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I've always built my own. Typically I find that it actually costs a little more then a mass market PC, but I get exactly the options (video card, PC card, etc) I want, and don't have to pay for any bundled stuff I didn't want.

I typically price all my parts through Pricewatch

You can easily find prices for the components you want from tons of different places:

www.pricewatch.com

Check out Newegg for a pretty good selection of stuff. They don't have the best return policies, but they are a pretty good place. I also suggest looking at Anandtech for the motherboard/memory/video roundups which give the best prices for certain components. The places he references are usually higher quality than the lowball offerings given on Pricewatch.

However, they don't necessarily always have all the lowest stores listed. In particular, I often check at least newegg.com, but others may have their favorites as well.

Where? My search yielded prices of $184 to $193.
Not blasting you, just would like to find one cheaper!

hmmm, is $39 not cheap enough?

You might want to read the original message more carefully...the problem is that Gigabit Ethernet switches are still expen$ive. The $39 switch to which you linked is a Fast Ethernet switch, which is an order of magnitude slower.

I've seen 5-port Fast Ethernet switches for $25. The cheapest Gigabit Ethernet switch I saw on Pricewatch just now was the D-Link DGS-3204, a 4-port switch for $300.

Pricewatch is a good site to go for to get a feel for pricing. People keep trying to drop their prices. I've heard horror stories of people being scammed from people using Pricewatch, but if you're just curious about pricing, it's a good reference. Figure a bit more money, though, if you want to buy your processor(s) in a real brick-and-mortar store.

Now, my question. I've got a dual Athlon system (Athlon MP 1600s). That Linux/Athlon bug thing continues to plague me, I think it's like the "agpgart" bug. Anyone reading this know if that's been fixed yet? I've been toying with the idea of building a new webserver, and want to really beef it up, but if Athlons still crash every couple days (mine seem to go about five days and crash, actually), I really don't want to invest the money. Does anyone know if there have been fixes to this, either with Linux, or with the actual chipset?

so if everyone who currently subscribes to broadband internet took t ; ne month</a>'s worth of connectivity and purchased a wireless access point, we could have a peer-to-peer Internet that is truly distributed. for another $100 you could buy a sweet antenna for it in case your neighbors are too far away. i'm sure there's also ways to boost the power, as with that linksys router with a software programmable power setting.

You're lucky, my school actually made a profit on selling me software. Their student OEM version almost always costed more than the OEM full version I could hunt down on Price Watch

• Refill kits. Many vendors offer kits that will allow you to add more ink to an empty cartridge several times over. With the proper use of plugs and caution, this may save you hundreds of dollars a year.
• Buy from Pricewatch. Pricewatch allows you to find the cheapest vendors worldwide of most computer hardware, and you can usually find ink cartridges there for about 60% off retail prices.
• Warranty service. Most cartridges are sold with a (n albeit poor) warranty. Use about half the cartridge, then apply a small quantity of glycerin or sugar water to the jets to clog them. Send the cartridge back to HP and wait a week to get your replacement.
• Return it. When you've got a dead cartridge in your hand and you're trying to print out that last minute book report, don't despair. Head over to Best Buy and pick up a new cartridge. Then, spray a bottle of typewriter ink liberally all over the old cartridge and (optionally) your hands and arms. Head back to the store and accuse them of selling you a defective cartridge, which exploded (and thus drained all of its ink) when you installed it. Voila! You will have a new cartridge for free.
• File a complaint with the BBB. The majority of inkjet cartridges clog irreparably between the time when the warranty expires, and the time when the ink runs out. Make the manufacturer accountable for selling you a shoddy product by complaining to the BBB, your Attorney General, and the IFCC.

/fug

I scrapped my old computer a couple weeks ago and upgraded my processor, RAM, motherboard, and video card for around $510. Since you didn't mention a video card I'll assume you have one, mine was $240. That leaves $270 for Athlon XP 1800+, Asus A7S333 motherboard, 256 meg PC2100 DDR DIMM. Throw in a decent case/power supply and I'd say your total would come out more like $350 than $500. You might want to check Pricewatch if you haven't lately.

Yet at pricewatch the lowest price listed for the same processor is $395. Does this mean the companies selling them below the list price are selling them at a loss or are they getting an even better deal than this?

In case anyone is curious, according to pricewatch, the cheapest memory-for-the-money deals:

solid state storage: about $356 per gig (256MB = $89)
hard-drive: about $1.15 per gig (80GB = $92)

So yeah, it will be awhile before flash becomes reasonable compared to a standard HD.

For those looking for a cheap home theater PC upgrade, the Creative Audigy sound card provides Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and an integrated IEEE 1394 Firewire port. I was surprised how easy it was to capture video from my Sony Camcorder through the 1394 port and burn it to a Video CD. PriceWatch has several companies listing it for under $60.

I'm not sure when you got these prices, but certainly not today. I just checked pricewatch right now and the prices aren't as low as when you supposedly checked:
$ 92.00 GeForce 3 Ti 200
$103.00 800 Mgz P3 (133Mhz FSB)
$ 29.00 Biostar M6VCF from compgeeks
$ 56.00 Maxtor 20.0GB from Inca City
$ 9.00 Realtek 8193 10/100BT from Microtech Computers
$ 30.00 SB Live! 5.1 a decent 3d sound card from Deal Sonic
$ 53.95 Afree 10x DVD-ROM from Access Micro
$ 12.00 64MB PC-133 house brand=generic from Alpha International Inc
Total: $384.95 (most prices include s/h) However, I believe the GF3 that is in the X-Box was specially designed for the X-Box but is similar to the GF3 Ti 500 than that Ti 200. Which means you have to add $64.00 on to the total: TOTAL: $384.95 + $64.00 = $448.95 That, however, doesn't even include an OS. So since what's in the X-Box is an NT5 (~= XP) you'd have to add about $180 on to that price. Then, you'd need at least one game pad which is $9.00 from compgeeks but wont be as good as MS's or Logitech's gamepads which are $20+. TOTAL: $448.95 + $180.00 + $9.00 = $637.95 I'd figure on $650.00 for an equivalent system, but you'd need a monitor to install everything initially and once XP is installed, you could switch it over to use the TV-out.

"as everyone knows that Professional is not supposed to be subject to the key bullshit whereas the home version is..."

No. The OEM version of Windows XP is not subject to the activation crap that the retail version is. That means that if you buy your software from Pricewatch (search "Microsoft Windows XP Professional"), you'll not only pay half-price ($89 for XP Home; $140 for XP Pro), but you will escape the activation crap completely.

As to the warez part, I'd bet $100 it is at least partially based on this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu rr entVersion (ignore stupid /.-added space)

In there you'll see a key called ProductId. (This is in Windows 2000, at least... I'm assuming it's in XP as well.) Change that to a legal (as in, non-warez) value, and I bet that your system will magically update again.

Back in the Windows 95 days, Microsoft used to make it simple and hand out those Product IDs as the keys on your CD case, but recently they have gotten smarter about it. The new stuff translates from that 25-character gobbletygook to these oldschool product IDs. Figure out the translation algorithm (I believe several warez groups already have) and you're set.

Or stop being such a cheapass and go spend $89 for an OEM copy of XP Home. That's what I did for Windows 2000. :P

Swapping? Perhaps you haven't checked memory prices lately.

if you check pricewatch, you'll find that you can find a pretty nice cd burner for less than $75.00 (name brand 24x write 10x rewrite - including shipping). that's a little less than your $240.00 estimate.

Please direct me to a commercialy available DVD->DVD copier, or a DVD->VHS unit?

You can find the former at Pricewatch .

And here's a link to VHS->DVD units; I haven't found any DVD->VHS units in my quick searching.

I estimated the costs associated with the XBOX, and it doesn't seem like they'd be taking such a loss, using today's computer parts prices:

(I'm using a 10% discount off of Pricewatch's lowest prices-- assuming no middlemen & huge quantities.. frankly it's probably lower.)

Celeron 733 - $45
(adjusted to intel's p3 estimated manu. cost of $35 + $10)
20 GB 5400HD- $50
64 MB DDR - $12
CAV DVD-ROM - $28

(now the guesswork)

Motherboard Manufacture - $30
(it's real simple & cheap)
NVidia Chip - $35
(rumored $50 at launch of xBOX)
Case/PS/Controller/Packaging - $30

This all equals $230. Which means they could have at least been breaking even before this price cut-- and will very soon be breaking even once again. Of course, none of this includes marketing or development costs-- but we know MS is in this for the long haul anyway.

In any case, I wouldn't be running out to the store, just to "cost" MS some $$$. Who knows, with cuthroat deals, they may already be breaking even at $199.

