Searching For a Deal?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://pocketpcthoughts.pricegrabber.com' target='_blank'>http://pocketpcthoughts.pricegrabber.com</a><br /><br /></div>Since this is a weekend full of saving money, I wanted to remind everyone that Pocket PC Thoughts has partnered with Pricegrabber to give you a resource for finding the best deals all the time. To access it, just click on the SHOP link in the upper left-hand navigation area, use the search box in the upper right, or go to <a href="http://pocketpcthoughts.pricegrabber.com">pocketpcthoughts.pricegrabber.com</a>. When you're searcing for low prices, every time you click on a vendor listing to go see their price, the site gets a few cents. It's not much, but it adds up, and we greatly appreciate your support. Thanks!

[Foo Fighter]

Pricegrabber is awesome. CNET Shopper.com is another good resource. But sometimes direct vendors like Dell offer the best prices on certain items. I just bought an 18" LCD and got quite a good deal. :)

The key to using Pricegrabber though is find the best prices, and then get a more reputable retailer or reseller to match that price. Once I've done my homework, I go to Staples, Amazon, or CDW and get them to match my price as closely as possible. If that fails, I go back and look at the lowest prices and go up a few notches to find larger vendors that come close to the least price. I would much rather pay more through retailers like PC Mall, PC connection, CDW, Amazon, Buy.com, Computers4sure, or eCost than buy from some sneezy outfit like "A to Z computers".

Be sure to research a vendor you are unfamiliar with to see if they are legitimate. Also be weary of prices that are unusually low. Read the fine print, sometimes online retailers will present refurbished hardware as "new". Another thing to watch is the bait and switch tactic. A company will list extremely low prices, and then jack up shipping.

Word to the wise. :wink:

[Fzara]

Nice. Thanks Foo. ;)

Another awesome resource is Slickdeals.net, and fatwallet.com.

Also, although I havent tried it, I heard Staples matches any price, internet price too, by 110%. Word to the wise. ;)

[Newsboy]

I never knew this, thanks for posting it. I use PriceGrabber all the time.

[Jason Dunn]

I never knew this, thanks for posting it. I use PriceGrabber all the time.

Hmm...that's a bit distressing. :D Any suggestions how we could have made it more obvious to you?

[Newsboy]

Ummm....how about a section on deals and bargains, with an obvious link/tagline at the top of the page by a pricegrabber search box. I often frequent TechBargains.com, and would love to see tech/PPC related deals at PocketPCThoughts. It would give me one less site to frequent.

[MPSmith]

That's a great idea, Newsboy.

I've often wondered why this site doesn't have a "Great Deals" forum. Considering how much "stuff" there can be to buy for a PPC, a consumer has to watch their pennies. I'd appreciate a forum to help me watch my bottom line. Also, it's a good place to advise where a good deal might not be so good. Often, you will see a great price posted and later discover that shipping is triple what it ought to be or they only have 3 in stock when they posted the deal.

Let's continue to try to watch out for each other. This kind of forum wil continue that trend.

I know the Amish do "barn-raisings". Jason, do we need to come over to your house and do a "forum-raising"? :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

Ummm....how about a section on deals and bargains, with an obvious link/tagline at the top of the page by a pricegrabber search box. I often frequent TechBargains.com, and would love to see tech/PPC related deals at PocketPCThoughts. It would give me one less site to frequent.

Can I ask how this would be better than the current method of:

1) Submitting deals to the news@ alias
2) We evaluate
3) We post
4) Everyone gets to see it

Remember that not everyone goes into the forums...I'm not opposed to the idea of creating another forum, but I question the need for it.

[Newsboy]

Here's a deal to get you all in the right spirit...

SanDisk Ultra Compact Flash, 512 MB...$97.33 @ Dell Home, no tax most states, shipped free. (And yes, they're in stock! Just ordered mine, final cost just $97.33 shipped to NY!)

Click the link! (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?Sku=A0079147&category_id=&customer_id=19&c=us&l=en&cs=19)

Note: I DON'T recommend jumping on the deals all over the place for the regular SanDisk Compact Flash cards. I tried one in my Kodak MC3 digicam/vidcam/mp3 player...and got an "insufficient data rate" error.

This (http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/) article has a handy comparison of read/write transfer rates of various manufacturers' Compact Flash Memory cards. Note that the SanDisk Ultra is approaching mid-pack, whereas the SanDisk CF card is at the bottom of the heap. Write performance is becoming more and more important with multi-megapixel cameras. Faster write = less time between shots.

[Newsboy]

Of interest from that article I linked to...the "street price" for the 512 MB SanDisk Ultra CF card has dropped from $500 as of 10/15/2001 to just under $100 less than 18 months later. Ain't progress great!? :D

[MPSmith]

Can I ask how this would be better than the current method of:

1) Submitting deals to the news@ alias
2) We evaluate
3) We post
4) Everyone gets to see it

Remember that not everyone goes into the forums...I'm not opposed to the idea of creating another forum, but I question the need for it.

Personally, I would use it ALOT, when I was in the market for a particular piece of equipment. Further, the deals would be in a separate place and not intermingled with other news items.

Maybe a poll would be in order.

[Kati Compton]

What about creating a new Hot Deals forum with threads that are started by admins (after deals have been submitted), but allow user replies.

Then on the front page, you could have in either the left or right column, the pricegrabber link that you have, a direct link to the forum, and a list of the 10 most recent deals?

This would get the info out to the people that don't normally visit the forums, but would keep it neat and more obvious than before, but without cluttering up the main front page posts?

Obviously there are many other solutions, but it's one idea.

[Pony99CA]

Can I ask how this would be better than the current method of:

1) Submitting deals to the news@ alias
2) We evaluate
3) We post
4) Everyone gets to see it

Remember that not everyone goes into the forums...I'm not opposed to the idea of creating another forum, but I question the need for it.

I understand the usefulness of posting deals on the home page, and I appreciate it. I've found some good deals that way. Believe or it not, I almost never look at the new posts. I read the home page, look at topics I've previously posted to and check the "Last 10 posts" section on the home page.

However, making the existing Hot Deals forum full access would have several advantages (at least to us, if not your affiliates :-)).

1) Word gets out faster. Submitting as news is good, for the reasons I listed above, but when I submitted the Neutron Express 256 MB SD card deal, it took about two days to get posted on the home page. It was mentioned in the forums once or twice by somebody other than me before the home page posting.

2) It doesn't have to get "evaluated". I'm not sure what "evaluation" consists of, but the paranoid among us might be leery of that. Some (not me, of course) might worry that you won't post things that don't get you affiliate credit or have a conflict with your advertisers.

3) Some people don't use the home page. I saw one person in the forum who said he almost never uses the home page, preferring to rely on the New Posts list (which will show items from the home page, too, of course).

4) Deals could be centralized. The way things get posted now, affiliates post in the Hot Deals forum, you guys post on the home page and everybody else finding a deal posts in some other forum, possibly a hardware-specific one even for devices that work with many Pocket PCs.

If you open the Hot Deals forum up, you could have affiliates mention if you get a cut of any purchases, allowing those of us who want to support the site to feel good when we buy from them. Adding a line automatically saying "Pocket PC Thoughts gets a small commission for everyone buying this" might help you. I know that I have munged some Amazon links to include your affiliate code when posting them here so you'd get a cut if anybody bought using them. :-) (I hope that's "legal"; if it is, I can easily show anybody how to make almost any Amazon purchase get Pocket PC Thoughts credit.)

Steve