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Droppin Pods - Huge iPod Price Cuts

Electronics | Feb 25, 05

Apple just dropped price across its entire iPod product line, and the savings are already reflected in much lower vendor prices on PriceSCAN.com. Even more interesting, after rebates the price may be even lower than what you see on our site.

For example, today the iPod Photo 40GB is being offered by the highly rated Buy.com for $374. Now that's already a $65 drop from the low price on PriceSCAN.com last week. But if you click through to their site, you'll see that after further discounts and a $20 rebate, the price is only $339.99 - a hundred dollar price drop in a week, and that's with free shipping! Similar further discounts may be found throughout the iPod universe, so run a price comparison on PriceSCAN and click through to the vendor site. You may get an even better deal than you expected.

Posted by jeffrey.trester at 2:50 PM | Comments (0)

Go Sit on It

Home & Garden | Feb 20, 05

One of the problems with buying a chair is that it's hard to 'test drive' it long enough to matter. Some chairs that feel good when you sit on them in the showroom end up by causing near sciatic imparement when used over days, weeks and months. I suppose this could be a corollary of the old Things that look good in the shower... rule.

I recently decided to buy a chair for my home (apartment) office. This involved three principal considerations: (a) it had to function well as an office chair; (b) it had to look ok in an apartment --- where you generally can't afford to hide it away by taking a whole room for an office; and (c) cost is a factor, though, in this case, distinctly less important than other considerations.

A local high-end office decoration and workspace store had a chair I liked in the window. While it was expensive, it had several characteristics that were appealing:

1. The 'modern' style would fit well in my apartment as it looked fresh and new, but was not so very avant guarde as to be distracting;
2. You could buy an ottoman for the chair with either a work surface or a back rest or both --- thus allowing the ottoman to function both as a footrest and as an occasional extra office chair ---something particularly convenient given the space constraints of an apartment;
3. It came in colors that would fit well in a residential apartment setting;
4. It was large enough to be comfortable, but not so huge as to require special treatment with regard to space; and
5. It had lots of adjustable aspects that would let it fit into different circumstances as the apartment decoration changed.

The chair in question was a Sitag Emotion along with an E2 Ottoman. It cost about $600 for the chair and about $400 for the ottoman along with its acoutrements. I bought one and it was delivered about two weeks ago.

So far I am happy to report that the chair has passed my one day and one week tests. My guess is that it will continue to make me happy, but it's not the vote of my brain that counts with respect to that one. Suffice it to say that at least up to this point in time I find it both comfortable and effective.

I'll do a follow-up report if I find anything changes.

Posted by david.ness at 9:09 AM | Comments (0)

Deep Discounts On The Nikon Coolpix 8800

Digital Cameras & Camcorders | Feb 14, 05

Right now, some vendors on PriceSCAN are offering a top of the line Nikon camera at a huge discount to what it was going for late last year. This camera is the Nikon Coolpix 8800 and its the fourth most popular item on our site, and its 8 megapixel image sensor isn't the only reason. It also features movie capture, USB connectivity, 10x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom and a built-in flash.

Back in September 2004, the Coolpix 8800 was going for between $950 and $1000. As you can see from the PriceTrend Graph below, some vendors are now offering it for about $600.

Time Period: 9/27/2004 through 2/7/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price

If you've considered buying this very popular Nikon before but you put off by the price tag, you might reconsider now that the sticker shock has been reduced by about forty percent.

Posted by jeffrey.trester at 3:37 PM | Comments (0)

Laptops of every size and weight

Computers | Feb 13, 05

Most of us agree about what a "desktop" computer is. It is a computer that sits on your desk, and is only very occasionally moved---usually when changing offices or redecorating the home.

However, when we get to Laptops things get more complicated. Non desktop machines vary in size and weight. At the low/small end they may be under a pound and the size of a PDA. At the upper end they may weigh 10 lbs and almost fill a whole briefcase. This isn't surprising in circumstances where each of us has different needs that this technology can help us supply.

Another major issue has to do with data capture. Some of the devices have touch sensitive screens, while others do not. Some have standard sized keys, while others have either "chiclet" keys or the tiny Blackberry sized keyboards. These differences make some of the devices appropriate for entering reasonable quantities of data, while others effectively limit the available input capacity to only a few keystrokes.

Perhaps it would be useful to compare and contrast some of these "laptop roles".

First, let's discuss some terminology, all of which is used in talking about these machines, but often in a somewhat haphazard way. We'll talk a little about:

1. Cell Phones;
2. PDA-sized machines;
3. Hand-helds;
4. Tablets;
5. Super-light Notebooks;
6. Regular Notebooks and
7. Laptops;

We'll take a quick look at each size and capability. However, to make that meaningful, we will start looking at some of the problems that the various scale of machine attempts to deal with.

First,

there is the "PDA" aspect. While PDAs are, in an of themselves, an interesting category to discuss, that is not our purpose here. We are interested only in PDAs that have sufficient progamming power to be considered as a "full computer". When we add that qualification, we are looking at a much more limited set, and one which, at this point in time, is really only satisfied by some Unix-based machines. Windows (and we don't count WinCE as "windows" for our purposes) is just too complex to (so far) be delivered in a very small tightly packaged machine.

