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Now that I look, the actual price difference is $1.45. I didn't see this, which is the same model as the one you linked to, But yeah thats my point, I'd buy local rather than mail order every time, unless I'm going to save a substantial amount of cash.

> $20 CDN is still too high. You can get optical logitech's in Canada for $16.50. Of course the page you linked to also has an optical for

I've been eyeing this combo CDRW & DVD drive for my CD burning / DVD watching needs. I was in Futureshop about a month back, and noticed the same exact drive in their computer section, above a sign that read this price. I assumed that this was wrong, and pointed it out to the guy behind the counter.

"No," I'm told, "that's the correct price."

"But I can buy that exact same drive for about $75 online - don't you think that $120 is a little expensive?"

Once the guy finds out that it was NCIX that had this price, he starts ranting - yelling basically - about authorized distributors, and how as an authorized distributor, Futureshop doesn't have to match that price - besides, NCIX doesn't guarantee their products!

"Yes they do," I tell him, "plus they don't yell at their customers for asking questions."

At this point I walked away to pay for my purchase, and the cute girl at the register asked me how my visit to Futureshop was - I replied that it would have been great except for the jerk in computers, who I pointed out to her.

"That's the manager, sir."

In-effing-sane. Like I said to my buddies when I recounted this story, there's a serious problem somewhere in the supply chain when the same product costs 50% more at one location than another - somebody is getting screwed, and given the choice between the two retailers, I'm going for the one that causes less damage to my wallet.

Or go all out with a simple $100 investment!

I contacted someone on the NewEgg.com staff via e-mail regarding their international shipping policies. I was told the main reason they didn't ship to Canada was that it would be difficult for them to prosecute fraudulent credit card users, among other things. So it's essentially a conflict of laws. You might want to use NCIX.com in the meantime. I also find BBF.ca useful.

Yeah, I'd say that the plain old AIW 9600 would be a better choice. Slower, but fanless. Or one could replace the heatsink/fan with a Zalman VGA heatsink (I've got one on my 9700), but that probably wouldn't fit in a Shuttle cube.

For anyone who's buying from them, stay away from the accessories. Mice are universal, PS/2 or USB. Laptop hard drives are universal, and the only thing you might need to worry about is height (9.5mm or smaller?). Laptop memory may not be completely universal, but it's pretty easy to find compatible stuff. All or virtually all external USB storage devices are compatible with Linux.

I'll admit to having 3 or 4 blue LED's in my room (antec sonata...and a few peripherals), but there are things that are FAR FAR worse. Last week I built a computer for my friend's girlfriend (which to me seemed kind of like that story about the French guy with the big nose who writes someone else's chick love letters on her boyfriend's behalf, but never mind that).

Check out the case - here . My GOD that thing is an eyesore, but she was insistend, because "IT'S PRETTY!!!". I convinced her to let me at least replace the two "rainbow" fans with some coolermaster blue LED ones, but still! she's using this computer for word processing, not running light shows! All she needed was some fricken' laser beams attached to it. Start das blinkenlights jokes now.

That's the dumbest thing I've heard on /. forums for a long time. When you preface something with "99% pure" anything, whatever the stuff is made out of is put into the anything place. Read the f***ing article.

Try searching for "ocz ultra premium silver" on Froogle. This is the first link. It clearly states Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver and Over 70% silver content by weight. When they're emphasizing "silver" all the time, what do you think Marketing is trying to tell you? That's right, they want you to buy their garbage because it's got a cool silver crud in the product, not because it looks silverish.

Jeez, try taking a Marketing class yourself. And wash it down with a good English class.

1. They're expensive - 32MB = 40 (~$60) (not sure where you get $40 for 256MB the cheapest I can find is around $150).

Expensive? $55CDN for 128MB. While it's admittedly a boxing week sale, and costs about $80 CDN (About $50USD) regularly, I'd say that's indicative of where the prices are headed.

2. 99% of Computers have USB ports at the *back*, meaning that you have to crawl around the floor to get the thing in. Floppy drives are (almost) universally at the front.

USB ports are slowly moving to the front. If they are in the back, the system probably doesn't support booting from USB anyway. And just because most speaker jacks are in the back of computers, the rate of headphones and speakers being plugged in hasn't been greatly affected, has it?

3. You need drivers. If you have to boot into DOS they stop working... For a similar reason they're not bootable, so you can't carry around a 'boot pen' to rescue systems the way you can a floppy.

Last I checked, USB drives were bootable, and there are some linux distros that can boot off of them. Why would anyone want to boot into DOS anyway? It's not that great for fixing problems, thanks to the Windows Registry and NTFS.

4. They're not durable - electronics is too easy to break. If you get a floppy wet it'll usually keep working. If you get a pen drive wet then that's $40 (or $150) down the drain.

I concede this point to you...Although, I'm curious as to how you'd be getting your Pen Drives and Floppies out into the rain in the first place. Furthermore, have you ever seen a floppy drive spontaneously destroy all the data on a disk before? Floppies are far from durable as well.

I purchased a Leadtek Winfast TV 2000 XP Deluxe tv tuner, and I enjoyed it alot. It is not as expensive as other tuners available on the market, but works for all my needs. It has a stylish and easy to use remote control, as well as an FM tuner built in.

I have written a TV Tuner Guide for linux that focuses mainly on this tuner (but can be used for most tuners under linux.

For the price, and the quality you get, in my opinion, this is one of the best tv tuners out there.

Yeah, they just released a new version that (among other things) supposedly improves DivX 3.11 playback. (The other versions and Xvid played fine, but 3.11 was jerky.) Unfortunately, it sounds like there's still a problem with it being zoomed in automatically for MPEG-4, so you have to adjust the screen or stuff will be cut off the top and bottom. Hopefully I'll be able to get through to their server soon so I can try it out myself. There are some comments about it on the NCIX forums.

LG GSA-4040B 4X DVD+-R/RW DVD-RAM CDRW DRIVE IDE 2MB W/ SW OEM and forgit 'bout it

The levies are set by this board of people and ar enot per MB. And if you would just compare Canadian HD prices to US ones you would see that they are not only comparable when you take into account the exchange, but because of the US dollar you can often geta better deal buying from a Canadian suppler.

So stop spouting bullshit when you have no clue what you are talking about.

Very true. I've always had to pay taxes on internet purchases in Canada, and that's never stopped me. (Duty on stuff from the US is just nasty, though.) I buy things online that I can't find locally - mainly tons of anime, and computer stuff.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's a unix-like operating system that works wonders for building infrastructure?

Using it to control and automate things like power stations and fresh water reservoirs, for instance.

Not to mention banks.

Things that were being done 20 years ago in the US by big iron mainframes that cost $180,000, plus $10,000 for the OS itself, which can now be outdone many times over by systems costing $300 and $0 for the OS.

There's little or no need to use hardware as crufty as a 486 anymore, when you can get a system a cheap as this.

Things in developing countries are typically done on the cheap, but are often newer technology than the legacy systems Americans continue to use (because it was state of the art years ago and would cost too much to bring back up to the state of the art again).

http://www.ncix.com/usa/productdetail.php?sku=7402

Anyway, you totally want to get your CD-Rs online. Sometimes you can get 'em off of ebay for a ridiculously low price (say, $10 including shipping for 100).. On the other hand, you can also buy from NCIX (in BC, though, which means PST - so is A-Power, for that matter).

Link to a list of spindles here.

Here y'go, my friend.

As I've said before in this thread, the 'card companies have got their pricing a little beyone the range of mere mortals, whether they purcharse Macs or not...

Here's a to show you how to flash a Radeon 8500 ($229 retail in the Mac market), and here's a link to show you where to get it for $89 (US). It's the exact same card. Just slightly over $240 difference in the retail price once you factor in shipping.

I made a point, a lot further down in the thread, and I'm restating it here. The video card/peripheral vendors price their items just below their (*perceived*) point of pain for the markets they're targeting.

Gamers (particularly Morrowind players -- as I've found the past week trying to play a damned game I *bought*...) seem to be the mid-high demographic, while Maya/Pro3D/Mac users seem to be the high end of their profile.

For the record, I wish they'd cut that shit out -- so the people who didnt' know any better could buy the same gear at the same price point without having to do the whole run-around.

Yes, virginia, you're being *SEVERELY* overcharged for your new über video card. The only things to do about it is not buy it until the manufacturers' markerters realize that you've figured out their game -- or buy the Wintel versions (which are *still* ridiculously overpriced) and flash the ROMs.

(In retrospect...)

Wow, how self-referrential was that? You'd think I've been out drinking on Halloween or something... at least smoking some crack.

--dr00gy

That POS $9 firewire card won't support OHCI due to a low-value ancient chipset so you can say hello to hellish proprietary windows-only drivers and flaky-at-best linux support. And I'm willing to bet it won't support an internal power connection so you won't be able to recharge the iPod through via power through the firewire cord. And good luck getting any modern-day DV cam connected to it.

You have to spend some good money to get a good firewire card. I am leaning toward the Adaptec DuoConnect because it has Firewire, USB 2.0, Internal connectors for those interfaces and PSU supplied power. (Cost: CDN$132)

I have nothing but good things to say about Netlink Computers. You can get everything you need there.

