After seeing a few people scrambling around 3-4 DAYS before Xmas, I'm amazed how much stuff was actually delivered on time.
I, for one, like to order early. AND, I'm actually quite happy with buy.com. I have consistently found them to have the lowest prices on almost everything I want. (And they had free shipping for the first (?) weekend of December.)
I ordered many of my X-mas presents direct from Buy.Com. The results were mixed:
- A few items appeared within 2 days of ordering!
- Most things were shipped within 7 days of ordering.
- Two things are still on order. (A movie, and a couple of kids books.)
Now the movie was a popular one that has been back-ordered, and so were the kids books. I'm not going to fault Buy.Com for not being able to deliver the goods in time because lets face it: If the manufacturer isn't able to produce enough for every distributor then there will be occasional shortages.
Out of the 25 or so things I ordered online, 23 of them showed up well before X-mas. I'm quite happy with that fact!
The kids books? Well, I just went to a local store and picked up something else. When the books do arrive, I'll just keep them until their next birthday.
All in all, I'll continue to shop online. For those of us miles from a city, it's nice not to have to drive all over town (polluting the air and such).
When Windows goes into Safe Mode, it does not load any "unecessary" drivers--including USB! So everyone that goes out and buys these USB-only motherboards are going to have a *lot* of fun. How on earth do you manipulate a computer without a keyboard or a mouse? (Another example of Microsoft brilliance!)
Here's a tip to all Windows support techs: Carry your own keyboard and mouse from now on!
It is not really a good idea to hot-swap either AT or PS/2 keyboards as they were not designed with that in mind. There is 5 volts of power flowing through both types of keyboard connectors. While you may get away with connecting and disconnecting the keyboard (either type) with success some of the time, you'll eventually zap your hardware! [A friend of mine used to hot swap AT keyboards all the time until it killed both his keyboard AND his motherboard.]
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After seeing a few people scrambling around 3-4 DAYS before Xmas, I'm amazed how much stuff was actually delivered on time.
I, for one, like to order early. AND, I'm actually quite happy with buy.com. I have consistently found them to have the lowest prices on almost everything I want. (And they had free shipping for the first (?) weekend of December.)
I ordered many of my X-mas presents direct from Buy.Com. The results were mixed:
- A few items appeared within 2 days of ordering!
- Most things were shipped within 7 days of ordering.
- Two things are still on order. (A movie, and a couple of kids books.)
Now the movie was a popular one that has been back-ordered, and so were the kids books. I'm not going to fault Buy.Com for not being able to deliver the goods in time because lets face it: If the manufacturer isn't able to produce enough for every distributor then there will be occasional shortages.
Out of the 25 or so things I ordered online, 23 of them showed up well before X-mas. I'm quite happy with that fact!
The kids books? Well, I just went to a local store and picked up something else. When the books do arrive, I'll just keep them until their next birthday.
All in all, I'll continue to shop online. For those of us miles from a city, it's nice not to have to drive all over town (polluting the air and such).
When Windows goes into Safe Mode, it does not load any "unecessary" drivers--including USB! So everyone that goes out and buys these USB-only motherboards are going to have a *lot* of fun. How on earth do you manipulate a computer without a keyboard or a mouse? (Another example of Microsoft brilliance!)
Here's a tip to all Windows support techs: Carry your own keyboard and mouse from now on!
It is not really a good idea to hot-swap either AT or PS/2 keyboards as they were not designed with that in mind. There is 5 volts of power flowing through both types of keyboard connectors. While you may get away with connecting and disconnecting the keyboard (either type) with success some of the time, you'll eventually zap your hardware! [A friend of mine used to hot swap AT keyboards all the time until it killed both his keyboard AND his motherboard.]