Sim Lim Square: On 13 May 2015 at 22:59, Joe McCauley wrote: > Off the Rocher Road near the Rocher river as I recall. Do let us know if > it is any good. Its been years since I was there. > It's OK. You can get ripped off badly, and you get some excellent bargains, and in between in the majority there are OK through too expensive. I was there very briefly in April 2014 (I wanted a PCMCIA plig in to N x USB3 ports card). They were hard to find there (as here) and what I got works OK (always a bonus :-) ) and was cheaper than here but not vastly so. _______________ Local versus international purchase I live in New Zealand. I've bought a useful amount of computer and electronic devices 'from overseas'. Long long (you'll see how long) ago as my first foray into international PC importing I was silly enough to import by 'mailorder' two PC's for resale and one for my use - from the fabulous and much maligned Golden Building in Hong Kong. I bought standard 4.77 MHz IBM clones and a dearer fast "turbo" 6 MHz machine for myself - with *TWO* 5.25" floppy drives. Wow!. That transaction worked out very well (somewhat surprisingly in retrospect) an set the scene for some ongoing purchases. That was then. There was a time when "Asian" prices (Singapore / Hong Kong / China / ...) for medium to larger $ camera and computer equipment could be expected to be cheaper to much cheaper than in NZ. Those days seem to be largely gone. You can still get unbelievably insanely mind bogglingly low prices for smaller items out of China (relay modules, GPS, Arduino, IMUs, JTAG, USB logic analysers, ...) . But. by the time you get up to netbook/notebook/disk drive / lens the pricing is often almost to about as good here. Add in warranty, time to obtain and "come back" and local purchase often wins. I have seen some unbelievably cheap top-end camera deals offered out of China. They are, as I say, unbelievable. I recently bought a (superb) Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 Di USD [/VC*] lens (for Sony but Nikon and Canon the same price). *The *(probably genuinely last available for now from wholesaler) *in stock NZ retail price was slightly cheaper than the best half trustable ebay buy-now prices from either USA or Kong Kong or Korea. *I bought it then, it has known warranty and supplier, is probably not [tm] grey market sourced. And it's lovely. The occasional one apparently is not lovely for some reason. Have that happen locally and they swap it when they next have one. >From overseas even if there is a no hassle exchange you are involved with packing, international shipping, customs, insurance , ... . * I say /VC as the Canon and Nikon versions have very effective internal anti-vibration compensation. This is the first constant f/2.8 aperture zoom to have this feature and a major selling point. Apart from that the lens is 'right up there' with lenses costing 1.5 to 3+ times as much from more name brand manufacturers. Sharpest lens I've ever owned. BUT the Sony version does not have VC as the SONY A mount cameras have in-body anti-shake so "do not need in-lens" VC. So Tamron say. Alas, the Sony price is the same as for Nikon and Canon VC versions. I would have loved to have been able to use one or other and at least tried both at once. But Tamron would rather make some windfall profit from Sony users than give us the chance to try. I'd be more annoyed if the lens was not so utterly marvellous and still far cheaper than any sensible alternative. Russell --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .