I agree things have changed alot. I went to the fair at the Boston Expo Center last month and came home with a desktop machine and a laptop. The deal I got on the desktop was ok. It was basically street price...or should I say cyber price:) ...for a machine purchased online. However I was amazed at the selection of refurbished laptops. I got an IBM Thinkpad T22 for $750 and it is still under warrenty!! Happy shopping, Mike On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 15:12, Gary Hanley wrote:
Those computer shows are nothing like they used to be, and that is not because the shows have changed but more because the PC market has.
Back when the PC market was exploding with high demand and expensive performance parts these shows were a great way for vendors to unload excess and refurbished inventory...and most times you could get very good deals without looking too hard.
Now that the market is in a slump and the shelf life for the latest and greatest hardware is probably 6 months, you can't get the deals at these shows that you once could. And also because there is so much competition at the hardware manufacturing level (motherboards, graphics cards, memory and now even CPUs) the margins are fraction of what they once were.
But not to say you can't still buy at them. They are a great place to find replacement hardware or slightly outdated hardware as needed, but for me if I'm going to build something new I usually buy all the hardware from an on-line vendor like newegg.com. The savings, if any, from a computer show is not enough to warrant the risk of flaky or failed hardware.
YMMV, of course.
-- Gary
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Baris Hasdemir wrote:
hi, I heard of two computer fairs? or something similar... will take place in malborough this weekend and another one in worcester, again, will take place this weekend. does anybody know anything about them? do such fairs worth seeing? where are they held? a web page if possible? thanks, baris
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