Slashdot Mirror

The technology stuff:
Slashdot
ThinkGeek Clearance
ThinkGeek What's new
Was a promising Image Editor. - Pixel Image Editor
Great discount on technology and sometimes other gear.
More technology discounts.
Latest video tools.
Mac Software discounts.
discounted product sales.
More Mac Software discounts.

A few local feeds:
Durham, NC food reviews. - Carpe Durham
Durham, NC drink specials.
Raleigh, NC drink specials.
Raleigh, NC Photo blog. - Goodnight, Raleigh!
Chapel Hill, NC drink specials.

In order:

Yahoo! News: Top Stories
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things http://www.boingboing.net/ - Links of cool stuff / interesting political stuff on the web
Slashdot.org (some nerd website)
Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/ - Best webcomic evar
Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com/ - Gaming news
BensBargains.net http://www.bensbargains.net/ - Website that lists awesome deals on all sorts of stuff
FOUND Magazine http://www.foundmagazine.com/ - Website where people submit random interesting/hilarious/beautiful/sad/etc things that they find (letters, pictures, notes, signs, etc.)
SlickDeals.net http://www.slickdeals.net/ - Same as above
Techbargains.com http://www.techbargains.com/ - Ditto.

http://www.xkcd.com/ - Fun, nerdy webcomic.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/ - Has likely the best general automotive and games forums around.
http://www.dealmein.net/ / http://www.slickdeals.net/ / http://www.bensbargains.net/ - The sites that post deals every day have gotten me some awesome bargains in the past.
http://news.google.com/ - Duh.
http://slashdot.org/ - Duh x 2.

What you're basically describing is investing on margin (i.e. investing with borrowed money). Most experts steer people away from investing on margin. The possibility exists to lose money that wasn't yours to begin with AS WELL as having to pay interest on that money. And the interest rates are usually high.

You might be thinking that the interest rate on your student loans is really low. But recent legislation changed that. See this article for a description of the recent change. To summarize, the rate on Stafford Loans is going up to 6.8% and PLUS loans are going up to 8.5%. To compare, my mortgage is only 5.375% and my wife's consolidated med school loans are only 2.875%. So the new rates are pretty high.

What I would suggest to you is to find a really high-rate savings account or a money market account. I often see Emigrant Direct mentioned on Ben's Bargains as a good place to park your money. If you want to go down the money market route, I can highly suggest Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund. Don't bother with the tax-free money market funds. You don't have enough income to make it worth it.

I would definitely steer clear of investing in stocks. It's just to risky to do with borrowed money. Once you have some money of your own that you can put away for a long time (think retirement savings), that's when you turn to stocks. Also avoid bond funds. Unlike individual bonds, bond funds have no maturity date, so they entail risk with little reward.

Others have suggested that it's illegal to invest your student loans. I find that hard to believe since that would preclude putting your loan money in any form of interest-bearing account. Maybe there's an exception for FDIC-insured accounts?

I'm not even going to get into fatwallet.com...

It's too bad fatwallet is full of bastards who would sell their mother out for a quarter.

Use some other, less-evil sites instead:

http://www.dealmein.net/
http://www.slickdeals.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.bensbargains.net/

Ben's Bargains had them for ~$750 a month or two ago but it was the end of the quarter and Dell needed some business.

http://bensbargains.net/. The comments can be pretty juvenile, but the deals are good and easy to browse.

I think it is fairly prevalent, which is why sites like http://www.bensbargains.net/ exist. An example I found a couple of years ago : I ordered a flat panel from Dell. When I shopped on their "Home User" site, I got a price that was $300 more than if I put in some bogus corporation name and shopped the "Small Business" site. Guess which one I ended up using? To me, it is repugnant that I had to even go through all of those steps. Volume deals for corporate customers I can understand, but blatant price discrepancies just because you browse a site differently than another single customer is bad business. I don't know if I would consider it illegal, but it is definitely unethical.

Then again, so is lying to get a better deal on computer hardware. :^)

check here

Funny you mention that. DOOM III is already down to $27.

...unless a computer manufacturer is willing to market a $99 PC as a loss-leader. "Buy this PC for $99 if you sign up for $20 a month internet access, or tech support, or the Foo Computer Corp. fan newsletter, or whatever."

DIY computers got more expensive than bargain-basement Dell boxen about 2 years ago...I bought the Dell that I'm typing this on for about $300 shipped with a monitor and a copy of XP. I did it through a deal on Ben's Bargains when I realized I couldn't build my own system for less than the price of the Dell. Now, my gaming system is homebrew, and I have plenty of homebrew systems around, but those are mostly application-specific (a music jukebox machine, a server, a game emulation machine) and a labor of love rather than practical "do-it-all" cheapie boxen.

If you want a PC for less than $100, your only option right now is really to head on over to Craig's List and find somebody who needs to get rid of their old Compaq for $50. In that sense, the sub-100-dollar PC is possible, but it's still a loss-leader for the guy who's selling his $2000 system for a fraction of the cost when new.

Now, could it BE done? Is it POSSIBLE? Of course. But, again, only by a company like Dell or IBM or whoever can afford to buy old Duron chips by the truckload and stick 'em into bargain-basement mobos for inclusion into home computing applicances. It will happen at some point. It just hasn't happened quite yet.

If one can get a 2.4 Ghz laptop for $889, then is this thing overpriced?

bensbargains.net one of the best.

I routinely check Ben's Bargains at least once a day. It's a very good summary of all the good deals posted to message boards like Fat Wallet without the YMMV (Your Milage May Vary) or PM (PriceMatch) crap. Also, I'm sure most Slashdotters know this already but AnandTech Hot Deals Forums is a great place to get computer related deals.

Before I make any purchase online, I always send it through Pricegrabber to make sure I'm getting the lowest price, as well as check Funtasia for any coupon codes to sweeten the pot. Be sure to check the merchant ratings. It's sometimes wiser to spend a few more bucks to get it from a more reputable vendor rather than go through the headache of harassing a company to send you your stuff and later disputing a charge with the credit card company (take it from one who learned the hard way!).

B.G. Micro is sort of like All Electronics in that they carry a ton of surplus electronic junk, download both catalogs and enjoy! Also try American Science and Surplus for a wider variety of tech stuff, toys, labware, and millitary goods.

I've been using for a while now. When a site pulls a coupon code or something, Ben usually updates the listing, and the discussions following each posting are a helpful way to share results. "I had to put in a California ZIP code to view the item, but then I was able to order it shipped to my Michigan address." or "Make sure the CompUSA is within 4 miles of the Best Buy or they won't honor the pricematch. Get a friendly CSR and you should be golden!"

I've stopped using Pricewatch, their listings have become crammed with keyword spam and are all but useless. The "price including shipping" column was a good idea, but the quality of the listings has been terrible lately.

Clinko.com is just a module off of my full site Protista.com. But, it's the main attraction because it parses bensbargains and slickdeals so I can check them at work.

I'd say this was a shameless promotion, but i make Jack and shit off of this, so enjoy it.

BensBargains pretty much does it for me. Ben parses a lot of other deal websites, then compiles it together. Overall, pretty good.

He posts a ton of stuff daily, and seems to aggregate what's on some of the other sites and combines it with coupon codes, etc. link

Or you could get a Creative Nomad Muvo^2 for $200 (okay, $205 shipped)

Creative made a product very similar to the ipod mini for less, which is actually worth more, since you can remove the cf microdrive inside and sell it (or use it).

Your best bet may be Dell. They occasionally have coupons for accessories and peripherals (which might include the iPod). That's how I got a 40 GB iPod from them a few months ago for $430. Check Bensbargains and Techbargains for the coupons.

To be safe, a safe-delete has to have cooperation with the disk-space allocation semantics of the file system and block device driver. Sometimes this means placing kernel-level assist code into the picture.

Probably not dissimilar to the way that the defragmenting software works.

Of course, hard drives are so cheap that one could just scrap them to be really safe. My my recent hard drive purchase was 200GB for $22 after rebate. Heck, the average 40GB drive can be had for about $60 any day and compared to the cost of losing to the RIAA in court, that's not squat. A screwdriver, hammer, torx driver, and some sandpaper will render that drive unreadable. ;-)

Then there are always options involving overwriting, deleting, drive formatting, defragmenting, etc. that will pretty much guarantee that the data is not recoverable.

Its not always worth the effort of researching then ordering parts only to deal with the occasional DOA part and various sources of support for hardware issues when prepackaged prevalided machines using essentially the same components you would buy are available for about the same or lower price point.

