New PC

November 19th, 2009 omo

Christmas is EARLY this year wooo.

This post is work in progress. I’m not too keen on posting my personal spending to the world wide web but think of it as a way to tell you about what are the prices this day and age. I picked my parts based on influence from Vinny and silentpcreview.com. It’s not a bad start if you don’t mind spending 200+ on case and PSU!

112.34 – Motherboard

283.98 – CPU and RAM. Nothing special here.

262.13 – Case and PSU. I actually didn’t mean to buy this particular case but I didn’t double check when I purchased it…

26.49 – some heat sink

259.99 – systems drive

The Newegg orders have 2% cash back totalling to 13.58

The X25-M 80gb has a 30 rebate. If I bought the P183 as originally intended I would have saved $20+tax on top of another 25 rebate (and drop the cash back down by maybe 40 cents).

Oh, I spent 30 on a digital copy of Windows 7 Pro. Yeah go Alumni Account Powahs.

That adds up to…

974.93

Ouch. In return there is 43.58, so it tops over $931. If I didn’t screw up with my order it would have been under 900. orz. But all this is for an i5 system with 4gb of ram and a 80gb SSD. I think you can probably do slightly better if you go the way of Dell or HP as they’ll give you an i7 for about the same cost, plus keyboard, mouse, cables, and an optical drive (woo another $30 worth of stuff). You just won’t have the SSD and you’ll have a 250gb or 500gb drive. You won’t have an ultra-quiet system either. Not that matters, since an Antec 1200 is not exactly the quietest kid on the block unlike its cousins P183 and P193.

Oh, you won’t have the freedom to go SLI either, nor will you have SPDIF outs. You will have a video card that’s…like the one I’ll migrate over into this box though. I won’t count it since it sort of is “used” or whatever.

Then again I’m not sure I’m done spending yet. There may be 1 more upgrade. We’ll see. In addition I might end up buying a optical drive anyways, since it’s cheap and rather useful, instead of using an old one. Or just wait till Blu-Ray write drives are cheap enough.

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Nintendo DS Lite

August 10th, 2009 omo

I bit the bullet and bought a DS Lite. Which was on sale this week at target. I think after all the taxes, fees and cash back, it’ll come to $96 or so.

But I also ordered an Acekart 2.1. That’s an impulse buy…as I don’t even know if I’ll use it. But if I have it I will use it… It’s not like I’ll use a DS to watch video or listen to music anyways.

In retrospect a DSi would be a much better fit for me given the apps on it and it has a real browser of sorts, also you can put a SD card in it built-in. But that’s easily $50-70 more than this deal.

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Comic Party, 21st Century Style

April 21st, 2009 omo

Every once a blue moon I find a good article that interest me and that I didn’t find on my own via the Japanator tip line. This one is so good that it’s worth sharing before it even gets written up :3

This is a way that you can print about 16 pages, with color front, back cover, inside covers and rest B&W for about $200 for roughly 175 copies. If you’ve ever done small-run prints, you’d know this is a p. good deal. In some respects, the generalized advice is that for the right job you need to find the right kind of printer service. In this instance some small-press management type was looking for someone to run a doujinshi print run for an anime con. These numbers, hopefully, make obvious sense to you before I even mention the d word.

The print service is one of those online places that mail it to you, www.docucopies.com. The stiupation here is that you can’t have bleeds (standard for doujinshi), and the printing is done through a photocopier (as in, basically, printed in a relatively low fidality method). Make sure you test it out if you can before you submit your order (go to a Kinkos or something). No bleed just means having a .125 inch border of white space around the edges. You could have more if you’d like.

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The Fruit of Labor

February 23rd, 2009 omo

The New Nana Mizuki album

The New Nana Mizuki album

If you didn’t know, I run an anime blog that originally was a personal blog. Since now that site has a dedicated audience, I’m also running some ads (I stuffed some google ads and some text link ads on the footer) and affiliated with one store that I shop often–CD Japan. If people click and buy with my affiliate links to CD Japan, I get a commission (like 5-9%, depends on volume) which can be cashed out via Paypal (they pay in yen…which is good these days) or as store credit. I vouched for the latter.

Because as you all know how the economy is globally, retailers are pushing hard to get rid of wares. CD Japan is not really the cheapest place on the block for importing Japanese CDs, but they are one of the more reliable and well-serviced alternative if English is your preferred language. To compete on price, they offer a lot of random coupon things, a point program (1-5% of your purchase turns into points, and my affiliate credits are treated as points), and on top of your usual clearance and %-offs (rare as they are), they are also sales tax-free for their exports unlike most other places.

Enough about writing on ads. I am just a little happy about preording a $40 import and getting it for free effectively. Just had to pay shipping and some change.

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Everglide S-500 Is Holiday Tease

December 2nd, 2008 omo

So a while back during the pre-Thanksgiving Woot-off, I got a pair of these Everglide S-500 which are now on sale for the same price from buy.com. That means I paid an extra $5 to get them about 2-3 weeks early. I suppose it’s not a terrible loss. Oh by the way you can pick from white or black. I got the white ones because I was slow with the wooting and the black ones ran out.

I can help you with a review, at least.

These are strictly cheap, big, comfy headphones. They are a little on the bulky side but I think that’s a good thing for most people. That keeps out the sound from outside (especially since you want to use these massive things in a stationary setting) and that always translate to a better sound.

