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FYI, a very useful place to go before ordering from a mail order or internet place is Reseller Ratings. Newegg is one of the highest rated general computer components places, and it is based on thousands of reviews, so is a pretty reliable rating.

Reseller Ratings is particularly useful when considering ordering from a place listed at Pricewatch. The vendors listed at pricewatch range from great to total sleazebags that I would not order from even if their price was half anyone else's and included shipping and a blow job from the UPS person.

If you're ordering from Tiger Direct, you are brave or insane.

As for Dell, near-enough the only corporate supplier, good luck getting anything without WindowsXP pro. Even if you can find redhat, they'll still charge you for the windows license.

If you can live without an AGP slot you can purchase a server or workstation from all of the major oem's without the windows tax.

The price of these machines are incredibly low these days (never thought I'd say that).

Also check out powernotebooks.com for a notebook without an OS.

• Discount Laptops Note the "Optional Operating System" bit...
• PowerNotebooks.com even has pre-installed linux on selected models, if you want. Build your own system and you don't have to have an OS installed at all.

I'm sure there are more out there... Just pop over to ResellerRatings.com and search for notebook or laptop.

I'd suggest definately buying from iDOT instead of TigerDirect.

I've never heard of iDOT, and I'd still recommend them over TigerDirect.

Tiger Direct has a 5.01 lifetime rating. Compare that to Newegg's 9.69 lifetime rating (one of my favorite e-tailers). iDOT doesn't have enough reviews to get a rating, but the five that are there are favorable.

I'd suggest definately buying from iDOT instead of TigerDirect.

I've never heard of iDOT, and I'd still recommend them over TigerDirect.

Tiger Direct has a 5.01 lifetime rating. Compare that to Newegg's 9.69 lifetime rating (one of my favorite e-tailers). iDOT doesn't have enough reviews to get a rating, but the five that are there are favorable.

BULLSHIT!!!

You copied that post from resellerratings.com
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller611.html


2/18/03 4:07 PM
Purchased a case, m/b, cpu, and RAM from iDot during the weekend. On Monday I received a call from them...It turns out that they had noticed I lived only 20 miles from their warehouse, and they were wondering if I wanted to come pick everything up in person so that I wouldn't have to pay shipping! Additionally, they offered to mount the m/b, cpu, and ram in the new case, saving me some hassle. To make things even more friendly, when they noticed that they the case I had ordered was out of stock, they called me on the phone to ask if I would like a replacement case, and if so which one I would like. No waiting weeks without notice for a package while they dawdled on reordering. No wondering where my money had gone. I would rate iDot.com as the best online computer supplier I have EVER dealt with.

Try ResellerRatings before you try Pricewatch. Pricegrabber is also pretty nice in that has both on one site.

1.) Yes, I am the king, thank you.

2.) I've bought stuff from online computer stores dozens of times, each time with credit cards, and I've never had a single erroneous charge. Of course, I always make sure to check out the place before hand, and I'm always a bit leery when the price is too good.

3.) Those AMEX cards are good for a month, which means they have a month to rack up as many charges as they can.

4.) Your account information was not stolen; you gave it to them. You also give that same information to a pimply-faced teenager earning minimum wage every time you charge to your card in a "normal" store.

I'm not saying a little paranoia isn't healthy -- obviously I practice it myself -- but to be honest, the best and only truly effective way to protect against credit card theft is to review your bill carefully.

I gave them up after I found:

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2121.html

I would never, ever buy from them either: http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1983.html

PowerNotebooks sells rather nice laptops sans operating system. You can choose to have Win2k or WinXP installed for extra if you'd like, but they come standard without anything pre-installed. Reasonable prices, too. Not only that, but they are also ranked rather high at ResellerRatings.com. (Not trying to plug them, just pointing out there are non-mainstream alternatives to get Windows free equipment.)

