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Jennifer Lo

Slashed prices, bargain-basement offers and one-dollar tokens had gadget geeks  queuing in their hundreds yesterday as the annual Computer Mall Festival opened in Sham Shui Po.
More than 300 bargains priced as low as HK$1 are being offered daily during the 11-day fair at the Golden Computer Arcade, Golden Computer Centre, Golden Computer Plaza and New Capital Computer Centre and - for the first time - the Wan Chai Computer Centre.
But numbers were down on the festival's opening day, thanks to the city's economic situation and competition from the Hong Kong Computer and Communications Festival which starts in Wan Chai next Friday.
'Expensive items are not going to sell well but cheap deals will,' Lui Kin-ching,  vice-president of the Hong Kong Computer Association,  which jointly organised the festival, said. 'We're less optimistic about turnover this year given our city's economic situation, but we hope to attract mainlanders.'
The festival - which offers $HK1.8 million worth of goods at bargain prices - attracted 50,000 visitors yesterday, a 25 per cent drop on last year.
'Discounts were not as attractive as before, when iPads were sold at HK$1,' bargain hunter Wyman Lin Wai-man, 23, from Tin Shui Wai, said. 'It makes them unprofitable for resale.'
Some shoppers were also disappointed by the policy that allowed each customer to buy only one discounted item per day. 'We came all the way from the New Territories with a long shopping list, and it turned out we could only buy one item,' Fong Cho-yan, 19, from Tuen Mun, said. 
But Lui still has some sales ammunition ready to fire, planning a 'counterattack' on the last four days of the festival, which overlap with the Wan Chai computer expo. 'Laptops and netbooks will be our last resort,' he said. 'We've reserved HK$300,000 for the four-day battle.'
While numbers were down yesterday, there was still a queue of about 400 people despite the summer heat, with some having queued for up to 15 hours.
First in line was  Kin Chung, from Ma On Shan, who snatched a D-Link router originally priced at HK$1,299 for just HK$1. 'It's just worth it despite a 15-hour wait,' he said. 'I bought this for my children, so that they can enjoy wi-fi at home.'
Nine-year-old Fong Yeung, from Sheung Shui, lined up overnight with his family who bought three of five Sony PSPs which were marked down to HK$999 from an original retail price of HK$1,499.
'I only slept for three hours,' he said. 'But the first thing I'll do after going home is play video games - not sleep.'



Bargain prices really do compute