I get everything from Netlink Computers. Very competetive prices!

You might want to try out Shacknews's new parts store, Shackstore
They have really really cheap prices, and you can order every part separately, with good descriptions and such.

I work at an ISP, and build tons of systems. I get all my parts from Netlink and they have by far the biggest, most detailed database of parts for order (us and Canadian pricing) on the web. Give them a shot for wicked pricing as well.

Hope that helps someone out.

Their prices are already waaaay lower than someplace like Future Shop, and they also handily beat out all the local dealers. I have no experience with Dell, so maybe their prices are good, but with NCIX's system packages there is no "mix-and-match" parts - they have these systems ready to go. Configure them if you want. I was on there the other day and to put together a bare bones, 850 Duron system was $400 CDN (minus monitor/keyboard). That's about $250 US!

It cost me less to get them to ship a samsung stick of ram (that's with an $11 CDN shipping charge) to where I live than it did to get it through local dealers.

Thus you have it all - prebuilt or configurability, good components that you want, and best of all cheap price. Oh, and they also have minimum 1 Year warranty (you can buy more). "Building" it yourself is definitely the way to go if you can find the right dealer.

Check out www.ncix.com. So far I've been very pleased with them and unlike most other sites, they are located in Canada so you don't get nailed with $40US of international shipping and another 40% for duty.

Check it out eh! :-)

I've gotten fed up buying my DVD's from Express.com in the US, who, while being cheap, tend to take a good 2 weeks to get to Edmonton because of customs holdups (I swear I'm on the customs hit list. They inspect EVERY package sent to me...) so I've found all kinds of worthwhile online stores based out of Canada. Thats a good thing for two reasons ... one, you avoid duty and Canada Post's $5 "handling fee", and two, Canada Post XPress Post is _really_ cheap and fast within Canada. 2-3 days for a couple of bucks.

So, for DVD's, I'll reccomend www.cnl.com based out of Vancouver. I've only been dealing with them for about 2 weeks now but I've been very happy, and they come highly reccomended to me. Consider, around midnight on a Wednesday I ordered 5 DVD's. Late Thursday I got a shipping confirmation, and I had the DVD's in my hands on Friday afternoon. All for $8 cdn shipping. Prices are quite reasonable, only a little bit more than buying from Express once you factor in shipping and customs fees, plus you get 'em in 2 days (or less), not 2 weeks.

For CD's, I usually buy from Chapters Online, but the trick with Chapters is to only buy items that are listed as "shipping in 24 hours". If it says anything else, especially the dreaded "1-2 weeks", expect to be waiting 1-2 months, if you get it at all. Other options are HMV who's prices seem okay. I preordered Moby's new CD from them because I came across a $5 coupon .. hasn't shipped yet so I can't comment on service. Finally, A&B Sound, who despite the spartan website, are reported to have nice prices.

For books, again, Chapters Online is your best bet. Really good prices, especially with a Chapters One Card (you pay a $15 yearly fee and get 10% off everything, along with $5 in coupons for every $100 you spend). But again, only order if its in stock (shipping in 24 hours), otherwise its a real crap shoot as to when you'll get it.

For computer hardware, the best is easily Onvia. Great prices, and even better free shipping. Nothing better than buying a 21" monitor at a decent price and not having to pay for shipping. Service is great, shipping is fast (they courier it, so 2-3 days or so), and prices are competitive. Fairly often they have $25 and $50 off coupons, too. I've also done a fair bit of shopping from NCIX, based out of Vancouver. Their prices range from really good, to comparable to my local prices, to a bit high, but they're worth checking out. I got a killer deal on my IBM Deskstar 7200rpm 30 gig from them a while back, and got my Pioneer 10x DVD player from them last year when virtually no stores anywhere in North America were selling them. I'll definately continue dealing with both.

Someone forwarded www.goldfishlegs.com to me the other day, and they've got reviews of Canadian E-Tailers, along with coupons and other goodies. I didn't agree with some of their reviews, but it seems like a useful site to keep bookmarked.

In general, my dealings with various Canadian online stores have been positive. Through harsh experience I've learned how to deal with Chapters (thankfully they're very responsive to e-mails), and I've only been ripped off once (www.stupidcomputers.com, they closed up shop and dissappeared, taking a lot of people's money with them. VISA refunded my money, thankfully). In general I'm willing to pay the little bit extra to buy from Canadian stores (support the economy _and_ get it in less than 2 weeks), except for extreme price differences and/or unavailability in Canada.

Hope this helps =)