"Good grief, that's too long to wait :) "
What can I say... My sisters & I are messed up, growing up with parents who had a Very hard time of it in the Depression. As much as we hated their super extreme thriftiness, it still became sort of ingrained, to the point that I'll feel guilty if I buy anything non-essential at full price. Needless to say I'll Never, Ever, buy a Surface 3 with LTE... http://www.neowin.net/news/want-a-surface-3-with-lte-thatll-cost-you-7777777
"I used to watch out for bundles, but here in the UK the 'kit' prices are usually no cheaper or better quality than just picking out the parts yourself, so after a while I stopped checking them. "
That's part of the reason I posted those kit prices, so folks in the EU &/or UK could compare them to what they can buy separately, & get some sort of an idea if it was worth checking out. I *think* Tiger is a EU company, & I believe Newegg sells internationally, but it's difficult & IMHO unreliable to try & gauge availability & shipping when their sites peg my US ip.
In the US the best CPU/Motherboard bundle deals come from Microcenter, but you have to have one within driving distance so you can pick it up at the store. Otherwise the individual components in a kit can be found cheaper on sale, but they never have sales on more than a few of those components at the same time. And often sales on a particular part actually tend to be seasonal, so you'll see the best prices only once a year, so the bundles can be economical if you want everything now -- the regular prices at retailers like Newegg [& what you'll see in the kits] are generally competitive.
"I've been looking for a new mouse for over a year, but finding the perfect mouse is a difficult project!"
YES! It's a bit worse for me as the wrong mouse can actually be painful. I've got a few standard sized, cheap, wireless, Logitech mice [they came with keyboards & warranty replacement keyboards]. They actually work OK, but I developed an almost constant pain in my right hand from using them -- the hump in the middle is just too tall. I'm not too critical on the cheap mice I buy for spares -- they're in case someone's mouse dies -- but for myself, I now check the measurements very carefully.
There are quite a few so-called gaming mice made by Chinese companies without a known brand that sell for pretty cheap. In my experience, & I've bought several, many use the same innards as much more expensive mice, but the build quality of everything else can be questionable. A good example is that many use a clear plastic scroll wheel with a rubber-like ring around the middle -- that rubber ring will go away. Another example that's fairly common I think, many come with the pads or feet stuck on wrong or even mangled. It's also common to have on-board memory to store stuff like button assignments, polling rate, & hopefully control the *breathing* lights [that I personally Loath]. The good part is you run their software once to program the mouse, & never have to run it again [unless you want to re-program it]. The bad part is that software tends to be as buggy as can be -- I have to run it in a VM because it will not run in any of my regular Windows installs.
I bought one spare from FocalPrice for ~$5-$6 that actually performs as well as anything else we've tried [including some pretty expensive Logitechs], & feels comfortable enough in use, but it's cheap plastic housing is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. The higher end cheap mice [I know that's contradictory ;) ] can come with removable &/or adjustable panels to make them wider/narrower, longer/shorter. I picked up one of those from Meritline, where the back portion of the mouse can fit snug against the housing, or be extended to increase its length. I can't say much good about the way they engineered/manufactured that part, but once you have it set you forget it so it doesn't matter a whole lot.
Focal Price & Meritline are Chinese retailers that ship world-wide. Another good source is Amazon, which frequently has these cheap mice on sale. I don't know if Amazon.UK is similar, but I've bought from Amazon UK & had stuff shipped free, so I imagine [guess] it would work the same way buying from Amazon & having stuff shipped to the UK. I have seen the R.A.T. mice on sale for pretty reasonable prices, but the ones I've seen on sale all had very poor reviews so I've never bought. Still, sales are possible so maybe you'll get lucky one day.
I Will Not buy mice/keyboards from Microsoft or Logitech, with the exception of Logitech's $10 mice. I've had letter rot with keyboards from both companies, sticking keys, & premature failures. The Microsoft mice I've had always failed early, & with Logitech's higher end mice, including the gaming versions, odds are just too great switches will fail in months. I'd rather just beat my head against the wall than deal with Logitech's warranty dept.
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Another Desktop PC option for some folks might be something like this
Dell Optiplex GX620 Desktop PC with Dual Core Pentium D 3.40Ghz, 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, DVDROM, Windows 7 Professional 32 Bit -- $79.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=83-158-135&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=GD070115&nm_mc=EMC-GD070115&cm_mmc=EMC-GD070115-_-index-_-Item-_-83-158-135
http://ark.intel.com/products/27520/Intel-Pentium-D-Processor-945-4M-Cache-3_40-GHz-800-MHz-FSB
$80 is a good price for win7 pro or 10 pro themselves. *IF* 10 turns out to be like the win8.1 update/upgrade, you should be able to enter your old key in a fresh install [32 or 64 bit on any hardware] to activate.