The ATI Radeon 8500 is a very nice card, and the image quality is really stunning. However, the $199 price is a bit more than you can pay for a slightly-slower and comparable in quality GeForce 3 Ti 200. I got one of these for $119 at Best Buy (Bah), after a rebate.

That's odd, Pricewatch seems to turn up Radeon 8500s for about $125, including shipping. At least, that's how I read the figures.

Bottom line is, in the quantities they're buying, costs of manufacture should be substantially less than eight months ago.

What has stopped me from buying, however, is the claim that this card does not work under current Linux drivers because it uses a currently undocumented MAC chip, although the rest of the hardware is supposed to be standard Intersil Prism.

Does anyone know if this problem is still the case? If the hardware were documented I would probably feel comfortable enough buying the chip and adapting one of the Prism drivers to it. (One the other hand, I would use a different card or do without rather than run a proprietary driver.)

By the way, the SMC card the MicroCenter had for $140 looks identical to the Socket card from the outside. I would be intersted in knowing if they are the same, and if anyone has used the SMC card under Linux.

Shell out US$a few hundred, and you can have a super-speedy IDE RAID with mondo-capacity. And, if one of the disks breaks, ah, no big deal. Especially if it breaks 4 or 5 years from now: that disk that cost $250 in 1998 can be picked up for $50 today. Try finding an old SCSI drive that easily.

Pricewatch is a very reliable way to find low prices on components.

If you know where to get stuff, it can be cheap. Definately check Pricewatch for your stuff. You'll even get discounts on shipping if you buy in bulk from most places!

Don't buy more processor than you need; It's expensive. You can always upgrade the CPU later if you pick a good platform. You can do the whole thing for about $450-$500 for each box.

Incidentally, I picked the GF2MX because it has good drivers and VERY fast 2D. If you are doing cad or something, get something from matrox, they have a much better DAC. The 3D is just icing.

• SV-24 / SV-25 (Pentium 3) -- $215 to $230
• SS-50 (Pentium 4) -- $340

  Therefore, I would expect the SS-40 (Athlon) to be close to $350 as well.

  (Numbers are based on what is advertised via PriceWatch.)

Pricewatch has a vendor selling a (no doubt earlier version) 3CR990 for $59. That's a bit more than your CompUSA card, but a respectable price for a brand-name card -- especially one with an embedded ARM processor specifically for offload processing.

The worst part of this all is that the "new" price of $399 is horrible. They are also trying to shirk with a $30 coupon. Link below.

Here are a few links to show you how to find a deal on this card, Vision Tek part number 30001522 :

Pricewatch Search for 30001522

Tip on searching Pricewatch (my favorite); the url format is: [http://brook.pricewatch.com/search/search.asp?cri teria=item_criteria_here]

Streetprices Search for 30001522

Pricegrabber Search, I don't like Price-grabber, but its here to show that even a crappy Shylock engine is better than Worst Buy ©(TM)®.

BEST BUY charged with FRAUD:
Best Buy & HRS Credit Insurance Fraud to their customers. Big Ripoff Scam!

Story also covered here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/10020202.htm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/24005.html

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/19176/

http://courses.wcupa.edu/jredingt/BestBuy.htm

http://www.hardocp.com/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/24041 . tml Worst Buy Highway Robbery Inc. Trying to give only $30 bucks for mistake.

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bes tbuy_gf4deal.html

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bb_ arrest.html

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/11357/3033 .

I have had horrible experience with them as well. I won't even go into it, but they tried to do something fraudulent and were obstinate about owning up to it.

I had a similar Problem with Buy.COM and there was a class action lawsuit and 3 years later I got a $60 coupon for my troubles. I would have liked to have gotten a $50 Hitachi monitor for th $163 dollars they promised it for.

It has been committed in history FORVER, here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&frame=right& th=5c9f98e92d07422b&seekm=36C0A7EF.7AF4%40uclink4. berkeley.edu#link1

I have had horrible experience with them as well. I won't even go into it, but they tried to do something fraudulent and were obstinate about owning up to it.

The worst part of this all is that the "new" price of $399 is horrible.

Here are a few links to show you how to find a deal on this card, Vision Tek part number 30001522 :

Pricewatch Search for 30001522

Tip on searching Pricewatch (my favorite); the url format is: [http://brook.pricewatch.com/search/search.asp?cri teria=item_criteria_here]

Streetprices Search for 30001522

Pricegrabber Search, I don't like Price-grabber, but its here to show that even a crappy Shylock engine is better than Worst Buy ©(TM)®.

