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Go to http://www.pricewatch.com. They have very low prices but the dealers always seem to screw you on shipping. Still cheaper than retail.

The problems with Ask Jeeves are two-fold:

1) They only have a few paid editors who try and compile the list of questions and answers
2) They in general only provide a single link to a question that they already know the answer to. Big companies provide big money to make sure that their resource is listed first/exclusively and these big sites are not always the best sources of information. For instance the questions "Where can I buy an Ethernet cable" should take you to a site like Pricewatch and not to CompUSA in order to get the best deal.

The Open-source community can solve this problem easily. We allow anyone who wants to to submit question-and-answer pairs, and then we allow end-users to vote (or should we call it moderate?) on which answers are best suited to each question. Thus, the system grows as a result of its users activity, and is not really subject to editorial control. Even less editorial control that Slashdot, believe it or not.

So, here's my question. I am currently too busy with other projects (although one of them such as enzyme.sourceforge.net, the engine that backs Catalyst Recruiting has a lot of related code) to really speahead and maintain this project. I have, however, purchased the domain names that will be necessary to make it work: askgneeves.com (this time the N is silent). Anyone out there interested in working on it? Anyone think it's even a good idea? Is someone already doing this? I think that pretty soon we could have an open-source product that would be useful to 90% of the clueless users out there.

I never said I wanted "the best" - I know how much prices vary, when it comes to this stuff. (4 to 5 orders of magnitude.) Pointing out my desire to use a DCR-TRV 103 was, as you pointed out, a very consice way for me to say exactly what level of product I would be happy with - I think for the money ($649), it can't be beat.

You're right - I'm obviously not high-end. However, I will use whatever system I buy, and I did two days of research before I posted my question. I wan't satisfied with the information I found (and I had run dry on my sources), so I played my Nerd Trump Card - I Asked Slashdot. Unfortunately, my strong Intel bias limited me from finding the G4 information that I needed, making me look like an idiot to people like you. If you unintentionally overlook all the Mac DV editing options, the $499 Canopus Raptor with the full Adobe Premiere 5.1 (together) starts to seem pretty good. After looking at the Raptor Requirements, the eMonster 550R looked like more than enough machine (once you upgrade to about 256M of Ram, and toss in a second hard-drive at about 30G.) Granted, I prefer home-brewed solutions, but the couple eMachines we have at work stack up fairly well, for the price we paid for them. It's also a lot easier to describe a home-brew machine by pointing to the closest consumer-level product...

I don't want to shoot the next Star Wars; I was hoping I could make something that looked 1/10th as cool as El Mariachi. (If you don't know about El Mariachi, then it's hard to imagine you know anything about amateur film-making.) I'd like to make something maybe 5-10 minutes long, for my first attempt. Think "Bedhead", but in color. I believe this is a realistic goal, since Robert Rodriguez says he thinks that digital video is the wave of the future - that young film-makers are going to swamp the biz with fairly high-quality films for dirt cheap. I don't think he'd say that unless he'd researched it some, and he's got far better connections and a lot more money than I do.

Anyways, thanks for the unwarranted criticism - gave me something to stew over.

P.S. If most of the $7000 spent on El Mariachi was on buying and developing film, and if I spend $7000 on digital equipment, do you think I'll be able to come close to its quality? (An Arriflex 16S Camera compared to a Sony DCR-TRV 103?)

What is dynamic content? Well, in MOST useful cases, it's simply a dynamic query into a larger set of static content (slashdot and pricewatch are good examples of this) This is necessary because the web browser architecture does not allow you to make these specific queries on your own without serverside help.

I don't know if FreeNet is going to be such that it will be practical to have forums like slashdot emerge (it sounds like it's going to be funcionally more similar to usenet than to the www, but I can't really tell).. but what we think of as dynamic content really isn't all that dynamic at all.

> If so, there are going to be a lot of 1GHz Athlon processors sitting on the store shelves months ahead of the Intel shipments.

I don't know what the OEMs have access to, but I've been watching pricewatch.com ever since Intel and AMD fell over themselves trying to be the first to announce a 1GHz chip.

Intel is getting stomped. Sometime in the last 24 hours a link for Intel 866MHz machines showed up at the site; right now there are now five entries for PIII 866s ($975-$1035) and none for Xeon 866s.

Meanwhile, there has been a single listing for an Athlon 1GHz chip ($1399) for 2-3 weeks, there is now a single listing for an Athlon 950 ($985), and there are two listings for A900s ($885, $986) and about 30 for A850s ($718-859).

Without boring you with the details, I can add that there is a similar mismatch between price and availability for 800MHz chips from the two makers.

It looks to me that Intel is suffering a strategic rout in the high-end x86 chip market.

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I got mine at pricewatch. Just did a search for the G400. I'm very happy with what I got for the price ($139 three months ago).

nope I don't think so

pricewatch query for ethernet + usb
I told you so.

> HP is already planning to sell systems within a week.

For my money, a chip is on the market when I can go to pricewatch.com, find some prices, call the seller, and find someone who actually has it in stock.

Special arrangements with OEMs are exactly that: special arrangements.

p.s. - By the above definition, the fastest x86 chip "on the market" today is the Athlon 850, and it is about three times as available as the PIII 800, if you measure availability in terms of number of sellers. It's also cheaper.

It will be interesting to watch and see when the G's show up, but right now I don't think there's any possible spin that is going to let Intel come out on top on this one.


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Umm.. ahem. It's pretty funny to see all these people arguing about why you should use this or software RAID from Linux when they are the same thing. Think about it - if you can flash the controller's BIOS into suddenly being a RAID controller, then something must be happening in software. I've never heard of a BIOS flash that actually creates a whole new processor right onboard. Hardware RAID always, always costs more than a hundred bucks. If you don't believe me, may I suggest Pricewatch. The extra money you pay is for a dedicated on-board processor. The FastTrack don't got one; it relies on the host processor just as much as Linux kernel RAID does. I'm not sure which is faster, but I guess they'd be comparable. So just choose one and pick it - if you're like me you'll pick the free solution, but whatever.

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> *sigh...* I suppose it really is just too difficult to actually read the article, isn't it? This announcement is that 1GHz PIII systems will be available, actually available, by the end of the month.

For what it's worth, here's what I see at pricewatch.com right now:

PIII 800 - four vendors listed, one offering at $799, the rest over a grand.

Athlon 850 - fifteen vendors listed, thirteen under $800, the rest between $800 and $850.

Athlon 800 - five pages of vendors listed, prices starting at $522.

Yet somehow Intel is going to jerk the rug out from under AMD's feet in the next four weeks. If you doubt it, you can just ask them.

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May I humbly suggest pricewatch? (Prices under $300!)

here

Not that I trust all these dealers, but that is their advertised price.

Also, when i read that Timna will have native RAMBUS only forced through a MTH so it can only take SDRAM, I was confused, as that cripples performance, until I realized, "Intel's doing that so Rambus will get a cut of the price due to royalties," which is probably due to exclusivity contracts with Rambus.

Finally, it's interesting that Intel is pushing DDRRAM for servers, which are notorious for needing high performance, which seems to say Rambus can't cut it at that level, yet at a far higher price. So, in all likelyhood they know Rambus is inferior, yet are still pushing it for consumer-level. Gotta love that company!

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Pricewatch claims $40-$50, not $150.

This was a few weeks (or maybe months...) ago, checking a bunch of the local computer stores (chains, a few of the smaller shops in town) for prices on the boxed PII and PIII processors...

I think I remember the PIII prices being ~$270 and the PII's being ~$290 at the time... Actually, I'm sure it was a few months ago. Anyways, there wasn't a significant differance in price over the week or two I was looking (I think the online prices were about $20-$30 less for the PIII and maybe $10 less for the PII), so I decided to go ahead w/ the PIII.

