Slashdot Mirror

If you don't mind smaller I would recommend ExcelStor.

I had trouble finding them, but it looks like $70-80 for a 250GB drive? That's not what one would usually consider cheap.

Although I have also had pretty good luck with WD, but I mainly buy in the 500Gb range for myself. But for cheap you can't beat a 1TB Samsung for $95.

Those look nice. It would be great if they had 1.5's - those steal the $/GB and GB/cm3 shows. I had half of a lot of WD's fail within a few weeks last year. I've just been mixing brands in RAID-1 mirrors for now.

Depends on what you want.

Microsoft makes nice cheap intellimouse's for normal wireless use. Like 20-30$ range.

Gaming = Logitech G5 or a cheap Razer (older gen razer's are cheap, redundant poster is redundant).

For a cheaper gaming mouse that works well with high resolution I suggest a4tech's wireless battery free NB30. It's like 10$, no batteries, no wires, just has to be on the pad it comes with.

Ergonomic = get the trackball and avoid that Evoluent mouse at all costs or you will induce carpal tunnel, especially under longterm use. Plenty of people have been complaining about the same. Short term use = http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=205557633 (trust xpertclick tk4300)....great for general use and not too expensive, can find online around 30$.

Solution to ergonomic problems = beanbag wrist wrests such as IMAK ergobeads. Most of what they preach is BS but this thing seems to work for mice for people pretty well.

Usually I agree with the saying that you can't judge a book by its cover, but this design gives us mere mortals a glimpse of supernatural genius.

OCZ Barebone Gaming Notebook
Directron's Notebook Barebone Systems

Granted, the barebones kit is most of the laptop and you can usually buy a Dell with the same configuration for cheaper, but there are a few options out there for "building" a laptop now.

say you have a hand-held "walkman" style player, you could just buy a 1/8" stereo to 1/8" stereo cable and plug it right in to the Input on your sound card, then use your favorite recording software to record and export as your favorite audio file type (mp3, ogg, etc.). If your tuner is a home stereo type, then you could buy a RCA to 1/8" adapter to connect to your computer. There are several different styles of adapters out there and they all do the same thing, so there is no need for the "Adapter for iPod" special cables that come with a special price, unless it makes you feel better paying more for the same thing.

say you have a hand-held "walkman" style player, you could just buy a 1/8" stereo to 1/8" stereo cable and plug it right in to the Input on your sound card, then use your favorite recording software to record and export as your favorite audio file type (mp3, ogg, etc.). If your tuner is a home stereo type, then you could buy a RCA to 1/8" adapter to connect to your computer. There are several different styles of adapters out there and they all do the same thing, so there is no need for the "Adapter for iPod" special cables that come with a special price, unless it makes you feel better paying more for the same thing.

http://www.buy.com/articles/loc/2/channeltype/2/channelid/109/subtype/1/147.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2054511,00.asp

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=830544

You could always send the ram back as defective.

Truly, the "Shocking Truth" (informational video by Apple way back in the day) is more about the physics of what can go wrong in ancient designs than what DOES go wrong in practice.

Static straps do nothing unless you're grounded.
Grounding does nothing if you've got insulators nearby, so make sure you're styrofoam cups are far away. And I hope they didn't package that ram in plastic or send your package to you with bubble wrap or packing peanuts. And don't forgot to tie your hair back if you've got long hair. Oh, and your shirt? Take it off. Moving your arms generates a charge in the fabric strong enough to fry the mightiest of circuits. I hope you're working on a hard floor with anti static mats, too. Don't forget to take off your watch and turn your pace maker off before you install that ram.
Make sure your cellphone is off, too. And you might want to buy some anti static gloves ( http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=203348526&listingid=1522673&dcaid=17902 ). And be sure to use a non-magnetized screwdriver.

Mine came with one originally from HP but I switched it to this one IOGear 4D Optical Web Cruiser. The track ball and magnifying option are very convenient.

At home, the mouse I use is whatever Lenovo includes with their systems. The device works but I never really checked the markings to see if it is anything other than a Lenovo (probably rebranded) product.

