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It presumes the reader already knows something about programming, but wants to learn the essentials of a new language.

A smart book by smart people, for smart people, about a smart language.

If your hard drive is bothering you, I suggest a Fujitsu MPG-AT drive. Fujitsu uses liquid ball bearings which eliminate that annoying whine.

The only thing to consider is where to get the monitor from, since it is so heavy, so shipping costs are high. A large local retailer might be better for that. Or use egghead.com, which has (at least used to have) a limit of $9 on shipping for all items.

The only thing to consider is where to get the monitor from, since it is so heavy, so shipping costs are high. A large local retailer might be better for that. Or use egghead.com, which has (at least used to have) a limit of $9 on shipping for all items.

I am currently in the same situation.

First, you have to figure what you want to buy. Read reviews suchs as Tom's Hardware and Anandtech (to name a couple).

Second, get an idea of the minimum cost by searching pricewatch.

Third, find a vendor to buy from:

Pricewatch: I have been burned by the cheaper companies before, so I make sure they have a good return policy.

Large Internet Suppliers: I usually end up buying things from amazon or buy.com (who are now starting to sell components), there are also huge component stores like newegg.com.

Local: But I've found the best service comes from local reatilers, because you can get the part replaced or exchanged the same day. It is up to you and how much time you want to spend.

This topic is going to create some huge flamebait.

vossman

So sure, you can like the other folks have already mentioned, use pricewatch, pricegrabber, even mysimon to find good prices on QUALITY components. But don't buy cheapie stuff--the best part of building your own system is that you can use quality parts and get it done for the same price as a system manufacturer might with cheap stuff!

But then you go to a store with a good reputation, such as Dell, NewEgg, Buy.com, etc. to buy all the stuff at a higher price. The best part is when you whip out the Amex Gold card to pay for it. Then you call American Express up and tell them that you found all these items for cheaper at other websites (referencing your searches above). They kindly cut you a check for the difference.

This way, you get the best price and the best service. Ahh how wonderful.

Details on doing Amex pricematching are here which is a link on www.xpbargains.com. XPBargains is a very cool site by the way.

Or buy a SonicBlue Rio Volt SP250 for $146 at Buy.com and hook it up to your standard car stereo. It has many options most MP3 car stereos should have, but don't. Whether it's a portable or in-dash unit, however, MP3 players have quite a bit going for them. That's not to say Satillite Radio doesn't. But I figure you're shelling out how much and still getting commercials?! Record a 650mb winamp stream, burn it to disk an bam, you're there.

Compaq has a lot of expansion, but they are too expensive, and if you want a pcmcia slot, you can't have a compact flash slot, and in almost all features, if you want one, you have to forget other.

That is not true. Photoshop is designed for graphics professionals, not the average user. That's why Adobe has Photoshop Elements, which is bundled with many scanners and can be purchased for $84.

The truth is, almost all sofware is not priced too expensively for the markets they target. The problem is that users are greedy. They want to have lots of programs, more than they would normally use, and they also want to have programs that are high-end just to have them. No, the real reason why people pirate software is because they can.

Students also get significant discounts on software. I don't know of any major piece of software that costs $500 for a student. For instance, the academic price for Photoshop 7 (full) is $300, which is less than half of the MSRP.

List price : $500. Street price : $290
100 meters
Now.

Yep - really easy too - they all should have a n type port on the back that the antenna plugs in to.

I use a decent $67 8db omnidirectional at my base station, although, if you need longer range you might want to look at this $109 24 db directional.

Remember, you can increase the range by putting an antenna at both the base station, and the remote station. You might want to consider using an omnidirectional at the base, and a directional at the remote if you really need to push the limits.

$1800? You haven't done any shopping. How's $325 for a laser printer?

I'm just glad mine came in via fedex today.

It's kind of funny that after having trouble with this in the past, Buy.com has a "Price Mistake Of The Day" special on their front page everyday.

I would love to have one of these, as I am a very light sleeper.

That being said, the technology is the same thing as noise cancelling head phones (such as these, these, or these). These headphones simply rock if you have not tried them.

alternatively, you can use more traditional methods to quiet things down, like insulation. Putting some dynamat in your car will really dampen the noise and make it nice.


One thing I have always wanted to try for fun, is get a really sophisticated sound cancellation system with many microphones and many large speakers to broadcast the "anti"sound, and put it in a large area like a park or the mall.

then, don't tell anyone about it and watch the puzzled look on people's faces when they can't hear each other.

maybe it's not possible, but I sure do think it would be funny.

