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For a couple of hundred bucks he can get a Quickbooks terminal running on embeded Xp. Then all he has to do is export the quickbooks data or just access the pc for the info. The terminals are fully functional PC's, Registers, and loaded with Quickbooks.

http://shop2.outpost.com/%7Byf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3%7D/product/5380498;jsessionid=yf7-gwJCCQm5GvlczRQ4zQ**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
QUICKBOOKS 2008 POS BASIC W/HARDWARE

INTUIT:
For Windows
FRYS.com #: 5380498
QuickBooks Point of Sale Basic is a complete retail management solution that tracks inventory, sales and customer information to help you save time and serve your customers better. Includes easy-to-use software and retail hardware including a bar code scanner, cash drawer, receipt printer and credit card swipe* guaranteed to work together.**

Here is a USB 100Mbit Ethernet adapter which is $13 at Fry's, sometimes on sale for $4 (I got two extra that day) and for which OS X drivers can be found on the chipset manufacturer site if you google for the chipset ID that shows in System Profiler when you plug it in.

Neat little device

Fry's (outpost.com) lists the Seagate ST305004FPB1E3-RK 500GB external, with eSATA, Firewire (400) and USB 2.0 for $199.99, and the ST305004FPB1E2-RK, which is the same drive (and I'm sure the same PCB less the FW chip, connector, and a few "passive" components) for only $20 less, which is a far lower price difference, percentage-wise, than the parent postulated.

IMHO, A $20 adder seems fair, considering the cost differential and the lower volumes.

Qute frankly, I think that price differential would shrink to nearly nothing, if they'd just put FW on every external. The USB protocol is simply not suited to streaming large chunks of data. But that's what Firewire lives for.

Fry's (outpost.com) lists the Seagate ST305004FPB1E3-RK 500GB external, with eSATA, Firewire (400) and USB 2.0 for $199.99, and the ST305004FPB1E2-RK, which is the same drive (and I'm sure the same PCB less the FW chip, connector, and a few "passive" components) for only $20 less, which is a far lower price difference, percentage-wise, than the parent postulated.

IMHO, A $20 adder seems fair, considering the cost differential and the lower volumes.

Qute frankly, I think that price differential would shrink to nearly nothing, if they'd just put FW on every external. The USB protocol is simply not suited to streaming large chunks of data. But that's what Firewire lives for.

The New York Times seems to think Apple has designed the ideal techie retail store.

These people have never been to a Fry's. If you've never been to one, picture this: they sell porn and energy drinks within 20 feet of each other.

The New York Times, like many of the rest of us, is at least a 16 hour drive from the nearest Fry's. That, alone, would make Fry's less than the ideal techie retail store.

I am assuming that http://shop1.outpost.com/ac/storelocator/index.jsp is the correct URL to find store locations?

I can't remember ever enjoying being at a fries. Being in Fry's is like shifting through every item available on the internet pilled into an enormous unorganized mound.

The basic concept of the store seems to be condense all of amazon.com (or in this case http://www.outpost.com/) into a single physical store. This basically means you get all of the items of output, with *no ability to search*.

Additionally, everything is overpriced. If they were smart, they'd be the costco of electronics stores, and instead of carrying a small quantity of every item you don't need at a high price, they'd carry a large quantity of stuff that everyone needs at a low price, and ignore specialty products.

Try: http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5325528
Intel uAtx board, Celeron 215 soldered on, takes DDR-II 533 or 400, onboard graphics, one PCI port, $70.

$229 at frys

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5434329/

And lets be honest, sales from services like Steam and Direct2Drive are rather insignificant compared to that coming from brick and mortar stores, that is if they ever actually released those numbers.

Not to mention recently you have such time vacuums like World of Warcraft that have been drying up PC gaming dollars that might go elsewhere. Consoles don't really have that problem, yet.

From http://shop3.outpost.com/template/help/index/FE30/ Service3/Assistance/Left_Topics/A12ContactUs

Sales and Customer Service -service@outpost.com
        Toll-free (within U.S.):
        1-877-688-7678 or 1-800-856-9800
        International: +1-408-350-1484
        Sales/Customer Service Fax: 1-408-487-4700

Works for me.

If you could buy [the 500 series] for $19.99 you almost certainly would.

$599+a USB keyboard lying around at home+a USB mouse lying around at home+a PC monitor you have lying around at home = a real Mac with Tiger on it.

If you value the many hours it takes to hack an AppleTV at <$170.00, then maybe your argument flies. If you think your time is worth more, maybe this is a project that isn't worth the hack value.