I have yet to have a single Maxtor fail on me when bought from a reputable reseller. My only failed Maxtor (and that was a U/160 SCSI drive) came from Computer Giants. As far as I'm concerned they are a failed company. Anyone who buy sfrom them should expect problems. Back on topic, like I said, I've never had a single Maxtor failure. I have however had failed drives from Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, and Conner (oh god don't get me started on Conner). I never had a single Quantum failure before Maxtor bought them or after. As far as I'm concerned Maxtor is top-rate. Their customer service is excellent. I have yet to have a bad experience with Maxtor's CS. Perhaps your incident is fairly isolated. When you get you replacement drives, do they come from Maxtor or do they come from a reseller? Did you record the various lot numbers on the drive to look for a pattern (possibly bad batch which happens every so often)? As far as I'm concerned you can't go wrong with a Maxtor drive.

The reason why Dell is on top is they know what they are doing and put the best into their computers.

I call bullsh-t.

Their use of non-standard power supplies alone is reason to shun Dell.

That will solve many peoples' RAM issues. All to often people buy the cheapest crap RAM they can find. They get what they pay for. Never buy the housebrand. All too often you don't get what was advertised. Stick with a quality namebrand with a lifetime garuntee. Personally I like Kingston. Crucial, Corsair, Infineon, Zeus (Kingston really?), Viking, Kensington (for the specialty stuff they make), NewerRAM (excellent Mac RAM), and Viking. I don't trust anything else. Oh, and whatever you do. DO NOT buy your RAM (or anything else for that matter) from OCSystem. You absolutely WILL NOT get what you paid for. Their reviews over at resellerratings.com tell many sad stories. Beware and don't be a cheapskate.

That will solve many peoples' RAM issues. All to often people buy the cheapest crap RAM they can find. They get what they pay for. Never buy the housebrand. All too often you don't get what was advertised. Stick with a quality namebrand with a lifetime garuntee. Personally I like Kingston. Crucial, Corsair, Infineon, Zeus (Kingston really?), Viking, Kensington (for the specialty stuff they make), NewerRAM (excellent Mac RAM), and Viking. I don't trust anything else. Oh, and whatever you do. DO NOT buy your RAM (or anything else for that matter) from OCSystem. You absolutely WILL NOT get what you paid for. Their reviews over at resellerratings.com tell many sad stories. Beware and don't be a cheapskate.

As you can see I found out about re-seller ratings a little too late! ;)

And in terms of rebates I've never had problems with COMPUSA, only with PNY.

I keep hearing good things baout new-egg, I'll have to try them out.

You should check Reseller Ratings before buying from a new mail order store. They'll save you a lot of grief. FWIW, Multiwave and NewEgg are my two favorite toy stores, and both of them are highly rated on RR. Both have handled RMAs from me well.

I don't think I've had any rebates fulfilled from gear I've purchased at CompUSA.

FYI, You can get the Zaurus over at TigerDirect for $199. It is recertified and Tiger has kind of a dubious image although I have bought from them a few times with no problem.

> I have a Sony Playstation 2, and I have been converting a lot of home movies to DVD recently, and getting seriously pissed off in the process. The stupid PS2 only seems to like Verbatim DVD-R discs, and nothing else

You probably have an older PS2, and since the Verbatim are highly quality then the "no-name" brand, they are the only ones working for you.

You *can* use other media -- it depends on which *version* of the PS2 you have. The newer version 7 has much better support for media.
US PS2 Versions
UK PS2 Versions

I've been using Ritek http://www.allmediaoutlet.com/P-DVD-R-4.7-R100free .html burning at 2x on my Sony DRU-500, and they have played perfectly so far in my PS2. (Last month I picked up a 100 pack for $104, plus free shipping ... not too bad!!)

As always, check Reseller Ratings before buying online.

Cheers

So, are there any independent review sites out there

What do you mean by independant? They all take ad revenue now, and often that ad revenue is from either hardware companies or retailers. Most of the reputable ones (AnandTech, Tom's, Sharky's, etc) have guidelines on who they will and will not accept ads from - in the case of retailers they usually have to have a good rating.

How do they get their hands on pre-release hardware

The hardware companies aren't freaking stupid. It's called marketing, and the marketing departments make sure that the top reviewers get the hardware ahead of time. Sure, you could send them something the day it's out, but that hurts the marketing push. Especially since it can take a couple weeks to do some reviews. And you want to make sure that if the reviewer has a problem they can get help.

At least it's better than the old print reviews, where they would get the hardware before release and then print a couple months after release -- since print cycles are so freaking long (especially for monthly magazines).

Just how close to payola is the whole thing, anyway?

Most reviewers have to return the hardware afterwards. Of course, there's always swag, and they get tons of it. From everyone. Occasionally they'll get to keep the hardware, and upon occasion the big sites will have charity auctions or giveaways for random stuff (although that's often just another marketing gimick - the site is donated hardware specifically for the purpose of giving it away).

If you want a "truely" independant site that gets no stuff from anyone, then go look for the chintzy sites that review stuff weeks to years after it's out. You know... the sites that you think suck and are horribly outdated.

If you want to know what you should buy then read the reviews from a couple of the top sites, and then go scan some forums. The forums are by average geeks and will give a wonderfully negative review of pretty much any product.

You've hit on something.

Much like eBay, if this "core offering" proves to have a solid business foundation, then one or a dozen satellite services will surely spring up.

It would be great to have a music-oriented variant to ResellerRatings.com but for music - songs, groups, venues, etc etc.

Or how about a "song of the day" service, where you got a random song from your chosen list of genres, once per day, and you could hear 1 minute of a song. If I had a link to click to spend $0.99US on a single song that caught my fancy, I'd spend $100 every year, without blinking.

But it'd better not be "just for Mac users" as the article states. It'd better be MP3 without any "encumbrances".

The following is my personal opinion, please do your own research on this company.

These guys are notorious for setting up review sites to promote their own products. They use employees to falsely promote their products on different message boards. Resellerratings has had to clear some of this companies sites reviews because they were getting too many fraudulent positive reviews mixed in with the negative reviews.

If you notice this article was submitted by one of their employees. When did /. start taking ads?

IMO, this is one of those companies that gives Internet commerce a bad name.

You have now been warned.

ResellerRating's OC System
OCZ Memory: Are they able to regain consumer trust?
Update on 'OCZ EXPOSED'

but lets turn your retarded pointless post into
something worthwhile.

NewEgg.com's 9.77 out of 10

Sidewinder's 9.77 out of 10

Dealsonic's 9.69 out of 10

GoogleGear's 8.37 out of 10

Mwave's 8.42 out of 10

ALL companys I've done business with that made
small mistakes and fixed them at NO COST TO ME
AT ALL. Mwave was even nice enough to mail me
a prepaid shipping label when they accidentally
shipped me the wrong memory, and cross-shipped
the correct ram OVERNIGHT at no cost. There are
businesses willing to go the extra mile to make
sure they have an excellent reputation. Even with
an economy this bad. Companys like OCsystem have
NO EXCUSE for the way they treat their customers.

but lets turn your retarded pointless post into
something worthwhile.

NewEgg.com's 9.77 out of 10

Sidewinder's 9.77 out of 10

Dealsonic's 9.69 out of 10

GoogleGear's 8.37 out of 10

Mwave's 8.42 out of 10

ALL companys I've done business with that made
small mistakes and fixed them at NO COST TO ME
AT ALL. Mwave was even nice enough to mail me
a prepaid shipping label when they accidentally
shipped me the wrong memory, and cross-shipped
the correct ram OVERNIGHT at no cost. There are
businesses willing to go the extra mile to make
sure they have an excellent reputation. Even with
an economy this bad. Companys like OCsystem have
NO EXCUSE for the way they treat their customers.

but lets turn your retarded pointless post into
something worthwhile.

NewEgg.com's 9.77 out of 10

Sidewinder's 9.77 out of 10

Dealsonic's 9.69 out of 10

GoogleGear's 8.37 out of 10

Mwave's 8.42 out of 10

ALL companys I've done business with that made
small mistakes and fixed them at NO COST TO ME
AT ALL. Mwave was even nice enough to mail me
a prepaid shipping label when they accidentally
shipped me the wrong memory, and cross-shipped
the correct ram OVERNIGHT at no cost. There are
businesses willing to go the extra mile to make
sure they have an excellent reputation. Even with
an economy this bad. Companys like OCsystem have
NO EXCUSE for the way they treat their customers.

but lets turn your retarded pointless post into
something worthwhile.

