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I'm busy because I'm the only IT guy in our organization

I know what you're talking about.

After I got a full time job doing admin/helpdesk work for a larger company with a more proper (though terribly underpaid) IT Dept., I learned that not only is cutting corners hazardous (because it makes you look bad), it often eats up more cash, via your time, than just buying whatever the fully supported and proper solution is for what you need.

If you're flying solo in systems administration, and your boss says, "We need on our network/server/desktop," and you find a couple of products that do what you need, get the cost of closed source product A with a support contract and open source product B's support contract, particularly if said product's failure interrupts line of business, and present them as options to your boss and as the cost thereof.

Having someone to call in the event of a nightmare that knows more about a product than you ever will is quite the life and time saver. Furthermore, assuming that you being on your own for this business is indicative of the amount of equipment you're responsible for, paying even $5k for support contracts annually or even less often is a hell of a lot cheaper than you troubleshooting problems on your own or hiring a second admin or a contractor to fix what you can't or don't have the time for.

Lastly, get yourself a sales rep with an ISV. Personally, I've used PC Connection and Insight, and even though I go to Newegg for my personal purchases, having someone you literally call to ask about products and price quotes is a godsend. It's rather beneficial to have a relationship with a good sales rep, even if you only call them once or twice a year. That ability to pick up the phone, say, "My boss wants me to do X, what do you guys have that'll get X done, and what's the cost/feature difference between the varying products?" and get a comprehensive answer immediately or in a few hours via email while you're doing other work sure beats the hell out of researching it for hours or days, coming up with the same or inferior answer, and having to bill the company for hours where it looks like you've gotten nothing done.

Solo administration isn't always necessarily about what you can do or how much administration knowledge or experience you have---though if you've got no idea how to set up a basic Windows SBS you might want to consider classes or a career change---it's really more about the resources you can exploit to get the job done as quickly, efficiently, and most importantly as correctly as possible.

And remember, if you tell your boss how much something costs, you explain why, and he tells you to GTFO, then just do it. It's not worth your time, and ironically, it's generally not worth the company's time either. The only person who'll give him a lower price quote is someone who's going to struggle with things as much as you will without taking advantage of the things he could and should to get the job done.

Here's one that's close. It costs ~$1800, and can withstand some pretty harsh conditions like these

Three weeks ago I bought a ThinkPad R61 from Insight.co.uk.

Before actual purchase, I asked a sales-rep if Insight might do me one favour, namely kindly remove any windows (XP, in this case) from the hardware, at no change in price. And the rep chirped yes they will, much to my surprise--she obviously was in error, as Insight won't even go so far as fit an additional 1G of RAM, which I ordered along with the laptop.

Perhaps I coveted the R61 too much to let it slip from my hands, then and there, and... just let the question become moot, despite lingering suspicions that the rep simply lied^H^H^H^H let me be so easily blinded.

When the thing was delivered by courier, it was obvious that Insight's part in it was to forward the shipment as it came from Lenovo, straight on to me.

Now, was it my mistake that I first made due inquiries about availability of that ThinkPad sans Windows? With a response in the negative, what would my options be to both get the hardware and a refund, once I was made fully aware that neither Lenovo won't ship it w/out windows, nor Insight the middleman will or can do any favours for me?

Yes, yes, it's all about determination and a tinkling feeling of avenging many a fellow geek, if the refunded ~$100 alone doesn't count. And yet, I can't help thinking that all in all my single option would be to not buy it. That is, no Windows, but no ThinkPad either.

Things would be profoundly different if I came in possession of a Windows-loaded laptop not of my own will--say, as a gift.

Power Factor Corrected (PFC) supplies are available. The better ones use a switch mode circuit to charge the reservoir capacitor through most of the main power cycle, while the less good ones incorporate a capacitor across the mains to buffer the large peaks of current when the input voltage exceeds that stored in the reservoir capacitor.

Not a rhetorical question, but is PFC really that much of an unusual feature when even cheap PSUs claim to have it?

The Real question is
"Does the game ship with these http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/ind ex.php?product_id=EXO88121?"

No, the Real question is, does the game ship with these?

