The Hunt - Online Retailers

Through eBay, I’ve discovered Justdeals.com (www.justdeals.com), where I picked up my Tyan Trinity KT S2390 motherboard. Other online stores worth mentioning are Directron, Inc. (www.directron.com); NewEgg.com (www.newegg.com); The Hard Drive Outlet (www.harddriveoutlet.com), where I purchased a 4GB SCSI hard drive for $5 (an eBay store); and the Yahoo store, Shentech.com (www.shentech.com), where you can buy a CPU and motherboard combo for under $70.

The online comparison portals, or “shopping agents,” are also helpful, not only for helping you find new and used merchandise at the lowest prices, but also to check if the bid you’re about to make is less than what you would pay to buy the product new. Dealtime.com will search hundreds of web sites for the best prices and give you a list of the retailers and a community-based rating system, much like the feedback profiles of eBay sellers.

Micro Center and OfficeMax

When I discover an exceptional deal at a retail level, the risk factor diminishes greatly. It’s a brand-new product, with warranty and an actual physical location where you can walk in and see and touch the product before purchasing it. This is why I’ll go out of my way to grab a special at an OfficeMax or Micro Center.  

Recently, I was at a computer show in Washington, D.C., where I picked up two used SoundBlaster-compatible PCI sound cards for $10. It was a great deal at the time, until Micro Center offered a special on their Inland SoundBlaster compatible PCI sound card, marked down to $6.99, with a one-year warranty. I was fortunate that my two used sound cards work fine, but the extra $1.99 would’ve been worth it.

I’ve picked up multimedia speakers, network adapters, 100 CD-Rs, and 64MB of Kingston Memory from OfficeMax (www.officemax.com) for $0.00—zero dollars, but I wasn’t shoplifting. OfficeMax routinely has promotions that offer a full rebate on the entire cost of products, so essentially they are free. OfficeMax has had promotions for memory modules, like I mentioned earlier, and more recently a 40x CD-RW drive for $19.95 (after rebates). You can also find specials for memory at Coast to Coast Memory, Inc. (www.18004memory.com) or at Crucial Technology (www.crucial.com), where at my last visit I was offered a $30 instant savings coupon on the memory I was looking for. In fact, I once asked the technicians at Micro Center about some obscure memory and they steered me to www.crucial.com, which offers a memory upgrade wizard that can help you choose the right memory for your specific motherboard or computer make and model (see Figure 2-9).

Figure 2-9 - Crucial.com offers a drop-down menu wizard with which to find the right memory for your motherboard.

Micro Center has 19 locations nationwide, but is also available online at www.microcenter.com. Fortunately for me, one of its stores is conveniently located a stone’s throw from the headquarters of Intellisys Technology, LLC, (www.intellisystechnology.com). This store offers everything at reasonable prices and has a clearance section that includes goodies from time to time. (I bought a 10/100 Mbps network adapter once for $5 and an internal fax/modem for $9.)

The standard Ethernet network connection requires a typical RJ45 Category 5 (Cat 5) cable and network adapter PCI expansion card. I picked up one of these at OfficeMax, taking advantage of one of its regular full-rebate specials. The adapter was $10 with a full $10 rebate, so essentially it was free! I picked up the GigaFast 10/ 100 Mbps at the local Micro Center, on sale for $5. I first discovered the Proxim Symphony wireless adapters on the clearance table at a local OfficeMax, but then rediscovered them on uBid, at www.justdeals.com, and at a few other outlets for under $15. At first, I decided to experiment, since I was skeptical about what I could get wirelessly for $10. I purchased one network adapter for one of my towers and one PC card for my laptop; both were on closeout for $10 apiece (regularly $150). It was simple to set up; and after downloading the Windows 2000 drivers from the Proxim, Inc., web site, I had both computers talking to each other, peer to peer and without wires, within minutes (technology is like magic when it works seamlessly). True, these discontinued items are limited to only 1.6 Mbps (you can get 11 Mbps wirelessly these days); but considering that the traffic throughput between the two computers is limited to online access at 1.5 Mbps, I found it exceptionally handy to cut the wires.

Thanks to the continued proliferation of wireless technologies, you can easily find products that can turn your server into a wireless Internet gateway. By configuring your server with a wireless network adapter and setting up Internet sharing for that adapter, you’ve effectively given anyone on your wireless network Internet access from anywhere—they no longer need to be chained to a specific desk and network RJ45 outlet (more on this in Chapter 10).

This chapter is from Build Your Own Server, by Tony Caputo (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072227281). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now.

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