms, HDMI, DVI – US$259.00 including free shipping

There is a healthy US$70 instant saving to be had on this 27” Acer LED TFT screen, bringing it’s price to US$259.00 inc shipping. From the specification it appears to be your standard middle of the road type 27” LED TFT screen though with the US$70 instant saving this does seem like a good deal, especially if you’re in the market of upgrading your existing screen to something larger.

• 27" Class Widescreen LED Monitor
• Full HD 1080p, 1920 x 1080 Resolution with 16:9 Aspect Ratio
• 100,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio

____________________________________________________________

Samsung External DVD+/-RW USB Drive:
£21.99 inc VAT

This external USB DVD+/-RW could prove useful to those of you that use a netbook, MacBook Air or similar where there isn’t a built in CD or DVD drive. Although I don’t own one of these particular DVD+/-RW drives I do have one similar and find it really useful in my home lab for installing VMware vSphere onto my HP Microservers which, as standard, don’t come with a CD or DVD drive.

EBuyer have these nice looking Samsung external DVD +/-RW drives for £21.99 inc VAT at the moment which didn’t seem a bad price.  Click here for more details.

Specification

    Interface : USB2.0
    CD-ROM Speed (Max) : 24x
    CD-R Speed/s : 24x
    CD-RW Speed/s : 24x
    DVD ROM Speed (Max) : 8x
    DVD R Write Speed/s : 8x
    DVD RW Write Speed/s : 6x / 8x
    DVD R Format (+/-) : +/-/DL/RAM
    Buffer (Mb). : 1Mb
    Dual Layer : Yes
    Data Capacity : 8.5GB
    Average Random Access Time : 150ms
    Bezel Colour : Black
    Supported CD Size : 8 and 12cm
    Inc. Software/Media : None
    Supported OS : MS Windows, MAC OS
    Package Type : Retail
    Manufacturers Warranty : 12 Months

____________________________________________________________

HP MicroServer – Kingston 4GB (1 x 4GB) Memory Module for £17.38 inc VAT & Delivery

CCL & Play.com have a good price on individual Kingston 4GB memory modules which are suitable to for the HP MicroServer.  I have a second, still unopened, HP MicroServer which I want to introduce to my VMware vSphere home lab and wanted to take the MicroServer up to its maximum 8GB memory capacity, so have bought a couple of these 4GB modules (I should receive them in the next few days).  Click here for more details.

Update 2: Play.com have an even cheaper price on these memory DIMMs.  They are selling them for £16.29 inc VAT & delivery – now that is a good price.  Click here for details.  Thanks to Fred for pointing out this great deal! 

Update:  I received my memory modules a day later, they we packaged well and I was impressed with the quick turnaround on the order.  I originally bought my memory modules at £14.82 but I notice that the price has now gone up to £17.38 in the past week which is a shame, that said since VAT and delivery are included at this price it still offers good value for money in my opinion.

Vendor: CCL Cost: £17.38 inc VAT & Delivery Deal Ends: Unknown

____________________________________________________________

OCZ 120GB Vertex Plus SSD for £109.26 inc VAT

Nice deal from eBuyer on a OCZ 120GB SSD.  This is an easy way to speed up the starting and deployment of your VMs in your lab environment.  Not a bad deal for £109.99 inc VAT.  It’s good to see the prices of SSD based storage slowly coming down.  I’m just waiting for a good price on a 256GB SSD.

Vendor: eBuyer (UK)     Cost: £109.26. inc VAT     Deal Ends: Unknown

____________________________________________________________

MICROSOFT TECHNET ELECTRONIC SUBSCRIPTION DISCOUNT CODE

15% OFF UNTIL 29th February 2012

Good news folks!  2012 has seen the release of a new Microsoft TechNet Discount code.  This code will give you 15% (small print: this is based on the US currency so may vary slightly between countries), though is due to expire on the 29th February 2012. 