I wouldn't run such a Mac with only 512MB of RAM...I would advocate maxing it out to 2GB to make Tiger chuff happily. But it will run and it is a real Mac.

The same goes for hard drives. Apple charges you $329 for a 500GB SATA drive, which you can get from NewEgg for around $200. Granted, these aren't covered by your warranty, but they often have a manufacturer's warranty

Applestore upgrades have always been a convenience thing.

Fry's has a Seagate 500MB SATA for $120 right now.

Link:

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4697788

It started out as a small western chain, but it grew.

Principle 2: "The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them"

I can attest to this 100% - in a different, but similar area many are familiar with. My example is my experience with WindowsXP. When I lived in New Zealand, I could not afford the NZD$536 (USD$377) for XP home to keep my CS:S habit alive, so I used a 'less than legitimate' copy of XP. Anyway, when I moved to the US I thought I'd go legit only because after a visit to Frys i saw i could pick up XP off the shelf at (USD$199) - almost half the price. Even better I managed to get an OEM XP home for just over a hundred bucks.

Now there's no way I'm paying NZ$536 (USD$377) for an OS. No way. No way in hell. However, I was happy enough to part with a hundy for the OEM version. I didnt know of Linux at the time (now have 3 PC's on Ubuntu), but wanted XP to play CS:S and various other Windows games I'd paid for over the years (because they were well priced!!!)

So yeah, hopefully big business will wake up and smell the coffee one of these days.

Fry's Electronics.

The prices at Thomas Distributing are VERY high, in my opinion. The charger recommended is $70. The batteries are more than twice what they cost during a sale at Fry's.

Overnight Battery Charger With 4 AA Ni-MH Batteries, $11.99, regular price.

Buy a 60 GB unit from CircuitCity.com. If you don't like Circuit City, how about Fry's? Or maybe you prefer a Gamestop Bundle?

The PS3, despite shipping a paltry 400,000 units to the US before Christmas and maybe another 400,000 since (and that's being generous) has already intersected the Supply and Demand curves. They are freely available to anybody who wants one yet they remain in stock for long periods of time, sitting in warehouses and on store shelves.

How's that for data?

The Fry's in austin has had PS3s in stock for at least a week now. In fact, it's available at Fry's online still, while the Wii, is not, if it ever was. Couple this with the fact that more Wii's shipped than PS3s, and you can conclude that there is a higher demand for the Wii than PS3.

Also available at Walmart, though I'll grant you it's an expensive bundle.

The Fry's in austin has had PS3s in stock for at least a week now. In fact, it's available at Fry's online still, while the Wii, is not, if it ever was. Couple this with the fact that more Wii's shipped than PS3s, and you can conclude that there is a higher demand for the Wii than PS3.

Also available at Walmart, though I'll grant you it's an expensive bundle.

Why would content providers ever bring the price of a HD based product anywhere close to that of a comparable bundle of optical discs? My answer: They wouldn't. It'll always be a premium product

Hard Drives have moving parts Optical Disks don't Which is more reliable?

>> There must be something very unusual with that drive. You get 1GB Flash parallel IDE disks for about $45.

> Really? Link me, I'd like one.

http://www.acscontrol.com/Index_ACS.asp?Page=/Page s/Products/CompactFlash/IDE_To_CF_Adapter.htm

So add in a $25 1GB compact flash, e.g. http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4174273?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG and you're within a few dollars.

After checking bestbuy.ca and futureshop.ca I found 1 1080P HDTV and it was not 1000 bucks, it wasn't even close.. I've only seen a 1080p TV in a super high end audio/video store.

One 1080p TV from Outpost.com (Fry's Electronics) for under $1000 right here.

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4860630?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Too bad it won't take a 1080p signal. You've fallen for one of the great wonders of the video world, advertising scalled inputs resolutions while actual native input resolution being something different hidden amongst the fine print.

After checking bestbuy.ca and futureshop.ca I found 1 1080P HDTV and it was not 1000 bucks, it wasn't even close.. I've only seen a 1080p TV in a super high end audio/video store.

One 1080p TV from Outpost.com (Fry's Electronics) for under $1000 right here.

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4860630?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

A bunch of solar panels stuck on the roof of an electric car and hooked up to the battery to recharge would be great- more so for California, Arizona, and similar regions than places like Washington state, of course.

Solar panels produce relatively little power, relative to the surface area they need. Consider this 100W panel as an example (specs, including dimensions, here). It needs over nine square feet to produce a bit more than 1/8 horsepower.

