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Go to http://www.googlegear.com/, and notice how the URL changes to http://www.google.com/googlegear.html. The message displayed:

Please note: The website formerly known as Googlegear.com is not now and has never been associated with Google Inc., and is now zipzoomfly.com. To go to zipzoomfly.com, click here.

Google has in recent months taken up a strategy of buying up every website with "google" in their domain name in a brand-image protection spree. They recently got computer parts storeGoogleGear.com to change its name to ZipZoomFly.com... which was a very interesting case because Google had no legal leg to stand on... the computer gear store had named its mascot a "Google" before the search engine existed, the sites looked completely different, and the computer gear store didn't do web searching and the web searching company didn't sell computer gear.

The deal was apparently struck quietly, but clearly some cash was paid. There never was any media coverage of the event, and I'm pretty sure the terms of the deal reqires the computer gear store to not disclose how much they got.

Only $35 for 128MB at Googlegear.

I've got a Solarism LM1530, it's a pretty nice 15" LCD monitor and has a fast response LCD (16 ms instead of a more typical 30 ms) for under $300. You can get a 17" version as well, for under $400. It works well with my Shuttle SN41G2. I have the black Shuttle case, and it looks great with the black Solarism monitor.

The reason I mention it to you is that I read some article where someone was speculating about how it might be good for LAN parties, since the monitor stand basically folds up and you can carry it flat. I can't say I've brought my monitor to a LAN party, but it is quite easy to carry around when folded flat.

Check out the review on GamePC for more info. I haven't seen any others yet, since this monitor is fairly new (on the market about a month, I think...). Anyway, I thought it was a great deal, since it runs about $150 less than the Hitachi CML174, and about $250 less than the Planar PX171M, which are also 16 ms response time LCD monitors. The only down side for me is that the Solarism doesn't have DVI, but the picture is still awesome for analog.

I've got a Solarism LM1530, it's a pretty nice 15" LCD monitor and has a fast response LCD (16 ms instead of a more typical 30 ms) for under $300. You can get a 17" version as well, for under $400. It works well with my Shuttle SN41G2. I have the black Shuttle case, and it looks great with the black Solarism monitor.

The reason I mention it to you is that I read some article where someone was speculating about how it might be good for LAN parties, since the monitor stand basically folds up and you can carry it flat. I can't say I've brought my monitor to a LAN party, but it is quite easy to carry around when folded flat.

Check out the review on GamePC for more info. I haven't seen any others yet, since this monitor is fairly new (on the market about a month, I think...). Anyway, I thought it was a great deal, since it runs about $150 less than the Hitachi CML174, and about $250 less than the Planar PX171M, which are also 16 ms response time LCD monitors. The only down side for me is that the Solarism doesn't have DVI, but the picture is still awesome for analog.

They'd do what all humans do- download porn. This site will be among their favorite: http://www.googlegear.com/

15" LCD=$299.95

-Ted

RAID 0 is pointless - gosh, I wish all the video editing studios out there knew this. They've been duped into believing 150 megs a second sustained has value. What morons.

Too bad cheap RAID5 cards don't exist. - Hmm, you mean like the Promise SX4000 that costs $150?

NVidia still offers the best value out there for mainstream users in the GeForce 4 Ti4200

Then you obviously haven't heard of ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro which performs exactly like a GeForce Ti4200 but is actually lower in price.

NVidia still offers the best value out there for mainstream users in the GeForce 4 Ti4200

Then you obviously haven't heard of ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro which performs exactly like a GeForce Ti4200 but is actually lower in price.

Yeah think mice. And while you're at it, think buying another computer (or a cable if you're lucky). Notice the disclaimer that starts in red "Please Note", about buying extra hardware with MS products on the link...

Processing usually requires 1-2 business days. If a product requires more than 2 business days, it may be noted on the specification page ( link)

3dfx's insistence on their proprietary glide technology (which caused a lot of problems for those of us with TNT[2]s wanting to run games that were specifically written for the braindead and worthless glide) and their refusal for years to admit that a scene rendered in 32bit with a full alpha channel would look better than their Voodoo's 8bit rendering just annoyed the hell out of me since they were, at least at first, the top dogs and should have known a lot better.

