Slashdot Mirror

In Canada, as in the States, you can still buy barebone laptop - no OS included, like:

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=30406&vpn=OCZNBIS15DIYA&manufacture=OCZ%20Technology&promoid=1016 [ncix.com] [ncix.com]

I worked out the price, and it's still not in your favor though.. I also looked at US Dell models with Ubuntu - their price is not that good compared to the windows version..

Yeah, OCZ USB sticks are awful. I remember reading about mass-RMAs of those "Rally2" USB sticks on the NCIX.com forums. (eStore) Pretty poor write speeds too, compared to quality flash drives. Not very durable; lots of reports of them breaking by being dropped, or being left in a pocket while going through the wash.

I picked up a Patriot XPorter XT several years ago. (2007) It writes at about 25MB/sec, and reads faster than that. It's survived the washing machine several times, and also my car driving over it. (oops)

Check out ncix out of Vancouver (yes, they ship to the US). I've always had amazing service from them and their prices are hard to beat (in Canada at least). Plus they will price match other online retailers. Also great for me as I don't get dinged with duty charges.

I stopped dealing with TigerDirect and TigerDirect.ca years ago. I've had bad experiences with them and often the cheap items they carry are exactly that, cheap. Anything worth buying from them I can most likely get at the same price elsewhere.

Well, of course, if you don't want on-board video then you MUST be a gamer seeking maximum performance!! Which means even the lowest low-end cards without fans are going to probably run very hot, raising the temperature of the entire case.

Not necessarily. You said you weren't concerned with xHz/$. It may be worth your while to check them out. None of the cards on the linked page have fans. I've used a few different matrox cards in the past and have been very satisfied. They make reliable hardware, with good solid drivers.

Of late I've been eyeing their DualHead2Go. Yes most laptops (these days) will let you work across both screens, but rarely can you get a desktop screen to:
1. Sit evenly with the laptop LCD
2. Be the same resolution at the same pixel density.

I don't work for Matrox, I'm a public servant. I just really like Matrox's products.

You made some good points, and the anonymous poster also kind of touched on this but there is a 3rd path for 'advertising' beyond your 2-point list---metainformation.

A forum for discussing the content, or in some way giving feedback for a directories, imho, is extremely valuable. I don't need to buy a million shovels, even if they are an exceptionally good deal, because I'm not specialized in shovel distribution. But if I see a well built shovel for a dollar, that lasts longer than 5 years or so, you bet I'd be willing to make a post on a forum linked with the shovel. Same goes for other things--- ncix has forums for each peice of computer equipment that you can buy, consequently the difference between shopping at a place like BestBuy and NCIX is that the latter you're likely to get real feedback, real information that you can use to become informed on a product, whereas the former you're just likely to get suckered in by a salesman. It's not really a directory, but it's information about a directory, usually provided by the users of the directory.

Similarily, I guess, you can provide feedback about #2. reddit, for example, allows you to discuss the banner adds on the site. So you can say the product sucks, for example. This activity is fairly new, expect more from this in the future.

Google kind of does this, but could certainly do a lot more. If there was a 'click here to discuss this URL' on every search result on Google, complete with support for, say, orkut members to log in, ideally with /. or reddit like discussion threading, well firstly stuff like StumbleUpon would be all but forced to use Google as a backend, and second everyone would be much better informed on not only every URL, but how people perceive every URL. A huge benefit.

StumbleUpon, imho, was ahead of it's time, but it's become a bloated peice of garbage. But the idea of a universal discussion based on webpage has yet to truly come to fruition, and in this context, it has yet to truly become the solid 3rd part of 'advertising'.

Then I copied a 700 MB file onto it from a local hard drive in gnome, which reported initially that it was transferring at 20+ MB/s, but that dropped steadily until it levelled off around 6.1 MB/s.

Far from scientific, yes, but I wonder a)why the inconsistencies, and b)how these results compare with other products.

db

Is it really that cheap? Sure it's kind of cheap, but nowhere close to the $200 they originally stated. Also for not much more you can get a full sized laptop with much more power. The Asus EEE is nicely priced, but it's only good as a secondary laptop, and it's still nice to have a full sized laptop in most situations.