Yeah, I know when my wife says "I'm watching a Lifetime special", I always follow her straight to the tv.

Meanwhile, Quietly (cheaply), they are screaming "Naked Female Sex Game" at the male target audience outlets. (ie SlashDot) Notice the aversion to words "Porn Game". Most women hate porn games. Most women will likely hate this one too, No matter how much money you throw at the Oxygen Channel.

The Real question is
"Does the game ship with these http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/ind ex.php?product_id=EXO88121?"

But external HDs are certainly included (how would an EU politician be able to distinguish between tiny USB 5GB HD and a 256mb USB Memory stick.

If the 5GB HD USB HD is included then this would also be included, as it's external.

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/ind ex.php?product_id=LCE300944E&src=FRO1

I have a sneaking suspicion that we're not gonna be seeing many data backup companies based in the Netherlands.

Some KVM Switches have KVM dungles that you can buy seperately. This is what we are currently using, and you can get the dungle here . Although the dungles are much more expansive then actual keyboards.

I also found this on a good old google search. The APKME adapter seems to be exactly what you are looking for.

A Desktop KVM switch is a lot cheaper, but it might be a bit unsightly.

Heck, Pricewatch even lists them.

Those in Northern Ireland will know that the biggest problem for us is pp charges. To help with this i've compiled a wee list of shops and charges usually for something small and light like an ethernet card. Sorry if any of it is wrong - if so please contact the site and let them know that they need to make it clearer.

• CCL Computers Online 10 extra. 3.95 for small order 7.50 large all + VAT
• Insight Direct 19.99
• MicroWarehouse claim they don't ship outside uk mainland
• SavaStore 15 + VAT extra
• Scan Computers UK citylink so expensive - they quote 7 + VAT for non-NI will contact you for exact pricing
• Simply Computers 12.95 + VAT
• Overclockers UK 3.48 + VAT 2nd class recorded
• ebuyer 15 surcharge on NI p&p
• Komplett.co.uk approx 10 p&p
• aria .co. uk 11.95 + VAT for under 8KG
• Novatech 15 extra p&p
• Kustom PCs
• Tekheads.co.uk RM Recorded from 2.85
• mini-itx.com 8 - 12 +VAT
• LinITX.com 2.39 recorded or 6.05 next day special (+ VAT i think)
• TheCoolingShop.com free delivery on orders over 4 but under 2KG - over 2KG = 20
• PC Nextday 17.61 inc. VAT next day
• Leapfrog Computers Ltd 6.90 + VAT
• Chillblast 1.18 inc VAT recorded 5.29 special
• Stuff-uk.net under 100g 3.75, under 500g 4.05, under 1KG 5.25, under 3KG 6.60, large over 1KG 10.50, all + VAT
• CaseTech.co.uk from 2.95 based on weight for 3-4 day courier. guess + VAT
• Crucial UK over 25 free p&p. under 25 2.95
• Over-Clock UK from 1.42 2nd class post to 4.59 citylink
• Micro Direct Ltd. 17.63 inc. VAT
• Carrera SSC 64 for complete system
• MESH Computers 20 inc. VAT
• dabs.com 5.88 inc. VAT extra

We use a rugged Psion Handheld with an RFID reader to identify livestock electronically (approx 50 sets) as seen here http://www.insight.com/uk/apps/productpresentation /index.php?product_id=PSIMX2MB.

It couldn't possibly be a less reliable piece of shit. Memory cards randomly stop responding, it thinks its batteries are too low to operate even when fresh. Devices attached to it such as the RFID reader stop responding randomly.

I've had one get hot enough be uncomfortable to your hand but not hot enough to burn (it stopped working of course) and others just stop working all together. They are rated for a 1 meter drop on concrete and we had one stop working after a 2 foot drop off of a chair onto carpet and die.

I guess the only thing worse than these Handhelds is the RFID reader manufactured by a different company, Hotraco, that misread often if they bother to read at all. We have gone through a few dozen failed units and had to mail the rest to the factory for an internal wiring weakness repair as an oversight from the factory.

Anyway.. I guess all I'm getting as is you'll never see me buy a Psion PDA. At least my Psion Goldcard works well!

