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Or you can go to Best Buy and get a $129 TV.

The timing would be just about right....

http://www.bestbuy.com/gunsnroses

Bestbuy has a pretty good deal on an LCD HDTV for under $300. Might want to get one for the bathroom incase you have to 'poop' as they're about to announce the winner. Just sayin'...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8987475&type=product&id=1218006548849

.

You can't buy off-the-shelf software for it at Best Buy

But you can buy linux at BestBuy. If we can see strong sales of linux netbooks, we might see other software on the shelf too.

I wonder what the return rate for Macs are compared to Windows PCs? Perhaps Apple's investment in customer service is to reduce return rates when folk turn on an unfamiliar operating system. Of course when you sell some of the more expensive consumer PCs it's a lot easier to offer that level of support. To offer it when you're competing at the very lowest price point is much more challenging.

Others have suggested videos on the desktop. I recon that's a good idea. Why not throw in a DVD too - maybe use a well known actor to ease familiarity - and talk folk through how to do some of the most common tasks?

And believe me, at these prices they simply couldn't afford it.

Not sure about CC, but BB has been selling Macs for at least a few months. I have two withing 10 miles of me that have Apple sections.

Best Buy's MacBook Link

Not sure about Circuit City, but Best Buy has for a while now. link here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat128500050006&type=category . Both Future Shop and Best Buy do sell Mac computers. In-store stock isn't always the biggest (that I remember), but they do sell and have for almost 2 years IIRC...

Why stop at Amazon, let's take it to every retailer with a review page:

Best Buy Spore Product Page

EBGames Spore Product Page

Toys R Us Spore Product Page

If you do this to Gamespot, remember to mention how Battletoads is a better game at the end of the review.

Why stop at Amazon, let's take it to every retailer with a review page:

Best Buy Spore Product Page

EBGames Spore Product Page

Toys R Us Spore Product Page

You can get one or both of the DVDs for a lot less than half that!

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 1 & 2

You can get one or both of the DVDs for a lot less than half that!

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 1 & 2

You probably can't even get Ghostbusters down at your local "Three DVDs for $20" guy on the corner; his stock is all newer.

You need a better "Three DVDs for $20" guy. Even the Best Buy downtown has it bundled with Ghostbusters II and (for some reason) a book for fifteen clams.

Why not buy online vs a Box store? Compare Best Buy's customer service (eek) to Newegg's... Also, online prices are going to be more competitive, look at the EEE 16gig on Best Buy http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8905973&type=product&id=1213046768451 $449, windows Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220367 #379, linux

True. But still, if you follow the math the overall industry is saying that the movie has a negative value.

In other words, the RIAA is saying the music for Hard Day's Night is worth $14. And Hollywood is saying the music plus the movie is worth $12. That would mean the movie alone is worth -2 bucks. We all know that can't be true so something else must be wrong.

And what's wrong is the RIAA's greed. The price on the CD is artificially inflated to the point where it competes with movies. And as we all know, movies cost FAR more to make than a CD of music. Hell, with the quality of home equipment these days a decent musician working solo can bang out a seriously impressive CD worth of music in their basement. A $50k basement studio would put you in the ballpark sound-wise with most major labels anymore.

And hell, look at the Lord of the Rings movies. Right now you can buy the entire trilogy for $25. And the movies cost $430 million to make.

And the CD for A Hard Day's Night is selling for right around half that. I'm sure it's difficult to make an album, and The Beatles are pretty good - but I have a hard time imagining that the expense to make the CD and the money to market it compares fairly with The Lord of the Rings. If they did, that would imply that Hard Day's Night cost 430M * (14/25)=240.8M in today's dollars. To make A Hard Day's Night - if the costs matched up.

This disparity in pricing is what puts people off and makes them not want to buy CDs.

IMHO, a fair CD price would be about three bucks. A buck fifty goes to the artist (which by today's standards would be so generous as to seem like a fairy tale), and the other buck fifty goes to production and promotion.

And yeah, I really mean that. That's what it's worth. Fifteen bucks for a CD is simply unbelievable. That's about twelve dollars worth of useless outdated bloat that the world simply doesn't need anymore.

