Shopping
Can you trust eBay reputations?
An important consideration in dealing with others on eBay is their reputation rating. These ratings are supposed to reflect the feedback from those who have had previous transactions with the person in question. But are those reputation ratings reliable? Science Daily reports a study that says there may be problems:
A new study to be published [...]
Holiday gadget review
Shopping for Christmas starts earlier every year. PC World already has a selection of gadgets to look at:
When it comes to gadgets and gear, smaller is better, high fashion is in vogue, and affordability will be king this holiday buying season. That’s the message from tech firms that showed off their holiday wares at [...]
Amazon – the world’s general store?
Every time I look at the Amazon site, it seems there is something new for sale there. For example, preparatory to buying my wife an anniversary present, I was doing some Web research about jewelry and I discovered that you can even buy rubies and diamonds and the like through Amazon. I had already noticed [...]
Buy your new Chevrolet on eBay
It seems that General Motors is going to sell cars on eBay. Daily Tech posts:
As part of the government-driven automaker’s bid for revival, GM will be switching to selling some vehicles online, an industry first.
Additional information on the drive was just released. The trial deployment will start in California. In total, 225 of [...]
Radio Shack changing its name
I can’t remember the first time I went into a Radio Shack store- it was a very long time ago. I vaguely remember I used to buy vacuum tubes there. Except for an occasional odd adapter or a less common battery type, I have bought very little from Radio Shack for quite a while.
Remarkably, [...]
Guides for buying a laptop
It’ll soon be back-to-school time and you may be looking for a laptop for the students in your household. MakeUseOf has a post about 9 sites to obtain reviews of laptops.
Buying a laptop for fall is more complicated this year because Windows 7 is coming out in October. Be sure to find out if a [...]
Low cost laptops
Offerings of low cost laptops are popping up in various places. However, they are in limited supply and soon sell out. For example, CNET reported that Best Buy had a 15″ Acer for $299 with these specs:
An AMD Athlon 64 processor, 15.6-inch WXGA display, 2GB DDR2 memory, DVD-RW drive, 160GB hard disk drive, ATI [...]
Responding to spam
I am not sure how accurate the numbers are but if you believe a recent study, an astonishing number of people try to buy stuff from spammers. Ars Technica reports:
Good luck trying to find an Internet user who admits to responding to spam. Still, they’re out there, and in pretty good numbers. According to a [...]
Amazon (and others) face the taxman
Amazon and other businesses that sell over the Internet without paying state sales taxes are coming under more and more pressure from revenue-hungry state governments. Several states have already passed laws that get around the federal government restrictions on out-of-state taxation and it is inevitable that more states will follow.
Not paying sales tax represents [...]
Buying or selling a car
Whether you are buying or selling a car, the Internet is an indispensable source of information. There are a number of sites that provide invaluable data about car prices. I last mentioned this subject over a year ago and here is an update. Some useful sites are:
Edmunds.com
TrueCar.com
Kelley Blue Book
AutoTrader.com
Walmart to be new Circuit City?
I have bemoaned the decline of the big box electronic stores as several went bankrupt and left Best Buy without much nation-wide competition. However, Walmart may be expanding its electronics offerings. Technologizer reports:
Wal-Mart is making a move to become a premier electronics destination and gain share in the wake of Circuit City’s demise. Beginning [...]