I figured, "What do I have to lose? $20 and the nonexistance of an extra 'I'?"

BTW: I generally use CNet's shopper.com, so I'm not sure if it's price searches are generally better or worse than PriceWatch...

Actually, I just bought a Postscript printer for $350 once shipping & handling was factored in. It's the Lexmark Optra E310, and it handles Postscript Level 2 natively. List price on Lexmark's website is $400, although a Price Watch search ought to turn up some cheaper prices. Do a DejaNews search for "Lexmark Optra E310" and you can read about other people's experiences with this printer. I bought mine from Electrified, where they list refurbished Optra E310's for $300 ($299, technically). Note that that does not include a parallel cable (though it does include a toner cartridge, otherwise I'd be a little steamed), which wound up costing me an extra $15. Add hefty shipping & handling fees (due, I suppose, to the weight of the package, although I'm sure I got overcharged there too), it still came out to about $350, which is cheaper than anywhere else I found.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:

And speaking of cheapest rackmount chassis, I have tried both the Hawking and the Antech/Suntech cases. Both can be had for about $200 from the pricewatch vendors, but the Antech/Suntech cases are far superior. Bigger fans, better power supply, anti-vibro DD caddy and a locking translucent panel over the disk drives and power switches. The Hawking cases are cheaply constructed, not to mention ugly. Rackmount fetishists, I implore you. Pay the extra $20 and buy the Antech/Suntech.

Here 's my search results.

TC

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"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn from history are doomed to hear it repeated over and over and over..."

Here 's my search results.

TC

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"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn from history are doomed to hear it repeated over and over and over..."

Sometimes, however, there are advantages to pre-assembled machines. Now, I consider there to be three main types of pre-built machines--

1. proprietary parts (eg Dell Optiplex, but not a Dell Dimension)
2. integrated motherboards (the dirt-cheap machines you find on PriceWatch)
3. individual parts (individual sound/video cards, etc.)

Naturally, the flaw with this is that you might not be able to get that one specific part (video card, whatever) you had your heart set on, if the company you choose doesn't stock it, so it's not quite as good as the custom approach, but you might be able to save enough money to put in a crap item, and trade it out yourself.

For the middle class of pre-built machines, there's the ones with integrated parts on the motherboard. Mostly, they're the type that use shared memory for video, have built in wussy sound, etc. Probably not really what you want for a box permenantly, but they're good cheap-now/upgrade-later boxes. [you need something right now, and can't blow much cash on it, but you'll later have the cash to replace out the MB, video, sound, etc.]

And we're left with the 'proprietary parts' machines, which well, are great, so long as they never break. If something goes wrong, you might get screwed in having to fork out $40 for a FDD that fits in that size, etc. If the MB goes, you're basically screwed [although, most under this type have a longer warrenty than the others...as minimum a year... so with an extended warrenty, this might be a good type of machine for that aunt you have who's completely computer illiterate, but insists on calling you up for her 'I can't get on the Internet' questions]

So, in summary, look at what you need for this individual box -- is it a server, and you need 99.9999% uptime? Well, you'll want all custom parts for it, no question, to make sure you have an easy access case, reliable HD, ECC memory, a good NIC, etc. Is it just some lame workstation? Well, maybe you'll be willing to cut a few corners [integrated MB, smaller HD], so you can upgrade your main box. Is it for someone else? Warrenties/Tech support are good, so they're not calling you constantly to come over and fix it when they load some stupid screensaver someone sent them in e-mail.

And on an slightly related note, if anyone knows of a source for the Elan Vital M5 case, (not the M5-R), mail me : oneiros$at$annoying.org [replacing $at$ as appropriate]

AT/ATX Cases for $36 with 250W UL Listed PS ...