I even got one for work too great little projectors.. Some pixelation if you stand about a foot away or put your nose on the screen. Sceen size 60"x80"

I have only one complaint it is a little dark in video mode. So you have to keep the room very dark. It has Great color, all in all for the $$$ it is worth it.

If you want to spend 4 times as much the new 3m projectetor here
is 3500 lumens which is brighter than the $10K big boys ;)

"I'd like you to point out a large retailer that uses php for its online store, or an online banking site."

I am not sure where you are getting at with this. If you mean it's not possible to build a large, complex and busy site using php you need to look no further then sourceforge. Now sourceforge is not a commercial site but I bet it gets more use then 99% of the commercial sites on the net.

I don't know why it's so special to have a commercial site in php but I know of several. Here are just a few companies that I have dealt with which use php on their web sites.

Nonetheless if you insist on an example of a large online store using php look at
Insight.com or catalog.com

I see php in lots of very busy sites.

Just today I noticed that Insight is using php. I am pretty sure they were not using that before and migrated to php from something else.

A couple of years ago I bought a 17" 1280x1024 analog-interface LCD from Planar Systems - either the CT1744Z or a direct predecessor, I don't quite remember. It came with built-in speakers (I don't care that much about sound so that was a plus; YMMV) and a built-in four-port USB hub that hadn't even been mentioned in the literature. It was under $1000 then, and is now down to $650 (at Insight.

I just have to say, this is a great monitor, and I wish more people knew about the brand. It never seems to be included in these types of roundups, which is a shame because I think it would do very well. Compared to other LCD monitors I've looked at the Planar is bright, it has good contrast (400:1) and pixel response time (15ms rise, 10ms fall), etc. The interpolation actually works rather well, though I still prefer to get dot-for-dot accuracy on a smaller display area in most cases; unlike some LCD monitors, this one gives you the choice. IMO Planar's combination of performance, features and price spanks any of the monitors that were in this review.

And no, I don't have any relationship with Planar other than that of a very satisfied customer. I just like to acknowledge when people work hard to create good products.

Of course, you can probably find the software a bit cheaper through places like macmall.com, CDW or Insight. But if you are already in a market for a new Mac, free is still much better than $699 :)

I go to the glorious [insert sarcasm here] University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. This really hits home, not because my family uses @Home or anything like that.. They're smart, they use the sweet ADSL service back home, provided by Zoomtown through our local telco. This hits home because my school uses it for student Internet access in the dorms!

We're unfortunate enough to have been raped into a contract by our local high dollar cable company, Insight Communications.
Yeah, sounds good, right? Yeah, until you notice that their cable modem service is provided by freakin @Home!

Now what the hell am I going to do for net access? The cost is already included in our Housing, so now what? Do I get a refund? Hell no, this is UK we're talking about!
Am I going to get some different service, in the event that our service is terminated (more like when it is)? Our service, if you could classify it as a service, and not an overpriced unreliable annoyance, is already slow as hell, and hit or miss at best. Just about every night I come back from the Lab, my cable modem is retraining.
At least they had the intelligence to get some halfway decent equipment in our rooms, namely the Cisco uBR w/ non-functioning VoIP. :)

Anyway, I'm through ranting. I just hope my SSH connection doesn't drop again when remotely editing server config files!

Soon to be access-less in Lexington. :)

Who has them for sale? I tried the first three reseller links on Proxim's web page and none of them had 802.11a stuff listed. Or rather no one has Proxim's 802.11a stuff. Several people have Intel's.
CDW
Insight

On the positive side, several purchases from Insight were perfect with good support when a video card fried itself. TC Computers was always good for motherboards and what not (and now owned by Insight). Buy.com and Amazon have also been good to me. So on and so on for about two dozen purchases.

I think the summary here is bad experiences with big (and expensive) on line retailers, less than 10%. Bad experiences with small, fly-by-night retailers, more than 70%. Gee, you really do get what you pay for.

So which part of these instructions sets up the DHCP server?

Just as in Mandrake, I tell the OS what the name of my Workgroup is, the name of this particular PC on that network, and I enable DHCP. BAM! I'm on the network.