Here' an example:

The Beatles, Hard Day's Night, the movie on DVD is twelve bucks at Best Buy. It pretty much has every song on the album in the movie. Twelve bucks.

The Beatles, Hard Day's Night, the CD. Has all the music, none of the movie. Price? Fourteen bucks. Same thing, but on media with less scratch resistance, less storage space, and oh yeah - no movie.

The reason why people aren't buying music is because it's not worth it. The price is artificially inflated, which makes consumers grumpy and unwilling to buy.

Here' an example:

The Beatles, Hard Day's Night, the movie on DVD is twelve bucks at Best Buy. It pretty much has every song on the album in the movie. Twelve bucks.

The Beatles, Hard Day's Night, the CD. Has all the music, none of the movie. Price? Fourteen bucks. Same thing, but on media with less scratch resistance, less storage space, and oh yeah - no movie.

The reason why people aren't buying music is because it's not worth it. The price is artificially inflated, which makes consumers grumpy and unwilling to buy.

The arguable difference here is that you didn't agree to only eat the peach as a condition of the purchase. In this case you agreed to the condition of only using Apple hardware as a condition of the purchase.

Perhaps Apple makes customers agree to some sort of terms like that when you purchase the OS from Apple directly, but the software is sold by a variety of resellers. And I find it unlikely that Apple requires its distributors to only sell to resellers who will require their customers to agree to Apple's license terms in order to buy the software. I also find it unlikely that you'd have to sign such an agreement when purchasing Leopard with cash at Best Buy.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard:
$129 for a single license ($199 for a family pack)

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition:
239.99 for a single license.

Microsoft Windows XP Pro:
$199 for a single licence.

and, of course,
Debian GNU/Linux
$0, unlimited installs.

Stick OS X on a Psystar or Hackintosh, and it is cheaper. Or, if you go with a Mac Pro, the price is competitive with as-powerful hardware.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard:
$129 for a single license ($199 for a family pack)

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition:
239.99 for a single license.

Microsoft Windows XP Pro:
$199 for a single licence.

and, of course,
Debian GNU/Linux
$0, unlimited installs.

Stick OS X on a Psystar or Hackintosh, and it is cheaper. Or, if you go with a Mac Pro, the price is competitive with as-powerful hardware.

But there's a possible issue with this, no?

Let's say you have a Dell XPS laptop with a 320 GB HD. (Just picked a random lappy from Best Buy for this example). So let's say you have a 100 gig "Fake" partition and a 220 gig encrypted partition. Couldn't they just look up the laptop online and find out that the HD space is smaller than its supposed to be?

I do not know much about Truecrypt, but what about going into the BIOS? Let's say you get around my aforementioned problem by installing a larger hard drive and having a 320 GB fake partition. Can't they just go into the BIOS and see that the HD is really 500 gigs?

Of course, if it just has to pass a cursory examination (and they don't go into the BIOS), I'm sure this will work to get you through security.

BTW, could someone explain / provide linkage as to how this whole Truecrypt partition stuff works? Possible pro/cons (longer loading times for programs / longer access times for files? etc.), how it works, how it can be foiled and how it can be found out (i.e. how can they tell that you have a Truecrypt hidden partition). Thanks.

How about adding A bigger screen and video cards $1500 for a 13" screen and Intel GMA when there are 15" laptops with geforce 9700 and 4gb of ram at $1,249.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8906133&type=product&id=1213046768588

$2000 just to get a 15" bigger screen and 8600gt 256 with only 2GB memory?

$2,499.00 to get a 8600gt 512 with 2GB memory?

$2,799.00 for a 17" screen and still only 2GB memory?

what does the most expensive version of Windows OS sell for these days?

I saw Windows Vista Ultimate retail for $320 in a Best Buy store. BestBuy.com has it for the same price. Or were you talking about Windows Server?

It's fun to compare specs... Vista Home Premium SP1:

• PC Processor Speed: 1GHz
• PC System Memory: 1GB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 15GB (40GB total hard drive capacity)
• PC Video: 128MB graphics memory

Hmm. I can't think of anything I should like less than to run Vista on a system with those specs.