V-Tech 738F Semi-Transparent ATX Case

I personally like these cases over the more fully translucent Suntek/Antec/whoever ones. Most of the Suntek ones usually come with a crappy 235W, non-UL Listed PS that is more like a 200W UL one. I couldn't power up most mainboards in it until I upgraded the PS. And they are usually $90+ with UL Listed PS.

These little $36 babies are great. They feature extra port cut-outs (whereas the Suntek are lacking). An AT backplate (for those newer AT boards with ATX power connectors), along with the standard 2 ATX ones. And a nice, 250W ATX power supply (upgradable to 300W). Not fully tranlucent, but still cool looking with the hidden floppy drive. And you don't have to worry about matching the drives, since the drive area is beige.

I like the reseller too, Directron. They do NOT charge outrageous shipping charges (they make no profit on shipping). It will cost you only $10 + $10/case to ship (quite good compared to most other on-line stores, especially most of those who rank high on Pricewatch).

And NO, I do NOT work for them!

[ They also sell the Suntek case (with very crappy 235W PS), and a matching $9 KB and $8 Mouse for it too. IMHO, you'll definately need to upgrade the PS on it, and the mouse is pretty crappy too (but what do you expect for $8? ;-). ]

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

________________________

Mello like the Yello, but without the fizz.

This year I went around ordering parts for a new computer. For two of the pieces (Athlon 550MHz CPU, and an Enlight case), I just pointed my browser over to PriceWatch and just found the cheapest price. Placed my order for those 2 parts on the 17th, and all those got here on the 22nd. The other three parts I ordered (Asus K7M motherboard, IBM Deskstar harddrive, and some ram) I order from TCComputers. I did this with two seperate orders, but only one of the orders arrived. I placed the one that arrived I placed on the 17th also, but the one that has yet to arrive I placed on the 18th. I was actually quite amazed that everything amazed myself. Had a lot of problems 2 years ago with ordering online, stupid company kept on screwing me over.

This year with ordering online has been pretty good so far. But you still can't beat going out to the mall to get all the shopping done. And while your out shopping, you can preview all the ladies.

Its not what it is, its something else.

Does anyone know how they do it? Certainly some have special deals with the sites they're search, I think PriceWatch does this mostly, but there's so many products on these sites that it seems like they'd have to be spidering...

Are these bots very specialized, or can their techniques be used for the rest of the 'net?

For those who mentioned getting bad hardware because they bought the cheapest stuff they could find on Pricewatch, there's another site you should look at before you decide to where to buy. Check out Reseller Ratings to find out how lots of electronic retailers are rated by their customers. When I was shopping for PC parts a couple months ago, I went back and forth between these two sites extensively to find the best place to buy, and I didn't have any problems with my purchases (yet) even though I ended up buying hardware from 7 or 8 different sites. They list an absolute ranking for each site in several categories, and also display any submitted comments in case you're more interested in anecdotal rankings of the sites.

I should point out that I'm not affiliated with either site, I've just been happy with the information found there. Your experiences may vary (and I'm sure I'll hear about it below :).

Why did I stop reading Computer Shopper? The cover price.

I mean, HONESTLY! It was something in the area of $5 on the bookshelves during its heyday.

It just wasn't worth the money, regardless of how much money it helped me save on comptuter parts.

Check out This. I hate it when contests act like what they're giving you such a big deal. Value $120 my butt... $40 in 4front software(that actually costs them nothing to distrubate, I'm not saying it's wrong of them to charge, just giving it out in a contest costs them _very_ little.), and a $80 soundcard that's really $18? Heh. I love xmms, and I'm looking forward to the plugins this will bring, but please don't lie to get people participate in contests.

I wouldn't worry that much, cuz 1. it's an IBM drive that is designed for laptops. Have you seen what ppl do to laptops? 2. An "ill timed footfall" with any device would probably cause breakage. Even the "highly durable solid state devices." Though this would be cheaper to replace than a RIO. You could probably just plug-in a new HD easily unless you are afraid to mess with hardware at that level. IBM Price the main advantage... it will be cheap & store tons more music than any other SS device on the market. The real question is how will it handle mp3s that are already ripped? It says it can do fast ripping from CD, but will it let you copy files?

