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This really seems like a very unlikely event to happen to trigger the problem on these drives for most users since from my experience personally and professionally I have yet to see anyone actually know about BIOS passwords, much less about setting a password on the drive using the ATA secure drive password feature. I am surprised that this was even caught by anyone unless it was a complete fluke or there actually are people or companies using this type of a feature for security. (I don't doubt it but haven't seen it.)

I personally own the first generation Intel X25-M 80GB MLC SSD and I have written about it extensively here on this forum. I heard rumors that the new TRIM feature support will only made available to this second generation release of these drives but I'm unsure if that is really true. I'm on the fence right now whether I should sell my G1 drive and upgrade to the G2 because of this feature and also for a little more performance because I am so happy with the performance of this drive and also the current 8820 firmware that solved the fragmentation and slowdown issues.

If you are one of those folks who is still sitting around not knowing what to do when all of this Solid State Disk news is coming out all over then you are missing the biggest paradigm shift to computing performance since the transfer from floppy disks to hard drives.

With the upcoming re-release of this newly affordable drive around 2009-08-28 from Intel X25-M G2 80GB MLC SSD at ~$230 USD from Newegg or ZipZoomFly you should definitely dig down deep and save a little money to buy one of these drives and experience the biggest performance and responsiveness improvement to your computer that you could imagine.

If you need a primer on the SSD revolution check out my previous post regarding the articles to read.

Required Reading for Solid State Drives (Score 1)

I live in TN and while I still use Newegg for a small hardware purchase, usually for a whole system build I will go with ZipZoomFly

The real test of a vendor is what happens when you have trouble. I had a DOA hard drive from ZZF and their RMA process was pretty straighforward.

...and I feel your pain when it comes to paying tax on items ordered online. I have built several systems through the years, and I, like you, am building another one now to replace my old P4. After you have done your research and decided what you want, here are some places to compare prices which will not charge you tax when shipped to TN:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

http://www.directron.com/

http://www.ewiz.com/index.php

For specialty items, like heat sinks, I sometimes buy here:

http://www.frozencpu.com/index.html?id=wdw9Exum

Above all though, compare prices using these useful sites, for you may find the same part elsewhere even cheaper:

http://www.pricewatch.com/

http://www.google.com/products

Newegg is great for comparing parts and reading detailed specs/reviews, but the tax and shipping generally lead to the parts being more expensive than if they were ordered elsewhere.

MWave and ZipZoomFly are both very good alternatives to NewEgg.

As a fellow Tennessean, I'd first like to point out that Neweeg is still a great choice. I order from them regularly because:
1) They are usually still nearly the cheapest
2) They ship quick
3) If it ships from their TN center, I have it the next day
4) Their customer service ROCKS
5) Their website is the best of any I've used.

If I don't use them, I will use either mwave, ZipZoomFly, or (if you don't mind open-box items) Tech For Less (just remember to leave a comment when ordering that you know wtf you are doing, else they will hold your order until they get ahold of you).

I've also used ProVantage a time or two, but really only when they had a good deal.

Warranty periods for 750 gig and 1 terabyte drives from Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi, are 3 years to 5 years according to the info on zipzoomfly.com.

A one year warranty doesn't seem that common. External drives seem to have one year warranties, but even SATA drives at Best Buy mostly have 3 years

Warranty periods for 750 gig and 1 terabyte drives from Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi, are 3 years to 5 years according to the info on zipzoomfly.com.

A one year warranty doesn't seem that common. External drives seem to have one year warranties, but even SATA drives at Best Buy mostly have 3 years

Warranty periods for 750 gig and 1 terabyte drives from Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi, are 3 years to 5 years according to the info on zipzoomfly.com.

A one year warranty doesn't seem that common. External drives seem to have one year warranties, but even SATA drives at Best Buy mostly have 3 years

If $500 is too much then it's probably not a great time to be trying to upgrade your machine anyway, at least not if you want a gaming rig. But I have to point out that if you shop around you don't have to pay top dollar like that. For instance, the Asus P5B is a perfectly workable motherboard equipped with Socket 775 (for your Core2Duo) for $120. The lower end Core2Duos can easily be had for another $120, Memory is cheap. And you can even get a pretty good graphics card for under $200. Granted, this isn't top of the line parts (you have a lot of headroom on the C2D), but it would last for years assuming you don't want to run whatever the next Crytech-based game is.

This mobo has everything integrated (sound, video, sata/raid and dual gb nics) for about $64.

looks like a low end proc for it would run about $50, zzf has 2 gig Corsair ram kits on sale for $35 after rebate.

Then case and power supply would run about $120 (for a good ps and a cheapo case)

then a couple of these WD 500gb sata drives for $166.

That's $435 + shipping.

did i forget anything?

That's just a real quick browse on ZZF, I didn't really look into the parts, but i've always been a big fan of ASUS. Any body see anything i should change? or any major screw ups on my part?

This mobo has everything integrated (sound, video, sata/raid and dual gb nics) for about $64.

looks like a low end proc for it would run about $50, zzf has 2 gig Corsair ram kits on sale for $35 after rebate.

Then case and power supply would run about $120 (for a good ps and a cheapo case)

then a couple of these WD 500gb sata drives for $166.

That's $435 + shipping.

did i forget anything?

That's just a real quick browse on ZZF, I didn't really look into the parts, but i've always been a big fan of ASUS. Any body see anything i should change? or any major screw ups on my part?

... and ten minutes later the kid is looking at porn when he notices a neighbor's open wifi.

And if you don't have a wifi network, the kid picks up one of these set to client mode and still finds the neighbor's open wifi. And you won't know about it because he keeps it hidden along with a USB key he stores the 'good stuff' on.

You can't stop it. What you're fighting against here isn't just the kid. You're fighting against the entire computer industry, pda industry and cell phone industry. These companies are highly motivated to connect their customers and make it easy because it sells.

The best reference would be the official Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). But here is a piece of advice: the whole family of nVidia nForce chipsets is generally well supported by Solaris: any motherboard based on the nForce 4, nForce 500 (and maybe nForce 600) chipset should work flawlessly with Solaris, that includes probably more than half of the market of entry-level and mid-range motherboards. In my case I wanted a cheap, low-power, GbE-enabled fileserver capable of serving files over NFS at a throughput of 70-80% of the bandwidth of a GbE link. So I bought the most inexpensive nForce 4 mobo I found on newegg, with on-board GbE (even entry-level GbE controllers are easily capable of saturating a GbE link nowadays), and with a socket 754 (so I could use it with a low-power 25W Turion processor).

Regarding the SATA controller to use, I would recommend you either the Marvell 88SXxxxx family (such as the 88SX6081: 8-port, PCI-X, about $100), or the Silicon Image 3124 (4 ports, PCI-X, about $60), or an AHCI compatible controller (such as the built-in SATA controller found in modern Intel chipsets: ICH6, ICH7, etc, but you will need to use recent OpenSolaris builds: "Nevada B56" and up). Solaris supports SATA hotplug for these 3 families of SATA controllers.

I kept the list of what I bought 3 months ago:

If you buy this today, prices would be even lower ! I would feel jealous of you having a setup cheaper than mine :-)

The best reference would be the official Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). But here is a piece of advice: the whole family of nVidia nForce chipsets is generally well supported by Solaris: any motherboard based on the nForce 4, nForce 500 (and maybe nForce 600) chipset should work flawlessly with Solaris, that includes probably more than half of the market of entry-level and mid-range motherboards. In my case I wanted a cheap, low-power, GbE-enabled fileserver capable of serving files over NFS at a throughput of 70-80% of the bandwidth of a GbE link. So I bought the most inexpensive nForce 4 mobo I found on newegg, with on-board GbE (even entry-level GbE controllers are easily capable of saturating a GbE link nowadays), and with a socket 754 (so I could use it with a low-power 25W Turion processor).

Regarding the SATA controller to use, I would recommend you either the Marvell 88SXxxxx family (such as the 88SX6081: 8-port, PCI-X, about $100), or the Silicon Image 3124 (4 ports, PCI-X, about $60), or an AHCI compatible controller (such as the built-in SATA controller found in modern Intel chipsets: ICH6, ICH7, etc, but you will need to use recent OpenSolaris builds: "Nevada B56" and up). Solaris supports SATA hotplug for these 3 families of SATA controllers.

I kept the list of what I bought 3 months ago:

If you buy this today, prices would be even lower ! I would feel jealous of you having a setup cheaper than mine :-)

The best reference would be the official Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). But here is a piece of advice: the whole family of nVidia nForce chipsets is generally well supported by Solaris: any motherboard based on the nForce 4, nForce 500 (and maybe nForce 600) chipset should work flawlessly with Solaris, that includes probably more than half of the market of entry-level and mid-range motherboards. In my case I wanted a cheap, low-power, GbE-enabled fileserver capable of serving files over NFS at a throughput of 70-80% of the bandwidth of a GbE link. So I bought the most inexpensive nForce 4 mobo I found on newegg, with on-board GbE (even entry-level GbE controllers are easily capable of saturating a GbE link nowadays), and with a socket 754 (so I could use it with a low-power 25W Turion processor).

Regarding the SATA controller to use, I would recommend you either the Marvell 88SXxxxx family (such as the 88SX6081: 8-port, PCI-X, about $100), or the Silicon Image 3124 (4 ports, PCI-X, about $60), or an AHCI compatible controller (such as the built-in SATA controller found in modern Intel chipsets: ICH6, ICH7, etc, but you will need to use recent OpenSolaris builds: "Nevada B56" and up). Solaris supports SATA hotplug for these 3 families of SATA controllers.

I kept the list of what I bought 3 months ago:

If you buy this today, prices would be even lower ! I would feel jealous of you having a setup cheaper than mine :-)

zipzoomfly.com used to be called "googlegear" before Google forced them to change their name.

Either way it's still one of the best sites to buy computer parts from.

Just a little piece of web history.

be very careful when doing this though, often price and *scarcity* are related as well (i.e, trying to purchase something that has been generally discontinued by the manufacturer). There is often a large price *premium* when you're trying to buy old legacy hardware.

For example, you don't want to be stuck buying a $1004.00 Pentium-D Extreme Edition processor http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80833
  when a $180 Core2 Duo can easily beat the snot out of it.

The X2 3600+ could be had for $65 shipped free with a copy of Rainbox 6 : Vegas since last week. Sell the game for $15 - $20 and get the CPU for ~$45.
Pair it with a Biostar TA690G (the best overclocking 690G motherboard aside from the Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD) as well as some SuperTalent DDR2-667 (which seems to overclock pretty well) and you have a pretty nice setup.

Biostar TA690G at ZipZoomFly (the best deal atm w/free shipping)
2GB SuperTalent DDR2-667 at either newEgg or eWiz
If you need a cheap AM2 heatsink and some thermal paste, hit up SVC for the Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 and some Arctic Silver Ceramique

From a *trusted* on-line vendor. XP home will go for ~80-90 USD, Pro ~140. http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList.jsp?Thir dCategoryCode=071002 for example. You see it offered for much less, odds are it is a "student" version or "replacement media". OEM it typically what system builders use, so if you use that version in theory it is tied to that system. The $300 retail version can be moved from system to system, but costs a boatload more.

I can tell you I love my Treo, and I also had both for a while, but I always had to have my Palm with me for the things it did, and though I agree, email is superior on the blackberry, it's not good enough that I want to lug around another device. With my 4g SD card it's a better mp3 player than an Ipod Nano (well, better for me because I think ITunes is the devil). I have a a kickass GPS on it, so I can fly from city to city, and be able to rent a car and get to wherever the heck I need to be. With pssh I can take care of things I need to on servers anywhere, and with the browser (which also is not the best in the wireless space, but good enough for me) I can read my bloglists while riding in on the train

New Egg sent me the wrong product - twice! They seem to have this little issue where if model numbers are similar, they send you the product of their choice (not necesarily what you ordered).

I wasn't very happy when I returned it, only to have it come back AGAIN!

I ended up ordering from zipzoomfly and haven't looked back. They have an actual warehouse and very accurate "in stock/out of stock" monitoring.

I did not appreciate the nearly month of downtime afforded to me by newegg. Yuck.

Stellar folks!

Yes, as long as you are on Socket 939. If so, check your motherboard manufacturer's page for your motherboard, get the newest BIOS for it and flash the board up, and pick up a new X2 (might I suggest http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80721-1 ) to pop in. You might double check that your power supply can bear the extra load.

163.99 - Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003 (Full Version) Single-Pack OEM *** Free 2nd Day ***
224.99 - Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 (Full Version) Single-Pack OEM *** Free 2nd Day ***
289.99 - Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 (Full Version) Single-Pack OEM *** Free 2nd Day ***

From that page I also noticed that the price for the XP Small Business Edition is cheaper than the 2003 edition:

224.99 - Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 (Full Version) Single-Pack OEM *** Free 2nd Day ***
169.99 - Microsoft Office XP Small Business Edition (Full Version) Single-Pack OEM ***Free 2nd Day***

I used to do everything through NewEgg. Got a bad CPU through them, and the return went smoothly.

Unfortunately they don't have everything in the world. Recently had to replace a power supply in a Shuttle XPC. A local shop had something that would fit, but was terribly loud. Went looking for a PC 40 SilentX power supply. Newegg.com didn't have it listed, and I had a devil of a time deciding of those who did list it who was reliable.

Got lucky with ZipZoomFly.com. They had a good price & free shipping on that item. Seemed more legit than the places that made their profit on shipping.