I'm not knocking this. How could I know this? It's a NICE ADDITION that can seriously reduce the number of calls I get from people that have two PCs, bought two NICs and a crossover cable from me, but have no clue as to how to make the PCs see each other. I just find it funny that the first time I saw this type of "easy network setup" was in Mandrake.

Of course, we don't live in an unconnected world anymore. Most likely them have some outside access already planned. BUT, if you have a cable modem that only dishes out one address, you're still going to need a third something to NAT through to provide DHCP addresses. Or you'll have to break down and pay the extra fee most ISPs want for multiple addresses. An SMC Barricade can do the trick of doling out the addresses, serving as a broadband firewall, is only $99, and even works with all my VPN setups into the corporate LAN.

To be honest, while I think this guy sounds silly in his article, comparing his apples to pineapples, he is the face of the average computer user out there in that we can see he is slightly familiar with these two worlds and are glimpsing into a decision being made.

Secondly, the Netstream2000 is over $2000 and is for commercial use only. You probably couldn't get one even if you had the money to burn.

Wrong! The Netstream2000 is $240.00 not $2000.00, I know I bought mine from insight.com. It is fully supported, t.v. out & video overlay, it is based on the EM8400 chip which does all decoding in hardware. The EM8300 (H+/DXR3)only decodes video, audio & css are done in software. Plus the Netstream2000 is not a commercial use only product just commercial grade.

What? First to *use* USB (not just put it on the board).

That's an argument about their choice of peripherals, not about their support of i/o standards. It's marketing, not engineering. (Not that marketing is not important, just a different discussion.)

First to use Firewire. Using 32bit Nubus when PCs where using ISA slots.

Still using Nubus years after the PC had moved to PCI. Indeed, I'd count Nubus along with SCSI--in both cases Apple went with a clearly superior solution early on, but ended up being held back as the mainstream PC standards, driven by the much larger marketplace, managed to improve much faster and yet be much cheaper than what Apple used.

The "laughably inferior video card" may be so for FPS, but actually performs quite well for graphic artists. Makes me wonder why they specced it.

"The Macintosh does not have any decent 3d support, so therefore we can pretend that 3d support is not important." Any $9 graphics card is just fine for 2d, although I seriously doubt that 16 MB and a 230 MHz RAMDAC are really good enough for any serious graphic artists. The simple fact is that the Mac does not do 3d well, and that that is simply pitiful in this day and age. And no, 3d is not just used for games; you may be shocked, but there are actually graphics artists that work in three dimensions too! (They use PCs and Unix workstations.)

BTW, the only decent 802.11 system out there that can hold a candle to the AirPort system is the Lucent Orinoco system, which is slightly more expensive and a lot harder to set up.

I don't know how hard it is to set up, but IIRC for what you admit is only a slightly higher price it has a much greater wireless range.

How many makers right now are putting out machines with DDR RAM? Last I checked, not many. Sure they're ramping up, but Apple would be stupid (and possibly insane) to be on the top of the curve for every trend. Their machines would be even more overpriced and they could end up with a Rambus/Intel fiasco on their hands if they made the wrong choice. Better to let someone like Intel make that mistake and fight the battles worth fighting (i.e the ones pretty much won already like USB, firewire)

As this thread was initially about system *performance* (as opposed to capabilities), let me tell you that DDR is MUCH more "a battle worth fighting" on this metric. But you have a very valid point--indeed, I agree with you completely. The thing is, what you're saying assumes that Apple will be designing and validating its own chipsets, incompatible with the real world, every time they want to add a feature. In such an environment, it is indeed not worth it to come out with a DDR chipset now. Moreover, while it would have been worth it to come out with a PC133 chispet a year ago and a DDR chipset in around 3 months time, the fact that Apple is the one designing and validating every new chipset is the reason these chipsets are always a year behind the times--it's a very complicated process and Apple's engineers are understandably stretched thin to try to replicate the work of dozens of companies in the PC world.