You probably got cheated with a reconditioned unit. The Sony 520GS lists for $999 and the best Pricewatch price is $808.

But it would be to risky to presume that that policy will continue indefinitely. With Linux, you need not have any such fear.

This announcement is simply the inevitable result of economic forces, and is a continuation of what we've seen for many months on the ultra-low end of the PC market (check pricewatch.com) PC makers are starting to preload Linux, in order to guarantee themselves $0 cost for OS licensing.

The big guys will probably make the install a bit more idiot-proof (KDM/KDE, predefined user account, no services enabled, StarOffice, icons on the desktop for all important stuff), but I'm pretty sure that this is where they are headed. They see the writing on the wall. You just can't make money selling low-end boxes with a $50-80 Windows license attached.

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Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

And you can get an OEM MS Intellimouse for $14 at a computer fair, if you're lucky enough to have them nearby (or online, if you hunt around a bit -- try pricewatch).

Take a look at psion's web site for more information.. then take a look at pricewatch to find it cheap. Good luck!

PriceWatch already lists the Maxtor 93652U8 36.5GB drive (9gig per platter, 4 platters).

It's only $290

Price Watch Search Maxtor 36.5

Of course the most gig per buck is the Maxtor 27.2GB for $201. (I payed $260 a few weeks ago)

The 27.2GB Maxtor transfers at over 18meg per second according to the Adaptec SCSIBench32 in EZ-SCSI 5.0 (which does test IDE as well as SCSI).

Pretty impressive for a 5400RPM consumer level drive!

Those prices are only for the Creative 3D Blaster Annihiliator. Here are listings based on the keyword "GeForce". (They include the Guillemot 3D Prophet, Elsa Erazor X and LeadTek WinFast GeForce 256 among others.)

Listings on PriceWatch

As it turns out, the cheapest pre-orders are (as of now) for the Creative 3D Blaster Annihiliator.

Thanks, I was serching for Ge Force and nothing was turing up. Here is a link to the complete listing at pricewatch.

Prices at Pricewatch

The card has 23 million transistors on a 0.22 micron "GPU" die running at 120 MHz. I'd read that nVidia was planning on putting an air funnel through the die to remove hot air out, but *supposedly* card manufacturers had vetoed this :)

I'm somewhat skeptical about so much of the FPU intensive T&L work being shifted onto the GPU (graphical processing unit), essentially negating the usual FPS (frames per second) increase from having a faster CPU... So I plan on waiting to see what experiences the *beta* users have before diving in.

Pricewatch is great. They list the cheapest prices for hardware. They have several differant processors including the Athlon.

Perhaps you'd like word from the manufacturer. Or PriceWatch.

http ://rook.pricewatch.com/search/link.idq?ne=14821&l= 14775&qc=@ctd+2+AND+@contents+SUPER7*&ca td=2&cn=Motherboards&cr=Motherboards+Super7&n=14&C iCodePage=Windows-1252&a=2

The third one down is an AT $50 (well closer to $60), see? I've never seen a socket 7 motherboard that *didn't* support SIMM memory.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

In the last 10 weeks the best price for the K6-III-450 shown on pricewatch has dropped from $218US to $146US. I think this is mostly a natural result of its sliding down the curve from "latest thing" to "next latest thing" to "recently latest thing", and it will undoubtedly get another downslope shove when the K7s hit the street.

Even better, go to AddALL, and search for lowest price. It's like PriceWatch for books.

You can always check pricewatch.com for the latest lowest prices, except that they aren't listing buy.com today for some bizarre reason.

Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

They will search a limited amount of respectable online sellers, auctions, and classifieds for the selected PDA. Using this, I've found you can get a PalmIIIx for $265 to $275 and a plain PalmIII even cheaper.

