Now, with the start of the holiday shopping season just
days away, let's shift gears and survey some online shopping sites:
Techbargains.com, CNET Shopper.com, and eBay.com Shopping.
We'll look at where you can find some of the season's biggest tech
bargains - both for your personal and corporate gift-giving, as well as
for more routine PC related purchases for your small business.
techbargains.com
Run by the self-proclaimed Chief Bargainmeister, the
motto of techbargains.com
is "helping you
find the best deal on the best products."
At the heart of techbargains.com is a Recommended
Products area, organized into subsections including Computer Systems,
Imaging, Networking, Printers, Software, Sound, and Video.
techbargains.com also features a special Coupons
section, with offers from a variety of vendors such as Sharper Image,
IBM, Gateway, Dell, Crutchfield, Best Buy, and Amazon.
The techbargains.com Rebate section, although not as well populated as
the Coupons area, displays mail in rebates on products from vendors such
as Compaq, Palm, Samsung, and Yahama.
Also, don't miss the techbargains.com Deal Forums message boards. Quite
active with posts, techbargains.com Deal Forums is divided up into functional threads
including Coupons & Deals, Free Stuff, Merchant Problems, Product
Reviews, and Rebates.
Although the home page for techbargains.com is a little
busy, and didn't quite fit on my monitor at 800x600 video resolution,
techbargains.com pulls together a lot of valuable, objective product
sales information in one place; research that would conceivably take you
hours to discover on your own.
ZDNet/CNET Shopper.com
Organized into over 20 main level topics, covering
everything from Desktops to Notebooks to Cameras, CNET Shopper.com
ties together product reviews with price comparison services.
On the day I visited, CNET Shopper.com was featuring the
Kodak DX3500 as the "Latest in Digital Cameras".
By clicking on the first displayed link, I found a
well-organized page leading to a product review, as well as price and
merchant reviews for dozens of online stores carrying that particular
digital camera.
CNET Shopper.com adds an extra measure of protection by
offering up a "CNET Certified Store" logo next to select
merchants.
From this same section, I could also read reviews and
get comparison prices on the CNET Shopper.com Editors' Top 5 camcorders and bargain
cameras.
Each CNET Shopper.com summary page is punctuated with links to "What
to Look For", "Compare Products", as well as one-sentence
summaries of each product categorized under "The good",
"The bad", and "The bottom line".
And as you can probably imagine, any web site that sums
up with "The bottom line" is OK in my book!
eBay
Finally, no survey on holiday season PC bargains would
be complete without a quick trip to eBay Shopping.
For those of you who've never purchased or sold an item
on eBay Shopping before, eBay Shopping is primarily an online auction site where buyers
bid on items that sellers post. Even more interesting, eBay Shopping is
continually sited as the shining example of a financially
successful "dot com".
While eBay Shopping already has a Specialty Site set up for
Holiday Gifts, I'd recommend starting your search under the Computers or
Networking & I.T. category.
Because of the nature of eBay Shopping, the available offerings
are extremely dynamic.
To get a feel for what's available, I visited the
Computers category and clicked on the link for Scanners, under the
Accessories & Peripherals heading.
From there, I could choose from over 1,500 scanners. So
I narrowed down my search to just USB-based scanners, and then further
selected just those items whose auctions were ending today.
Unlike the merchants that techbargains.com or CNET
Shopper.com will steer you toward, some of the sellers on eBay Shopping view the
popular auction site as the Internet equivalent of a garage sale or flea
market.
So, take extra care to check out the seller when
purchasing on eBay Shopping. Fortunately, eBay Shopping provides built-in feedback and a
points system that you can easily click on to read about other shoppers'
experiences with the merchant you're considering purchasing from.
With eBay Shopping, the barriers to entry are relatively low. So,
you'll encounter many part-time or hobbyist merchants operating out of a
spare bedroom.
You'll also find many larger vendors who use eBay
Shopping to
liquidate slow-moving merchandise --- perfect finds for your holiday
tech shopping list.
|
Spare PC Hardware
Tip #18 -- Figure out your cost of downtime and invest
accordingly in spare PC hardware.
|