Anyway, for what it's worth, you can get GeForce4 MX440 based cards (the lower end GF4's -- do not mistake these for the high end Ti4600, they do not provide quite the same ridiculous amount of performance) for under a hundred. In fact, Googlegear has a whole slew of 64MB and 32MB GeForce 2, 3 and 4 cards -- any of which will destroy a Voodoo 1-3. You can even find GeForce 2 cards, which will give you respectable though not stellar performance, for $40 to $50 at places like NewEgg.

No, I don't work for Googlegear or NewEgg and am not affiliated with them in any way, shape or form. I'm just one of their satisfied repeat customers.

3dfx's insistence on their proprietary glide technology (which caused a lot of problems for those of us with TNT[2]s wanting to run games that were specifically written for the braindead and worthless glide) and their refusal for years to admit that a scene rendered in 32bit with a full alpha channel would look better than their Voodoo's 8bit rendering just annoyed the hell out of me since they were, at least at first, the top dogs and should have known a lot better.

Anyway, for what it's worth, you can get GeForce4 MX440 based cards (the lower end GF4's -- do not mistake these for the high end Ti4600, they do not provide quite the same ridiculous amount of performance) for under a hundred. In fact, Googlegear has a whole slew of 64MB and 32MB GeForce 2, 3 and 4 cards -- any of which will destroy a Voodoo 1-3. You can even find GeForce 2 cards, which will give you respectable though not stellar performance, for $40 to $50 at places like NewEgg.

No, I don't work for Googlegear or NewEgg and am not affiliated with them in any way, shape or form. I'm just one of their satisfied repeat customers.

3dfx's insistence on their proprietary glide technology (which caused a lot of problems for those of us with TNT[2]s wanting to run games that were specifically written for the braindead and worthless glide) and their refusal for years to admit that a scene rendered in 32bit with a full alpha channel would look better than their Voodoo's 8bit rendering just annoyed the hell out of me since they were, at least at first, the top dogs and should have known a lot better.

Anyway, for what it's worth, you can get GeForce4 MX440 based cards (the lower end GF4's -- do not mistake these for the high end Ti4600, they do not provide quite the same ridiculous amount of performance) for under a hundred. In fact, Googlegear has a whole slew of 64MB and 32MB GeForce 2, 3 and 4 cards -- any of which will destroy a Voodoo 1-3. You can even find GeForce 2 cards, which will give you respectable though not stellar performance, for $40 to $50 at places like NewEgg.

No, I don't work for Googlegear or NewEgg and am not affiliated with them in any way, shape or form. I'm just one of their satisfied repeat customers.

Given the fact that you want no video, it seems you need servers on the cheap. If you're actually buying thousands (or really more than ten or so) of machines, I suggest you go with an integrator like XRam or Fnord. They'll build whatever you want for you, configure everything EXACTLY the same, test everything, install & do a basic config (i.e. network config and root password) for any OS you want, and install your machines on site. I'm sure the'll give you a nice quantity discount if you buy in the numbers you're talking about.

Don't even THINK about deploying that quantity of machines without racking them in a proper datacenter type environment (cooling, ample redundant AC power feeds, generator, decent physical security, etc.); FORGET about normal PC cases on Ikea shelves in your basement/office. Whatever cash you would save doing it the ghetto way is absolutely not worth the headache of blowing breakers, having your ambient temp at 35-40C and grilling PC parts if your cheap-o electro-cool chiller dies or spills its bin of water all over the place, your local power company decides you're not important, etc.

That being said, here are a few links for what I'd build if I had to do it myself on the cheap (try googlegear.com for good qty. 1 prices on this stuff:

Elite K7S5AL mobo (integrated lan)
1.2 GHz AMD Duron with a really good fan (i.e. Tai-Sol or similar overclocker freak fan)
at least 512M of brand-name CAS2 ECC DDR SDRAM
Western Digital JB series hard drive (WD800JB or WD1200JB)
Netgear FA311 NIC

The cheapest 2u rack case on the net seems to be the Electroseller IPC-2025 at $118 without power supply and fans. It takes nomal ATX size CDRom, floppy, power supply, fans, etc. pricewatch is your friend (-:.

This should net you a pretty sweet 2u rackable server for about $500. I envy not the man that has to assemble more than about 10 of these things by himself. Maybe those chainmail gloves that people that shuck clams for a living use would help.

If you want to do something with the data on these machines, you'll probably want to stick a pair (yes, a pair) of big ethernet switches in front of them. I suggest Foundry or Extreme. You can buy these "certified used" from BizInt.

"Imagine a beow..." (-:

I've bought from Googlegear (no relation to the search engine as far as I can tell). They've got pretty good prices and I haven't had a single problem with them yet. What originally attracted me there was free 2nd day fedex shipping on an item I wanted. I've bought memory from them since then (again, free 2nd day fedex shipping). They had my order mailed out the day I placed it with the dvd drive, and the day after with the memory. I'm definitely going to check there first the next time I need some hardware.

I've also bought from McGlen Microsystems. This one is iffy. Originally I was going to buy a cpu, motherboard, and memory for them (they do 24-hour burn-in tests for you), but then I found out they offered a bare-bones system (everything but an OS and a harddrive). When I went back the next time to actually place my order, they offered a complete system so I just purchased that. Got my computer, and right away I was missing the mouse they were supposed to have sent me. Yeah, it's just a $15 mouse, but it was the principle. I wrote them an email and then called the next day (after getting no reply). I sat on the phone for at least 2 hours on hold. They have some system where if you're on hold long enough, they simply disconnect you! I tried again the next day, same thing. I wrote them a second email at the end of the week, and a third at the end of the next week--no reply. Finally I received a message on my voicemail at work asking me to call back and ask for a specific person. I did so and the person who had answered the phone (it sounded like they were *really* busy) said this woman would call me back in an hour. Hours later, no call. What gets me about the message they left is that I specifically said I left work at 4pm EST, and they called after 5pm :P

That was the first problem. The second problem came when my computer started doing funny things and somehow the registry got corrupted (yes, a WinXP machine :( I've since formatted and made it a linux/XP machine for gaming purposes). As it turns out, the memory was bad. I tried contacting customer support (they had removed the number from their web page!! Luckily I had it written down) and wasn't able to talk with anyone. I wrote them 2 emails asking for support and only received a reply after 2 weeks had gone by (the guy suggested I had a boot sector virus and suggested formatting the hard-drive, though in the email I had mentioned already formatting the hard-drive several times), of course this email arrived after the problem was fixed. I had also written to their returns/refunds division saying my memory was bad and I wanted to take advantage of the 2-year warranty on the memory. For me to do so, it turns out, I would have to ship the entire system back to them. IOW, pay $50+ and wait a couple of weeks for it to get there and back. Or I could just pay $80 for new memory. I bought new memory... from Googlegear. On the other hand, my friend bought a computer from them before all this happened and hasn't had a single problem with his yet.

So McGlen was alright, until I actually needed them to support their product, and that's when the real problems started.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is building her own high-end system. She was interested in purchasing a dual P4 Xeon motherboard and googlegear.com was one of the only online merchants selling one.

She said the prices were very reasonable and shipping was super fast. I've never done business with them myself, so I can't vouch for them personally, but my friend's review was glowing.

I was recently in the market for the 48GB IBM Travelstar notebook harddrive. I already purchased the drive from another vendor, but now looking at googlegear.com I see I could have saved $30. It's the cheapest price I've seen yet (newegg.com doesn't even list it).

BTW, I don't believe they are affiliated with our favorite search engine google.com.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is building her own high-end system. She was interested in purchasing a dual P4 Xeon motherboard and googlegear.com was one of the only online merchants selling one.

She said the prices were very reasonable and shipping was super fast. I've never done business with them myself, so I can't vouch for them personally, but my friend's review was glowing.

I was recently in the market for the 48GB IBM Travelstar notebook harddrive. I already purchased the drive from another vendor, but now looking at googlegear.com I see I could have saved $30. It's the cheapest price I've seen yet (newegg.com doesn't even list it).

BTW, I don't believe they are affiliated with our favorite search engine google.com.

For local shops I like Fry's. They are just huge.

For parts I like to try Computer Geeks first. I have ordered from them many times in the past. One time they sent me the wrong scsi card, I told them about it and they sent out the new one immediatly. I had two cards for a few weeks until UPS came to pick up the old one. I just thought it was nice that 1. they sent out the new one before receiving the old one and 2. They paid shipping to return the old one.

My latest server I built from Google Gear After shopping around I decided it was cheaper to ship it all from one place, and Goole Gear had the best all around prices I found.

Here are a few recommendations:

Price Grabber. Think Price Watch without so much sleaze. Plus, they offer peer merchant reviews!

Googlegear. They have good service and many of their items have free FedEx 2nd day shipping!

TCWO. They are a good place to buy CPUs.

Hope this helps you out.

If you end up deciding to build your own, another good place to check out is googlegear. I order just about everything from there. They have acceptable prices and are very professional.

Personally, I like pricewatch, which has already been mentioned several times. You won't find a single vendor that has good prices on everything, though. I usually end up ordering parts from 3 or 4 vendors every time I build a PC. Some vendors I like:

googlegear - If you really want to do the one-stop thing, this is who I suggest. They don't have the best prices, but they're usually close and they have a huge selection.

teamexcess - They have a great clearance section if you don't mind stuff with cosmetic blemishes. I've bought several "B-Grade" 20" and 21" monitors from them and have always been happy, especially since they've cost me under $200 each, including shipping.

There are more whose names I can't remember off the top of my head. I'll post them in a reply to this when I get home.

I've seen TigerDirect mentioned, but I'd avoid them since you're concerned about price. They carry just about everything, but even their super sale prices are pretty high.

I definately recomend building your own. After shipping and tax you really won't save that much, but you will know exactly what you have since you picked it yourself, hopefully with compatability in mind, which can be very valuable if you run anything other than Windows.

Considering the the hard drive card alone is currently running about $350 (cheapest pricewatch price at a place called Googlegear), its hard to argue with the value of this device.

Buy it for value of the hard drive alone. The MP3 player is a bonus.

There are other form factors, such as NTX, that one could build a small computer from. The major problem lies in mass-produced small footprint cases; these can be difficult to come by. Someone pointed me to this cheap chassis at GoogleGear. It might be worth looking in to.

Googlegear has an Audigy for $63.50. Sure it's OEM and all you get is the card and a CD, but at least you can save some money. You may want to check your favorite shopping site to see if they have a batter deal on an OEM version.

Googlegear has an Audigy for $63.50. Sure it's OEM and all you get is the card and a CD, but at least you can save some money. You may want to check your favorite shopping site to see if they have a batter deal on an OEM version.

Why do people purchase junk like this? The best thing to do with a used HD is throw it in the garbage. If you want a cheap HD, you can buy a brand new 10GB Travelstar for $81 shipped:
http://www.googlegear.com/ggweb/jsp/ProductDetail. jsp?ProductCode=712553-017

-nb

• It's "just a hard drive" when connected to a PC or Macintosh -- no proprietary software is needed to manage your collection. In addition, you can store and transport files other than MP3s, too -- documents, applications, whatever.
  
• You can copy MP3s (and any other file) OFF of the drive, as well as onto it. Contrast this, for example, with the PJBox, which only lets you put files onto it (Yes, really.)
  
• Good Mac support, including apparent interest from Archos in supporting playlists exported from "iTunes"
  
• Upgradable with almost any 9.5mm IDE drive (like this $160 IBM 20GB model)
  
• Only $350.

There's a discussion board about the Archos here. I've had mine for about two weeks, and I'm very happy with it.

-Mark