You have to constantly watch the deals though. Some are for a limited time. But, If you don't mind having your POP account flooded with email, you can have DealTime send you updates on the deals everyday.

You also might want to see if the prices come down, too. One day I saw a PalmIIIx for $265 then $289 the next from the same company.

If you want to search even more sources, try PriceWatch.com. They will search hundreds of online merchants. Some are big time companies, others are small little stores from the middle of nowhere. The prices are guaranteed [sp?] for a little while, so if a little brat from some small little buisness jacks up the price on you, you only have to pay the PriceWatch price.

#include "disclaimer.h"

I haven't used either of these methods to buy a PalmIIIx yet, so I can't personally reccomend them. But, I am currently searching for a PalmIIIx on DealTime. In other words, if it turns out they rip you off, you've been warned.

[Who would win in a fight, the normal Mr. Spock or a Fuzzy Logic Mr. Spock?]

link: pricewatch.com
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Reveal your Source, Unleash the Power. (tm)

Did you check Pricewatch. I think it is one of the best places to start.

Not by much, at least according to PriceWatch. the AMD K7s (as listed by PriceWatch) are only about $40-60 more than their PIII counterparts, and considering the K7 hasn't been out for too long I'd say that's good, and the price should drop after a while hopefully...

And also you must realise that not even Linux can turn an old P-133 into a P6-4000 (Yea I'm being a bit overboard with that statement, but you get the idea), which is important considering the ever increasing game requirements...

As others have noted, the FAQ tells of the prices per 1000 (note the price for the 500 Mhz one). So I wondered over to PriceWatch to check on the K6-III/500.

Of course the retailers will mark up the price a bit from the one in the FAQ. I'd say it would start at $399-425. But to have it cheaper, or damn close to the price of the K6-III? Damn sweet for us, but what is AMD thinking? :)

Go to PriceWatch and click on "PC", then any of the PC types -- most of the systems come configured with Linux! This is happening fast. You can get a P3-450 for $538, which includes 32 MB RAM, 4.3 GB hard drive, floppy, 45x CD, on-board video, 3D sound, 56K fax/modem -- everything but the monitor.

I'm not certain how reliable these machines are, as I primarily purchase through Dell. I got burned by an iDot machine a year ago, and don't want to repeat the experience.

But I've bought a couple $400 emachines, and they've performed flawlessly.

Cheers,
KenB
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But, at the same time, I am equally impressed with both what I can do at console on a 386, and some of the really fancy new GUI stuff comming to Linux. And, I am sorry to say, and it goes against everything I have always felt, but 64M of RAM in May of 1999 just isn't a "comfort zone."

Seriously, check out PriceWatch, because I was sort of shocked with my last memory order. $82 will get you a nice 128M SDRAM DIMM that will be happy at 100MHz bus speeds. And memory is the truely unsung hero of the computer. All these people talking about how they overclocked thier Celeron to 500MHz or more, and I just tend to sit back and go "Yea, so, you spent all that money, time, and frusturation, and you have 32M RAM??! I would be happy with half that speed and 128M to 256M RAM, because that's where I feel it most."

Yea, it's a bloat. I did a test last night on this very issue. Identical systems, one with 32M of SDRAM, the other with 128M of EDO, and ran RedHat 6.0 w/KDE and Gnome, and WHAM... Light-years of differance. Well worth the $82 I spent on the test, and you can't ever find a way to convince me to go back to less than 100M. (matter of fact, I will be shifting another 64M into that box later this week).

Swap is no match what so ever for even the cheapest slowest RAM. And that is what it basically comes down to. RAM is getting affordable, and to get all the GUI bells and whistles, you need the RAM for it. If you are offended by it, there is still fvwm or wm2, and vi to fill your needs, and I am not saying that as a put-down (because I find them very useful on my 386SX20 w/ 6M)