Bargain Thread for Hardware?

quick search at newegg.com finds $133 as the lowest price for a 240-256 GB SSD…so yes it seems to be a good deal. Transcend is not a famous brand, though. (I do have a single SD card from them which worked very well.)

The 128gb model is also on sale for $70.

So, currently best buy seems to be blowing out original Surface Pros for $500. Anyone have opinions on the hardware at that price?

Its a nice machine if you can stand the super high DPI with windows.

Pretty good deal for essentially an ultrabook with mediocre battery life. You will have to add on $100 for a type cover, remember.

CST LaserTrac Trackball is $99.99 plus shipping + tax on Massdrop. Read good reviews on this, since it’s supposed to have better build quality over brands like Kensington. One thing to think about is whether you’re ok with the scroll wheel being all the way up on top. There’s a +$10 option that lets you get a version where you can plugin custom switches. Not sure where you get those from… people seem to build their own.

1 day left:

Wow, I used a trackball that looked almost exactly like that 15 years ago. It was beige with a beige ball, as I recall. The physical housing was identical.

Edit: Did a bit of research and it really is identical-- it is the same device, just supporting USB and with an added scroll wheel. My ancient trackball was the Microspeed PC-Trac, and CST purchased Microspeed back in 2003. I really loved that thing.

Refurb Asus RT-N66R coming up on Newegg’s shell shocker at 1pm PDT for under its current price of $100

Pardon my ignorance, but what’s special about that router? I see the 3 antennas, and that’s bitchin’ `n all, but 100 bucks is still a lot for a router.

Gigabit ethernet, fairly long-range wifi, and it’s got a couple USB ports for files and printers. Plus it’s down to $80 right now.

Bandwidth when you’re not adjacent to the router.
I did extensive testing on three different routers in my house - a Netgear WNDR3700, my present TPLINK WDR 4300, and a Netgear AC1200. The latter two I received via Vine, so they were review copies, and the AC1200 was an 802.11ac router, while the other two and the RT-N66R are N routers.

Real bandwidth falls off rapidly with distance and obstacles. You’re only going to get 100+ mbps when you’re adjacent. Go upstairs and it can easily drop to 20-30 mbps, which is enough to make a serious difference in many routine tasks. In one test spot in my house, the difference was 40 mbps for the TPLINK WDR 4300, 21 mbps for the Netgear 3700, and no connection at all for the AC1200.

From what I’ve read, the RT-N66R is very good in this regard, though I’ve never tested one personally.

Razer Deathadder 2013 mouse is Best Buy’s daily deal. It’s the normal price of $70, but it comes with a $50 Steam card which effectively brings it down to $20 with free shipping. Ends tonight at 10pm PDT.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Misc/Deal-of-the-Day/pcmcat248000050016.c?id=pcmcat248000050016&snr=1_41_4__42

It’s the version with the silly cloud storage of the settings, but there’s an offline mode (after you make an account, of course).

Acer c720 chromebook refurb $150:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00JXNS9QM/ref=olp_tab_refurbished?ie=UTF8&condition=refurbished

Android apps coming to chromebook was announced at google IO.

Woot has a refurbished HP Chromebook for $199 (+$5 shipping) today. Probably will sell out fairly quickly, as it did when they ran the same sale last week. Decided I’d give it a try out of curiosity, and the 200 MB-a-month-for-life 4G from T-Mobile seems like it could be useful since I have no other wireless data plan right now. Very limited data, obviously, but I don’t intend to use it much outside WiFi areas.

Just as a follow-up to this I bought one when it was on sale and have had it since Friday. I’m loving this little thing. Its so speedy and light. Really really happy I got one. I haven’t touched my Nexus 7 at all since I got the Chromebook.

The C720 is really much better than the HP. The HP is noticeably pokey.

On the other hand, the HP has 4GB RAM, which is a major improvement for heavy usage.

What you really want is an intel haswell celeron CPU with 4GB RAM.

Unless it’s a mistake the woot specs page shows it does have the haswell:
Processor: Intel Celeron 2955U (1.4GHz)
2MB L3 Cache

Ahh yeah, this is the 14" chromebook, not their 11". The 11" uses an ARM SoC but has a fantastic IPS screen.

Had to grab one of those HP Chromebooks. Given the price, it was sort of a no brainer. I hear the screen isn’t as nice as on the 11", mostly because it is the same resolution but larger. Still, great price and the free 4G is a nice little addition.

The screen isn’t as nice primarily because it’s TN, not IPS. The 11" HP has the second best screen on any chromebook, only bested by the ridiculously expensive Pixel. But I mean, for the price, who can complain? And it’ll be relatively snappy too.