Code: TNFLA12

To give you an idea of the type of savings you can make here are the savings on a new TechNet Professional subscription in the US, UK and Europe (checked against France & Germany):

TechNet Pro - US $349.00 -> $296.65
TechNet Pro – UK £234.21 -> £199.08
TechNet Pro – Europe €373.64 -> €317.59

If you run your own IT lab environment the Microsoft TechNet subscription is definitely a worthwhile investment as it gives you access to most Microsoft applications, along with legitimate licence keys for non-production use.

Those of you like myself who are already signed up to the Microsoft TechNet subscription programme will no doubt agree that it offers great value for money and avoids the headache of trying to ‘track down’ license keys.

A big thanks goes out to Colin Westwater who pointed out this new TechNet code to me.

____________________________________________________________

HP Proliant Microserver ‘Special Edition’
VMware vSphere Bundle for £269.95 Excl. VAT

The folks over at Servers Plus have put together an HP ‘Special Edition’ ProLiant MicroServer N40L ‘ESXi 5 Testbed’ Bundle, which includes a ‘Special Edition’ VMware themed skin for the Microserver. The tasteful VMware skin makes the Microserver look rather slick in my opinion and will certainly look good in any home or SMB vSphere lab.

BONUS!  You can get yourself £100.00 off of the £269.95 excl VAT price through HP’s current £100 end user cash back deal – click here for more details.

The Microserver bundled in this package is the newer model which comes with the new AMD Turion II Neo N40L CPU (dual core) which runs at 1.5GHz.  This combined with the 8GB of memory, the DVD-RW drive (which doesn’t come with the Microserver by default) and copy of vSphere 5 on a USB pen drive, ready for booting off of, means that you’ll have your vSphere lab up and running in no time at all.

Click here to visit the Servers Plus bundle page.

Here are some more details on the specifications.

AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz Dual-Core CPU, 8GB DDR3 Non-ECC UDIMM (2 x 4GB), Internal SATA Cold Plug SATA 250GB Hard-Drive, Samsung 22x DVD-RW Drive, Embedded RAID 0/1, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 150W PSU, 1 Year Warranty, Heavy Duty Plastic Skin (VMware design)

Manufacturer Part Code: RB-404, RB-414, SH-S222AB/BEBE, KVR1333D3N9/4G, ESXI5-HYPERVISOR, 658553421-VMSKIN

Order Code: SVHEW-N40LESXI5V

____________________________________________________________

HP PROLIANT MICROSERVER £99.95 ex VAT (after cash back rebate) !

OFFER EXTENDED UNTIL THE END OF January 2012

The £100 cash back rebate deal on the updated AMD Turion II N40L CPU HP Proliant MicroServer continues into 2012.  Get yourself a vSphere or general IT lab server for less than £100 (minus extra memory, CD/DVD drive and cable)!  HP are offering a whopping £100 cash back on the RRP price of £199.99 ex VAT on all new MicroServers until the end of January 2012. Unfortunately this HP cash back deal is only for UK based residents, though I’ll keep my ear to the ground for any similar HP Proliant MicroServer deals in other countries and will post them here.

As mentioned in my recent MicroServer blog posts here, here and here the server will suit those of you looking for a small VMware virtualization lab server suitable for running >4-6 low to moderate workload VMs (assuming it is using 8GB memory). For anything requiring more CPU horsepower and/or memory I would recommend taking a look at the ML110 G6.

Check out the ServersPlus site for more details on this great deal and also check out their VMware virtualization HP MicroServer bundle here which offers good value for money and can also have the £100 cash back deal applied to it.  Keep in mind that you will also need to buy a CD/DVD drive and cable for it and that it also only has two DIMM memory sockets, so if you want to take it up to the maximum 8GB you’ll be looking at utilising both sockets with 2 x 4GB DIMMs.  Even still with this £100 cash back deal it offers exceptional value.

Extra TechHead Reader Deal – Free Delivery on Bundles:

Servers Plus are offering free delivery to TechHead readers on their HP MicroServer bundles (ie: not the basic individual server unit) – to take advantage of this deal give them a call to order and mention that you are a ‘TechHead’ reader. 

Small Print:  I in no way benefit financially by recommending this offer. I just like to pass on a good deal to my readers where possible.

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________