That's the problem with having a vertical monopoly; there's not enough room for differentiated product lines and innovation. In the PC world, there are 2 or 3 major chipset manufacturers competing to come out with the fastest chipsets with the most new features, and another couple players who drop in to keep competition high. There are about a dozen major motherboard manufacturers, who compete to best implement these chipsets with the most features at the lowest price. Because the PC RAM market is so large, you have all the DRAM manufacturers in the world driving chipset innovation as well. Finally, because PCs are used for general purpose tasks and because there's an independent benchmarking industry in the PC marketplace, all these people know that they won't be able to get away with a single toy SIMD benchmark as an overall measure of "performance"--thus they all feel pressure to create components which actually work fast over a wide variety of circumstances. Hence the PC market is moving into 2.1 and 3.2 GB/s FSBs while the Mac is finally hitting 1.1 GB/s. Oh, and while we're on the subject, it turns out I was wrong: you won't be able to buy a G4 with on-die L2 cache until the G4+ is released in March. Only then will the G4 finally be approaching clock-for-clock parity with x86 chips (according to SPECcpu, i.e. a real benchmark suite).

Now, I'm not saying there aren't some important tangible benefits to Apple's vertical monopoly. I just don't think they're worth the drawback: machines which cost twice as much as the equivalent PC did when it was released 9 months ago.

One final word re: price/performance -- find a notebook that can compete in that area with the new powerbook. Good luck.

Here you finally have a point: the new powerbook is very impressive and indeed competitive with PCs in price/performance. One important reason why is that AMD has not yet had a viable notebook CPU for the mainstream and performance ends of the market, so therefore Intel has a monopoly over that segment and thus performance notebooks tend to cost as much as powerbooks. Conversely, Apple has seen itself frozen out of the market it practically invented with the first powerbooks, as the portable market becomes more and more dominated by corporate consumers. Thus you have a reversal of the situation in the desktop PC market: Intel is getting away with monopoly pricing, while Apple is heavily discounting to try to break back into a market they've nearly lost.

Still, no matter how I might try to talk bad about it, there's no doubt the new powerbooks are very competitive. On the other hand, the situation is decidedly *not* as Apple has presented it. Here's what Apple has to say on the matter:


Sony Vaio Z505...........PowerBook G4

12.1-inch display........15.2-inch wide-screen display
Magnesium alloy..........99.5% pure grade CP1 titanium
650MHz Pentium III.......400 MHz PowerPC G4
No optical drive.........Slot-loading DVD-ROM
2 hours battery life.....5 hours battery life
Not wireless ready.......AirPort antenna built-in
1.15 inches thick........1 inch thick
$2549*...................$2599*

(Taken from here.)

Now let's look at what the actual facts on that Sony Z505 really are.

First off, let's take note of the fact that contrary to Apple's blatant misrepresentation, the Z505 with a P3-650 actually costs $2250, not "$2549". But what's $300 among friends? Well, we can use some of that money to buy the Z505 a 6-hour battery, so hahaha on you. The cost is now $2450, or $150 less than the Mac. Also while the powerbook may be a miraculous 3.8 mm thinner than the Z505, the important measure is of course weight; the powerbook, at 5.3 pounds, is 41% heavier than the 3.75 pound Z505--which makes sense, as they really serve different purposes. Indeed, the low weight (and its huge popularity) is the reason the Z505 is so underpowered for its price (for a PC that is), but we'll disregard that for now.

Unfortunately, there's no way to buy the Vaio as unloaded as those powerbooks: in particular, no way to buy it without at least Word 2000. Nor is there any way to purchase Word 2001 with our brand new powerbook at the Apple Store. We could buy it from MS for $400 but that doesn't seem quite fair. Instead we'll upgrade both machines to Office.

Where does that put us now?


Sony Vaio Z505...........PowerBook G4

12.1-inch display........15.2-inch wide-screen display
Magnesium alloy..........99.5% pure grade CP1 titanium
650MHz Pentium III.......400 MHz PowerPC G4
No optical drive.........Slot-loading DVD-ROM
6 hours battery life.....5 hours battery life
Not wireless ready.......AirPort antenna built-in
1.15 inches thick........1 inch thick
12 GB HD.................10 GB HD
3.75 pounds*.............5.3 pounds
$2650....................$3060

*Longer battery adds weight from this original measurement, but I couldn't find out how much.