Before disposing of the drives it's also a good idea to sanitize the media. A good guide is NIST's SP 800-88 Revision 1 Guidelines for Media Sanitation which will give you more than enough detail on how to securely dispose of those drives.

http://www.buy.com/prod/iomega-320gb-home-network-nas-external-hard-drive/q/loc/101/205120567.html

Only 320gb but that was plenty for my needs. Low cost, easy as pie to setup, low power consumption, no hassles/headaches(and no MS tax).

umm... that's exactly what I've been doing since the Fall update. They added MPEG4 (and some others) support. A little while later, uShare has been patched to serve these. Ever since I've been ripping my DVD collection with mencoder and have nearly filled up my shiny new Christmas present

1. They already exist, but for about $4000 for example here
2. On board RAM cache - it's called Intel Turbo Memory, it's cheap and it's been availabe on laptops for several months now and will soon be on the desktop also. Coupled with Vista readyboost it will do what you want it to, or it can also serve as a high speed flash RAM drive on which you can install frequently used apps or files.
3. They have them in 2GB also.
For the rest, they already have 32GB Flash for a reasonable price (around $300) if you make the comparison to RAM rather than spinning platters.

I am still waiting for a reasonably priced low-end drive. An 8GB usb drive can be found for about $50. Packing 4 of them and replacing the usb circuitry with SATA would make for a 32MB for $200. Granted, it may not be the fastest drive around, but sometimes speed is not the most important factor. A 32MB would be enough for installing any current OS and still have some room for personal files to carry along on a trip. So, I think the current trend of providing high-end drives only is just an attempt to milk users to the maximum without much concern for what we actually need.

I know there are probably a thousand people out there that'll argue, but here is my solution...

I bought a Buffalo "LinkStation Pro". It cost $210 for the 320GB NAS drive. It supports SMB network sharing and has a web interface. It also supports plugging in USB Printers and/or USB Disks for additional storage.

Here's the link:
http://www.buy.com/prod/buffalo-320gb-linkstation-pro-network-shared-storage-sata-2-x-usb-2-0/q/loc/101/202973094.html

The best part? If you plug in a USB disk the web interface allows you to tell it to backup the internal disk to the USB disk... and if you have more than one linkstation you can have one backup across the network to the other. Honestly, this is the best (and most simple) NAS setup I've found and I am very satisfied.

I also have a SimpleTech NAS drive that supports SMB and NFS, but have found it to be less robust. For all the rest of you do-it-yourself'ers, I have set up Raided drives in the past (had 6 x 250GB Raid 5 for a total of 1.2TB of storage space) and found that the Linkstation is the "no-brainer". You can do it yourself and spend the time and hassle with configs, but ultimately the easiest solution (and cheapest) is to buy it off-the-shelf.

Argue all you want.

> I assume the N800 will drop to the $250ish...

Already has: http://www.buy.com/prod/nokia-n800-internet-tablet/q/loc/101/204055141.html

> ...that the N770 did, though.

I think you missed a trick; try $150 or so:

http://www.google.com/products?q=nokia+770&btnG=Search+Products&hl=en

I've seen it as low as $120.

Buy.com has a video with a Nokia rep demonstrating the N95 - VERY impressive capabilities. A 5M pixel camera, GPS, and stereo bluetooth are just a few of the features that set it apart from the iPhone. The dual slider that reveals either a keyboard or media player controls is also cool. That said, the unlocked N95 costs $550, which is nearly twice as much as the 4GB iPhone I bought about 2 weeks ago. Moreover, the N95 controls seemed a little chaotic whereas the iPhone is amazingly intuitive - even features like conferencing calls or changing from the bluetooth headset to the regular handset are just simple buttons that appear when you might want them. I know that sounds a little simple-minded but in truth, accessing the features on a phone can be very frustrating. Maybe you should try the N95 out before you buy.

And lets be honest, sales from services like Steam and Direct2Drive are rather insignificant compared to that coming from brick and mortar stores, that is if they ever actually released those numbers.

Not to mention recently you have such time vacuums like World of Warcraft that have been drying up PC gaming dollars that might go elsewhere. Consoles don't really have that problem, yet.

