does an intel  d865glc desktop board count as cheap. because i know that when they first came out they were considered some of the best mobo's in their class. the computer used to be a university workstation computer costing around £2000 five years ago. i bought it for £80! the specs aren't bad either considering the price

intel pentium 4 3.00ghz HT
intel d865glc mobo
maxtor diamondmax 160gb hdd
matrox parhelia 128mb graphics
1gig ram
the slowest possibe dvd/rw drive in the world
crappy beige RM  case (no longer)

i admit  there are some not  so good components  in  there (namely dvd/rw, hdd and graphics) but the rest isn't bad for £80. the graphics may be pretty spoony but those cards retail for about £350 each.

anyway, back on the subject, any other ideas? i don't think power is an issue because the scanner that runs off the front usb ports gets its power over usb, and that's bound to use more power than a card reader, isn't it?