10 days with 30 minutes a day = 5 hours. 7 days, if used with music and screen off = 3.5 hours. Ok, do the maths. This thing will less than 2 continuous hours with music and screen on.

I happen to own a PEG-760C and I routinely use it to listen to MP3s at work all day. I used up ~20% of the battery a day, and this was before I figured out how to turn the screen off. Now I hardly use 5% of the battery/day. This also includes time spent using its more traditional PDA functions.

MP3: I've given before. DRM means special app on windows to convert your MP3 to Sony homebrew format with copy protection. So it's not really MP3. First you need another OS to do the conversion with their crappy app (Jukebox if I remember correctly), next you can't transfer more than once and in one direction

Bullshit. I can mount the memory stick as a USB device, and copy MP3 directly to it. No DRM, no extra software. Have you even used a Clie before?

- Memory Stick: Ok: Sony still doesn't get it. The most expensive format per MB. I still refuse to go this route. What is the point of adopting this format over other proven and more economic ones?

I'll partially agree with you on this. We don't need one more memory standard, but it's only marginally more expensive. There still is no standard for memory expansion in the electronics market anyway, so there is no dominate solution as far as portability goes. Each standard has its set of supported products.

Special keyboard rotation and cool design: Here too, I've given in this trap already. If I need a keyboad, I get a laptop. Graffiti doesn't cut it for me. Cool factor: I already have an iBook and an iPaq. I'll still with that.

Good for you. I'm glad your happy with your laptop, but some of us would still like the basic features of a PalmOS plus a little extra in a smaller foot print. I personally can write in Graffiti much faster then I can type on those keyboards, but I don't assume everyone can. Sony is try to appeal to a larger market then just you and I.

Good question. I use these exclusively and they work perfect. I have always been fond of netgear.

Netgear MA301NA WIRELESS PCI ADAPTER 802.11B

$38.95 @ buy.com

link here.

just slap your favorite

Good question. I use these exclusively and they work perfect. I have always been fond of netgear.

Netgear MA301NA WIRELESS PCI ADAPTER 802.11B

$38.95 @ buy.com

link here.

just slap your favorite

seem to disagree with your POV. I'm admittedly biased, (see my site, but I'm not the only one. In fact, I'd much prefer to have the web designer set the background color, as very often you run across sites that assume you have your default background color set to white, so there main logo is black text with a drop shadow on a white rectangle--which looks like crap if your background color is grey (default UNIX Netscape) or light blue or tan.

Admittedly people need to be careful and judicious when designing pages. Putting red text on a fractal background image or lime green text on an off blue background are evil. If you want to try overriding somebodie's site with images=off background=grey text=black, good luck, but you may find the site to be an ugly mess.

I don't know what the current costs of bandwidth are for RedHat, but assuming everyone who pays the $5 downloads all four CD iso's of 7.2, that's a good 2.6 GB. Sure, it's better than not getting anything for it, but the increase in traffic their going to have might hit them pretty hard. I've NEVER downloaded anything from the RedHat servers simply because the mirrors are so much less busy and a whole lot faster.

Personally, I'd much rather see the in-store retail versions of RedHat drop in price to the $10-15 range for the latest version. I'd be more than happy to pick up a copy (can't have too many Linux install CD's lying around). Most of the documentation can be found online, and there are probably a lot of people like many that just want the CD's and don't really care so much about support. Right now, the current list price for RedHat 7.2 is $59.95, and it can be bought for $48.95 at buy.com. This company really ought to think their strategy. The distro market is pretty competitive right now, and 59.95 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a free OS.

And here's a working link to the Sony 12x firewire drive you mention.

in fact, if you're in the market for a memory stick, you can get a 128mb for $61 at buy.com and there's a $15 rebate.

in fact, if you're in the market for a memory stick, you can get a 128mb for $61 at buy.com and there's a $15 rebate.

Right now you can save $9.50, it's only $20.49 over at buy.com (and I have not hidden any referrer ID in that link, so I don't get anything out of this). They've also got the season 1 Buffy DVD's for $29 ($11 off list price). I use buy.com a fair bit, and never had any trouble with them so far.

