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Tech on the Cheap?
andyatkinson asks: "A technology enthusiast always has more products and services to buy than he or she can possibly afford. A variety of methods will help you save money: discount, deal, and coupon websites, price comparisons, eBay, and rebates. How do you save bucks on tech?"
Rule number one: Never buy the "top-of-the-line" product. Always purchase one or two notches below it. There's usually a major price point between the fastest CPU and those below it and the difference in performance is marginal.
If you're shopping for laptops, check the chain stores like CompUSA and others. Sometimes they have special versions of manufacturer's products that are better-equipped than more widely-available items at greater cost.
EBay is definitely invaluable. Like others have said, if a new generation product comes out, like a RAID array or new server technology, you can often pick up the previous generation's products at a fraction of the cost. When Compaq discontinued one line of high performance servers, the market became flooded with these units for pennies-on-the-dollar.
For other kinds of tech, like cell phones, look into the pre-paid plans as an alternative to the standard monthly contracts. It is true, you may not find the Treo 650 on a discounted prepaid plan like you would if you committed to a two-year contract, but you can often get great phones at the same price people pay who commit to multi-year contracts when you sign up for the pay-as-you-go plans. This is a great deal that is geared normally for kids or people with bad credit, but ends up being a better deal for others who want to avoid getting locked into a particular calling plan that costs them more money later.
I have a great relationship with mine. They get off lease equipment from Dell and others which means that a lot of gear is two to five years old, but, for example, we just purchased some blade servers at 80% off of their new price. Make sure to find a good one and stick with them. My rep gives me calls when good deals come in and we get first whack. Not to advertise but my remarketer is Stallard Technologies http://www.stikc.com/.
There's no need to stay cutting edge unless you're really into the latest games or you feel a need to keep ahead of everyone else. I was that way once, but a period of extended unemployment caused me to reevaluate that attitude. :-)
I've actually been very happy using older PCs at home for years. Not only do I purchase most of my PCs and related peripherals on eBay, but I have a whole series of other sites I hit on a regular basis for various techie supplies and misc items (www.ubid.com, www.compgeeks.com, www.cyberguys.com, www.pcsurplusonline.com, etc.).
My Palm PDAs are all older (two Palm m105's, one IIIc) with the exception of my Fossil/Abacus WristPDA (which at US$49 on eBay was the least expensive of the lot). My digital camera is still a refurb Casio QV3000EX I picked up on uBid five years ago for half its retail price. The last piece of hardware I purchased was a new 16-port 10BaseT/100BaseTX auto-sensing switch for US$22 at CompGeeks. It seems to work fine. The second-to-last one was a refurb 8-port Belkin OmniView Pro KVM (F1D108-OSD-B) which I absolutely love. Cost: US$70 including 8 new 10-foot cables from a nice guy on eBay.
If you do the research, learn what what you actually need instead of what you want, and spend a little bit of time looking around, you can find a lot of good stuff for very little money.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
this might be the case at your well-mananaged company
and the part about the problem with IT is everyone trying to show each other how smart they are and looking like lost little idiots?
thats not just IT. infact that applies fourfold to most anyone wearing a tie.
i've been at my current job for 8 years and in the IT industry for nearly 20. my purchases were scrutinized when I was young and green. now? not at all. if anything now i'm the one doing the scrutinizing.
im guessing you're under 25. yes?
I've been in the refurb business and have some experience with these surplus sales. There's a couple reasons why you don't hear about them.
One, most of this surplus sales are auctions meant for volume buyers. They don't advertise them in consumer channels because they don't want to sell 1 computer to an individual, they want to sell 2000 computers to a guy with forklift and a truck that will haul them away. When companies/schools decommission large amounts of technology, they want to get them out of the way as quickly as possible. Being able to sell some of it to recoup their losses on the way to the dumpster is just a small bonus to them. They're not in the business of opening a flea market to the public.
Two, a lot of the auctioneers and the big buyers play "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" games. Pretty much to hear about the good auctions you get the information directly from the auctioneer that was hired to conduct the sale. To do that you need to be on their list to begin with, and it helps if you've been a good customer to them for a while (i.e., pay for your lots on time and get them off-site quick). Of course this creates a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario, so if you want to do this for a living it helps to make some contacts up front with other buyers and find out from them where to go. Depending on the area, once you get in good with two or three of the biggest auction houses you'll get info on most of the auctions in the area.