I keep an eye on sites like Ben's Bargain Center, where really good deals from vendors like Dell are brought to the budget conscious geek's attention. I recently picked up a pair of 2.4Ghz 800Mhz FSB dual channel DDR P4s from Dell for less than 500$ each, and I'm very pleased with the machines. They are petite yet expandible, made of standard quality components, neat, silent, stable and fast. The one I use as a Windows box boots into XP before my monitor warms up. Which is another thing, essentially free Windows licenses, which is nice when I need to use Windows. And Linux has no problems on the machine, aside from a bit of difficulty during install since most of the hardware is quite new compared to the aging Debian install disks, like a new unrecognized rev of the Intel eepro.

My main machine is an upgraded Compaq W8000, which was a great deal back when I bought over a year ago. For 700$, I had picked up a great case with a 500W power supply, an i860 SMP motherboard worth at least 500$ itself, a P4 Xeon 1.7Ghz which was at least 150$, 18GB 10k SCSI drive which was over 200$ at the time, and the other necessary parts short of memory and video.

If you're ambitious enough to enter everything into your PDA, all the power to ya'. Otherwise, I found it handy for boring classes to be able to read the news (basically like bringing an electronic magazine to class). You may think it sounds funny and that only flunkies would do such a thing, but I gaurentee there will be courses you show up for the sole reason to either receive or hand in assignments. The rest of the time is just filler. If you do get a PDA, make sure you get 802.11 support with it.

I think the only device you really need is a good computer. Laptops are nice because you can take them to group sessions, but not necessary. A desktop will give you more features for a lower price. I would get a desktop and save my money to get a newer one in two years when it's obsolete. Most public campuses here in the Midwest seem to be Microsoft campuses, so you might as well get a Windows machine and buy/steal Office from your University right away (unless you're an Art/Music student, you'll want to check with your department as you'll likely find more value in a Macintosh).

If you get a laptop, get a wireless NIC with it! Printer isn't absolutely necessary because you'll have access to printers on campus or possibly at work, depending where you work. You'll probably want a decent sized hard drive for P2P. An LCD monitor is hella-sweet in the dorms.

Here's a tip: Don't buy a piece of crap, overpriced, used computer from "a friend your dad knows" or from schmuck in the newspaper. Dell and HP Compaq always have new machines for around $300-$400, and if you look around, they often have new machines in the low $300's, which leaves more room to add the features you really need/want. If you're really looking to pinch pennies, buy a machine from Dell with the things they offer cheap (like video cards and DVD burners) and buy the stuff they sell expensively from an alternate source (like Memory or CD readers). Make sure you get name brand memory, though, as Dell's can be a bit finicky with cheap memory. I've had good luck with Kingston ValueRAM in my Dells.

And let's not forget about the Golden rule of the dorms - he who owns a DVD burner and the right software makes the friends. ;) Dell often has a deal where you can get a DVD burner for $99.

I recommend a decent size TV too (~25") and a DVD burner that can read all types of media, because I know my roommates and I spent a lot of time playing video games and watching TV...unless you're a girl...then just get some rollerblades and some hot pants or something from Wet Seal or whatev.

Let's recap - a good computer (I prefer a desktop), a good TV, and a beer fridge. Any further questions? Oh yeah, and some helpful, off-topic advice:

1. College is not primarily for education. It's merely a system our society has created to determine who is willing to jump through more hoops than the others.
2. Don't be bummed that you didn't get the GPA you got in high school. There is a good chance you will either a) fail a course, or b) drop it before you fail it. And you will probably take at least a course or two over.
3. It doesn't really matter what you major in. Don't let it stress you out. Just study what you're good at. They're pretty much all the same anyway...
4. Most importantly: NOT EVERYONE IS MEANT TO GO TO A UNIVERSITY. If you can't handle it, don't worry. Try something else. It doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means it's not for you. Some people have PhD's, but that doesn't mean anyone below them is stupid. Different strokes for different folks. Remember that, especially when you get all depressed about some bad grade(s) you get.

I put all my dailies in a folder called "Bored"

Here's some I haven't seen mentioned:

Ben's Bargains - because it's good to drool.

Homestar Runner - the only excuse for Flash on the web

The free bacon that never came.

I hate to be a Dell booster, but when they can basically give away P4 1.8GHz machines for $340... with XP included, I have to wonder how thin some of these profit margins actually are.

Here is a link I found to have the CD mailed to me for free.

link
I don't plan on paying for this game either. I got this link from Ben's Bargains So read the discussion there as well.