BEST BUY charged with FRAUD:
Best Buy & HRS Credit Insurance Fraud to their customers. Big Ripoff Scam!

Story also covered here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/10020202.htm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/24005.html

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/19176/

http://courses.wcupa.edu/jredingt/BestBuy.htm

http://www.hardocp.com/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/24041 . tml Worst Buy Highway Robbery Inc. Trying to give only $30 bucks for mistake.

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bes tbuy_gf4deal.html

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bb_ arrest.html

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/11357/3033 .

I have had horrible experience with them as well. I won't even go into it, but they tried to do something fraudulent and were obstinate about owning up to it.

The worst part of this all is that the "new" price of $399 is horrible.

Here are a few links to show you how to find a deal on this card, Vision Tek part number 30001522 :

Pricewatch Search for 30001522

Tip on searching Pricewatch (my favorite); the url format is: [http://brook.pricewatch.com/search/search.asp?cri teria=item_criteria_here]

Streetprices Search for 30001522

Pricegrabber Search, I don't like Price-grabber, but its here to show that even a crappy Shylock engine is better than Worst Buy ©(TM)®.

BEST BUY charged with FRAUD:
Best Buy & HRS Credit Insurance Fraud to their customers. Big Ripoff Scam!

Story also covered here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/10020202.htm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/24005.html

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/19176/

http://courses.wcupa.edu/jredingt/BestBuy.htm

http://www.hardocp.com/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/24041 . tml Worst Buy Highway Robbery Inc. Trying to give only $30 bucks for mistake.

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bes tbuy_gf4deal.html

http://hypothermia.gamershardware.com/articles/bb_ arrest.html

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/24/11357/3033 .

''This is a sociological problem and we have got to work it out,'' adds Galuten. ''I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music.''

According to Pricewatch, a 180GB SCSI might be 'bout $1K or more. 'course, how many SCSI fiends are there among the MP3-burning segment? Drives like that, I'd expect to see for people building network file servers...

The lowest end CPU you can find now-a-days is like 800Mhz, unless you go to auctions...

But when that 800MHz Duron costs $31 (www.pricewatch.com), many people might be inclined to think that perhaps you should just quit your whining and buy one, rather than scrounging through auctions to try to find a 120MHz Pentium that costs a couple of bucks less.

The lowest end CPU you can find now-a-days is like 800Mhz, unless you go to auctions

Or pricewatch

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me, but you seem to be contradicting yourself.

You say you chose AMD because you decided it delivered better price/performance, but you're going to stop and move back to Intel because AMD has shown that it's partially in bed with M$ (as another poster noted, they're not totally there).

And yet, Intel has been in bed with M$ for years and years, but you "don't see why anyone should have or should have had political reasons against buying Intel".

Come again? Oh, and by the way, you might wanna take another look at AMD's "small edge w.r.t. price-performance ratio". Intel's new Pentium 4 2.4GHz does (apparently) slightly beat the Athlon XP 2100, however, it's almost TWICE the price.

I used to use suspend, but my 802.11b interface doesn't seem to like that... The system just shuts down as soon as it comes back from suspend. (Previously had a similar problem with my old sound card).

This kinda defeats the purpose of suspend/hibernate.

That said, with the relative low cost of 512M CF cards, wouldn't it be easier now to use one of those in an IDE to CF adapter to store the hibernate file? (I guess this wound't work if you have 512M of RAM due to the fs overhrad required?)

Balam

• Thinkpad 600e $650
• Laptop Shipping $20
• Lycoris distro $29.95 or $39.95
• Lycoris Shipping $7.95 vis FedEx
• Total: $717.90 (assuming All discs are purchased from company)

If it works well enough to be a Windows replacement, I would be more than willing to get it. However, I'll hold off until a few more reviews of it come out. It certainly beats having to pay Microsoft anywhere from $100-300 just for the operating system.

Oh, you should look @ pricewatch,- 160GB for $197, that's $2364,- instead of $3108!!!

Not bad! I'm building a terraserver myself to store all my DVDs(unmodified, so no loss of quality or extra stuff).

the difference between the newest IDE and the newest SCSI is far more then marginal.

That's right,- at least if you are talking about the price tag.