NewEgg.com's 9.77 out of 10

Sidewinder's 9.77 out of 10

Dealsonic's 9.69 out of 10

GoogleGear's 8.37 out of 10

Mwave's 8.42 out of 10

ALL companys I've done business with that made
small mistakes and fixed them at NO COST TO ME
AT ALL. Mwave was even nice enough to mail me
a prepaid shipping label when they accidentally
shipped me the wrong memory, and cross-shipped
the correct ram OVERNIGHT at no cost. There are
businesses willing to go the extra mile to make
sure they have an excellent reputation. Even with
an economy this bad. Companys like OCsystem have
NO EXCUSE for the way they treat their customers.

but lets turn your retarded pointless post into
something worthwhile.

NewEgg.com's 9.77 out of 10

Sidewinder's 9.77 out of 10

Dealsonic's 9.69 out of 10

GoogleGear's 8.37 out of 10

Mwave's 8.42 out of 10

ALL companys I've done business with that made
small mistakes and fixed them at NO COST TO ME
AT ALL. Mwave was even nice enough to mail me
a prepaid shipping label when they accidentally
shipped me the wrong memory, and cross-shipped
the correct ram OVERNIGHT at no cost. There are
businesses willing to go the extra mile to make
sure they have an excellent reputation. Even with
an economy this bad. Companys like OCsystem have
NO EXCUSE for the way they treat their customers.

as long as I live, no freaking way. I went through
a living hell with them over some ram. They sell
this ram called "Expeditious Gamer". It looks like
something fabulous. I read a few very positive
reviews on hardware sites. Whether they are paying
a fortune for false positive reviews, or cherry
picking samples for reviewers, I have no idea. All
I know is memtest for the first stick of pc2700 I
got showed more errors than the early 90's era
dumpster printer ram that the assholes at computer
shows sold. And that was at pc2100 speed because
the ram refused to run at pc2700. I figured it
might be a fluke and tried a second stick and
it actually tested WORSE than the first stick.
It was more than a little interesting that the
ram comes with copper heat spreaders installed
with stickers over the links that say your
warantee will be voided if you remove those
stickers. It's obviously so you won't remove
the heat spreaders so you can see what kind of
ram it actually is. After a ton of phonecalls that
were never answered, and emails that were never
replied too, I ended up sending them a bunch of
faxes. I got my RMA numbers, but was still charged
a restocking fee. So in the end, I was out 20
bucks and had absolutely nothing to show for it.
If you don't believe me, try reading the reviews
for this "company" here:

OCSystem's 3.77 rating out of 10

These guys are consumate rip-off artists. Do not
trust them. Also, seriously doubt the quality and
ethics of ANY company that gives ANY product of
theirs a positive review. There is a lot of
money changing hands for positive reviews.
I hope this helps someone. Read some of those
reviews. Read how they have seriously fucked a
lot of people out of a lot of money. After you
get screwed, order from a REAL company like
newegg.com or mwave.com that actually cares about
their customers. In closing, let me state
emphatically that you are OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND
if you order anything from these bastards.
Thank you.

first, their rating on resellerratings.com is pretty abysmal. basically, the product you get may or may not what's been advertised.

be doubly cautious of buying anything from them that isn't the $500 model. like any other chip the gpu on the radeon has some variations in their yields. as every overclocker knows, some just run faster than others out of the box. what these guys are doing is to try overclocking each card they get from ati, and sell those that will clock higher for significantly more money. throw a fancy heatpipe on it, and charge lots of cash. if you just buy the plain vanilla 9700 pro from them, you can be absolutely certain that it's the "bottom of the overclocking barrel". but don't take my word for it, check the user reviews from people that actually purchased it as opposed to models shipped for free to overclocking websites for promotional purposes.

first, their rating on resellerratings.com is pretty abysmal. basically, the product you get may or may not what's been advertised.

be doubly cautious of buying anything from them that isn't the $500 model. like any other chip the gpu on the radeon has some variations in their yields. as every overclocker knows, some just run faster than others out of the box. what these guys are doing is to try overclocking each card they get from ati, and sell those that will clock higher for significantly more money. throw a fancy heatpipe on it, and charge lots of cash. if you just buy the plain vanilla 9700 pro from them, you can be absolutely certain that it's the "bottom of the overclocking barrel". but don't take my word for it, check the user reviews from people that actually purchased it as opposed to models shipped for free to overclocking websites for promotional purposes.