A battery pack that can deliver an average load of just 50 hp for four hours will have a capacity somewhere around 150 kWh. It'd take a 100W solar panel nearly seven weeks of continuous sunlight to recharge that battery pack. Unless you live in the northern reaches of Alaska, you're not going to ever get 24-hour sunlight, so you'll want to double or triple that time estimate. Basically, you're never going to get enough power out of solar panels on an electric vehicle for them to be worth the added expense.

No one buys a wireless adapter for a Mac laptop, because they all come with one. Not true. A couple of months ago I was asked by some starving-student acquaintances to help them set up wifi in their apartment. They had two older PowerBooks neither of which had wireless of any sort built into them. Faced with spending either $20 x 2 (on sale at Fry's) for USB adapters with an ralink rt2500 chipset and a c.$70 Linksys-WRT54G router versus c.$80 x 2 (now reduced to $50)for the apple brand cards and c.$200 for the Airport Extreme Base Station they decided to save the money and go with the $250 cheaper solution. Yes, the PowerBooks were "Airport Extreme Ready", but all that means is that they have the antenna built into the casing and a space inside for the card. I wouldn't mind betting there are quite a few people in a similar situation. I'm hoping that it's not the rt2500 driver that's compromised... that would suck as ralink have been pretty good about releasing open drivers.

No one buys a wireless adapter for a Mac laptop, because they all come with one. Not true. A couple of months ago I was asked by some starving-student acquaintances to help them set up wifi in their apartment. They had two older PowerBooks neither of which had wireless of any sort built into them. Faced with spending either $20 x 2 (on sale at Fry's) for USB adapters with an ralink rt2500 chipset and a c.$70 Linksys-WRT54G router versus c.$80 x 2 (now reduced to $50)for the apple brand cards and c.$200 for the Airport Extreme Base Station they decided to save the money and go with the $250 cheaper solution. Yes, the PowerBooks were "Airport Extreme Ready", but all that means is that they have the antenna built into the casing and a space inside for the card. I wouldn't mind betting there are quite a few people in a similar situation. I'm hoping that it's not the rt2500 driver that's compromised... that would suck as ralink have been pretty good about releasing open drivers.

The US$300 models typically have analog VGA only.

Actually, I've found several at that price that have DVI. Such as this one: Samsung 205BW (hopefully the link works).

Buy a Samsung ML-2010 for $69 http://shop4.outpost.com/%7BdvG+uA4pjhcymGxusl-wvg **.node3%7D/product/4515497;jsessionid=dvG+uA4pjhc ymGxusl-wvg**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Get a Buffalo Print server for under $50 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16833162203

Works flawlessly with Windows/Mac/Linux

(My printer is the ML-1710 and I bought it for $99)

Drat,

and I just bought an Athlon x2 from HP at Fry's last week....

Seriously, this was such a great deal that I couldn't build one for cheaper:
Athlon XP x2 4200+
2 GB RAM
250 GB SATA Drive
DVD+-combo writer
built in firewire and NIC and every type of removable media support that you can think of.
Windows XP Media center
$820 + $50 rebate = $770

The same Frys had the CPU ~ $350 and when you add the standalone costs for 2GB RAM the SATA drive and the DVD burner (and Windows) you're already ~700. I know that you can buy the Intel dual cores for cheaper now though...

The only thing I will be adding soon will be some good video card to replace the integrated nVidia graphics.

HP a1450n Ath64X2 4200+ Processor for TRUE multi-tasking

http://shop3.outpost.com/%7BlZNEvmnJrJRmmQ+BgJ8WIg **.node2%7D/product/4796499

-What's the speed of Dark?

With big jobs you have no choice but to use some highly specialized tools. It sounds like the Testum Network Management Tool would be useful.

It'll help you figure things out a lot easier. It also does a lot of other nifty things that could become useful when you need to expand the network.

Well, you can get a 1 Gb PQI for $19.99.
http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4359955?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

The PNY 2 Gb is $35.99 after $10 mail-in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820178085

NewEgg has a couple others that hit the $40 mark w/o rebates.

Frys has a better system then this that is on sale all the time for $149.95. Regular price is 179.00. In fact, it was on sale on black Friday for 99 bucks. AMD Sempron 2200, 40 gig HD, CD Rom, Internal Video, 128 megs RAM, Mini tower case, speakers. Loaded with Linspire. Here it is WAY overpriced at Outpost. http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4714029?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

$270 American vs. $150? Linspire vs. whatever PRC government-approved distro this is?

Big deal (or not, really).