188 GB SCSI: $999,-
160 GB IDE: 197,-

And God help you if you want to access more then 2 devices at a time.

Exactly why it is nice to have a board with more than 2 IDE controllers. As long as you hook all devices to their own controller, there's no problem accessing more than 2 devices, which you should know, I know as someone who just finished writing a UltraDMA driver for a custom OS.

If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare a 3.9 ms SCSI drive to a 3.9ms IDE drive..oh wait, they don't exist.

And this is where a RAID controller kicks in.

So take your SCSI elitism and buy your drive for 5 times what it should cost. All the best.

the difference between the newest IDE and the newest SCSI is far more then marginal.

That's right,- at least if you are talking about the price tag.

188 GB SCSI: $999,-
160 GB IDE: 197,-

And God help you if you want to access more then 2 devices at a time.

Exactly why it is nice to have a board with more than 2 IDE controllers. As long as you hook all devices to their own controller, there's no problem accessing more than 2 devices, which you should know, I know as someone who just finished writing a UltraDMA driver for a custom OS.

If you don't believe me, go ahead and compare a 3.9 ms SCSI drive to a 3.9ms IDE drive..oh wait, they don't exist.

And this is where a RAID controller kicks in.

So take your SCSI elitism and buy your drive for 5 times what it should cost. All the best.

Pricewatch has many links to 1GHz CPUs.

Go ahead and donate that dollar to some charity in my name. Thanks!

Besides the "it's cool!" factor (which it really isn't anymore, since everyone's been there and done that by now), why on earth would anyone water-cool their system nowadays? The difference between an Athlong XP 1500 and an Athlon XP 1800 is $14, and even the fastest Pentium 4 CPUs are reasonably affordable (to say nothing of the absolute cheap asking price for the fastest Athlons.)

I guess what I'm getting at is this: why bother with any of this overclocking nonsense anymore? What on earth can it possibly buy you nowadays, other than a voided warranty and a fried CPU?

- A.P.

No, I've read a few interviews where Theo stated that he hasn't added SMP support because he has no dual or quad motherboards lying around... Do people on Pricewatch not ship to Canada, or is he *that* broke?

I always build my own, stopping by Pricewatch to find the best prices.

But everywhere I look, places are building custom PCs now. BestBuy was even building pcs to order. They had many vendors, Alienware, hp, compaq, etc.... You could order a custom PC, or build your own with off the shelf items. CompUSA started to carry OEM products awhile back, funny to see those white boxed oem products on sale at a retail store.

Its sitting right next to my tivo and dvd player... well its not the same one as mentioned above but it has:
ogg support, with mp3 and cd
110 gig of storage space
burns cds
internet connectivity (p2p) and usb support
linux
a java compatible browser
a beautiful ui running through a huge screen
2 processors and a whole hell of alot of memory

if you haven't guessed its called a "computer" and is availabe from parts at pricewatch.com
for about 600 dollars, i really suggest you get one (they're great). It also plays dvds flawlessly (in linux), plays divx (again in linux, hell thats all i have on it), and acts as a tivo using simple bash scripting and some good old fashion c/c++. We won't even get into the fact that its dream console, capable of playing all your favorite games from nintendo and sega

Why spend 2 1/2 times as much for such a teensy little performance gain -- and only that in certain situations?

First, head to pricewatch.com.

Pick up two 160 GB drives for about $200 each, an Athlon 1.4 GHz mainboard combo for about $140, a full-tower case with redundant power supplies for about $200 (or a *U rack unit), an Intel 10/100 ethernet card for $20, and the rest of the pieces/parts can be had for less than $100 with frugal shopping. Total cost for twice the storage of Iomega's lowest-end offering (which is $2000): about $860. With the remaining money you're saving, pick up a solid tape drive and practice religious backups (or step up to SCSI). I'm sorry, but I'm tired of paying a premium for "brand name" crap. I have the feeling a lot of other folks on this list are, too. Heck, for the Windows guys, spend the remaining money on a full version of your favorite Redmond OS. Rinse, lather, repeat -- and be satisfied with the fruits of your labors.

i wouldnt remove the stickers from the top of the HD if i were you. IDE failure rates are higher than that of scsi and if you take the sticker off (or badly discolor it/mark it up) you can almost assure yourself the manuf will not take it back.

i think that you are looking for something like this. $13.95, you can probably check pricewatch.com and find it cheaper or others like it.

hope this helps.