Build a storage server with ftp and use Cobian. It has 256bit encryption too. If you are looking for a cheap storage solution you can look at Buffalo Terabytes. For about 1000 bucks you can get a 2TB server. At terastation.org there are hacks to install NFS and good stuff. http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm (Cobian is Free) http://www.buy.com/prod/buffalo-terastation-pro-ii -network-attached-storage-2-0-tb-2-usb-2-0/q/loc/1 01/204038588.html http://terastation.org/wiki/Main_Page Buffalo Terastation is RAID capable. Hope this helps. Nav

I run IE on XP and that's nowhere near your mythic 10GB. Hell, even if it were I can get a 320GB hard drive for under $90. It's up to me to decide if I think that's excessive or not. Certainly not to you.

And BTW, I call BS on your claims of FF being "nimble" on a 233MHz Pentium II. I don't doubt it runs, but I'm going to guess it's not a pleasant experience. Just a wild guess.

You're just posturing to get your "M$ Winbloze" quippy into a discussion that doesn't even involve Microsoft other than the submitter's FUD headline.

I predict that we will see Border's web site saying: You can order this book and it will be delivered in x days, OR you can drive y miles and have it today!

At Buy.com, your privacy is a top priority. Please read our privacy policy details.

...

...

Except as limited below, we reserve the right to use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.

An opt-out option is useless as the cat is out of the bag before delivery of goods and often the opt-out is broken or they opt you back in, or you don't know the extent of the abuse 'til later*. Many online stores essentially say, "We value your privacy... read on to see how we really don't and were just joking."

I know being AC and this is /. with its masturbatory hatred of ACs and DRM, but IMHO, this is a concern of equal if not more serious concern.

*I opted out of receiving a woodworking catalog after buying a $10 doodad. The online company had sent over a dozen catalogs based on one $10 purchase. After "opting out", I promptly received another half dozen catalogs from OTHER woodworking stores with whom I had never done business. That is how opt works. Fuck us? No, FUCK YOU!

Wow, no. You can get a 32" 720p LCD for about $600.

Here's one for a little under $600.

Here's one for a little over $600.

Here's another is you prefer to walk into a B&M and get it.

Even if your limit is around $400, you can get this 27" for $419.

Wow, no. You can get a 32" 720p LCD for about $600.

Here's one for a little under $600.

Here's one for a little over $600.

Here's another is you prefer to walk into a B&M and get it.

Even if your limit is around $400, you can get this 27" for $419.

Wow, no. You can get a 32" 720p LCD for about $600.

Here's one for a little under $600.

Here's one for a little over $600.

Here's another is you prefer to walk into a B&M and get it.

Even if your limit is around $400, you can get this 27" for $419.

If you've been a procrastinator for years in multiple areas of your life, it's worth spending some time trying to understand root causes, instead of searching for the "do it now!" quick fix (which often produces only fleeting improvements). A good place to start is with the psychological research presented in the venerable Burka and Yuen's Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It, also available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

If you're a pessimist who often frets and fusses at the very beginning of projects when others are working away, worry-free, you might also find useful a read of "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" bn.com, amazon.com, buy.com. The author makes the case that those of us with a pessimistic explanatory style may be using it to good effect when it comes to getting things done (e.g., worrying can be a form of motivation, and focusing on possible negative outcomes can be an aid to reducing risk of failure).

If you've been a procrastinator for years in multiple areas of your life, it's worth spending some time trying to understand root causes, instead of searching for the "do it now!" quick fix (which often produces only fleeting improvements). A good place to start is with the psychological research presented in the venerable Burka and Yuen's Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It, also available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

If you're a pessimist who often frets and fusses at the very beginning of projects when others are working away, worry-free, you might also find useful a read of "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" bn.com, amazon.com, buy.com. The author makes the case that those of us with a pessimistic explanatory style may be using it to good effect when it comes to getting things done (e.g., worrying can be a form of motivation, and focusing on possible negative outcomes can be an aid to reducing risk of failure).