What's missing? Well, the DVD player, for one thing. An external one adds $400 to the Z505's cost, making it just a hair cheaper than the powerbook. The 650 MHz P3 is in reality a good deal faster than the 400 MHz G4, but by using the right programs an argument can be made that the G4 comes close. "AirPort antenna built-in" is a red-herring, since you still need to spend $100 for the AirPort card. I looked it up, and the first place I checked had an Orinoco card for $160. Again, I'm almost positive this card has much better range than AirPort. Eh, let's look it up, shall we? Well, AirPort only goes a measely up to 150 feet. Orinoco goes...let's see...up to 1750 feet. Hmm. Guess the "built-in antenna" isn't working too well, is it??

So what do we end up with? The new powerbook is almost exactly the same price as a similarly configured Z505, except that the Z505 has a tad more HD space, has an extra hour on the battery, and, sorry to say, is the faster machine. Alternatively, you can get the Z505 without a DVD player and save $400.

Meanwhile, the powerbook has a luscious 15.2" screen, while the Z505 is stuck with a 12.1" which, while quite small, at least manages to almost hit the resolution of the powerbook (1024x768 vs. 1152x768). The benefit of giving up the nice screen and the internal DVD is up to 1.55 pounds of heft and of course that extra hour.

In other words, it's arguably a tossup. Of course it's a bad comparison because one is a sub-notebook and the other a full-sizer, but Apple chose it, not me. Still, it's worth noting that the Z505 is perhaps the most overpriced laptop around, so it's not such a surprise that Apple chose it when making a comparison.

Well phew! Aren't we enlightened? Did I pass? (It wasn't that tough, I let Apple "find a notebook that can compete in [price/performance] with the new powerbook" for me!)

Now it's my turn: find a desktop Mac that can compete in (price/1.5)/performance with a similarly equipped desktop PC--and I mean in a wide variety of benchmarks, not just Photoshop and RC5. (Indeed, it would be tough to do that even with Photoshop, assuming one actually used a complete Photoshop benchmark like PSbench.)

Good luck. Unfortunately, there are very few good cross-platform benchmarks to consult; the most well-respected cross-platform benchmark in the world, SPECcpu, shows the G4 in a rather unflattering light--indeed, because of this Motorola hasn't even released official scores for the G4, making it the only current general-purpose CPU family I can think of for which SPEC scores are not available. Oh wait, I lied: there's no SPEC scores for Cyrix chips either. However, there are SPEC scores for the P3, P4, the AMD K7, for Sun's UltraSparc II and III, for IBM's POWER3 chip which is sorta related to the G3 kinda sorta, for the Alpha EV67, and the MIPS R12000 and the HP PA-RISC 8600-just in the past year. The point is, every real chip releases SPEC scores, usually early and often. The best we have for the brand-spanking-new G4+ is an *estimate* for the outdated (in fact retired) SPEC95 suite, and man it's not too pretty. Of course, Motorola can always complain that they don't have a very good Fortran compiler, which is key to a good SPECfp score (their SPECint score sucks too, though); still, this is no one's fault but their own, unless of course they never meant the G4 or G4+ to be a high-performance general-purpose chip (oh that's right, they didn't; they built it for the embedded market).

Other cross-platform benchmarks are invariably much less trustworthy, because they are almost always binary only and are never of the breadth or depth of the SPEC suite. Picking Photoshop, for example, is just plain dumb, as Photoshop is simply better optimized on the Mac than on the PC (alternatively, we could benchmark Word and see which runs it faster). There's a nice collection of published cross-platform Mac vs. x86 results here; it's worth perusing, even though most of these programs make *very* poor overall benchmarks, taken as a whole they at least provide some semblence of a big picture. Needless to say, I think your task will be pretty difficult, even if there were a good way to compare performance across the two platforms.

I ordered two quantum 10000 rpm SCSI Ultra 160 18 GB hard drives from them about five months ago.

Even though their US parent company listed those drives as in-stock, the Canadian subsidiary had to order them from a distributor and estimated they would take a month to arrive.