Ubuntu:

• PC Processor Speed: 500MHz
• PC System Memory: 256MB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 4GB
• PC Video: 1024 x 768 video card

Vista Home Premium SP1:

• PC Processor Speed: 1GHz
• PC System Memory: 1GB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 15GB (40GB total hard drive capacity)
• PC Video: 128MB graphics memory

That "Vista" is more than twice as good! Ubuntu only has 256MB of RAM and a 0.5 GHz processor? Sheesh!

Ubuntu:

• PC Processor Speed: 500MHz
• PC System Memory: 256MB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 4GB
• PC Video: 1024 x 768 video card

Vista Home Premium SP1:

• PC Processor Speed: 1GHz
• PC System Memory: 1GB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 15GB (40GB total hard drive capacity)
• PC Video: 128MB graphics memory

That "Vista" is more than twice as good! Ubuntu only has 256MB of RAM and a 0.5 GHz processor? Sheesh!

I wish it were included in the "Operating Systems" section of their catalog.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=abcat0508001

Odd, the breadcrumps on the link say it's in that category, but it doesn't come up..

Here it is. Oddly, it's not under "operating systems." Idiots.

• PC Processor Speed: 500MHz
• PC System Memory: 256MB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 4GB
• PC Video: 1024 x 768 video card

Vista Home Premium SP1:

• PC Processor Speed: 1GHz
• PC System Memory: 1GB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 15GB (40GB total hard drive capacity)
• PC Video: 128MB graphics memory

• PC Processor Speed: 500MHz
• PC System Memory: 256MB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 4GB
• PC Video: 1024 x 768 video card

Vista Home Premium SP1:

• PC Processor Speed: 1GHz
• PC System Memory: 1GB RAM
• PC Hard Drive Space: 15GB (40GB total hard drive capacity)
• PC Video: 128MB graphics memory

They do. But they have a tax that is similar. More of a fruit tax of some kind...

Are you happy that best buy is sanitizing the customer reviews to prevent anyone mentioning that it's freely available elsewhere?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=product&tab=7&id=1211587312374&skuId=8888563&childSku=null&count=null#headerCustomerReviews

I'm not.

Windows XP on the OLPC: $3

Microsoft becoming microprofits: priceless

WordPerfect X4 sells for $299. Office 2007 Standard (with more elements to the suite than WP) sells for $399. I wouldn't call that extortionate.

The problem is that if I give you a model, there's no guarantee that it'll have a supported chipset. Manufactureres like Netgear and Linksys are famous for changing the chipsets, but not the model number. So one may have an Atheros chip (very well supported), and another may have a Broadcom chip (very not supported), but both be called a "Wireless Super-N USB Dongle" on the box. It doesn't matter with Windows since they ship drivers with the hardware, but what it amounts to is that they give you the cheapest chipset they can buy that marginally works, just to make a bit more profit off their standard pricing model.

In short, no, I can't tell you which ones from a store will work. But then again, I had the same issues trying to get a wireless dongle working with Windows 2000 around 2003. It just wasn't supported by Windows. Getting a properly supported dongle changed that.

And since I'm feeling nice, this Belkin adapter should work out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04 (make sure you get the correct model), A very common DWL-122 should also work if you make sure linux-wlan-ng is installed (plug in for a few minutes, it's not a default package), and this Netgear dongle should also work straight out of the box.

The problem is that if I give you a model, there's no guarantee that it'll have a supported chipset. Manufactureres like Netgear and Linksys are famous for changing the chipsets, but not the model number. So one may have an Atheros chip (very well supported), and another may have a Broadcom chip (very not supported), but both be called a "Wireless Super-N USB Dongle" on the box. It doesn't matter with Windows since they ship drivers with the hardware, but what it amounts to is that they give you the cheapest chipset they can buy that marginally works, just to make a bit more profit off their standard pricing model.

In short, no, I can't tell you which ones from a store will work. But then again, I had the same issues trying to get a wireless dongle working with Windows 2000 around 2003. It just wasn't supported by Windows. Getting a properly supported dongle changed that.