$35.50
Bookpool: Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source
http://www.bookpool.com/sm/1904811361

$39.99
Amazon.com: Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source: Books: Barrie, Dempster,James, Eaton-Lee
http://www.amazon.com/Configuring-IPCop-Firewalls- Closing-Borders/dp/1904811361

$41.99
Buy.com - Configuring Ipcop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source : Barrie Dempster : ISBN 1904811361
http://www.buy.com/prod/configuring-ipcop-firewall s-closing-borders-with-open-source/q/loc/106/20330 4392.html

If you're in the UK you get a huge 0% discount at TheReg:

1904811361/9781904811367: Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source :: The Register Books - The IT and Computer Book specialists
RRP £24.99 Save 0%
Our Price £24.99
http://books.theregister.co.uk/static/live/805529. htm

High Court Trims Whistleblower Rights

The Rise Of Pseudo Fascism

Conservatives Without Conscience

Yes, but people at least tried AppleWorks and found that they didn't like it. If they had found that they liked it as well as (or better than) Office they wouldn't have bought Office. Nothing's wrong with that - they gave AppleWorks a try and found that they preferred Office.

"A typical home user trying to use linux would pay money. They will buy a distro at the local store which often charges for their update service and technical support as part of the price. Most of them are not tech savvy enough to pick another distro with free packages or compile software."

Yes, most people do pay for Linux. And $69 for OSX is reasonable (never used it myself but it certainly looks cool - and I've only heard good things about it).

However, neither of those comes close to XP Pro's $200 pricetag.

For most people it's not only about price, it's a balance between price and worth. Is Linux worth the $50 (or whatever) you pay at the store? Is it worth the free CD Ubuntu sends you in the mail? Is OSX worth $69? IMO, yes.

But is XP Pro -- which costs $100 to $150 more, and has all the same features (even less, in some cases) -- really worth buying? Is Office 2003 Basic Edition worth $190 -- especially when WordPerfect Office X3 Home costs about half that price, and OpenOffice is free? IMO, no.

Good products are worth paying for. Overpriced products are, well, overpriced - and most people won't buy them if they know of a good, compatible alternative. And it seems to me that MS products (well, Windows and Office, anyway) tend to be overpriced.

Yes, but people at least tried AppleWorks and found that they didn't like it. If they had found that they liked it as well as (or better than) Office they wouldn't have bought Office. Nothing's wrong with that - they gave AppleWorks a try and found that they preferred Office.

"A typical home user trying to use linux would pay money. They will buy a distro at the local store which often charges for their update service and technical support as part of the price. Most of them are not tech savvy enough to pick another distro with free packages or compile software."

Yes, most people do pay for Linux. And $69 for OSX is reasonable (never used it myself but it certainly looks cool - and I've only heard good things about it).

However, neither of those comes close to XP Pro's $200 pricetag.

For most people it's not only about price, it's a balance between price and worth. Is Linux worth the $50 (or whatever) you pay at the store? Is it worth the free CD Ubuntu sends you in the mail? Is OSX worth $69? IMO, yes.

But is XP Pro -- which costs $100 to $150 more, and has all the same features (even less, in some cases) -- really worth buying? Is Office 2003 Basic Edition worth $190 -- especially when WordPerfect Office X3 Home costs about half that price, and OpenOffice is free? IMO, no.

Good products are worth paying for. Overpriced products are, well, overpriced - and most people won't buy them if they know of a good, compatible alternative. And it seems to me that MS products (well, Windows and Office, anyway) tend to be overpriced.

Yes, but people at least tried AppleWorks and found that they didn't like it. If they had found that they liked it as well as (or better than) Office they wouldn't have bought Office. Nothing's wrong with that - they gave AppleWorks a try and found that they preferred Office.

"A typical home user trying to use linux would pay money. They will buy a distro at the local store which often charges for their update service and technical support as part of the price. Most of them are not tech savvy enough to pick another distro with free packages or compile software."

Yes, most people do pay for Linux. And $69 for OSX is reasonable (never used it myself but it certainly looks cool - and I've only heard good things about it).

However, neither of those comes close to XP Pro's $200 pricetag.

For most people it's not only about price, it's a balance between price and worth. Is Linux worth the $50 (or whatever) you pay at the store? Is it worth the free CD Ubuntu sends you in the mail? Is OSX worth $69? IMO, yes.

But is XP Pro -- which costs $100 to $150 more, and has all the same features (even less, in some cases) -- really worth buying? Is Office 2003 Basic Edition worth $190 -- especially when WordPerfect Office X3 Home costs about half that price, and OpenOffice is free? IMO, no.