And yes, precisely BECAUSE the hardware is so expensive.

FWIW, I priced a Mac Mini at Fry's Electronics, trying to give myself an excuse to get one:

Mac Mini 1.5 GHz/512MB/60GB HD/CD-RW|DVD-ROM Combo Drive) (1.5 GHz? Huh?) - $600
Logitech Cordless MX Duo - $70
Viewsonic 19" LCD Monitor - $290

Total Price for new Mac Mini system - $960 base.

Or I can get a new Acer or similar PC system with all the bells and whistles, running a Dual-Core 64-bit AMD processor at 3.2 GHz, a Gig of memory, a 300 GB HD, for about $700 at my local Impress Computer store. Since I don't like XP, I can reformat the drive and load Fedora or Ubuntu or whatever, and have a hell of a workstation, every bit as stable as MacOS X, plus a huge selection of productivity software, for about two-thirds the price. And I'm not even getting into how much more powerful the Acer system is, the far larger (and faster) hard-drive, the fact that it includes a DVD-R/W drive, etc.

Sorry, but you Mac entusiasts need to cotton to the fact that your choice of computer is more akin to your choice of hobby than a practical decision.

based on the difference between what I paid, and what you are looking at, I'd say either you looked at prices a few months ago or your retailer is ripping you off...

Here you go.

There are plenty of other companies that sell Linux an (sic) no-OS machines.

http://www.addonshop.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.ibexpc.com/
http://www.koobox.com/
http://www.linare.com/
http://www.linspire.com/
http://www.linuxcertified.com/
http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/
http://www.microtelpc.com/
http://www.outpost.com/
http://shoprcubed.com/
http://www.sub300.com/
http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm
http://www.walmart.com/
http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html
http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed
http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html
http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information)

Slashdot's lameness filter is actually pretty... well... lame. Defeating it is usually as easy as adding more text. You know, like this sentence. :-)

There are plenty of other companies that sell Linux an no-OS machines. http://www.addonshop.com/ http://www.emperorlinux.com/ http://www.ibexpc.com/ http://www.koobox.com/ http://www.linare.com/ http://www.linspire.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/ http://www.microtelpc.com/ http://www.outpost.com/ http://shoprcubed.com/ http://www.sub300.com/ http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm http://www.walmart.com/ http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information)

http://www.addonshop.com/ http://www.emperorlinux.com/ http://www.ibexpc.com/ http://www.koobox.com/ http://www.linare.com/ http://www.linspire.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/ http://www.microtelpc.com/ http://www.outpost.com/ http://shoprcubed.com/ http://www.sub300.com/ http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm http://www.walmart.com/ http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information) No OS (Sabio made by Quanta, like Dell-latitudes) http://www.avadirect.com/ http://www.asimobile.com/ http://www.powernotebooks.com/

I'm working, as much as possible, with the same rules they did, except that I'm pricing everything after rebates.

RAM: Corsair 1GB PC3200, $48.99 after rebate http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3746086

Optical Drive: NEC 3550A, same as they did, $38.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=50001326&Manufactory=1326

Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers: About as generic as they come, cheap PS2 keyboard, USB mouse, and some sort of speakers, $12.99 including shipping http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?l inkid=119&item=23-174-003

Monitor: 17" X2Gen LCD, $129.99 http://www.onsale.com/onsale/shop/detail~dpno~7181 70.asp

Case/PSU: Generic silver case with a generic 450W PSU. $29.50, free shipping http://www.supergooddeal.com/ProductDetails.asp?Pr oductCode=BCC204-4HA-S-P4&Click=17583

Hard Drive: There's either a 160 GB WD drive for $50 http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oi d=67646&cm_keycode=85 or a 100 GB Maxtor for $40 http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?p roduct_code=320167&pfp=feb19sale.

Now, here I left a choice, and a bit of a nasty one. I've got $189.54 left for a motherboard, CPU, and hopefully a video card. I'm going to offer it both ways, one with the best processor I can fit into this, the other with a cheaper processor and a real video card.

