Amazon Prime Day

Amazon is running a special 20th Anniversary event just for Prime members. Starting on the 15th July and lasting only one day. I'll let Amazon speak for themselves on what this event is about :)

Amazon Prime Day

For folks in Singapore, this will be July 15th 3:00PM till July 16th 2:59PM (assuming the usual Pacific Time that Amazon uses).

TL;DR? More lightning deals and better offers than Black Friday, or so Amazon claims. It's still 1 week away but you can start to prepare. If you haven't been shopping at Amazon, you can just follow through the earlier articles to get you started. Look at the side bar for them :)

If you have shopped at Amazon but do not have Prime, then it's time to Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial. Not eligible? No worries, just sign up a new account and you'll be eligible for the free trial again.

Have fun and take care of your wallets!

What to buy on Amazon : Kindle Reader

Good news for book lovers. Amazon is currently running 2 offers for the Kinder.

• Purchase the Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High-Resolution Display (212 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers or Kindle Voyage, 6" High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Adaptive Built-in Light, PagePress Sensors, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers and save $40 on Amazon Prime subscription
• Purchase the Kindle, 6" Glare-Free Touchscreen Display, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers and save $39 on 6 months of Kindle Unlimited subscription

However, do note that Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited are primarily US only services. This is not a bad deal actually, especially if you are already looking to buy one.

Update : It's even better today (27th Nov). Kindle is $49 while the Paperwhite is $99. And still comes with the above mentioned offers! Amazing!

Amazon Prime : Updates

A quick update to the previous Amazon Prime article I wrote. Since then a few things have happened. The first and foremost is of course the price is now $99/yr.

Amazon added Prime Photos where you have unlimited storage for your photos. This is stored on Amazon's Cloud Drive and you can access them from any of your devices, be it your phone, tablets or PCs.

The other new addition is Unlimited Music Streaming. It works the same way as Prime Instant Video and Premium Spotify. You have access to a huge library and is able to download tracks offline (although you can only do this on the Amazon Music App). If you know Prime Instant Video, Netflix and Spotify, yeah, that's how it works.

Lastly, Amazon also includes Prime Early Access to Lightning Deals. Now, this is a killer feature. For the first time, if you're a Prime Member, you can get a 30-minute early access advantage to selected lightning deals! This will usually decide if you actually get that popular deal or not, especially for the perennial popular items like external disk and SSDs.

Besides these, you still get the usual 2-day shipping with no minimum, Prime instant Video and Kindle Owners' Lending Library. This is starting to look even more attractive. If you're not too sure about forking out $99/yr yet, you can actually try it for free here - Join Amazon Prime - Listen to Over a Million Songs - Start Free Trial Now. Just remember to cancel it after your 30 days is up.

Or if you already have it and love it so much you might want to consider gifting it to your family members or a good friend - Shop Amazon - Give the Gift of Amazon Prime

Happy shopping and enjoy all the current Black Friday deals going on.

What to Buy on Amazon : HP Stream 7

Not too long ago, HP introduces this nifty little 7" tablet, HP Stream 7 32GB Windows 8.1 Tablet (Free Office 365 Personal for One Year), at an amazing price point : $99. Now you might wonder, there are a couple of Chinese made tablets that also can be had for $99 so what's the big deal here.

First, this tablet runs Windows 8.1. The full version, not the still-born RT in the Surface RT. Second, it has a decent and nice IPS touch screen running at 1280x800 resolution. Most importantly, it came bundled with Office 365 Personal 1yr Subscription. This subscription is valued at $69.99. That alone makes this bundle an excellent value proposition.

That aside, there are a few things you should take note and while the price tag is attractive, we need to keep things in perspective. It is unlikely to run graphics intensive games or do any kind of heavy lifting smoothly, you know, like Lightroom or Photoshop. I exaggerate but you get the idea. Most of these limitations come from the fact that it only has 1GB of memory and a quad core Atom based CPU. We know the Atom is not the fastest and you probably couldn't multi-task very well. However, it should serve you well with the occasional emails, small and straight forward Word and Excel documents, web surfing and Skype.