Good products are worth paying for. Overpriced products are, well, overpriced - and most people won't buy them if they know of a good, compatible alternative. And it seems to me that MS products (well, Windows and Office, anyway) tend to be overpriced.

Will that 10 year old laserjet print 20ppm, at a resolution of 600-1200 dpi, ship with !6 MB of RAM, USB and Ethernet, drivers for Windows and Linux, and sell for $230?

Samsung ML-2251N Monochrome Laser Printer

Right, and you can buy a perfectly serviceable Windows laptop with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM for $500 new if you keep your eyes open. OK, it will only have 256 MB of RAM, but for $30 you can kick that up to 512 MB, which is plenty for any operating system but Vista (or maybe Linux with xgl/compriz). My friend shopped around a bit and bought a new Toshiba for $400. Shopping around doesn't really help you with Apple, plus you get to pay $100 premium if you want a different color, I understand.

But I guess I cheap PC lappie won't be as "cool" as an Apple. Seems like the majority of the folks I see at the local cyber-cafe have Macs, though they are a small fraction of the market. I guess that's what you want when you want to be seen.

Frankly, though I have a couple of techie friends who swear by Macs, most of the folks I've seen using them bought them because they were told they were "more advanced" and they would have been better served buying a cheap clone and pocketing the cash.

Case and point, I know a 75 year old folksinger who thought she needed a Mac to make music (this despite the fact that she couldn't figure out how to play the directory of MP3s that I put on her Desktop). She paid as much for her bleeding wireless router as an entire faster PC would have cost her (and her husband still can't connect to her $300 Airport Extreme upstairs). And despite this eMac having a reasonably fast CPU and enough RAM (256) I couldn't stand using this Apple POS because it was so pokey. The Apple default is to turn on every stupid piece of eye candy like transparency and animated oscillating taskbars. And they tuck the preferences away so that a fairly computer savvy person couldn't easily turn that crap off without Googling around. The lack of a second mouse button with a context menu or a scroll wheel didn't help figuring things out. But it looked "cool." It seems like Mac is a cult of form-over-function. All the connectors were tucked away away on the side of this all-in-wonder POS. 10 out of 10 for aesthetics, minus several dozen for convenience.

All she does is a little light web surfing and email. I could have bought her the $150 Fry's "GQ" special with Linspire pre-installed, kicked up the RAM to 640 MB for $40, and it would have been more responsive and done everything she needed, and she could be getting interest on the $1200 she would have saved.

Sure, the GQ would be made with low quality commodity parts. But Apples are now mostly commodity components these days and those eMacs had plenty of hardware problems, particular RasterShift and failing capacitors. At least if the GQ's motherboard or power supply failed they would be cheap and easy to replace. I don't think the eMacs were designed to be consumer serviceable, any more than the MacMini or the iPod. Take 'em in to the Apple store when the battery fails, or better yet, buy a new one. Feh.

I believe you and appreciate the warning, although so far I've had a very good experience with them. I do have to laugh when you say "what they once were". Years ago when Buy.com was a newcomer, they shipped me the wrong item (I think it was a book or a computer item). I exchanged it following their procedures, and then they proceeded to ship me TWELVE copies of Foolish and Belly -- at that time it was a VHS two-pack.

My colleagues started to look at me strangely!

I believe you and appreciate the warning, although so far I've had a very good experience with them. I do have to laugh when you say "what they once were". Years ago when Buy.com was a newcomer, they shipped me the wrong item (I think it was a book or a computer item). I exchanged it following their procedures, and then they proceeded to ship me TWELVE copies of Foolish and Belly -- at that time it was a VHS two-pack.

My colleagues started to look at me strangely!

And, like usual, buy.com has it even cheaper than Amazon.

And Buy.com has it for a couple bucks cheaper yet. It's been a few years since I bought from them though, but back then the free shipping took a week or so to get around to putting your stuff into a box and out the door. It's good though if you're not in any hurry to get the stuff.

And that doesn't even cover all of it. According to this page other things are off limits as well including "cell phones, market place items, digital downloads, magazines, extended warranties, pre-orders, on order items, items requiring the collection of Ca recycling fees and other special items".

buy.com has it cheaper than overstock.