Auctioneers are mostly regional (there are a few national clearing houses but prices tend to be high because of the visibility), but if you're local to Texas here's a couple I suggest (that actually have web sites, a lot of them don't):
Rene Bates Auctioneers, Inc.
Lemons Auctioneers
Oh please. I just checked AdSense, $1.96 today. Yippee. AdSense revenue pays my hosting fees and helps "legitimize" the hours I spend researching and writing articles. Since real, actual earnings information is hard to come by, the only way to know the potential is to run it yourself (unless you can point me to some empirical statistics). Every webmaster knows that Slashdot visitors don't click ads.
In addition to the Parent Post, here's a few comments of my own:
Patience definitely has it's rewards. If you don't absolutely NEED the latest and greatest, wait. Saving today leads to greater consumption tomorrow, or in other words, saving today allows you to purchase the same thing for less money later. Which of course, leaves more liquid cash in your hands to purchase more things. The point is, don't be a bleeder out on the bleeding edge. It's just not worth it. The only exception to this rule is where you will immediately benefit from some new technology, in a way that will either reap you money (as you might be able to do something faster than a competitor) or that you will save money because you're able to accomplish more. But this exception is tied DIRECTLY to a benefit that is measurable. If it's just because you will feel better, or have a warm fuzzy feeling that you're the latest and greatest, then you're deceiving yourself.
I'll second the thoughts the parent post had about buying cheap stuff. Get good stuff where it matters most, like for instance, DO buy good monitors because you'll be staring at them all day, and the eyestrain with a bad monitor/DFP isn't worth the extra $$ that the cheap one saved you. Speaking of monitors/DFPs, spend good money on these. You're not likely going to upgrade them for quite a while. Think about it, how many computers have you been through and kept the same monitors? So if you don't upgrade them frequently, you can afford to spend extra money on them. Trust me, your eyes and head will thank you.
Another point: Get informed! Many times, things such as processor speed aren't relevant, because you've got bottlenecks elsewhere in the system, like in the IO subsystem, memory subsystem, etc. So just because it's a newer processor, doesn't mean it's going to do you any good (if it does, it may only be fractionally better). However, if you spent some good money on getting a faster disk subsystem, you may be able to speed up your system more effectively than with a newer processor.
Just my quarter-byte's worth.
Ignorance is lacking knowledge, stupidity is a choice of ignoring knowledge.
Use the "F" word: Fraud. Every time an employee quits, it costs the rebate company a lot to hire and train someone new. Minimum wage people don't like to think they are helping break the law. Ask the employee how she or he can justify working for a dishonest company. Tell the employee he or she has the worst job in the world.
Call the manager of the store where you bought the rebate item. Use the "F" word again. Managers have a special telephone number. The rebate company will listen to them. Store managers don't like the word fraud applied to their store; that could cost them hundreds of thousands, if the word gets around. If you don't get satisfaction from the store manager, get his or her name and call the store's main office. The people who work in main offices don't want fraud calls; and they definitely don't like fraud calls in which the name of a store manager is mentioned.
Never let rebate companies steal from you. If you ever accept that once, they will know they can do it again. Remember, there are a limited number of rebate companies, and they keep databases on those who apply for rebates. Don't allow yourself to become a known easy target.
Tell the rebate company that you will file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and your state's consumer fraud department and do it. Tell the store that sold the rebate item the same thing. See the links for filing below.
Apparently all or almost all rebate companies are involved in fraud either for their own profit, or pre-arranged with manufacturers. They try to concentrate on the customers that will accept excuses. The stores will tell you they know nothing about the fraud, but that is not true; they know very well.
Typical experience with a rebate company:
I'm not the only one to have a huge amount of trouble with Parago; read this amazingly ugly April 22, 2005 story: Parago Rebate Gripes Keep on Coming. Here is Parago's Better Business Bureau information: Parago BBB info. My experience with Parago is that the company will try many, many tricks to get you to stop expecting a rebate. Other people have reported that Parago will ask a caller to fax some information, and then give an invalid fax number. Most people don't have a fax machine, and going to an office supply store and paying to fax something discourages them. Parago changes phone numbers frequently, apparently; on March 13, 2006, someone said that (888) 641-4109 is a good number at which to call Parago. (Parago operates Rebates HQ. )
This story by Jonathan Kamens at MIT about Parago contains many Parago tricks that are very familiar to me: My "Staples Easy Rebates" Horror Story. Here are the tricks Parago used to avoid paying: