Tech Break

In order to get your favorite tech goodies, you have to either buy them or get them gifted to you. Since the latter is a hit-and-miss affair, the former is usually the solution, and since the former required money, shaving dollars off the price of your beloved <insert gadget here> is a very, very good thing. Here are a few sites, whether for buying directly, for comparing prices or for just hunting out the best deals, that make the shopping process a good one.

Price Comparison Sites like Google Product Search, Nextag, Pricegrabber and ShopZilla are probably the most obvious first step for a savvy shopper when deciding where to get a shiny new gadget. The above sites are unbiased, and aggregate pricing from dozens of online stores under one virtual roof so you can figure out who has the best price, including shipping and tax, on Gadget X (which will almostinvariabley be different than a similar search for Gadget Y).

You may also want to check out Epionions for reviews of the product you want to buy; the community there is rather long-winded but the reviews, coupled with price comparisons, really help. Last but not least, make sure to check into the reputation of the online seller you want to buy from; some are outright scams. I’ve found that the best site for this is ResellerRatings.com, with BizRate also being a good option.

Online Stores are where you buy stuff, but some have better features than others. I buy most of my tech from Newegg; their customer service is quite good, their product selection and pricing are both great, and their product pages generally include a large amount of information, and usually a gargantuan stock of user reviews, always a good thing.Newegg is now also selling non-tech goods…you can buy toasters and such online through them, complete with the same product descriptions and reviews that are a hallmark of the moretechy products on the site.

Other stores to check out are Buy.com, TigerDirect (who now owns CompUSA, including the CompUSA website) and eCost. These last two e-stores tend to be less upfront about pricing on their items, usually burying shipping fees behind your shopping cart (Newegg displays it in search results, Buy.com displays it on product pages). Their review portfolio is also smaller than Newegg’s. However these guys sometimes have smoking-hot deals, available for limited times, to the point that signing up for their e-mail fliers may be a good idea, if you can spare enough time to read a few e-mails per week from each seller (Newegg has also started sending out more e-fliers lately).

Another retailer you may not think about when looking to buy tech: Amazon. They not only sell a lot of tech products at comepetitive prices, but also aggregate smaller resellers into the mix, who may offer a product that Amazon doesn’t have, or offer it cheaper than Amazon does. Plus, $80 per year gets you Amazon Prime: free 2-day shipping and $2.95 overnight shipping on pretty much everything Amazon sells, even big-screen TVs!

A few of my other favorite e-tailers are off the beaten path. Woot (and its associated sites, including sellout.woot), sells one item on its site per day, usually at a huge markdown from other places’ retail prices. 3BTech has a few deals on computer components and pre-built computers. Lastly, TxMicro may be just the ticket for finding parts and accessories for older computers and gadgets.

Finally, Deal Sites should be consulted before buying anything tech-related; it might be much cheaper to get a similar model from another brand at another store due to some crazy promotion that’s happening for a limited time at said outlet on said brand of said device. Plus you can find lots of great deals on stuff you didn’t think you needed…until it was 50% off of regular price! Okay, maybe not such a good thing for penny-pinching college students, but you can find some awesome deals on these sites. My favorites are DealNews and, for laptop computers, the Deals section of NotebookReview.com. Other good sites are SlickDeals, TechBargains, FatWallet and DealKing. Some of these sites even offer cash kickbacks when you buy stuff online through their referral links.

So there you have it: a semi-comprehensive buyers’ guide for…well…pretty much anything tech-related on the Internet. In some cases this advice even applies to non-tech online purchases. Hope this helps!

One last thing: make sure your online transactions are secure. Use a credit card (not a debit card) online whenever possible, as credit cards have fraud protection where debit cards generally don’t. On lesser-known sellers, usePayPal , Google Checkout or Amazon Payments to provide some insulation between your financial information and the seller…and if they don’t accept one of those payment methods, use the Virtual Debit Card function on PayPal to create a one-time-use MasterCard number to stay completely secure. With that, happy shopping! This economy needs all the consumer stimulation it can get…