One other thing to consider is that it's a small 7" screen and without a physical keyboard, you might not find this a very productive tool. You might also have an issue with the small on-screen control elements where you might not be able to say select the menu items easily.

You are unlikely to be able to install a lot of programs due to the small on-board 32GB eMMC. You can, however, expand up till another 32GB via the onboard micro-SD card slot (hidden underneath the back shell). I've seen reports saying that the micro-USB charging port is USB-OTG compatible so there's a chance that you might be able to stick another thumb drive to it.

Read the reviews posted on the Amazon's website to get some more details. I might pick one up and play with it at the end of the day. :)

What to Buy on Amazon : SD/SDXC Cards

There seems to be a slew of deals for SD cards, both the standard sized and the micro version. The major brand would be Sandisk and the most bang for the buck would be SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSDXC Class 10 UHS Memory Card Speed Up To 30MB/s With Adapter, Frustration-Free Packaging - SDSDQU-064G-AFFP-A at $37.99 currently. This card is rated Class 10 and Sandisk claim it can do 30MB/s.

Those who wanted more speed will have to go for the Extreme version,SanDisk Extreme Plus 64GB MicroSDXC Class 10/U1 Memory Card Speed Up To 80MB/s With Adapter, Frustration-Free Packaging - SDSDQX-064G-AFFP-A. Sandisk claimed up to 80MB/s and will set you back $69.99.

Transcend is another reputable brand in the States and they currently have a very good offer for the Transcend 64GB MicroSDXC Class10 UHS-1 Memory Card with Adapter 45 MB/s (TS64GUSDU1E). Transcend claimed 300x for this card and at $29.99, it seems to offer the best value.

Lastly, Samsung recently introduced a brand new line of SD cards sporting a bright orange colour. The Samsung Electronics 64GB EVO Micro SDXC with Adapter Upto 48MB/s Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MP64DA/AM) is currently going for $39.99. Samsung claimed a slightly higher speed at 48MB/s.

Before you rush out and buy these, do note that if the 64GBs are SDXC cards and you do need to have a compatible SD card slot on your devices (smartphone, camera or laptop) in order to utilize them. If you're going to feed them to your laptop/PC via a card reader, you'll also need a USB3 capable one to realize the claimed speed.

Current Deals : Kindle Reader

Thanks to Mother's Day (We all love you Mom!), Amazon is running a promo on all the Kindle Reader lineups which starts at just $49!

• Kindle, 6" E Ink Display, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers (Black) - $49!
• Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High Resolution Display with Next-Gen Built-in Light, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers - $99!

The Kindle Fire lineups get the same treatment too!

• Kindle Fire HD 7", HD Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB - Includes Special Offers - $119
• Kindle Fire HDX 7", HDX Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB - Includes Special Offers - $199

I must say these are very attractive prices. On top of that, you also get 20% off selected Kindle accessories.

What's New : Amazon Fire TV

Amazon has finally released their much anticipated TV product, known as Amazon Fire TV. It is essentially a beefed up Roku 3 and Apple TV. The unique feature I can see is probably the Amazon Fire Game Controller. They will set you back $99 and $39.99 respectively.

The channels included are the usual suspect : Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, Crackle, Vevo and of course their own Amazon Instant Video, available as part of Amazon Prime. We shall see how well this guy will sell.

What to Buy on Amazon : SSDs and HDDs - Updates

In a previous article about SSDs, I list out a few options of the possible value-for-money SSDs you can buy. The scene has changed somewhat. It looks like Crucial is going the offensive and keep lowering the pricing of their M500 series. As of today -

• Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1 - $114.99
• Crucial M500 480GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT480M500SSD1 - $229.99

If you check the camel3 price tracker data, you'll realized that the prices have been hovering around this level. I can only postulate that there is a somewhat downward price pressure on the SSDs. The Crucial M500s are good enough for your average workload and is now more affordable than ever. Also, there's no reason to buy locally anymore. If you went to the most recent show, you'll realize that the local pricing are a total rip-off.