I purchased a santa cruz in 2000 or so and up until it was replaced, it had richer fuller sound than any other card I had tried. Previous to that I was using a soudblaster 512 which they discontinued in favour of bringing the EXACT same card to market under the title of "sb live", and costing IIRC double the price. You can see that creative has been pricks for pretty much their entire existence. The main reason to move away from creative is their god awful driver suite. I have never had a turtle beach card or driver crash, period. Not to mention that they dont install a fuckton of TSRs and spew crap all over the system.

Currently I run a turtle beach montego DDL 7.1, and its simply flawless. The only problem I've ever had is getting their cheaper card (riveria) in canada. Its practically the same as the montego, but for half the price (30 bucks) and no 7.1.

Sorry, I can build an adequate gaming rig, including Windows Vista for $750. Here's one for example. Its $950, but includes a $200 monitor. And, as I said, I was talking of someone who wanted to do both and was buying new. If you're buying used, you can probably do it for $500 or less.

200$ will get you a 8800GT (if you get a good price, about 240$ otherwise). Hell you can even get a case/2GB ram/8800GT for less than 300$. (These links might not work after 2007/03/11, but there are deals like that every weeks)

That's not medium settings, that's high even in Crysis.

200$ will get you a 8800GT (if you get a good price, about 240$ otherwise). Hell you can even get a case/2GB ram/8800GT for less than 300$. (These links might not work after 2007/03/11, but there are deals like that every weeks)

That's not medium settings, that's high even in Crysis.

If you don't want to bother with the whole enclosure, ngear makes a thing that is more of a quick tool.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17275&vpn=NG-RDRIVE-USB&manufacture=nGear%20Technologies%20Inc.

As you can see here: http://img.ncix.com/images/17275_All.jpg It just plugs into the back of a 2.5 or 3.5 ATA hard drive, and gives you USB. Also comes with a molex connectorized power supply. I've found it handy in my computer testing.

If you don't want to bother with the whole enclosure, ngear makes a thing that is more of a quick tool.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17275&vpn=NG-RDRIVE-USB&manufacture=nGear%20Technologies%20Inc.

As you can see here: http://img.ncix.com/images/17275_All.jpg It just plugs into the back of a 2.5 or 3.5 ATA hard drive, and gives you USB. Also comes with a molex connectorized power supply. I've found it handy in my computer testing.

http://pc.ncix.com/pcbuilder/index.php?action=config&id=2643518&platformid=1000 That's with a 19" widescreen Samsung LCD. And keyboard/mouse and all the junk. But it is in CDN, so I guess it's slightly more than $1391. Mac != games, and any rig you can come up with on a Mac you can build cheaper as a PC, and until Apple licenses their stuff to third parties like they did with the PowerPC's in the mid '90's, that will never change.

No, it's $230 (Canadian, so maybe a bit more expensive for Yanks with your weak dollar.)

You can buy sata data cables with a locking mechanism. http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?mode=produc treviewread&product_id=20770&review=14

I'd agree with your point though, I've had drive issues a couple times just because a sata data cable came loose.

Is this actually being paid out by manufacturers/importers? I ask because I keep seeing CD-R media for extremely low prices which makes this hard to believe. From the link you provided:

In fact, in volume terms, most CDs used to copy music are "ordinary" CD-Rs and CD-RWs (subject to a levy of 21c), not "Audio" products (subject to a levy of 77c).

But just a cursory look shows that you can buy CD-Rs for $0.264 each, meaning that they're actually selling these discs for 5.4 cents each, assuming that the levy has been passed onto you. Is this correct?

Reason is right. PCs (desktop) are far cheaper than Mac. As a general rule of thumb, Mac cost upwards of 33% of higher.

Dell, Sony, are just some manufacters; they by no means represent the PC market; herein lay the difference. Mac on the otherhand does represent the PC market.

Consider this general comparison
[pc $1578]
http://pc.ncix.com/ncixpc/ncixpc.cfm?uuid=8B991317 -6311-BA72-D69D8922B9D1115F-1457351

[Mac $2,499.00]
http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjects/BizCu stom?qprm=78313&family=MacPro

While I'm at it, I also want to state the Mac commericals are garbage in how they portray the Mac as being better than the PC.

Apple is using intel cpus. One can even get a copy of OS X (unoffically and unsupported) to run on an intel PC.

Last time I checked, I can buy all new barebone PCs! [1] The idiots in ZDnet obviously did not do their work!!!

[1] http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?majorcatid= 109&minorcatid=1113

Another poster has mentioned this, but you want the WRT54GL. I just helped a Co-worker buy one from NCIX.com and I flashed it with DD-WRT v.23 SP2.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17408&v pn=WRT54GL&manufacture=Linksys

Yes, it costs more than the Vx-Works models, but then it does *SO* much more. Plus, the V1.1 model can be flashed directly with the latest version of DD-WRT, without having to take the intermediate step of flashing with DD-WRT Mini first.

I am so impressed with mine, that I am considering buying two more. In all seriousness. (I can run Apache, Bittorrent etc on these things - and they consume far less power than a PC in doing so.)

This argument has been used by Microsoft for years in defending their abyssmal security record. It sounds plausible, but unfortunately, there's no truth in it.

MS Bashing threads are so funny.

The first time I installed Linux for myself many years ago, it was hacked in a half-hour as I took a break and went to get some freaking lunch downstairs. I was lucky I knew enough at the time (although not that much) to know that someone was in the machine and uploading some crap when I got back and continued work on setting it up. Did I stop using Linux because its security is teh suxx0rz and I got a lot of flak about being dumb from 'the community' as I asked questions about how to secure the thing? No.

Will hackers attack anything they can find? Yes. My Windows box has never been attacked because I know enough to keep it secure. The better / worse design discussion is pointless and in a lot of cases incorrect anyways, as others have pointed out on here.

I agree with a lot of other stuff I've been reading, MS has themselves a bit of a pickle. They want to make an accessible product (i.e., your 10-year-old sister can sit down and start using it without apt-getting), and at the same time they have to try to protect those people from themselves to some extent. To add more problems, because their product is sold, they get all the critical press, because the press loves doing that.

Then there's the DRM issue. Why does everyone on here just complain about Vista and DRM? Newsflash folks, it's not just Vista!! What about all the hardware manufacturers building the same sort of capabilities into their products? Computer components, stereo components, even bloody cables now... how about complaining about them? Nah, it's just Microsoft. In fact, they invented DRM. BALLS.

For once, I'd like to see a thread on Slashdot complaining about the other enablers; they're not making their products only "because Vista says so". Products advertise HDMI and HDCP as features now.

Excel has some notorious errors. These don't matter to all people, but the spreadsheet power-users should be wary

No peer-reviewed journal with a significant impact factor (science, nature, etc.) has a majority of plots done in Excel. Yes, there are conference proceedings with a lot Excel plots. Yes, there are low-end journals that have a lot of Excel plots. Even in these, I wouldn't say a majority of plots were done in Excel.

...most scientists/engineers use some other package

Ah, but you said you didn't use OO.o Writer & discouraged deployment because MS Excel was "better" than OO.o Calc. This is silly. You can buy Excel stand-alone & save money, so it IS cost-effective!

Excel has some notorious errors. These don't matter to all people, but the spreadsheet power-users should be wary

No peer-reviewed journal with a significant impact factor (science, nature, etc.) has a majority of plots done in Excel. Yes, there are conference proceedings with a lot Excel plots. Yes, there are low-end journals that have a lot of Excel plots. Even in these, I wouldn't say a majority of plots were done in Excel.

...most scientists/engineers use some other package

Ah, but you said you didn't use OO.o Writer & discouraged deployment because MS Excel was "better" than OO.o Calc. This is silly. You can buy Excel stand-alone & save money, so it IS cost-effective!

I had the same problems, so now I run two machines. One with windows, and one with Ubuntu. They share a k/b and mouse via Synergy, http://synergy2.sf.net/

Linux is not for gaming, if you absolutely insist on running WINDOWS games on LINUX, I suggest Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/

Try XMMS, if you don't like it or the plugins it supports there are over a dozen other programs out there for playing music etc. Or worst case you can post a bounty for the feature you want and pay a few bucks to have it developed.

There are cheap, linux compatible wireless cards. $33 - http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=20711&v pn=PC54G3&manufacture=MSI/MicroStar

I've found that if I do my office etc on the Linux box, and my gaming on the windows box, life is good :>

So I'll be able to upgrade from XP to Vista for free? If not, well... that would definitely be a reason. I know $136 isn't a lot to MS bigwigs, but it is to me.

Secondly, am I the only one that noticed that FarCry requires less of a system than Vista does? Holy Crap!!!

FarCry:
Minimum Requirements: 1GHz P3 or Athlon 256MB RAM 64MB 3D card 4GB hard drive space
Recommended Requirements: 2GHz P4 or Athlon XP 2000+ 512MB RAM 128MB DirectX 9.0 3D card

I can run XP AND a 3D game with less hardware than Vista with some visual effects turned on. OMG!

Consider the purchase of 100 blank Maxell CDs. Future Shop retails the 100 CDs for $69.99. The breakdown of this sale is $48.99 for the CDs and $21.00 for the levy (even worse is a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99. The levy alone on this sale is $42.00 (200 CDs x 21 cents/CD) which leaves the consumers paying $17.99 for the CDs and $42.00 for the levy).

For example, the same Maxell CDs retail for US$34.99 at CompUSA. When you add in the exchange differential, the Canadian cost is just over $40.00.

Umm... excuse me

This article is on crack. Maybe if the authour was actually a Canadaian he'd know WTF he was talking about.

See above links. You can get 200 blank CDs for 40 bucks anywhere. And when they are on sale you can routinely get them for less, like 20 or 25.

So that means either this guy doesn't know WTF he is tlaking about RE the actual cost of the levy, or all these stores are selling CDs at a loss constantly.

I think option A is more likely.

http://ncix.com/ is the newegg of Canada.

In the early days NewEgg was tough to beat. Great prices, great service, fast shipping. Everything one could want in a computer parts supplier. Lately though the great prices seem to have disappeared from NewEgg. Sure there is the occasional deal--but finding a better price doesn't involve too much looking. What do folks think about the new "pyramid" schemey shops that are popping up? http://store.ncix.com/, from what I understand, lets geeks "setup" their own personal stores. The geeks the get their friends/associates to shop from the their personal store and get a bit of a kickback. http://www.burnlounge.com/ is trying to do same thing with MP3 sales. The NCIX system seems a little hokey to me--but I know that dozens of my friends and family use NewEgg because of my recommendation. Might be nice to start getting a little something back for all the referrals. ** I have no involvement with any of the above companies. Just curiostiy.

$120 for a 250GB SATA? How about $123CAD for 250GB of SATA2 w/ NCQ? NCX Rules That's like... what.. $106USD! Cheep.

I'm using some of these Gold DVD-R's. After doing some research I picked these. They are supposed to have a shelf life of 200 years or something if treated and stored properly.

I bought them at this Canadian retailer...

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=16000

Oh and it does a complete 2.6.13 kernel compile (modules and all) in 3 minutes 27 seconds. :) All my wife cares about, though, is that she can run her cell simulation code in a reasonable amount of time.

Any canucks got any good sugestings for online canadina based stores? Only decent one i know so far is tigerdirect.ca

NCIX has a nice site, lots of inventory but their prices are not that great. Given the choice I would much rather order from one of these guys...

Don't forget Tiger direct has a canadian site and you won't get dinged for duty/border fees if you order from there.

One of my favs has always been PC Canada. They are almost always cheaper than NCIX and they have always been fast with my orders. I had to return some RAM once upon a time and had no hassles at all. The only real strike against them is they don't carry as broad of an inventory as a place like NCIX does (take a look at their vid card selection, you will see what I mean).

If you want the absolute cheapest, it's hard to beat Canada Computers. I can not vouch for online ordering since anything I've bought from them has been in person but they usually have the cheapest price around. I've heard some people say they are pretty unforgiving when it comes to returns so be aware of this.

I always liked NCIX, has some pretty nice deals

http://www.us.ncix.com/

I only have the one drive in my 3700BQE, but that's a bummer. The Nexus Breeze is the only other one I could find with some attempt at noise reduction and without (useless) holes in the sides, but it doesn't have the drives isolated by rubber - I'm not sure if it would rattle more, or if the soundproofing material would dampen any vibrations. (Well, there's also that several thousand dollar heatpipe case...)

In most provinces, we have two sales taxes: provincial sales tax (8% in Ontario), and the GST (7%)<arrogant-worms>Screw it!</arrogant-worms>.

When doing mail-order from another province, they always charge the GST. If the company has any business presence in your home province, then they have to charge PST too. However, if they don't, then you get away without paying the PST.

For example, I can order DVDs from http://www.thecnl.com/ or computer parts from http://www.ncix.com/ in BC, and I never pay PST (which almost makes up for the shipping costs). However, if I order clothing or equipment from http://www.mec.ca/, I have to pay the PST, even though MEC is based in BC and everything ships from Vancouver. They have stores in Ontario, so they have to collect the PST for anything sold here.

Of course, some provinces have the HST (harmonized sales tax), which combines their PST and GST into one big tax. I think they always get stuck paying it for anything that they buy.

The best part about the GST is that we have the privilege of paying it on anything ordered from the USA too.

Seriously, I've gotten Samsung's Linux drivers to work in OpenBSD with out emulation. Their printers work like a charm with cups + ghostscript. Even works with Windows via Samba. Something like this: Samsung ML-2250 is what I would recommend because it supports PCL6 and has memory upgradable using standard SODIMM laptop ram. The GDI printers work great too they just offload too much work on to the CPU.

1 x SOLTEK QBIC EQ3702A MINI PC ALUMINUM NFORCE2 SOCKETA DDR 2VGA TV 10/100 LAN
1 x AMD SEMPRON 2400+ PROCESSOR 1.67GHZ SOCKETA 256K 333FSB RETAIL BOX 3YR MFR WARRANTY
1 x BENQ DW1620 DVD+-RW 16X4X16 DUAL LAYER +R 2.4X BEIGE IDE OEM W/ SW
1 x SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.7 80GB HARD DRIVE ATA/100 8.5MS 7200 OEM
1 x SAMSUNG 512MB PC3200 DDR400 184PIN OEM 1 x MITSUMI FA404A 7-IN-1 FLOPPY DRIVE & FLASH READER CF/SM/SD/MMC/MS
1 x MICROSOFT MULTIMEDIA KEYBOARD & OPTICAL MOUSE OEM (WITH SYSTEM ONLY)
1 x NCIXPC $30 INSTANT REBATE FOR SELECTED MODELS FROM 9/22/04 - 10/31/04
1 x MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL OEM (WITH SYSTEM ONLY)
Fully assembled NCIXPC systems come with a 1 year limited parts and labor warranty.

Unless you need specific aspects of the Mini (or iLife) you can get a SFF PC including OS (by why bother paying for Windows when Linux would do the trick?) for much less than the $832 it could cost to build a Mini with similar hardware (as per a Mini I configured on Apple's US site about 1 minute ago).

My time is worth a hell of a lot to me, but part of how I choose to spend my time includes the hobby of computers. I'd have fun building it, and would rather build it than have someone do it for me in most cases.

People who say "I can build that for less" are either not bothering to account for their time or just flat-out lying

Really? I can build it for less, and I can do it in an hour. Including the time it takes me to go and get the parts from the computer shop 3 miles from my house. Perhaps your construction abilities are taxed to the point of exhaustion over acquiring parts and assembling them, but don't make that generalization for everyone.

my friends build their machines with parts from NCIX, which seems to be the Canadian version of NewEgg. prices are good, and the selection is decent.

ncix is probably the best Canadian online store for this sort of thing.

I've been running a mythtv box for 9 months now and it has been a wonderful experience.

Anyone got up-to-date recommendations on a PC box that won't look like utter crap on the TV cart?