And since I'm feeling nice, this Belkin adapter should work out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04 (make sure you get the correct model), A very common DWL-122 should also work if you make sure linux-wlan-ng is installed (plug in for a few minutes, it's not a default package), and this Netgear dongle should also work straight out of the box.

Not having a physical copy and requiring activation are certainly high on my list. What really gets me is that you don't get a fancy box, manual, or disc and the game still costs the same.

Except you are exactly wrong.

This is a fully distributed and available product you can buy and resell. Like if i wanted to I could go to my local bestbuy and buy 20 of them.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8559197&st=leopard&type=product&id=1188561458224

Or I could work with a LAR or Distribution Partner like Tech Data or Ingram Micro and buy hundreds of them at a discounted rate!!

This isn't something that Apple can really hold the purse strings on, the way they have the Leopard setup for sale.

You are correct sir. I have a Pinnacle PCTV HD-Pro USB stick - slightly bigger than a flash drive, but with a coax connector on the end. Supports QAM and ATSC (up to 1080i broadcast), oh and NTSC.

Best $50 I ever spent - link - 60 with shipping, and on sale...

And I do mean HDTV - full 1280x800 resolution MPEG video files dumped to my disk, and 6-7GB/hr. If that's not HD, I want my disk space back.
Anyways, screw their 'epic gadgetsxxxx0rs that the US sux0rs cuz theys dont haz'. Now shut up and let me watch CSI in HD

How can we trust the article at all when it's wrong? Or am I just a newbie?

I never said you should. Just don't lie about the cost to make your point

I didn't lie about my price. Best Buy - Windows Vista Ultimate full edition is $400.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8112598&st=Vista&type=product&id=1158317974609

That's the street price for a new Vista. What you say is to pretend that you have an upgrade, and knock the price down to $250. But I didn't have an upgrade, and advocating your sort of the theft would be wrong in my eyes, and, incidentally, in the eyes of Microsoft.

Again, you're lying about the price when I already proved its a fair bit less than $400. And where do you get your numbers from? You think that the price difference (which is 249, not 400 as you claim) means that it should perform that many times faster? What utter nonsense.

Let's see, it costs 400 times as much, and yes, it is $400 as I claim, because that is the price that the local stores carry the full version for, and according to my situation, to be legally licensed, the full version is what I need.

he value in my opinion is that you have 1) support 2) pretty much all hardware will work with MS OSes 3) there's a lot more quality software for Windows than Linux and support for said software is better

Well, no. The problem with Vista right now, especially in 64 bit land, is that there are not lot of drivers for it. In fact, there are more drivers for Linux than Vista 64 bit.

and because i'm programmer 4) the platform is easier to develop for.

It depends on what you are doing. I find that the Windows SDK has taken a nosedive as of late, and the once vaunted Windows Help has degraded to the point of total uselessness. Visual C# is good for business applications, I'll give you that, but I like to program in C++ and there Windows does not have so many advantages, largely because Visual C++ is basically unmaintained for native code development. In the case of assembly language, I think the AT&T syntax used by GNU is a lot clearer than Microsoft syntax, and I like the way the Linux calling convention is, better.

Besides, for christ's sakes, the Visual Studio tool chain is still only 32 bit only. Go looky at that little asterik that means WOW32 emulation when you run Visual Studio in Windows 64 bit land. By comparison, the whole C++ tool chain for Linux is 64 bit native, and you can tell when you use them.

Finally, do you ever get those weird crashes in C++ on Windows where you are inside the kernel and there is no call stack available? What's up with that? Under Linux, you have the sources to the entire OS, so you can trace everything all the way through, if you want to.

Well, if those prices are authentic, Apple looks pretty good. You can get an 8-core Mac Pro for $2,799 and it's a pretty usable machine (including 2GB RAM) but not including the huge disk space your system has). It has a lovely, easily expandable case and of course a great OS that pretty much everyone loves.

But if you want enough computing horsepower to run Vista on a brand new machine, how about this? It has a quad core processor, 2gb RAM and a 500gb hard drive for $709.99. It does have an integrated video card but you could always buy that $60 card you mentioned and deactivate the onboard video. And amazingly enough, a whole bunch of people (see the reviews) got it for $550. What's not to like?