Let's turn our attention to Intel. Previously, the Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 is attractive because of their strong 5-year international warranty. However, if you consider the price differential today, I will probably just go for the Crucial ones. Also, recently Intel introduced the 730 series as a brand new in-house designed enterprise-classed SSD. Now, before you rush out and buy this spanking new drive, do note that it draws power from the 12V rail, making it unsuitable for mobile use. Don't ever think of putting this drive in a USB-powered case. It will not work. In any case, I'm sure you'll be put-off by the initial pricing as well.

Lastly, Seagate NAS HDD 4TB SATA 6GB NCQ 64 MB Cache Bare Drive ST4000VN000 is now at it's lowest price point of $169.99. It's a pretty good deal at this price point. My guess is that it's priced similarly to the standard 5900RPM 4TB locally.

Amazon Prime Price Hike

OK, for the very first time, Amazon is hiking the Prime membership fees from $79 to $99. I have a write-up on what it is. At this juncture, you can start your free Prime Membership Trial to 'lock' in the old price of $79 for the first year. Do remember to cancel the auto-renewal if you don't have the intention to pay.

Is it still worthwhile to sign up at the new price? Well, it very much depends on what you're going to do. Personally, if the Prime video library agrees with you, it's probably ok to sign up. Even so if you like the free 2-day shipping.

Good luck.

Current Deals : 2nd Mar - Lord of the Rings BD Set

It's been a while since The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers / The Return of the King Extended Editions) [Blu-ray] had a price drop. As of today, the price is $44.96 for the one sold by Amazon. However, it is temporarily out of stock so you have to wait.

I spotted this compilation The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music going for $3.99. I happen to have this and it's good value at this price. It contains most of the more well-known pieces and it's performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. For casual classical listeners like me, you should add this to your collection.

While I'm at it, I noticed there's a recent release by the Bach Guild, Little Big Box of Romance, for the literally next to nothing price of $0.99. Then again, most of their compilations are being offered at this price. I have personally bought quite a number of their releases. For $0.99, you can't really fault it for anything.

Lastly, from now till 10th March, All You Need Classics is offering their releases at $0.99 as well. I haven't tried these so I don't know how they fare. Then again, it's $0.99...

Happy downloading!

On the FileServer : The Disk Drives

In the first part of the series, I briefly touched on some of the hardware that are either necessary or good to have in order to build your own NAS. Right now, I'll go on to talk about the disk drives.

There are many types of disk drives (appreviated HDD from now on) and are mainly differentiated by the following parameters -

• Form Factor. Either 3.5" or 2.5"
• Interface Type. Either SATA or SAS.
• Spindle Speed. How fast the disk platters spin.
• Capacity. How much the disk can store.

Form Factor

This mainly tells you how big (or small) the disks physically are. Most desktops use the 3.5" form factor. If you opt for this, you don't have any other physical parameters to worry about. All 3.5" HDD comes in the same height of 1" today.

If, for some reason, you want to use 2.5" HDD, then you need to be aware that they comes in several different heights. The most common today will be 7mm and 9.5mm. A few high capacity ones come in 12.5mm height. Lastly, some enterprise drives, such as the Seagate Constellation 2 series comes in at 15mm height. You have to take note of the height, especially if you want to use a hot-swap cage.

You might have also heard of 1.8" HDD, primarily manufactured by Toshiba. I'll suggest you leave these alone.

Interface Type

This describes the interface the HDD supports when connecting to your computer. The mainstream today is Serial ATA (SATA). We are at its 3rd revision, supporting 6Gbps link speed. Version 2 supports 3Gbps and the first version does 1.5Gbps. The later versions are usually backward compatible with earlier versions.

HDD today are mostly SATA3, supporting 6Gbps link speed. If you have the unfortunate task of connecting these HDDs to a computer that only supports SATA2 running at 3Gbps, your HDD will then run at the same link speed of 3Gbps. However, you don't have to lose sleep over this. 3Gbps is the link speed between your computer and your HDD. None of the HDDs sold today is able to saturate a single SATA2 link. The only devices that can transfer at more than 3Gbps today are SSDs, SAS/SATA expanders and SATA port multipliers. If you don't know what these are, it's fine as they are not that common and their use is pretty specialized.