But the S-500’s mids and highs are disappointingly flat. My Shure e2cs kicks its butt. The bass response for these Everglides is obviously better than a pair of ear buds (of any kind) but that’s really the one of only two redeeming features. Bass sounds bassy but probably a little too dense, but the drivers provides a filling sound.

The other redeeming feature is that they are comfortable. For the record I wear glasses and have relatively big ears, and after an hour of use they only feel a little warm. Definitely good for long-term gaming.

In fact, these Everglides are touted as exactly that–comfortable gamer headsets for those tiresome, long Naxx raid nights. But speaking of online gaming and vent and all, it actually doesn’t come with a microphone built into the headset. The package comes with a separate, simple clip-on mic that you plug in separately into your PC. It’s definitely A HUGE MINUS because who wants 2 sets of wires dangling? This really bothered me. I mean, sure, that also means you can use the mics separately if the need ever arises, but I guess that is why most PC headsets…have a mic attached to the headset? EPIC FALE IMO.

These made-in-China headsets are definitely worth $15 just because of their solid headphone aspect. The mids responses well enough that they make good gamer headphones in terms of getting crisp sound effects from games, but it’s no improvement over good PMP earbuds for music. Rest of it is sorta disappointing. Despite the solid feel of the whole package the non-integrated mic is a major issue I have with it. In the end, I feel sorry for anyone who paid the $90 or whatever price they were as MSRP, but they can make a good throwaway headset or a casual Christmas present.

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eBay Takes, Gives

November 24th, 2008 omo

The Fatwallet thread is probably the most authoratitive thread to follow on this holiday’s eBay $1 “doorbusters.” Starting today, for the next 14 days, eBay will randomly pop out $1 Buy-it-now auctions of various goods NOT worth $1 over the course of the day. You just have to look at what’s on sale that day at their holiday site portal and be refresh monkey about it.

While it is no way a “deal” as much as a sweepstake (and note that you do have to pay income taxes on their “ultimate items”–which at some point can be a 2009 Corvette. Today it was a $5000+ plasma TV–do the math how much taxes that is for you), it’s a fun way to kill time and if being a refresh monkey is something you do normally. Everyday there will be 3 items for sale, 2 items are cheap things (today was also Wall-E SE DVD set and Jawbone 2) that have 50 BIN auctions that will pop up over the day. The expensive, “ultimate item” is a one-shot thing.

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Taking the Bait

October 1st, 2008 omo

It must be because the economy or something, but I feel like spending money today.

1. I bought a bag of honey mustard & onion pretzel crisps at a NY deli. It’s a 6oz bag but it costs $3.50. For $6 I can get one of those 2-pound bags at costco. On sale you can buy 2 fer $6. It’s like my latest addiction or something.

2. Microsoft is doing another live cash back deal with eBay now. This time I took the bait. If you recall me writing about it when it first started, generally people got their money’s worth. This time it’s just 30% (not 35%) but I ended up buying new RAM and battery for my laptop. These two things are on the long list of items that are actually worth getting. Now only if I can find that memory card pro adapter for it… So we’ll see. The deal allows for 6 transactions so I can get 4 more things at 30% cash back.

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Free Ice Cream

September 18th, 2008 omo

@ Cold Stone Creamery

It’s 1 east-west block east and 5 north-south block north from my work. So it’s a bit of a trek for free ice cream. Probably will pass.

But you don’t have to on my account!

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Flurry of Cheapness

August 19th, 2008 omo

I am having problems with my desktop’s random crash-ness. i’ve narrowed things down and I highly suspect my fanless and aging 7600GT is the culprit. Since I can’t really stand to wait anymore I pulled the trigger on a Radeon HD 4850. 2 days later I found a HD 4870 for only $60 more. UGH.

Is the performance worth $60 between a 4870 and a 4850? In short, yes. Do I need it? Obviously not if I was fine with a 7600GT.

But the problem is, Nvidia is having hardware problems yet they have the best bang-per-buck right now for the fanless/speed/price combination I want. I could alternatively get a fanless Radeon but it would be something like $80 for a small speed upgrade. Concensus is that the 4850s and 4870s are the best buys right now, and it would be some time until ATI releases a 48xx series board that is passively cooled. Budget or not.

So I guess I’ll just have to bear with it. Worse comes to worse there’s always eBay.

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Anti-Virus

July 30th, 2008 omo

Since AVG forced all its free users to upgrade to version 8 and give us no update for 7, I’ve been looking for a free antivirus system for my home network. I’ve been using Avira Antivir for now, and it’s overall satisfactory except for a couple details (like unable to schedule when to do the update, the ad it pops up, etc).

This week Fry’s (well, outpost.com) is doing a free-after-rebate deal on Kaspersky. For $55 up front you get a 3-user license and 2-year support, but now it’s free if the rebate goes through 8-12 weeks later. It is still version 7 but I think they’re just getting rid the retail packages that aren’t selling. The license key should allow upgrade to version 8. You can find the deal here.

Kaspersky is, in a nutshell, one of the best (if not the best) home-commercial antivirus solution out there. It’s lightweight and scores very solidly in detection and performance. However I haven’t used it before so we’ll see…

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