Motherboard: Again, there aren't any great motherboard/CPU combo deals at the moment. For those wanting to go all-out on the CPU, I found an Athlon64 3400+ (socket 754, obviously) with a PCCHIPS 861-G (Yeah, crap, but it has onboard audio and video) motherboard for $184 (optioning to update the BIOS and including thermal paste). http://www.pc-infinity.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen =PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=MB7543400

Now, if you do plan on doing a bit of gaming on this, a video card might be a good idea. Unfortunately, one really can't be put in without dropping the processor to a Sempron, so that's what I'll do. Let's face it though, with the video card that could still be afforded, CPU limiting will probably be a non-issue. As far as Semprons go, the 2800+ they chose seemed to be at a very nice price point, so I went with it and an ECS 761GX motherboard, $75 and $49.50 respectively at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819104245 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813135002

Now there's $65 left for a video card, but I'm going to offer four options; two each for ATI and NVidia, going to $525 as they did or keeping it under $500 (with the strong recommendation of spending the extra $25; performance increases a lot). For the cheaper two, we have a choice between the ATI X1300 128MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8

Yep, for $525 you can get a much nicer machine. Heck, I would get a Mac Mini for that price.

You can buy the ultimate budge pc from Fry's Electronics and Outpost for $199, and still pocket $300 after paying taxes!

http://shop1.outpost.com/%7BD1Y2sVQJ2SSw3LRG1Z2tTB yLG9R1Yc2T0HwLFmpL7kKHqTfDhQS1!-1219162780!NONE!11 40824310314%7D/product/4368965

Instead of using some kind of monster 500+ watt system, you could get a laptop or an Epia or a Mac Mini or this AMD Geode-based desktop* or some other low-power system. Even underclocking and using power management on your current PC can help, too, and switching from CRT to LCD monitor helps a lot.

*which, by the way, is cheaper (~$200) at my local Fry's for some reason

As CmdrTaco, I'm sure you have money coming out of your ears that you've harvested from the pseudo-religion that is Slashdot.

But for those of you with fewer fiscal resources, I will tell you the stories of my friend and me, a.k.a. The Master Rebaters.

My story is a simple one. I love music. I have over 1,000 CDs and have spent a lot of time meticulously ripping them with my friend CDex. So, I have some 350-400GB of data that I would like to archive. There are a multitude of possibilities but, since I'm short on cash, I opted for a simple $13 RAID 1 controller ... I know, I know, I'm going to catch hell for using such a crappy generic product. And I know many people who will tell you that VIA is crap when it comes to RAID controllers. Maybe you're one of them. If you are, I hear that the brand Promise provides excellent RAID controllers, you'll just pay a whole lot more for them. A couple of these babies in RAID 1 and you're set.

My friend, however, opted for a huge and expensive RAID 6 array controller made by Promise. Then he waited and waited until there was a 250 GB Maxtor rebate at CompUSA or Outpost and went in and bought five with cash. Then he filled out the rebates for relatives and played the waiting game. Huge initial investment but he received a lot of money back slowly. Result, a 1.1 ~ 1.2 TB RAID array. He got a lot more storage and more efficient use of the disks since a RAID 6 with striping allows for drives to be rebuilt in the array.

What he wasn't planning on was the logistics of what he would have to do to his Antec case as a result of all these drives. Fans. Airflow. Heat. These all became huge issues for him--especially in the summer. I'm not sure what your situation is with a case but I made no alterations to my case.

Now, there's a lot of things I skipped over that you can take into consideration, like SATA or ATA? 7,200 RPM or 10,000 RPM? 8MB or 16MB buffer? Striping size? etc. Honestly, those issues aren't worth my time to mess with. Sure sure, I'm losing precious ms seek/read time on my disks but I'm not that motivated.

In the end, if you're only looking for half a TB, do what I did. Those 500 GB drives will only get cheaper and if one blows, just pop another in. And if you really need that room to grow, grab the nice RAID controller that supports RAID 0-6 and just use two 500GBs leaving the other three slots open for the future when you might buy them and RAID 6 it.

What fails? The old IBM Deathstars. Beware!

http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-15keyboard_hub_m ini.htm

That's got function keys, arrow keys, and it's $20 from outpost.com. Happy Hacker is far more expensive.

http://shop2.outpost.com/product/3632305#detailed

Take a look at the rest of their keyboards. They've got a big selection of all types, including several other mini keyboards. http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-keyboard.htm

One or two of these hanging off your wall will do you good http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4215604?site=sr:S EARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

http://www.addonshop.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.ibexpc.com/
http://www.linare.com/
http://www.linspire.com/
http://www.linuxcertified.com/
http://www.microtelpc.com/
http://www.outpost.com/
http://shoprcubed.com/
http://www.sub300.com/
http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm
http://www.walmart.com/
http://www.xandros.com/

http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html
http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed
http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html

http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information)

No OS

(Sabio made by Quanta, like Dell-latitudes)
http://www.avadirect.com/
http://www.asimobile.com/
http://www.powernotebooks.com/