...they have terrible resellerratings. Also, the card ships with a nice and quiet Zalman heatpipe, which, though quiet as the fanless nature of it implies, probably cuts the life of the card to a year or so. I'm sure anything close to the heatsink is in serious danger of melting (be careful of PCI cards around it). Besides, this isn't anything you couldn't do with a retail ATI 9700 Pro which isn't very loud in the first place.

Don't know if they're this X-Technology, but if so, I'm not sure I'd risk it.

Pricewatch is nice, but next to useless without or similar methods of checking out resellers.

Always remember to check out anyone offering the "best" prices, especially their history with returns. :^)

Ryan Fenton

Many venders with lowest prices on PriceWatch, provide either bad or fraudulent service. Choose a reputable site with credentials (newegg.com) or your local retailer to get your prices and merchandise. The best place to check out a online business is various consumer review sites by typing in the company's name into Google (sample link to review of vender w/the $120 price on the HD). Pay particular attention to the most recent comments when reviewing a company.

When I started out in stereo equipment in the 1970's, you could go to any dealer and get handouts with product specifications on just about any product sold. You could compare transient intermodulation distortion, total harmonic distortion, FM sensitivity, wow & flutter, etc. Now you go into some place like Best Buy or Circuit City and there is nothing but a tag on the shelf. You're lucky if it shows even the most basic specs (e.g., watts per channel, number of discs the changer holds, etc.) and God help you if you ask the salesman for anything more. He'll look at you like you have three heads.

Nowadays we shouldn't have to depend on salespeople to know every detail about every product. They have hundreds/thousands of products in their stores-- even a Slashdot geek would have problems keeping current on the detailed specs on all those items.

Consumers have a huge advantage over salespeople. We can actually research the items we want in depth since we have the advantage of focussing on at most a handful of items. Thanks to how easy it is these days to exchange information it's trivial to get in-depth specifications on whatever we want.

Remember the Bad Old Days before most major vendors had their product info online? People were lucky to find any information anywhere. Brand, faith, and luck were pretty much all we had.

Now, however we can pop right on over to the various manufacturers' websites and get all the information we could want about the product. No info available? Hmmm, maybe that product drops off the list right there.

As if that wasn't enought, we can go to Consumer Reports' website and see what they think of a product. We can go to Epinions and see if a bunch of people we don't know are griping about it. We can check Reseller Ratings to see if an online store is screwing people over, or really trying to do business.

This kind of information flow has the potential to really improve quality and reward quality as word of crappy products/merchants gets out. In addition, we get a better statistical sampling since we have more people commenting than just the one or two we might know who bought the same thing.

Unfortunately, the bitter portion of me has to concede that most people just don't have the motivation to do any research. To them, I say you deserve what you get. ;-)

Also, you might want to go to http://www.resellerratings.com/ and complain about the reseller there. I think it should also have been the responsibility of the reseller to inform you that it came with a crippled hard drive without a CD.

You should realize though that most of these companies purchase the hardware from companies like Sager (Linux forum) and Compal, and those companies also supply the big-name guys like Compaq, HP, Dell, and Toshiba. So when you find some no-name laptop, it is usually equivalent to some branded laptop that never touched the hands of HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Dell. (And figuring out exactly *which* brand-name laptop it is equivalent to can be extremely difficult) Some of the below claim to manufacture their own notebooks, but what this means is that they buy them from Saeger/Compal or someone else, and put in a hard drive/CPU/RAM, which is why you will find identical looking cases at several of these vendors.

If you find a HP/Compaq/Toshiba/Dell/IBM/Sony branded laptop that has linux preinstalled, it means that the vendor paid for windows and removed it. I do not list them below because I think this is a despicable and deceptive practice. These manufacturers do not (yet) sell no-os or linux laptops. (But please, call them and ask!! The squeaky wheel gets the grease!) Also if you order a no-OS laptop, please request linux to be installed anyway, and tell them you'll pay for it! Let them know there is demand!

