I used to live on ubid. I once bought a $700 hub (24-port) for $80 and resold it for $450. I've gotten a $3500 laptop for around $1200 off there, too. Somewhere along the way, clueless folks ruined it by bidding prices over what I could go somewhere else online and buy it for. I stopped going there. I've also heard of people getting burned lately there. I doubt I'll ever use them again. Most of my electronic and computer purchases are online. I probably spend more money online than at B&M's. When you can get things like a 120 GB hard drive for $70+ when the cheapest you can find the same drive elsewhere is around $179, hell yeah, I'm gonna keep buying online.
hey DoD, I want to get a laptop but only need it for internet access. Recommendations on places to look since you buy so much stuff online?
Thanks Jeff. I think I saw refman recommend that one in another thread also. I keep seeing these $200 machines on ebay. Do you think those are some kinda ripoff or might that serve my purpose?
HayesStreet, I don't buy anything off eBay (I'm too chicken)... especially not anything expensive. Price search engines that I use off the top of my head : www.shopper.com www.pricegrabber.com www.nextag.com www.pricewatch.com And when you find a store that's selling something you like and you can't figure out how in the hell they sell it so cheap, you may want to go to www.resellerratings.com to check out what others think about them. You can also go to coupon/hot deal sites like www.fatwallet.com forums.anandtech.com (hot deals forum) www.jumpondeals.com to see if you can get coupons. I know Dell often has 10%-15% off hardware sales and if you're buying a laptop, that can be a lot of money. I got my 120GB hard drive from Dell using a coupon stacked on a rebate. Ended up getting about $100 off the original $179 price.
HayesStreet, Try this one. I don't know much about laptops, but at staples.com you can get an HP laptop for $700. Follow the instructions at techbargains.com. It has a couple of rebates which are always a pain, but seems like a good price. Also, seems like Dell Always has some sort of deal on laptops. Keep an eye on any of the sites listed above - they publish a laptop deal every other day...
For that matter, Gateway has a 2GHz laptop for $999 right now (though there's no rebates to drive down the eventual cost... I just hate mail-in rebates, mostly because I forget to send them in a lot of times. And there have been many times when I've just never gotten the rebate despite mailing in the required documentation). But if you're just looking for something to get email, you don't really need all that much computing power. The problem I've found is that it can cost $500 or $600 just to get a hideously (but still marginally useable) laptop at a lot of places. I figure if I'm going to spend that much, I might as well spend a few hundred more and get something that's more useful and likely going to last at least a little longer than an older, far less powerful machine will. If you don't mind the rebates, that Staples deal is a good one.