The thickness of these cards is a major factor since it limits which cameras, pdas, and mp3 players you can buy to use it with. I purchased the 340mb microdrive a year ago and now it's collecting dust since I sold my Canon s20 digital camera in order to get the s110 digital elph wich only supports type 1 cf. Maybe I'll just stick it in a new Cassiopia e200. Man, this stuff just keeps getting more and more expensive!

The microdrive was invented for impatient people like me who didn't want to wait for flash prices to fall...

This is great, but will the new version be able to open Powerpoint 2002 files? I don't think so. People are using Powerpoint 2000/02 files now, which are not compatible with Powerpoint 97. So you'll still have to fork over a bundle of money if you work on presentations with people who use M$ products. Current price for Powerpoint 2002: $93.95. Good deal!

There's no problem copying to/from memory sticks, including MP3's... I wouldn't deter people from buying a Clie if they want to play MP3's.. I've never had problems playing an MP3 on the Clie. It also plays the secure ATRAC3 files, if you're into that sort of thing. The Clie also comes with a nice input wand that lets you control music without taking the Clie out of your pocket (and can actually provide input for PDA functions, if any programs were ever to take advantage of that).

Memory sticks go up to 128mb currently, so if you want to store your entire CD collection you're out of luck (unless you have a CD collection consisting of 3 CD's). A 128mb Memory Stick costs about $100 if you shop around a little.

I'd recommend buying a Clie 760 if you want an MP3 player and a PDA (it's the best PDA out there), but if you just want an MP3 player buy an Ipod or something.

For an extra $15 you can get a NAT firewall from Linksys. It does PPOE, NAT, portmapping, DHCP, et al. It has no fans, so it is completely silent. Check it out here.

Best of all, (and unlike the Rio Volt SP250), it has a quite usable UI that lets you search your disks for MP3's by Artist, Title, Genre and so on. (On the other hand, the Rio has an FM tuner, and plays WMA files too). The UI is what sold me on this unit, it really is the make-or-break.

$128 at buy.com

Choosing which pictures to save and which to discard simply to save money on storage costs would be a waste of time (and, by extension, money). Far easier to spend less than a dollar to archive 100 images than to have someone take the time to individually decide whether each picture is worth keeping or not.

The real issue here is simply one of culture and discipline. If keeping complete archives is important, there's no real difficulty. Simply because the edit-on-the-spot functionality exists doesn't mean you have to use it.

I've been using a KVM for years, starting with a small cheap box that just switched the monitor signal to finally graduating to the linksys ProConnect 2-port switch.

I don't profess to be an expert on KVM switches, but the Linksys has worked decently for me. It has this feature where it listens in on your keystrokes and switches computers at a double tap of the cntrl key. Annoyed the hell out of me in quake until I figured out what was going on (like most computer students I chucked the manual the instant it came. . .oops).

However, despite this, its VERY small, cheap (check it out here, comes with cables), and I'd buy another one in a minute.

-S

4 port IOGEAR MiniView (Not the same MiniView in Tom's review) $106.95 with cables.

I've had this for over a year and I've never had a single problem with it. We struggle with the OmniView and others at work all the time, my Linux boxen always lose mice, or experience pointer wig-outs on the others, but never on the Iogear. It also has the best monitor quality I've seen so far.

Just my 2 cents...

Plus, this is from the Lotus Web site: The next release of SmartSuite for Windows will be SmartSuite Millennium Edition R9.7 (available in international English late this year, with other language versions to follow). This release will work with Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows ME, and Windows XP. SmartSuite 9.7 for Windows will include an improved installation module, and numerous quality improvements. In early 2002 we will also offer SmartSuite 1.7 for OS/2, which will also include numerous quality improvements.

Most GSM phones can connect to a springboard slot (or pcmcia if you prefer) with a cable by Xircom [buy.com], some do IR, some bluetooth. With a GPRS phone you can just hook it up to your visor and voila. Alternatively you can use bluetooth (the only phone I know that this will work with is the Ericsson T39)

I think this solution is superior to getting a "SmartPhone" because you don't have to talk with the visor up to your ear and it's cheaper.

And the choice between the two gets easier every single time hard drives become cheaper. Some things just become too cheap to meter, and hard drive space is one of them.

Take a look at this product at buy.com: a 60-gigabyte hard drive for $140. That's a fifth of a penny per megabyte.

So if you want to whine about 60 megs of Office, it's quite literally possible to say: here's a quarter, kid, buy a new hard drive. Except, of course, that's about 13 cents too much.