You will also have to think about how your computer can support these HDDs. When the SATA standard was first ratified (sometime in the early part of the 21st century), there is a need to slowly transit from the older ATA/ATAPI/IDE/EIDE interface to this new one. As a result, most computer during that time run your SATA interface in the dreaded 'IDE' mode. This basically means the computer is still speaking the older language of IDE despite the HDD is using the new connector. You can find out which mode your computer is using by going into the BIOS and see what mode the BIOS is using. If it's using 'IDE', then you're being short changed. If it's running in 'AHCI' mode, then you're all good. You might also see 'RAID', which means your controller is capable of running some form of RAID. All the newer Intel ICH can do RAID.

The other type of interface which you might see is Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). This is mostly reserved for enterprise deployment in servers. The link speed today is also 6Gbps. I wouldn't recommend this for your home setup since the feature might not benefit your type of workload at home.

Do note that SAS is considered a superset of SATA. If you have a SAS controller, you can connect both SAS and/or SATA drives to it. However, if you have a SATA controller (like most Intel based consumer motherboards), you will not be able to connect a SAS drive to it.

Spindle Speed

This describes how fast the disk platters are spinning. The faster it spins, the higher the performance of the HDD. This is the direct result of the fact that a faster spinning disk takes a shorter time to get to the data. This is known as the disk latency. The lower it is, the better.

Mainstream HDDs today sold over the counter spins at 7200 revolutions per minute (RPM). Some higher performance consumer class drives and entry level enterprise drives spin at 10000 (10k) RPMs. The highest performance drives spin at 15000 (15k) RPMs. You are not likely to see 15k RPM drives sold over the counter.

That said, there are some drives that spin at 5400/5900 RPMs. These are slower than the mainstreams. However, they have 2 clear advantages. First, since they spin slower, they make less noise and vibrate less generally. Second, they almost always consume less electricity.

Capacity

This is the easiest to understand. The highest capacity today (Feb 2014) is 4TB. Only 3.5" form factor drives is capable. 2.5" drives maxed out at 2TB. Also, the higher the spinning speed, the lower the maximum capacity available. You won't find any 2TB 15k RPM Cheetahs anytime soon, maybe never.

OK, so what's best? As a NAS, I want it to be as cost effective as possible. That means I go for the best GB/$ metric. I don't care if the drive spins at 5400 or 7200 RPM. But usually the faster the HDD spins, the more costly it will be. These are the drives I use personally

• WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EZRX
• Western Digital Caviar Green 3 TB SATA III 64 MB Cache Bare/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD30EZRX
• Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST4000DM000

So basically, I picked big capacity drives. The 3TB and 4TB are at the best price sweet spot today. Lastly, I'll like to touch a little bit about the WD Red (WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD30EFRX) and Seagate NAS ( Seagate NAS HDD 4TB SATA 6GB NCQ 64 MB Cache Bare Drive ST4000VN000) drives. What set these apart? Apparently, these drives are tested to run correctly in those off-the-shelf NAS products (like Synology DiskStation 4-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS412+ (Black)). One of the feature most advertised is that it has a shorter error timeout. The technical intricacies of this is quite complex and I won't go into the details. Suffice to say that if your normal consumer drives developed a problem, say a bad sector, and the OS attempts to read this sector, it will take a very long time (sometimes forever) for the drive to come back and say 'Sorry, I tried but I couldn't read the data.' This cause mayhem in RAID controllers and sensitive OS. I have had Windows Server totally crashed when it attempts to read a flaky consumer class drive.

Happy hunting. In the next part, I'll talk about the software that links all these parts together.

On the FileServer : The Hardware - Hotswap cages, enclosures and controllers

In this series of articles, I'm going to briefly jot down my setup. Hopefully this can provide some insights and ideas to those who are considering building their own NAS. Now, you might ask why a NAS at home? And even if we want a NAS, we can just buy one off the shelf, so why build? These are valid questions and I will share with you my thoughts. I'll then go ahead and list down the main components of the hardware I use.

