-----Original Message----- From: wlug-admin@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-admin@mail.wlug.org]On Behalf Of Gary Hanley Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 3:13 PM To: wlug Subject: Re: [Wlug] computer fair
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.
(Snip)
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.
Specifically about the Worcester show, which I went to not long ago, I picked up a Duron 1.3GHz to upgrade my system. Stupid me, the board didn't like it, and I THINK reinstalling the old one killed it (the old CPU, not the board, but I can't be sure.) I thought it was the board at the time, so I took the Duron back for a refund the next weekend in Nashua, and started poking around for a board that took SDRAM. I only found two, one had two SDRAM and two DDR slots - which would've forced me to lose a healthy chunk of mem - and an MSI board. That I ended up having to go to Manchester the next day to get a replacement on. Be leery of buying extensive hardware at shows, make very sure you get a receipt. Asking to see if the static bag is sealed beforehand isn't a bad idea either. You'll either find new stuff, or very old stuff; the in-between isn't very common at all. Personally, I'd rather just run down to Connecticut and hit one of the Cogan shows, as they've got far more vendors than I've seen at any of the Northern shows (don't know about KGP) and that means a far better selection.