To satisy needs as a PDA, there are a few necessary characteristics. The device must be essentially instant on. Perhaps a few seconds (a very few seconds) of "boot" is tolerable, but this it is intolerable to take more than just a few seconds, as PDAs tend to be used in circumstances where there are severe time constraints. Looking for a phone number, for example, better not take very long or one will resort to other means of finding it.

PDAs also require a longer time span between battery charges than would be the case for most normal computers. PDAs are used on trips where it may be inconvenient to re-charge them every five or six hours.

Another aspect of the "mobile computer" is how, and how often, it is to be transported. For some people, they want a computer as a companion to a daily commute. For others, portability is useful when moving from home to a summer house. Sometimes we have to lug them in our briefcase, in other situations, the trunk of the car will do. One of my earliest portables was a 10 lb machine back in the days when that wasn't unusual. It made exactly two trans-continental trips with me. Thereafter I always managed to figure out some way to avoid doing this arduous transportation activity. I'd borrow a computer, re-organize work so I didn't need one, or find some other way of avoiding lugging "the brick".

Second,

So different people have different needs. None of our discussion should skip over that point. What is important for our purposes, though, is some estimate of the size of each of the different markets.

Cell Phones None of these exist yet. And they may never make it, although there is every reason to believe that a Linux-based cell phone would, technically, be quite feasible. At the moment, however, we can probably skip this category.

PDA-sized machines might be useful, not (except for the rarest of the rare individuals) as a place to engage in any serious programming activity, but rather as a place where the result of such activities might conveniently be put to use. Again, this doesn't---at least at the present time---seem like a very large market, but there would at least be some demand.

Hand-helds tend to weigh only a pound or so. Some, like the OQO have existed only as "vapor" until very recently. Others, such as Flipstart are still in that category. Still others have been serving a (albeit very expensive) niche market for some time: Antelope and Tiqit to name a couple of examples. These machines seem to be another attempt to break through into the marketplace that was once occupied, and then abandoned, by the time-honored Libretto, and I must confess that it is not clear why the current developers of this technology expect to succeed where such a machine has already failed---several years ago. But perhaps they are right and it is just time to re-cycle an old idea again in the hopes that it will catch on. Goodness knows we have done that often enough with TV series to know that it is at least possible.

Tablets have an extensive range, particularly in the cost dimension. Supposedly the soon to be available Pepper will weigh in at about $900, and will run a version of Linux as its operating base system. Other tablet devices, built by the more main-line firms, range in price from $1500 on up, reaching some very high limits for devices that are intended to operate in adverse working conditions.

Super-light Notebooks weigh in at about three pounds, and tend to have keyboards and screens that are near normal to normal sized. One of my favorite portables ever was a Sony 505 that was light, thin and had a wonderful screen and keyboard. While these devices are generally very useful for information display and capture, they generally do not have built it CDs or DVDs. The disk devices are simply too heavy, and usually connect either through a expansion base, or through some sort of PCMCIA "dongle". This means that the super-lights are wonderful for some set of problems, but---relatively speaking---a nusciance for others.

Regular Notebooks weigh five to eight pounds, and typically have full sized keyboards and a built-in CD or DVD disk drive. These days this is probably the largest category, in terms of number of units, of any of the "laptop" categories.

Laptops round out the list. Some of these get to be quite heavy, approaching ten pounds, or even more. They often have beautiful screens---today as large as 17", and are used as much as supplementary entertainment centers as they are as productive workstations. These are excellent machines to allow us to move between different sites of computation. Particularly if we can move between the sites by car, or by other means that do not require us to lug these heavy devices on our own shoulders.

Third,

So that's the layout of laptops as we see them on the market today. All have their own place, and given our own problems, some will prove to be useful while others will prove to have little value. It's getting the right match between your own problem and this exciting technology that counts.

Posted by david.ness at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

Yet More Great LCD Deals

Computers | Feb 10, 05

Yesterday, I said there were lots of LCDs listed on PriceSCAN whose prices had dropped sharply, and I can't resist highlighting one more of them today. First, take a look at the Sony StylePro SDM-S73, a 17 inch 1280 x 1024 native resolution screen that last year would have run you $425, and today can be had for about $270.

Rarely has Sony quality come so cheap. And, for those of you in a noir mood, it comes in black, too.

Posted by jeffrey.trester at 8:31 PM | Comments (1)

LCD Screens Are Getting More Affordable

Electronics | Feb 9, 05

New production facilities are pouring LCD screens into the market, and that increased supply is pushing down prices. As we moved into the New Year, this effect has become even more pronounced. Consider the Sony LF-X1 LocationFree TV, a 12.1-inch model that allows you to roam wireless up to 100 feet from its base or connect to any Wi-Fi hotspot. Back in early December of 2004 the best price for this model was almost $1,200, today you can pick it up for just over a grand.

But the price drops aren't just on the low end; the big screen prices are dropping too. For example, the JVC PD-42V475 is a 42 inch HDTV-ready screen that last September would have cost you at least $2,700 and today will run you about $2,100.

These are huge percentage drops over a very short period of time, and you can find scores of similar cases by poking around PriceSCAN. If you've waited until after the holidays to pounce on a bargain, feel free to pounce away.

Posted by jeffrey.trester at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)