The PC Informant » Shopping

Can you trust eBay reputations?

Vic Laurie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:38:15 +0000

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 in the International Journal of Electronic Business suggests that unscrupulous vendors on the online marketplace eBay can easily buy a good reputation and so circumvent recent efforts by the company to prevent feedback fraud.

Holiday gadget review

Vic Laurie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:37:54 +0000

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 back-to-back industry shows in New York last week.

Heavyweights Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Palm, and Toshiba exhibited everything from supersmart digital displays to the latest in communication devices to cutting-edge geek chic. Also here in New York were smaller firms, such as Avaak, which promoted its wireless peel-and-stick video cameras that last one year before you have to replace the battery.

Amazon – the world’s general store?

Vic Laurie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:51:24 +0000

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 that Amazon had become a major seller of electronics and clothes. I bought my rubies locally but I have begun to use Amazon for a lot more than books.

The Sunday business section of the New York Times has taken notice of the expanded merchandising by Amazon and has an article, Can Amazon Be the Wal-Mart of the Web? The Times says:

In other words, in an increasingly digital age, Amazon is quickly becoming the world’s general store. Alongside the books and CDs and DVDs are diapers, Legos and power drills, not to mention replacement car clutches and more arcane items like the Jackalope Buck taxidermy mount ($69.97).

Amazon seems on its way to becoming something like what Sears, Roebuck was to the mail order business back in my youth and before. The Sears catalog used to be the main place for many families to find all sorts of purchases back then.

Buy your new Chevrolet on eBay

Vic Laurie — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:03:22 +0000

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 California’s 250 GM dealers will be offering Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac vehicles for sale on a co-branded page of eBay Motors, the site’s auto marketplace. Auctions will start September 8 and vehicles will be searchable both from the eBay and eBay Motors homepages.

Radio Shack changing its name

Vic Laurie — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:30:44 +0000

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, the chain has survived while other electronics stores have been going out of business. Although it once sold a popular line of Tandy computers, Radio Shack is no longer a front-line technology store. However, it seems that the company wants to spruce up its image and is going to change the name by dropping “Radio” and becoming just “The Shack”. Personally, I don’t think the name change is going to help business very much.

For a little reminiscing, see Harry McCracken’s selection of old Radio Shack commercials.

Guides for buying a laptop

Vic Laurie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:10:54 +0000

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 free upgrade will be available for any Windows PC that you buy before then. Microsoft has a site listing OEMS that will be providing upgrades. There may be some kind of charge involved.

Low cost laptops

Vic Laurie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:00:52 +0000

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 Radeon Xpress 1200 graphics, 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition.

But the offer quickly sold out. Now CNET reports that Wal-Mart is offering the following:

Starting July 26 (this coming Sunday), Wal-Mart will begin selling a $298 Compaq Presario notebook (CQ60-419WM) with the following specifications: a 15.6-inch display, 3GB of memory, a 160GB hard-disk drive, a CD-DVD drive, and Windows Vista pre-loaded. The laptop will use a 2.10 GHz AMD Sempron SI-42 processor and Nvidia GeForce 8200M graphics.

Again the quantities are limited. The laptop is said to come with Vista installed but I couldn’t find which version. I assume that, like the Best Buy offer, Vista Home Basic is what you get. And therein lies a catch. Home Basic is not to be confused with Home Premium; it is really basic with no fancy graphics. And, if I understand correctly, Home Basic is not eligible for upgrading to Windows 7. [Correction: Apparently, you can upgrade but a clean install is required.] However, it is something newer and with more safety features than XP and probably will serve the needs of many home users quite adequately.

The next post gives some more information on shopping for a laptop.

Responding to spam

Vic Laurie — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:05:24 +0000

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 new report, a full 12 percent of Internet users have actually wanted to pay for some product or service being advertised by e-mail.

Be honest: have you ever responded to a spam e-mail? Do you know anyone who has? If you’re like most of us at Ars, you can’t fathom why anyone would respond to most of the messages we get, but a new study released by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) shows that there are just enough people responding to make spamming worthwhile—especially since most spam these days is sent by botnets.

According to the group’s latest report, a disturbing number of e-mail users respond to spam, and not just because they’re dumb—some of them did so because they were actually interested in the product or service. Shocking, we know.

The survey only involved 800 interviews and I am always suspicious of small sample sizes. Nonetheless, it is clear that spam is a big business and enough people are responding to make it profitable for the spammers (and scammers).

Amazon (and others) face the taxman

Vic Laurie — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:02 +0000

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 a nice pricing advantage for Internet vendors and Amazon has a big business with billions in sales. So how will Amazon and the like be affected if they lose their tax-free edge? I know that I might end up buying more at Barnes & Noble and less at Amazon. However, MarketWatch reports that analysts believe Amazon might not be hurt much by having taxes added to its costs:

Amazon.com Inc. is clearly nervous about the issue of collecting sales tax, but several analysts believe the e-commerce giant would still do well even if it had to tax all sales at the same rate as its traditional retail rivals.

Of course, this may be a moot issue in the future since I strongly suspect that a federal value-added tax will have to be instituted to help pay the enormous federal debt.

How about you? Would you buy more from local merchants if Internet purchases were taxed at the same rate as local purchases?

Buying or selling a car

Vic Laurie — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:00:27 +0000

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: