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But in this case, the consumer has all the pricing information right at their fingertips. You can track almost any product's price history with CamelCamelCamel. Too much work to click a button? Use Wikibuy instead, which will pester you with a pop-up whenever you browse an item with a lower price elsewhere. In 2017, do I really need to mention PriceGrabber or NexTag? Hell, even Google links you to their own price comparison service nearly every time you search.

You could fold up into a toy truck that would fit in your pocket

They have these

...and also you could plug into a 240V outlet in the rest of the world and run 120V appliances

and could probably be combined with this pretty easily, although changing the frequency from 50Hz to 60Hz is a bit harder and required by some appliances

> "Free as in air" or something similar that you don't actually have to pay for ever

Canned air, $20:
http://www.nextag.com/canned-air/products-html

Thanks. I just found 2GB netbooks
do exist. What you own is as good as experimental until it is easier to find on shelves; reminds me of the topic of the Google Nexus. It was just as hard to locate out in the wild in users' hands.

Meanwhile, here is the projected price of your device in 2009 ($350) and here is how pricewise ($728) it is just it is piled together with the laptop category.

Calling it a rip-off is not really fair because it isn't a deliberate over-pricing, it's due to lower manufacturing yields and higher manufacturing costs.

If you truly believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Continuing to use the example of the AMD 1090T, it is AMD's flagship desktop processor, only on the market since May, and even when it was in shortest supply the price was still only $400 maximum [citation]. The Intel 980X by comparison has been out longer, everybody knows that Intel has a larger manufacturing base, and still their price hasn't dropped by as much in terms of percentage[citation].

Intel is leveraging its brand identity to keep their prices inflated, even though their ability to supply is known to be superior. The people who pay that cost are a) not spending their own money, making decisions for a business or government or b) insecure and trying to keep up with the Joneses or rarely c) have a special application which absolutely requires a minor increase in speed at three times the cost.

Calling it a rip-off is not really fair because it isn't a deliberate over-pricing, it's due to lower manufacturing yields and higher manufacturing costs.

If you truly believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Continuing to use the example of the AMD 1090T, it is AMD's flagship desktop processor, only on the market since May, and even when it was in shortest supply the price was still only $400 maximum [citation]. The Intel 980X by comparison has been out longer, everybody knows that Intel has a larger manufacturing base, and still their price hasn't dropped by as much in terms of percentage[citation].

Intel is leveraging its brand identity to keep their prices inflated, even though their ability to supply is known to be superior. The people who pay that cost are a) not spending their own money, making decisions for a business or government or b) insecure and trying to keep up with the Joneses or rarely c) have a special application which absolutely requires a minor increase in speed at three times the cost.

You cant just buy your own graphics card, more hardware, or even a damn battery for iPhone. You have to buy everything from Apple, from an Apple store, with high Apple prices. This just follows the same lead.

Buying RAM for a Mac: http://www.newerram.com/

Buying a new graphics card for a Mac (Mac edition of graphics cards): http://www.nextag.com/mac-graphics-card/compare-html

Pretty much everything you need to upgrade the hardware of a Mac: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/site-map/

These aren't Apple sites, but you can upgrade your Mac with their parts. Just because its harder to do, doesn't mean it can't be done.

We don't need another PSA for a problem after the fact.

We need cheap affordable firewall appliances in front of the boxes facing the web.

Think about it, we just did this (similarly) with the DTV / ATSC roll out.

And before someone say's there already are available, I would have to point out no they are not available like the ATSC tuners. And I don't see the US Government funding say IPCop and corporate media running ad's on getting your firewall up.

Schools don't teach the kids either. Sure they teach them how to open a word doc, but they don't explain network security. It's a real skill set that kids graduating high school should have. They should know iptables, or pf. They should know what an ISA network card is vs a PCI card.

Yeah yeah yeah I can find a network appliance
http://www.nextag.com/firewall-appliance/search-html

But I can't find one for $50 that the government pays me back $40 with a coupon.

If big brother should be hawking something, it should be hardware firewalls not anti-virus software.

A virus doesn't get on your computer by itself. It has to be run somehow. You have to run it. The skill set to track down a virus and remove it without any anti-virus software should be taught as well. At best anti-virus software is a tool to help you find something bad. Look at the windows log files. What good is it? Sure isn't like /var/log/messages where you can actually find something bad going on. I doubt most users ever look at windows logs in their entire life. On the other hand linux users learn early on to read the logs.

We need to keep the bad packets out in the first place in my opinion. Every anti-virus software I have ever used (some better than others) gives false positives, and also sucks up productivity resources. We need to get work done not deal with a warning / pop-up every time we restart some program. Also, I have written bad programs going completely undetected by anti-virus.

They probably don't add fancy features like that because the people who buy window air conditioners are too price-sensitive. If they weren't, they'd upgrade to central air instead (or fix the broken central air they already have, in the case of everyone I've seen who owned a window air conditioner).

Anyway, the solution is to just go buy a separate timer and be done with it. (They work well with other stuff, like cheap coffee makers, too.)

Try using a good sized hardback book. or one of those "lap pads/lap desks" with the cushion on the bottom and flat surface on top.

http://www.nextag.com/desk-lap-writing/search-html

Yes? There are a few out there.

"Are there practical crank chargers out there? "

Tons!

http://www.nextag.com/crank-charger/search-html

I'd advice you to download Apache source code
http://download.nextag.com/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.9.tar.bz2

That's because the statistics are a load. The actual median home price in Cupertino is somewhere around or above $1 million. Yahoo Real Estate says $924k, MLS listings are around $1.2M, Nextag says about $1.05M. The California median might be $649k, but that's because it includes all the sparse, cheap areas in the middle of the state and the high number of flats, condos, and townhouses in urban areas that sell at a lower rate.

A fairly pedestrian one-bedroom condo in Cupertino is $300,000. This house down the street from a friend is currently on the market for about a million. It's ~1400 square feet, 3 bedrooms and probably a typical Cupertino home in all respects.

Or...you could try actually performing a product search:

http://www.nextag.com/mac-tv-tuner/search-html

There is also this:

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/usbmac/index.html

Quite a few products take up only a USB slot, or alternatively, you can find MacOSX drivers for several Hauppauge cards and the like if you want an internal card. I've even found Linux drivers and cards for crying out loud :)

By the time the cost of Blu-Ray makes it cheap enough compared to DVD, I think you will see it to make more financial sense to buy one of these and get content delivery through the internet.

Thus making Blu-Ray a waste to invest in.

My bad. I mixed up water kettles and heatersnp. Another thing learnt, thanks and sorry for the confusion :)

People have been selling "fake books" for decades. http://www.sheetmusic1.com/fakebook.ultimate.html With all the tools to make something very similar to the copywrighted songs. If I make a painting that looks very similar to the Mona Lisa, I can't sell it? It's not like I'm claiming that it is The Mona Lisa, it's just something similar. http://www.nextag.com/mona-lisa-painting/search-ht ml

Publishing the transcription, in effect republishing the original artist's work, is the issue.

It's just as argueably a publishing of what I hear when I listen to "the original work". A conveyence of my own personal experiences.

I think one of these is the first I had friends from Seagate telling me about the 1TB drive in early 2005.

50" Panasonic plasma in the UK: 1300 to 5000
50" Panasonic plasma in the US: 1400 to 5000

Looks like there is a big mark up in the UK on TVs. So it makes me wonder what that actual price would be in the US. If they are in line with the 50" plasma's then it would be more in the range of 50,000.

So, I can get two.

Well, What About this, then?

http://www.nextag.com/Inline-Folding-Multi-Tool-52 6603763/prices-html

I whole heartedly agree with you conclusion, however flawed your analogy.

www.tV56pze3idd.com Hey, how did you find out my password? :)

I don't think the technology in this thing justifies the price tag. It sounds like the brunt of the work is done by four microphones and an algorithm to compare the data from the mics.

Have you ever done any work with mil-spec hardware? Everything that's going out on the field costs multiples, often many multiples, of the equivalent consumer/commercial products. Look at this laptop $4000 for a spec that you could pick up for under $800 on the high street. That's not even mil-spec, it's just a "ruggedized" consumer model. Every component in these robots will have very tight specifications and be certified for military use, down to the resistors on the circuit board. It's designed to work in the heat of a desert day and the cold of night, and to keep working when put through all kinds of abuse. All of its subsystems and the complete set-up will have gone through multiple testing and certification processes. Sure, the company will be making a tidy profit, but don't forget the R&D that's gone into this and the ongoing support they will have to give.

Looking at some other posts, I see someone else has a simpler idea. He suggested hooking one of these freeze alarms to your telephone line:

I found many many such solutions....with the first query string that came to mind after reading your post...

( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cabin+winter+ flood+alarm&btnG=Google+Search )

Here are two selected more or less at random...

http://www.nextag.com/RELIANCE-CONTROLS-PhoneAlert -Three-501572782/prices-html
http://www.norcoalarms.com/ezStore123/DTProductZoo m.asp?productID=1115

Either deliberately (perhaps you're an xbox fan?) or you're just uninformed, but the Samsung is *not* cheaper than a PS3, and the PS3 *does* do 1080p output.

Here's the NexTag price list where the best-value price is $737.88, although there's a "refurb" (ie: not new) option at $573.95. It's not fair to compare new prices with refurb ones. If you can come up with a lower price for a new unit, I'd like to see it...

And the article clearly states that it *does* do 1080p - there may be an issue if you only have a 1080i display and try to play non-1080i movies (eg: DVD) because the PS3 won't upscale from 720p/480p to 1080i/p, but any 1080p *source* will work just fine, outputting 1080p video.

Simon.

Sharp LC-65D90U 65-IN. Native HDTV 1920 X 1080 LCD TV has gone from 15,000 to 7,499 in one year.
Panasonic TH-65PX600U 65-Inch HD Plasma Television has gone from 15,000 to 7,149 in one year.

$300 bucks to virtually avoid burn-in? I'm sold. Plasmas just can't compete anymore.

ref: http://www.nextag.com/Sharp-LC-65D90U-65-83796107/ price-history-html
ref: http://www.nextag.com/Panasonic-TH-65PX600U-65-510 580514/price-history-html

I wonder how much the LCD will be in the next 6 months?

Sharp LC-65D90U 65-IN. Native HDTV 1920 X 1080 LCD TV has gone from 15,000 to 7,499 in one year.
Panasonic TH-65PX600U 65-Inch HD Plasma Television has gone from 15,000 to 7,149 in one year.

$300 bucks to virtually avoid burn-in? I'm sold. Plasmas just can't compete anymore.

ref: http://www.nextag.com/Sharp-LC-65D90U-65-83796107/ price-history-html
ref: http://www.nextag.com/Panasonic-TH-65PX600U-65-510 580514/price-history-html

I wonder how much the LCD will be in the next 6 months?

Not really, unless you want to call everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year an outlier. That would be how many million outliers?

There's that Sandisk player that looks more appealing than the iPod Nano it competes with. I wonder what might be wrong with it? I have to admit a prejudice against Apple for all those years then their products were known as being twice as expensive, lacking features, and being quirky and hard to use. I know they are better now.

The 140$ USD for a windows license comes with no support. The updates from windows update are so-so and tend to be after the issue has been in the wild a bit.

You are mostly correct about paying the yearly fee for RHEL ... but RHEL it self is not the payment, you are paying for a support stream.

I dare you to call Microsoft up next time IIS isn't running correctly on your Windows 2K3 server and see what you get for only buying the base $500-1,500 (http://www.nextag.com/Microsoft-Windows-Server-20 03-56866169/prices-html) license!

You know, I saw a refrigerator at Best Buy that has a TV and LCD control panel built in; it blew my mind, and it only costs 3.5 grand. Now, I like cool gadgets as much as the next guy, but I can't shake the feeling that whoever has the money to spend on a fridge like that (and not getting something industrial sized) probably doesn't deserve that much money to begin with -- give some of your money to UNICEF, don't buy a TV fridge. When I see this kind of wastefulness it really helps me understand why so much of the world has contempt for America -- the land of plenty!

Cool links.

There is a solution to the keypad on the right...

Either a Logitech diNovo desktop, which has a separate keypad (unfortunately, it comes with a righty mouse,) or a Happy Hacker keyboard plus a notebook-style external keypad.

I did the same to begin with, but the graphics cards are not equal.

For the graphics card, I figured 256MB=256MB, but the Dell's first 256MB card is a workstation class card, not an enthusiast class card like the Mac's Geforce 7300GT. Then I checked the street price of each of the base price graphics cards from each company. The street price of the Mac's GeForce 7300 GT is somewhere around $90 , and the street price of the Dell's nVidia Quadro NVS 285 is about $130. Also, the $2499 Mac does not have wireless. If you make the Dell's processors, hard drive, and memory equal to the Mac, select the base graphics card, and add in 1394 and sound, it comes to $3,036. If you then subtract the price difference between the graphics cards, that's $2,996. Now if you add the 3 year service/warranty to the Mac, the Mac comes to $2,748. Sure, there is a difference, but not $1100. I was just pointing out that it wasn't a good comparison, and two comparable systems are certainly not $1100 different.