After repeated phone calls about where my disks drives were going unreturned, I gave up on ever getting my order. I figured they'd lost it. Finally after I moved out of my house in St. John's and left the country and was in the US again, they shipped the drives and charged my card. I'd long since spent the money on the card that I'd set aside for the drives, thus prompting a call from my bank's security department wondering where their money was.

Question - why did the bank authorize the charge when there couldn't have been more than 50 dollars in available room on the card?

What followed was days and days of struggling with Insight Canada to get my card refunded. Eventually my bank got tired of waiting and covered the charge just by taking the money from my checking account.

It's been two weeks since Insight Canada claims they refunded the money for those two very expensive drives, and my card still has not been credited. I check with my bank every couple of days.

If anyone at Insight is reading this and wants to investigate this, my sales rep is Jordy at x5087.

I ordered two quantum 10000 rpm SCSI Ultra 160 18 GB hard drives from them about five months ago.

Even though their US parent company listed those drives as in-stock, the Canadian subsidiary had to order them from a distributor and estimated they would take a month to arrive.

After repeated phone calls about where my disks drives were going unreturned, I gave up on ever getting my order. I figured they'd lost it. Finally after I moved out of my house in St. John's and left the country and was in the US again, they shipped the drives and charged my card. I'd long since spent the money on the card that I'd set aside for the drives, thus prompting a call from my bank's security department wondering where their money was.

Question - why did the bank authorize the charge when there couldn't have been more than 50 dollars in available room on the card?

What followed was days and days of struggling with Insight Canada to get my card refunded. Eventually my bank got tired of waiting and covered the charge just by taking the money from my checking account.

It's been two weeks since Insight Canada claims they refunded the money for those two very expensive drives, and my card still has not been credited. I check with my bank every couple of days.

If anyone at Insight is reading this and wants to investigate this, my sales rep is Jordy at x5087.

They say on their order page that they need to have the shipping address match the credit card address and as I'm out of the country (in Canada) for a few months I explained the situation in the comments field and gave them my phone number.

Then the trouble began.

I got a message from them asking me to "add" my shipping address to my credit card. Well, it's a debit card and you can't do that, the best I could do was change my permanent address with the bank to the place I'm staying at in Canada. I didn't want to do that because I'm not staying here permanently but I really need the equipment. The bank was happy doing that over the phone.

I got a call from Bank Security verifying the transaction so I know that the transaction was approved by the debit card company.

But when they verified my address again it still hadn't gone through. No problem, I thought, I'll just give them the number of the lady at the bank who approved the address change.

Well that wouldn't satisfy them. I ended up spending all day on the phone, alternately with my bank who bent over backwards to be helpful and who assured me they would do everything in their power to get Megahaus to send me their drives, and some obnoxious chick in Megahaus order processing who said - get this - she wasn't permitted to dial an extension when verifying my address.

It is impossible to reach anyone at my bank without dialing an extension. The branches don't even have their own phone numbers. When you dial the number you get a switchboard and the person at the switchboard doesn't have bank record information available.

The chick at Megahaus said if she couldn't get the verfication from the person who answered the phone she wouldn't send me the drives.

Now I could wait three days for my address change to register on Visa's records (isn't this the 21st century) but instead I canceled my order and ordered from Insight instead.

Mike

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.

I send spam reports in about legit businesses just like I do with boiler room operations. I use Spamcop to filter my mail, and do the reporting. It makes it super easy to do.

Sometimes it is good to follow up your spam report to the CEO of the company, like I did with Insight - yep the mail order company. Their marketing drone decided that there were not enough people on the mailing list, so he resubscribed EVERYONE they had an email address for (even if you chose not to receive their junk mail when you purchased something from them). So, I wrote a letter to the CEO. The next morning he sent back a message and he was none too happy about it. Not sure what happened to the marketing guy, but from the tone of the CEO's message I would not be too surprised if the guy is now looking for another job.

http://www.insight.com has it for $38.99. Beyond.com and others have it for similar prices.

Insight also carries them. Ask for IBM spare parts. If you do some research, you can get lucky. Some of their keyboards are Yes, IBM still makes them. I just got a new batch of machines where I spec'd "no keys between the alt and cntrl keys."