COOLERMASTER 620-BX1 (matx)

I also like this power supply (coolmaster case takes atx ps, not included):

Zalman ZM400A-APF

I've been running a mythtv box for 9 months now and it has been a wonderful experience.

Anyone got up-to-date recommendations on a PC box that won't look like utter crap on the TV cart?

COOLERMASTER 620-BX1 (matx)

I also like this power supply (coolmaster case takes atx ps, not included):

Zalman ZM400A-APF

Its not in the Canadian channels yet.

Yes it is.

• $288 (G.T.A., ON)
• $306.66 (Ships Nationally)
• To name a few of the top of my head...

Just a tip. Try adding one of these to your setup. It will help with the heating, without giving you a noise related headache :)

I looked at my favorite computer store and found that the cheapest processor was an AMD Duron 1.6ghz, at $76 CDN or $60 US, and it wasn't even in stock. VIA makes a really cheap CPU, I believe, which might be usable.

Motherboard will cost at least the same, as will RAM. Don't forget the HD, and CD ROM.

Assume the graphics card, ethernet and sound are on the motherboard.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but manufacturers are going for faster-better, and so are consumers. The really cheap, low-powered no-frills stuff is for special applications, and generally difficult to find even for people who are capable of assembling such stuff.

I do believe, however, that a manufacturer with deep pockets who can get a significant discount from OEMs based on volume could pull it off.

I agree with your P4 to G4 Mhz comparison, my comparisons showed this to be approximately true. Actually, my comparisons showed, Mhz for Mhz, a G4 was approximately equal to an Athlon XP, which of course is quite a bit faster than a P4. This was solely for compiling source code, I didn't really care much for other tasks. I did not have a chance to compare a G5 vs. an Athlon64 or against an Opteron, that would be fun.

Anyway, I'm not presuming that a 3.0 Ghz P4 is equal to a 3.0 Ghz G4, only that, with 80% efficiency (as per the press release), it would still be faster than a 1.25 Ghz G4 (bottom-end eMac).

Note that ncix.com in Canada has a P4 3.0 Ghz CPU for $252.73, or approximately $200 U.S. I'm not convinced you can build an Athlon rig (motherboard, CPU, memory, case) for anything close to that, though you can get the Athlon64 3000+ chip (alone) for less.

Anyway, as I've said in other posts, my next PC will almost certainly be built around an Athlon64. However, I still say that if I wanted a Wintel machine as my primary system and a system capable of running OS X for rare occasional builds and testing (say, once a week as per my previous job), a $50 U.S. emulator package and a decent Wintel/Linux system makes a lot more sense than a decent Wintel/Linux system and a low-end Apple eMac. Approximately $600 U.S. more sense, actually, and I'd end up with a faster OS X environment anyway if the PR is to be believed (and I have serious doubts).

Now, I suppose it is conceivable that it may make more sense to go for a high-end G5 and run Windows and Linux on it as well as OS X, but that's not what I'm discussing here.

Sorry but you are not correct. The 19" Flat Screens do about 100-140W. My Sony G400 19" does about 140W and <1 W in standby.

Samsung Syncmaster 957 MB 19" CRT: 110 W
ViewSonic E90 19" CRT: 100 W
Benq Professional P992 19" CRT: 110W

There are also Pentium M motherboards, but they are hard to find and expensive. The VIA C3 1 GHz runs very cold, but runs slower than a ~500mhz P3. Also, the mini-itx board version has a rather loud fan - but it also comes in a socket 370 version, so you can put a big socket A heatsink on it and run it fanless - if you don't mind the lack of speed. I did this for a while, but it drove me nuts. So I put in a cheap Celeron 1.3 GHz (which has 256k cache, unlike the slower versions) and plugged in the cpu fan with a Zalman fan speed controller set to minimum. With a Zalman PSU and a Seagate hard drive, the system is barely audible if there is no other noise in the room. If I were to go totally fanless, I'd put in a laptop hard drive instead. (These guys had fanless PSUs in for $145 Canadian, which isn't all that bad, but they're sold out.)