They're quite similar. Just choose your favorite, and let the other guys keep theirs. Everyone wins!

Graphics card prices:
http://www.nextag.com/nVidia-Quadro-NVS-285/search -html
http://www.nextag.com/geforce-7300-GT/search-html

I did the same to begin with, but the graphics cards are not equal.

For the graphics card, I figured 256MB=256MB, but the Dell's first 256MB card is a workstation class card, not an enthusiast class card like the Mac's Geforce 7300GT. Then I checked the street price of each of the base price graphics cards from each company. The street price of the Mac's GeForce 7300 GT is somewhere around $90 , and the street price of the Dell's nVidia Quadro NVS 285 is about $130. Also, the $2499 Mac does not have wireless. If you make the Dell's processors, hard drive, and memory equal to the Mac, select the base graphics card, and add in 1394 and sound, it comes to $3,036. If you then subtract the price difference between the graphics cards, that's $2,996. Now if you add the 3 year service/warranty to the Mac, the Mac comes to $2,748. Sure, there is a difference, but not $1100. I was just pointing out that it wasn't a good comparison, and two comparable systems are certainly not $1100 different.

They're quite similar. Just choose your favorite, and let the other guys keep theirs. Everyone wins!

Graphics card prices:
http://www.nextag.com/nVidia-Quadro-NVS-285/search -html
http://www.nextag.com/geforce-7300-GT/search-html

There are many laser printers under $300. Samsung makes a few fairly nice ones. But networkable, that's another story. Probably your best bet is a USB printer supported by linux and then stick CUPs on a Linksys 54GSL or whatever it's called (the wireless router with USB support).

Although toner is very expensive, you can get a decent full-color laser for about $300-600. The HP Laserjet 2600n. See http://www.nextag.com/hp-2600n/search-html . The n designation means it comes with jetdirect too. The only downside is the printer language is not PCL or PS, but there is a CUPS driver for linux available. The extra money for color may be worth the extra couple of hundred.

As for myself, I have an old Okidata 10ex LED printer that is parallel only. I use a USB-Parallel adapter and plug it into my linux box (cups server) with the USB. The linux box shares it to windows and linux clients. I recently upgraded the RAM to 32 MB, so it should be able ot handle anything I throw at it for years to come, even if I have to wait a while for the pages to spit out. Toner is separate from the drum, so it's dirt cheap to fill. I recently bought a new drum for it for $60. This printer has been one of my best computer investments.

...if you wanted to "save power" in a watch, you would just build a simple accellerometer into the device to turn the watch on (for say 30 seconds) when you move it (a simple mercury or mass/spring switch would be the cheapest way).

They're called "self-winding watches", and they've been around for decades :-)
http://www.nextag.com/Watches--a-Watch+Features-_- Self-Winding--zz2702409zB4z5---html

How they work:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question285.htm
(includes link to video)

Thankfully there's still http://nextag.com/.

I've always went to nextag, though that may be because they advertised with Google.

100 for a 4gb solid state drive is affordable, but not worth the price.

For you maybe, but people do this every day http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buyer/outpdir.jsp? search=compact+flash&nxtg=67b8d_D13E150C29EFE508

What makes it so expensive to competetivly price large solid state storage devices?

No moving parts. No "spin up" time. No power used when idle. Ability to transfer the storage like a CD/DVD.

On a sidenote, is anyone going to buy this drive that is 4gb and costs 100 bucks? I don't think it's much use to anyone.

I would buy one in a heartbeat. Better deal than 1 Gig at $100.

mvps.org has a lot of the registry hacks needed to make security policy changes. So does windows registry guide, labmice, elder geek, and technet.

Good books to get are the XP Registry Guide and xp hacks. But the easiest thing to do is to run a copy of XP Pro.

XP Pro needs a paired down version of Windows 2003 Server "Security Configuration Wizard (SCW)"

Apple makes these things, called personal computers called Macintosh computers. Up until the G4 version of the Macintosh (or "Mac"), Apple used the Apple Desktop Bus for keyboard connections.

So yes, opposed to a USB keyboard.

An "Apple keyboard" is a keyboard manfacutured by Apple Computer Inc. Keyboards made for the Macintosh, therefore, would be called "Macintosh keyboards," or simply, "Mac keyboards."

Much like the usage of calling keyboards for (traditionally) Windows-based IBM PC clones "PC keyboards," "Windows Keyboards," or "keyboards that don't have a place for your one-button mouse to plug in."

As for one that you like, there are many to choose from.

Keyboard preferences are subjective. As much as you want me to, I cannot tell you what you like.

A DVD-R jukebox can give you 200 DVDs at once. That's $3600 (drive/changer) + $268 (1000 DVD-Rs), for (1000*4.7GB) 4.7TB@$4000, or $1.18:GB. That's almost double your HD cost, but you'd need at least another host PC, and multiple controllers for the 16HD RAID, which is probably another $1000. And another $268 buys you another 4-5 months storage, so by next April you're down to $0.14:GB; in a year you're at $0.12:GB. A shelf of 200-disc "CD" books will hold your archives, 1 book per carousel for "fast" retrieval. Backup all your DVDs offsite at $0.27:GB. As DVD-R prices fall over time, you're probably looking at something like $0.05:GB, probably less than even plummeting HD prices. And the DVDs (especially with the cheap backups) are much more reliable, especially over 10 years, than the HDs. If you are looking at 10 year archive, at $80:month in DVDs, for 29% more money you can add a second host PC/changer set, left in their boxes, in case the original PC/changers fail.

for the $700 - $800 price tag, you could buy:

a portable dvd player price = $200

a gba sp platinum and games price = $150

an i-pod price = $300

and still have enough cash left to buy some new shoes and a crapload of quesadillas . . . if you're into that sort of thing.

How about a DVD portable with a 7" screen? Digix DVD seen at Fry's on sale for as low as $249, Reg priced at $349.99 that is one option, there is also the Archos though a tad pricey, at around $550. Then you have PDA's for $300 - $500. There are several others as well, check this link out Search results

And it isn't a stripped down drive either, there are people buying up Creative Labs Muvo^2 players and getting the microdrive out and they work. Apple has just done some kind of strange partition on something to the drive.

Maybe he was talking about double-sided DVD-R, not dual-layer DVD-R? You can actually get double-sided DVD-R from several stores. They aren't dual-layered, but they do hold 9.4GB.

I'd love to get another HP 48, but I'm not even sure if HP even makes calculators like that any longer...

This is why I couldn't take any interest in that HP-Compaq soap opera. The dissidents said they wanted to preserve "the HP way". But all that went away when they outgrew the "strolling manager" culture, spun off their original core business, and stopped doing the electronic wizardry that besotted several generations of geeks. Now they're just another computer manufacturer, so who cares?

If you can live with that buzzing sound, you should just get some rechargables and change them every day.

Oh wait, Google is your friend. A couple of stores still have them in stock. Maybe you should get more than one -- when they're gone, they're gone.

1. Get a cheap PCMICA-ready laptop
2. Get a Firewire card
3. ???
4. Have a portable home theater!

Now, those 28 drives will need to be attached to something. Maybe an Adaptec SCSI RAID 5400S, which is a four channel card that can accept up to 60 drives and is priced at about $900. Add to that a machine to put the RAID card in with at least GB ethernet, at around $6000, 3 40U racks at $2000 each and a UPS for each rack at $2500 each.

All told, that's $67,200 each for drives and arrays, $900 for the SCSI RAID, $6000 for a single box, $6000 for racks, $7500 for UPS's, at a sum total of $154,800 for a single 50TB array. Primary point of failure is the single box running it. For a backup system, running a full second array as redundancy would cost a net $309,600. All of this is not inclusive of labor, which for setup might run easily $100k. Thus, a redundant reliable RAID solution would run you $400,000. All that's once the 320GB IDE drive is released by maxtor.

Does that answer your question?

Please note, this won't be the best array money can buy, just a large array on the cheap. (what RAID was intended for)

Now, those 28 drives will need to be attached to something. Maybe an Adaptec SCSI RAID 5400S, which is a four channel card that can accept up to 60 drives and is priced at about $900. Add to that a machine to put the RAID card in with at least GB ethernet, at around $6000, 3 40U racks at $2000 each and a UPS for each rack at $2500 each.

All told, that's $67,200 each for drives and arrays, $900 for the SCSI RAID, $6000 for a single box, $6000 for racks, $7500 for UPS's, at a sum total of $154,800 for a single 50TB array. Primary point of failure is the single box running it. For a backup system, running a full second array as redundancy would cost a net $309,600. All of this is not inclusive of labor, which for setup might run easily $100k. Thus, a redundant reliable RAID solution would run you $400,000. All that's once the 320GB IDE drive is released by maxtor.

Does that answer your question?

Please note, this won't be the best array money can buy, just a large array on the cheap. (what RAID was intended for)