1. Linux-preinstalled laptops
2. ASA Computers
3. ASLab (Linux Forum)
4. American Computer
5. Cyclox
6. Kachina Tech (positively ancient laptops -- K6 and PII)
7. QLI Tech
8. Workstation 2000

1. No-os laptops
2. ARM Computer
3. Chem USA
4. Mtech Laptops (these guys outright lied to me about what they could deliver, in order to get my order, were not able to deliver the laptop, and I had to cancel my order -- which took 3 months to process and they kept $5 for the priviledge -- do not do business with them)
5. PC Torque
6. Power Notebooks (very good customer service according to Reseller Ratings) (Linux forum)
7. Xtreme Notebooks

-- Bob

Check out these guys. They have a pretty good variety of notebooks, the OS is optional, they are VERY highly rated in www.resellerratings.com and even host a linux forum for folks using something else.

Like it or not folks, as e-mail becomes more important, it will be used by business to do business. Hopefully they will refrain from jamming everyone's inbox with "buy buy buy," (something I do not support), but if businesses and professionals can't introduce themselves to one another, the economy stops. Period.

What, these people have never heard of Google? Pricewatch.com? Pricegrabber.com? ResellerRatings.com?

If you think business will need to rely on blind dispatch of email to random people to grow and prosper, then business is in deep doo-doo.

Schwab

Depending on their income and technological proficiency, I'd either point them at Dell or http://resellerratings.com.

These guys have a superb rating on ResellerRating , so why deal with some amateur / potential crook at Ebay?

Customer reviews of Tiger Direct

Their ResellerRatings page is damned impressive. I haven't bought much from them so far (only a hard drive recently), but they'll definitely get first dibs on my future purchases.

I just saw an ad for tigerdirect on Slashdot. Yes, the scam artist company with the horrible BBB rating and the FTC investigation against them. It is highly irresponsible for Slashdot to show these ads. I warn all Slashdotters, do not order from tigerdirect

A quick google search

One of the worst ratings on resellerratings.com

Tigerdirect also is apparently a frequent user of spam marketing.

So what's next Slashdot? Alex Chiu life rings?

"Create a 70's gas-like war where companies outbit [pricewatch.com] eachother to sell the cheapest yet greatest. This is bad for the consumer, because he can generally get duped into purchasing that's either junk or way more than they need (or both). "

This can hurt the consumer because the consumer is dumb. Research your stuff, if you've got a geforce 1, then going and getting a geforce 2 isn't going to give you any huge boost. Oh no.

Would it be better to have a stagnant market in which you don't have to worry about 'buying more than you need', simply because it's impossible? Would you rather have it so there is no option to go beyond absolute neccesity?

As for the prices, I think competition is a good thing. The company I usually buy hardware from has good prices, but they are almost never the lowest on pricewatch. Still, I've had a lot of deals go smoothly with them, and their reputation is great.

Service, Service, Service.

Pray for destructive viruses... They are lucrative. Pray that Microsoft and Apple never get their acts together. Their crap software and hardware generates Lots of service. Thank all the major hardware vendors for all their crap hardware too. Never put a crap power supply, motherboard, CPU cooler or generic memory into a machine you build for sale. It will come back-and service will be on your dime. Never flash a bios for a customer unless you have an Identicle motherboard in stock AND you put the system on battery backup. Check out VIA's Eden platform to build an OEM price undercutting system. Never attempt service on a computer older than PII/Win98SE/SDRAM/FlavoredMac. You will break more than you fix by changing anything in their system. Spend 2 hours a day MINIMUM researching hardware and software online. Learn apply a mechanic's lien to a computer when you put $300 labor into a system and the customer won't pay. Get on a first name basis with your sales rep at each of these places. If your shop is really small, use pricewatch and RESELLER RATINGS.

Yes, pricewatch rocks, and it's an invaluable tool. The second invaluable site is resellerratings.com. These two sites together rock! I've built about 15 machines so far using these sites, and so far no horror stories.

Like others have mentioned, I've been using newegg a lot lately - they have great prices and great service in my experience.

Once you have decided what you want, you can do this for most of your items:

1. Check Pricewatch for lowest prices. (they now include S&H in the total)
2. Check the credibility of the companies with the lowest prices on pricewatch with ResellerRatings.com .
   I cant emphasize this enough. THIS is the most important step.

Other stuff:
You may be interested in special items, like a modded case, or a watercooling setup, these you have to look into yourself and you won't find them on pricewatch. Not necessary to build a computer.

In case you didn't know, it's back, and better than before. clicky clicky