BEFSR41 - Router + 4-port switch - $99.95 ($84.95 after rebate)

WAP11 - Wireless AP - $195.95 (180.95 after rebate)

BEFW11S4 - Router + 4-port switch + Wireless AP - $224.95 ($199 after rebate)

I don't know why someone would by the WAP-only model since it's only $20 more (after rebate) for the version with a Router+4-port switch. If you had the BEFSR41, just sell it to a buddy for $50, buy the BEFW11S4 for $199 (after rebate), and you end up saving $30 (plus your friend gets a good deal on the BEFSR41... Unless you've got some special router already and don't want to sell it).

BEFSR41 - Router + 4-port switch - $99.95 ($84.95 after rebate)

WAP11 - Wireless AP - $195.95 (180.95 after rebate)

BEFW11S4 - Router + 4-port switch + Wireless AP - $224.95 ($199 after rebate)

I don't know why someone would by the WAP-only model since it's only $20 more (after rebate) for the version with a Router+4-port switch. If you had the BEFSR41, just sell it to a buddy for $50, buy the BEFW11S4 for $199 (after rebate), and you end up saving $30 (plus your friend gets a good deal on the BEFSR41... Unless you've got some special router already and don't want to sell it).

BEFSR41 - Router + 4-port switch - $99.95 ($84.95 after rebate)

WAP11 - Wireless AP - $195.95 (180.95 after rebate)

BEFW11S4 - Router + 4-port switch + Wireless AP - $224.95 ($199 after rebate)

I don't know why someone would by the WAP-only model since it's only $20 more (after rebate) for the version with a Router+4-port switch. If you had the BEFSR41, just sell it to a buddy for $50, buy the BEFW11S4 for $199 (after rebate), and you end up saving $30 (plus your friend gets a good deal on the BEFSR41... Unless you've got some special router already and don't want to sell it).

PC game development is a marginally profitable endeavor anyway. For every iD, there are lots of losers. Aside from Wal-Mart specials like Deer Hunter and Millionaire, PC game development is a risky proposition at best. Retail software in general is an incredibly competitive business; the retail game software business is brutal.

Linux gamers, as a group, are willing to pay for games, but only for mega-elite titles. These are games that are already successful on Windows. In particular, multiplayer games are only successful with a large gamer population, most of which will be running Windows.

Console gaming is the only profitable market for most game companies. The margins are higher, the technology is simpler due to uniform hardware, losses to piracy are low, and there is significant revenue from rental outlets.

To those of you unwilling to dual-boot to Windows, do what I did - buy a cheap second (3rd/4th/etc) machine and a KVM switch. Or get a game console and rent software. Don't let funky OS advocacy blind you to reasonable alternatives. Hey, I love my TiVo, but the fact it runs Linux means diddly to me.

I love the Aeron chairs. I do believe that over 60% of dot.com VC money went to extravagent furniture like the Aeron, frivolous marketing or radical parties (where I used to work we had a private fireworks show off the coast at the Ritz Carlton and the B-52s played a private concert for us). I wish I could get an Aeron from a dot.com fire sale and save some money.

Try $900 here

Or actually go to Wal-Mart and buy one for $400. Wal-Mart != walmart.com

But why pay $400 when you can get one for even less.

Dude all you need is some WiFi (802.11B) gear. Get one card for each computer and run in ad-hoc (no base station) mode.

First get two WiFi PC cards. Yes I know you dont have laptops. Add two PCI-PC card adapters and you're set. Total cost $140 per computer, and you get 11MBPS. Also includes encryption if you feel paranoid.

This is industry standard gear, so if you ever decide to upgrade to a 'full' wireless lan you can get a base station and add as many computers as you want.

Dude all you need is some WiFi (802.11B) gear. Get one card for each computer and run in ad-hoc (no base station) mode.

First get two WiFi PC cards. Yes I know you dont have laptops. Add two PCI-PC card adapters and you're set. Total cost $140 per computer, and you get 11MBPS. Also includes encryption if you feel paranoid.

This is industry standard gear, so if you ever decide to upgrade to a 'full' wireless lan you can get a base station and add as many computers as you want.

I mean in all honesty, why would you buy this system without signing up for it?