Unless you need Bluetooth specifically (as in, you want to use it with a mobile phone in addition to the base station) then I'd tend to recommend forgetting about Bluetooth and using a traditional encrypted digital wireless headset. They generally have longer range, better battery life, and aren't susceptible to Bluetooth's security issues (as mentioned in the early comments to this story). They also usually have handset lifters, as you mentioned.

For example, the Plantronics CS-50

Don't buy it directly from Plantronics, though. It's far less expensive to get it from a separate store, like Buy.com or somewhere.
(Strangely enough, at the moment at buy.com, buying the CS50 + the handset lifter separately is $10 less than the two bundled together.)

I haven't used the PSTN version or handset lifter, but I've had a CS50 USB, the USB-connection version of this same model, for about a year now and been very happy with it for VOIP.

Plantronics certainly isn't the only manufacturer for headsets like this, though, so you may want to Google around for a bit and see what looks good.

Your point is still valid, but I don't know who the hell would pay $480 for an 8gb CF card, when you can get it for about $150 here: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=20201483 9&adid=17662&adid=17662 .

I think you mean higher res. VGA is (at least) "Hi Res" and I do not think you would be happy with that. (If you are, here is a cute little TV for you. It has composite input, so you can use it as a monitor.) Heh. Btw, true Hi-Res is 280 × 192 pixels.

You can get a 4GB USB thumb drive for $100 (or get four 512MB and one 2GB bundled together for $108). The current crop of MicroDrives (CompactFlash-compatible miniature hard drives) of similar capacity runs even less.

If a normal consumer can buy these things on the retail market today, Apple really needs to get its act together and start increasing capacity on its lower end or it is going to lose that market to these cheap drives and the simple add-ons that allow playback of music.

Where the hell do you get the $1000 number?

The Acer Core Duo runs for $2500 at http://www.buy.com/prod/Acer_TravelMate_8200_LX_TA X06_034_Mainstream_Notebook_with_Intel/q/loc/212/2 02166276.html

A comparable MacBook Pro (upgraded to 2GB RAM and 120 GB HD) runs at about $2900 from the Apple Store.

Let's see, that's a $400 difference. Hmm...

I counter with Buy.com for $20.76

This is what you should put those drives in

5 SATA bays, hot swap, fits in 3 5.25" bays, dedicated fan that will pull 100% of it's air past your drives. Oh, and it comes in black, too.

And use a RAID controller that allows automatic rebuilds using a hot spare as well as online capacity expansion. I've had good luck with Raidcore/Broadcom controllers. For 500GB, use RAID-5 with three drives, hot spare in the 4th bay, and room to add another in the future.

As far as cost - auto racers have a saying: "$50 helmet for a $50 head" - what's your data worth?

I've been looking on-line trying to find this sort of possibility and the only prefab system I've found that has configurable RAID in a consumer NAS is the Buffalo Terrastation. I've seen lots of NAS devices but basically they are all just a single hard drive with a network connection.

I have not used one of these and do not know if it's any good, but like I said, I haven't seen any other options for a prefab system. I've priced out what it would cost to roll my own system like this and it ends up being only a tad more expensive to get a prefab device. Actually, I think the price dropped on the terrastation so I'm not sure that's true anymore.

Also, if you get something like this, you should seriously consider upgrading to gigabit Ethernet if you haven't already. I have a network mounted share for most of my files and it works pretty well, but when I try to do things like synchronize my ipod against it, it totally crawls. Having a networked file server works better if it doesn't feel like your files are on a network.

How is this a ripoff?

Well, if you're buying 60gig drives for $320, obviously you can't spot a ripoff. I mean, you can get a 7200rpm one for $42. Or maybe you mean a laptop harddrive so that it can be small. Wait, that's $95. Ah, you said plug in to your computer, so I guess you mean a firewire drive. Darn, that's $75

I don't really have anything against ipods, and I do think they're probably worth the price (even though I use my pda for my music playing needs. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a huge music guy though). However, they're not the cheap device you're making them out to be, they are the expensive players of the market. After all, you could be buying a Nomad for $279 $229 with the rebate, but I refuse to count that as the actual price, I don't believe in rebates.