ZipZoomFly is what used to be known as googlegear.com until Google got uncomfortable with that...I like their site and prices. I've also shopped with good success at ComputerGeeks. TigerDirect is in my experience Highly Evil and should be avoided at all costs.

I've been working with a guy helping him setup his home theater system. Right now he's upto 9 TB of storage all running off of external firewire drives (http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?P roductCode=102670-1 1TB each drive). What I really want to do is get him setup with some sort of easily upgradeable system that is redundent. Price is not the biggest issue, easy of use and ability to upgrade is the most important. Right now he's expanding at 1TB every 1.5 months. I was looking at http://coraid.com/, anyone have any other suggestions.?

I've been looking at the Maxtor Shared Storage which can be had really cheap. 300GB version for $302.

It has 2 extra USB ports on it to hang extra drives or USB printers.

The company they really need to buy is google gear because their current Google Store is hidious.

I mean a google site using ASP? bleh

You are looking for the Hitachi 7k60 my friend, it's a bad ass 7200rpm/8mb buffer/2.5 inch hd:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=100519

Just to put a context on this. $1000.00 for 1 core 3.46GHz Extreme Edition , 1066MHz FSB
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80668-2

I personally own about $500/250GBP worth of music CDs, none of which I would have bought without P2P being there. It does help the record industry make money.

The specs look pretty nice, but Shuttle does not list a price on the web site. So, I looked on Google and found a price on ZipZoomFly's web site. For $449, I have to say that is not a bad price at all although I would think other places will have nicer designs for a better price. As for the article, it is not available at the moment, but oh well, it does not seem it is worth looking at anyway judging from the posts here.

Also, I have to agree about the steel case... yikes. I suppose if you add some brackets you can bolt it on your desk to make sure nobody walks away with your new BTX form factor box. :D

I used ZipZoomFly almost exclusively to build my PC this summer. There's free two day FedEx shipping on tons of stuff, and their prices always seem to be very near or at the top of the list of best-price vendors.

I've never had to return anything to them, so I can't comment there, but do at least check them out next time you're buying PC gear.

You can get the Hitachi 400GB drives from http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ ZipZoomFly for $330.

Forced? According to zipzoomfly, they voluntarily changed their name to better reflect what they do.

Google sued googlegear, they are now Zip Zoom Fly to prevent name confusion.

Look no futher!!

you don't get a cheap laptop with an 80 gig drive

But a cheap laptop and 144.50 will.

128MB USB drive for $13 with free shipping.

Now let's see you get 100 floppies for $13.

And who can forget that logo, the lima bean?

I think the most well known case of Google winning, at least on Slashdot, would be the former Googlegear which was forced to change its name to ZipZoomFly.

In this case, though, Froogles.com was there almost 2 years earlier, AND both names are obviously related to the English word frugal. This decision is a correct one. Perhaps Google should search for similar names next time before they start.

Happy Trails!

Erick

For home use I always go with linksys never had any problems.

This is a pretty cheap 10/100/1000 8 port switch here

.. but that slim, stylish Digimaxtrix box costs $1,112.42, starting price point.

That's not the price for the box, that's the price for the loaded system with WinXP. Do a Google search & you can find the barebones system for under $450 & add the components you need & probably come in well under $1000 (A quick check at zipzoomfly.com has a fairly basic system, 1.8G/512MB/160GB and a combo DVD player & cd burner (from NewEgg, they didn't have one at zzf) comes in at about $810). Cappuccinopc.com is even cheaper with a barebones price of $349 & similarly configured system at $764.

ZipCoomFly has it for $179 & free shipping.

Google has in recent months taken up a strategy of buying up every website with "google" in their domain name in a brand-image protection spree. They recently got computer parts storeGoogleGear.com to change its name to ZipZoomFly.com... which was a very interesting case because Google had no legal leg to stand on... the computer gear store had named its mascot a "Google" before the search engine existed, the sites looked completely different, and the computer gear store didn't do web searching and the web searching company didn't sell computer gear.

The deal was apparently struck quietly, but clearly some cash was paid. There never was any media coverage of the event, and I'm pretty sure the terms of the deal reqires the computer gear store to not disclose how much they got.

ZipZoomFlyhas these for$236 w/ free 2nd day air shipping.

I've seen plenty of them online (I got mine from googlegear.com, now zipzoomfly.com, but have seen a few at newegg). I got a Tyan retail box server board for my file server from ZZF. (I hate that new name)

Don't be afraid to shop around online... both ZZF and newegg (I buy parts from them all the time) are great retailers if you live in the US (I know, US centric but you don't specify where you live :-P)

I'm sure your local computer parts store wouldn't mind ordering you one though, for a small fee ;-) And I don't work for either company.