This certainly confirms your idea of buying Vista with a new computer - Vista Home Premium is about $200, right? Why buy that when for $350-500 more you can have a new, bang-up to date computer? You'd spend more trying to upgrade your old machine.

However, one of the reviewers mentioned the achilles heel of this computer. I have to quote it:

"Outside of hating Vista,this is the best computer purchase I've ever made !"

I'll stick with Apple. Yep, they're expensive. But their hardware and software combination is the best there is.

D

We run a medium sized network. We monitor our folks. We can also view their screen.

Something I've noticed happening a few times which I thought was interesting. I can see the screen & url that the person is looking at, and it has very questionable content.

I pull the URL from my logs and go to that page and it serves up an entirely different site.

Sort of like the webpage that has a breakout game that looks like you are working in Excel, escalation has many fronts. If you make it difficult for people to get the content one way, they find a different way. While we dis-allow e-mail for personal use while at work, and blocked webmail - people can now surf the Internet on their phones.

Why spend all this money on a war? Why not adjust the cost of a CD or DVD to be more in line with what the multitude will pay?

How is it a DVD costs $12.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=31042&skuId=3776596&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=3776596

But the same CD costs $12.99?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=124207&skuId=2830565&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=2830565

Shouldn't the CD be cheaper? I know I'd go back to buying CD's if they price were $5.

We run a medium sized network. We monitor our folks. We can also view their screen.

Something I've noticed happening a few times which I thought was interesting. I can see the screen & url that the person is looking at, and it has very questionable content.

I pull the URL from my logs and go to that page and it serves up an entirely different site.

Sort of like the webpage that has a breakout game that looks like you are working in Excel, escalation has many fronts. If you make it difficult for people to get the content one way, they find a different way. While we dis-allow e-mail for personal use while at work, and blocked webmail - people can now surf the Internet on their phones.

Why spend all this money on a war? Why not adjust the cost of a CD or DVD to be more in line with what the multitude will pay?

How is it a DVD costs $12.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=31042&skuId=3776596&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=3776596

But the same CD costs $12.99?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=124207&skuId=2830565&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=2830565

Shouldn't the CD be cheaper? I know I'd go back to buying CD's if they price were $5.

"Go to Best Buy or Staples and buy a P.C. laptop without Windows. Just go ahead and try. The barriers put in the way are amazing."

And here is a laptop from best buy that ships with linux:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8625295&type=product&id=1193452147742

"Go to Best Buy or Staples and buy a P.C. laptop without Windows. Just go ahead and try. The barriers put in the way are amazing."

Here you go:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8398673&type=product&id=1179877238756

their cheapest computer is something like $1000...and if you want it to actually include a monitor, I believe the price for that is another $1300.

I don't know where you got that number, but I can buy a Mac Mini (barf) for $600. Add a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor and that's less than $1000. Best Buy has a Mini for $600. A 19" LG monitor is $200. An Apple keyboard is $50. And a Kensington wireless optical mouse is $40. That comes to $900.

their cheapest computer is something like $1000...and if you want it to actually include a monitor, I believe the price for that is another $1300.

I don't know where you got that number, but I can buy a Mac Mini (barf) for $600. Add a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor and that's less than $1000. Best Buy has a Mini for $600. A 19" LG monitor is $200. An Apple keyboard is $50. And a Kensington wireless optical mouse is $40. That comes to $900.

their cheapest computer is something like $1000...and if you want it to actually include a monitor, I believe the price for that is another $1300.

I don't know where you got that number, but I can buy a Mac Mini (barf) for $600. Add a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor and that's less than $1000. Best Buy has a Mini for $600. A 19" LG monitor is $200. An Apple keyboard is $50. And a Kensington wireless optical mouse is $40. That comes to $900.

their cheapest computer is something like $1000...and if you want it to actually include a monitor, I believe the price for that is another $1300.

I don't know where you got that number, but I can buy a Mac Mini (barf) for $600. Add a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor and that's less than $1000. Best Buy has a Mini for $600. A 19" LG monitor is $200. An Apple keyboard is $50. And a Kensington wireless optical mouse is $40. That comes to $900.

This Toshiba is going for 199 at Best Buy for an HD-DVD player.