“Of Mice and Megabytes Supplement”

COMPARISON SHOPPING ONLINE
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Word of mouth is a strong sales tool, sometimes more so than the pulp contained in a manufacturer’s marketing hype. When I’m researching a new piece of hardware, I want input from the average Joe/Josephine about a product’s benefits, drawbacks, and nuances. This fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by some cyber venues and so when it’s time to buy new equipment, I visit a number of sites that publish consumers’ opinions and experiences about goods they’ve purchased.

One of the more well known places is Amazon.com. Each page of this popular site explodes with information -- sometimes too much. But in the midst of their visual onslaught of graphics and text, are reader comments and reviews that I’ve found helpful.

A lesser known site, but high on my favorites list, is Epinions.com. In addition to consumer comments, Epinions.com has a “find and compare” pricing feature. They research prices and shipping charges at various on-line stores. And, to go one step further, the featured on-line stores themselves are rated. This proved invaluable in the past and helped me avoid doing business with an on-line store that garnered way too many negative customer comments. Epinions.com’s product-range is more extensive than Amazon.com, and its simpler page layout isn’t as distracting.

Other sites worth mentioning are CNET.com and Audioreview.com. CNET.com is geared mostly towards electronics items such as audio/video equipment, digital cameras, and printers. It, too, provides price comparisons along with CNET’s own review of merchant stores. And because of my recent re-introduction to hi-fi and home theater gear, I’ve come to appreciate Audioreview.com, specializing in receivers, TVs, DVD players, and speakers.

At each of these sites, readers offer their opinions -- good and bad -- voicing their likes and dislikes, sometimes in great detail. Extrapolating the often diverging views is the real challenge. The readers also supply an overall rating which I tend to regard much like a judging competition: Throw out the highest and lowest scores then average what remains.

In the spirit of this subject matter, I offer my “short but sweet” reviews about products I’ve had experience with:

Epson Stylus Photo 785epx Inkjet Printer – Exceptional photos when printing on high quality paper with high resolution photos. Drawbacks: Must remove paper to print envelopes; noisy; inkjets clog frequently … too frequently.

Windows XP Home Edition – Stable. Very, very stable. Bill G. and Microsoft are finally on the right track. I haven’t tried the upgrade route; that could be fodder for a different story altogether. However, in 10 months of use, I’ve had to re-boot maybe four times at most. Did I mention it’s stable?

Vivitar 3330 1.3 mp Digital Camera – Perfect for Web photos or where high quality pictures are not necessary. (For an $80 Long’s Drugstore purchase, this ain’t bad.)

Iomega 120Gb External USB Hard Drive – Ideal for making quick, frequent backups of your hard drive. Plenty of storage space for MP3 music files or digital photos. Included software can be scheduled to automatically backup important files. Easy installation on PC; Mac compatible.

Re-printed from the Rafu Shimpo, August 2003. Copyright©2003 Rafu Shimpo. All rights reserved.