So, why do you even want a NAS at home? Let's face it, in this digital age, you would have build up a lot of photos of your kids, families and loved ones. Probably videos too. You're likely to have a massive iTunes collection, and maybe a sizable movies collections as well.

Traditionally, you have a desktop (or laptop) and you dump everything on it. The more careful ones will buy an external drive (see some of my recommendations here). At some point in time, you realized you run out of disk space, or you simply need more. Or perhaps you want to share them with another desktop (or laptop) in the household? That's where a NAS will come in useful. It provides a central location where you can deposit your digital life.

Why build your own then? Yes, you can just buy any one of them off the shelf. But I prefer the flexibility of building my own and to also satisfy the geek in me. It isn't really that difficult, you just need a bit of planning and some basic system administration skills. In this article, I'll continue with the hardware I use and then in subsequent articles, I'll follow through with the software and the final setup.

In a typical NAS, one of the key features is that you want many drive bays, which can be easily accessible. Why is this? The more the drive bays you have, the more disks you can plug in, plain and simple. But why do you need it to be accessible? Drives fail. It's not a matter of 'IF' but 'WHEN'. When a drive fail, you don't really want to open up the case and pull the drive. You want to just yank the dead (or dying) drive out from its bay simply by pressing a button or lifting a lever. Because of this requirement, I install what is known as a hot swap cage. There are 2 types, 3.5" or 2.5". 3.5" are more common since they provide more value compared to their physically smaller 2.5" brother.

You can find these hot swap cages on Amazon, an example (3.5") will be ICY DOCK FlexCage MB974SP-2B Tray-less 4 x 3.5 Inch HDD in 3 x 5.25 Inch Bay SATA Cage - Front USB 3.0 Hub. This specific model provides 4 bays, and uses up 3 5.25" bays in your tower. This is also known as a 4-in-3 cage. There are also 5-in-4 cages available. You need to plan a little bit further and decide if you want the 4-in-3 or 5-in-4. I personally use a 4-in-3.

An example of a 2.5" hot swap cage is Thermaltake MAX-1542 Backplane HDD Cage Hot Swap Removable Hard Drive Kits 2.5-Inches SAS/SATA RAID Ready RC1400101A. In most cases, you don't want these unless you plan to use the smaller 2.5" form factor drives. For me, I do have some 2.5" drives lying around (as a result of multiple upgradings of laptop drives) so I got one of these. I use the 4-in-1 type which takes in 12mm 2.5" drives. I have personally saw 6-in-1 cages (Thermaltake MAX-1562 Backplane HDD Cage Hot Swap Removable Hard Drive Kits 2.5-Inches SAS/SATA RAID Ready RC1600101A) but they can only take 9.5mm drives.

Alright, so I have a 4-in-3 and a 4-in-1 cage installed. It can take in 8 drives. Typically, an Intel-based motherboard (like ASUS P8H77-M/CSM LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard) comes with 6 SATA ports. You need an additional disk controller to provide the extra SATA ports. I purchased an Dell PERC card off eBay. It's really a rebadged LSI Megaraid SAS controller card. This is a somewhat high-end card meant for servers so you might want to go for 'consumer' class controllers, like StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express SATA 6 Gbps eSATA Controller Card - Dual Port PCIe SATA III Card - 2 Internal/2 External Card PEXESAT322I.

If you need more than 8, or perhaps you just don't have enough bays internally in your tower, you can opt for external enclosures. There are multi-bay external enclosures that run over USB3 or eSATA. I hunted for a while before settling for this bundle - TowerRAID TR4M+B - 4 Bay eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Performance Tower w/ 6G PCIe Card (Black).

One thing to note on the difference between an USB3 enclosure and an eSATA one. You cannot hot swap individual disks in an USB3 enclosure. This means if your enclosure has 4 disks, and one of them is dead, you have to bring all 4 disks offline before you can pull the dead disk. eSATA does not have this issue. However, in order to use all 4 bays in an eSATA enclosure, the eSATA controller card must have the 'Port Multiplier' feature. If you buy the bundle listed above, it will work nicely.

If you choose to still go with USB3 (it's definitely a lot easier to setup), you should seriously consider Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 ProBox 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with USB 3.0 & eSATA. For Singapore readers, just go SLS and buy it. It's known as Hotway Probox here.

Alright, that's all for now regarding hardware. Do also note that I don't build for performance (despite having a server class SAS controller) so you need to understand what you're buying if you choose to follow my hardware setup.

Do feel free to ask questions if you have any. I'll try to answer them, and stay tuned for the next installment where I'll talk briefly about the different drive types and what you need to look out for. And if you find my articles helpful, you can help to support the site by buying through the links above. Thank you!

Current Deals : 18th Feb - Nexus 7 FHD and SSDs

The Google Nexus 7 Tablet (7-Inch, 32GB, Black) by ASUS (2013) is back at $239. If you missed it the last time round, now is the time. I love mine.

Crucial M500 960GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter/spacer) Internal Solid State Drive CT960M500SSD1 is still $449! Looks like it's going to be a more or less permanent price drop.

If you prefer Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE1T0BW, it's $499!

Lastly, I saw an interesting item on sale. Now, if you're the type who can't leave your iPads behind even as you need to visit the toilet, then this is for you, CTA Digital Pedestal Stand for iPad 2/3/4 with Roll Holder.

Current Deals : 13th Feb - Some on-going coupons

Some on-going coupons deals -

• $3 off Seventh Generation Baby Wipes
• On-going 20% of selected Omron BP Monitors
• $7 off the ever popular Panasonic Oral Irrigator EW-DJ10-A

I saw this Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch ST1000LM014 for $99. This is the newer slimmer 7mm version but spins at 5400rpm instead. Might be a good buy as it's not that much expensive over the normal all-platters version.

The Crucial M500 480GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT480M500SSD1 is still $259 so grab while you can. 

Current Deals : 3rd Feb - Omron BP monitors coupons

There is now a coupon for a 20% off selected Omron BP monitors. I personally have the Omron 7 Series Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor and it works well. It's more convenient to use than the upper arm type. The size is also more friendly if you ever need to bring it out for travelling.

Current Deals : 23 Jan - Crucial M500 SSDs

I just found out (23rd Jan 2014) that the highly rated Crucial M500 SSDs have a price drop.

What to Buy on Amazon : Office Supplies

One of the more useful item to help you get organized is a labeller. There are a few reputable brands out there which make very nice labellers, like Brother, Epson, Dymo etc. The thing here is, labellers locally here in Singapore is extremely over-priced. As a result, whichever model you want is probably a lot cheaper on Amazon.

I personally used Brother's PT-80 but seems like Amazon no longer carries it. The closest will be the Brother PT-70 Personal Handheld Labeler with special time & date function. After getting the labeller itself, you'll need the correct type of tapes to go along. Brother makes 2 types of tapes, laminated and non-laminated. The PT-70 uses the M-series tapes which are non-laminated. The tapes come in a few colors and sizes so it depends on your preferences. The one I prefer is Brother M231 1/2-Inch Black on White Tape for P-Touch Labeler.

Other office supplies you can get from Amazon will be stationeries. I quite like Sharpie stuff and I have used Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Markers, 12 Black Markers(30001) and also Sharpie Accent Tank-Style Highlighters, 12 Fluorescent Yellow Highlighters(25025).

The other item that is of amazing value will be BIC Round Stic Ball Pen, Medium Point (1.0 mm), Blue, 60 Pens. It's going for $3.99 right now. You can't really argue with the price point of 6.7 cents per pen.

Lastly, mechanical pencils. My current favorite is Uni's Kuru Toga. Normally, you can find the 0.5mm version of it locally at very competitive prices. However, the 0.7mm version is no where to be seen. As a result, I got mine,Uni-ball KuruToga 0.7mm Mechanical Pencil Starter Set, from Amazon instead.

Have fun!