I, for one, won a TiVo in one of their silly contests. I was specifically told that all I was obliged to do was subscribe to 1 month of service; not more. Well, after the month was up, I had used the service just a few times, and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Also, TiVo would call out every day, uploading logs of whatever I watched. I pay per call ($0.10), so this worked out to an additional $3.00 per month. For me, it just wasn't worth it.
So I cancelled the service. But before cancelling it, I unplugged it from the phone jack, having looked at their scripts.
I'm glad I haven't plugged it back in. If I need to adjust the date, I'll do it in the bash.
One thing to note is that Fred (the first poster) paid $400 for the box; you can buy it for $235 today. In other words, Fred helped out TiVo in their early stages (he bought it over a year ago) by being an early customer. And this is how he gets repaid!
One other noteworthy thing: it has been just over a year since he bought it; and the warranty from TiVo is for 1 year. Could it be that they waited for a year so that they wouldn't void their own warranty?

First, I'd like to give a classic example of strongly correlated things with no causation.

Airconditioner useage is very strongly correlated with deaths by heatstroke. It's a very very strong correlation. In the past decade, almost nobody has died of heatstroke while airconditioner usage was low.

In this example, it is very easy to spot the third-variable effect: temperature. Nobody dies of heatstroke when it is cold outside. Also, nobody runs their airconditioner when it is cold. If it is 95 and humid out, many people will die of heatstroke. By the same token, everybody who is able will be running their airconditioner.

So, as you can see, it is very possible for two things to be correlated and not have a shred of causality between them either way. Now that that's done with, I'd like to talk about CD sales patterns amoung college students. There was a study done that quite thoughourly showed that there was a strong correlation between internet access at colleges and CD sales at nearby stores. The more internet access there was, the fewer CD's were sold.

Now, the study was done such that any possible third variable effects were tightly controlled. They compared entering freshmen classes to previous freshmen classes, and they compared classes against themselves (this years sophmores against last year's freshmen). To control any differences between these groups (this year's freshmen aren't into music, older students don't have as much free cash, etc), they also compared different universities against eachother, that as best the researchers could tell, differed only in how fast they rolled out Ethernet in the dorms. By trying very hard to control third-variable effects, the study could then claim to show causality.

The writeup of the study that I saw drew the conclusion that as more and more students got fast internet access, they became able to download their music from Napster, and therefore didn't need to buy CD's. However, a later study showed that students were buying more CDs than before. Now, we have to wonder, why did the earlier study fail?

The moral of the story is: yes, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but if you're careful with third variable effects, it can mean causation. Even so, be sure you choose the correct source of causality.

As far as the cost of Word, etc. You should probably find a different place to shop... Buy.com has Word 2000, Works, Money, Encarta, Streets and Trips and Picture It for $89. To look at that and say that software prices haven't fallen is to live in deep denial.

"valueable intellectual property"...
psst..

don't tell them it can be obtained by going into a cd store... shhhhh.

Or at CDNow, CDUniverse, Cheap CDs, Buy.com, Amazon.com.....


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It'll be part of Hailstorm, integrated into their instant messenger. I think Napster's trying to squeeze $ out of Microsoft for committing to .NET/Hailstorm technologies. It would be a big win for .NET. Microsoft is looking for big Internet players to commit to .NET. They've already got eBay and buy.com for commerce.

First, there are a few available... at a high cost. See, for example, http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10272 421. It's a classic chicken and egg problem. Prices are high because there's very little demand for HDTV tuners. And there's no demand because in most markets there's nothing that's available on HDTV that's not also available on standard TV, using equipment that everyone already has and that's dirt cheap by comparison. And there's not more content because there's nobody out there to recieve the content, so advertisers don't want to advertise on it and TV stations have no incentive to air new programming in HDTV.

As far as computer-based solutions, for better or worse, most people don't have monitors that are nearly as large as their televisions, or have computers set up where they want to watch TV. I'm a starving college student, so I use a TV card just because it was a lot cheaper. But in the consumer marketplace, how many people are going to sacrifice the ability to sit back on your couch and watch TV for a higher-quality picture?

In short, TV is good enough. HDTV looks much nicer, I agree. But for most purposes, standard TV is high enough quality that the added expense associated with HDTV, combined with the lack of digital signals, makes the upgrade not worthwhile.

Or so it seems to me.

Win ME (upgrade): $82.09
Win 2000 (upgrade): $171.95

Debian GNU/Linux: Free for download (I bought it for ~$20 shrink-wrapped)

FreeBSD: Free for the download (or $49.49 shrink-wrapped)

Solaris: Free for the download, or $75 shrink-wrapped, under "Free Solaris Binary License", not sure about commercial users.

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