• 200 Verbatim CD-R Discs for $29 after $11 rebate. Not a crazy good deal, but some people prefer name brand discs. [Nifty News]
• HP Pavilion m8100y Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz Desktop PC with HDTV Tuner for $650, shipped. Hefty home theater PC that would easily pull double duty as a game rig with the addition of a decent 3D card. [Dealnews]
• Today's Woot!: Refurbished Dyson DC15 The Ball All Floors Bagless Upright Vacuum for $295, shipped.
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Hey Joel -
I'm a long-time big fan of Pavilion desktops (honestly, who has the time to build PCs themselves anymore, when you've got toddlers to chase around!), and had bought the immediate predecessor model of this system just back in April, the Pavilion m8000e (which was a dual-core AMD x2 64, but they also sold it with a dual-core Intel).
I beefed-up the video card when I ordered it from HP, but other than that, have pretty much nothing but good things to say about it, so if someone's looking for a really good multimedia PC at a reasonable price (I've got mine hooked for video to both Comcast Digital Cable and a pair of rabbit ears for "over the air" HDTV), and that makes for an all-around "good for just about everything system", I definitely recommend it. Use mine for my work, some gaming (although I am not a hard-core gamer, admittedly), lots of video and photo editing for my kids, burning DVDs, etc.
I suppose if I have anything bad to say, it's that HP uses a big chunk of the internal space for their removable harddrive bay in these "high-end" Pavilions (and for which only they sell the removable harddrives). I'd be happier having that space used for two standard 3.5" internal drive spaces, but that's a pretty small quibble, in these days of "cheaper than dirt" external USB drives.
Oh, I'm not sure if the other name-brand manufacturers are doing this now too, but HP's current standard keyboard is god-awful. It must cost them about $1 to make - flat "chicklet" keys, no rebound, the whole works. Ran out and bought myself a Logitech as soon as I unboxed and tried it, gave the HP keyboard to my kids to beat-on.
Good to know it's a solid machine, Reed. Thanks for chiming in. I built my last couple of PCs and I think I'm about done with it. It's so much cheaper and easier just to buy a pre-built thing, even if you don't get to customize every last part.
I'm starting to wonder, is it even possible to find an all-metal vacuum these days? I've thought for a while that vacuums have been one of the biggest victims of the make-cheap-shit-out-of-plastic business model that will have everyone buying a new one 5 years later when all the plastic parts have broken in half.
I used a vacuum the other day that was at least 50 years old, and even though it probably didn't clean quite as well, it was a much more satisfying experience using something that is all-metal and destined to outlast me.
Royal still makes all metal vacuums, but they're pricey. I just bought a used one on eBay, missing the bag, for $36. It looked just like my old one, which had given up the ghost after too many years of pet hair in the bearings. I had bought the old one 12 years ago at a state auction, and it was already over 10 years old. The new one was made in 2005! Almost identical to the old one, but with a unitized motor inside the housing instead of a set of bearings, armature, and magnets..
It's almost a day-gone-by feeling, but I'm done with building PCs from scratch as well. It was worth it when you could really save several hundred dollars. Those days have passed.
The Dell I took to college was over $2k. Now you can spend well under a grand for a solid PC from Dell or HP, dropping in your own memory or video card. With the NIC and 5.1 (or sometimes even 7.1) audio build right in, it's hardly worth your time and effort, let alone all the shipping fees you'll pay grabbing every piece of a new homebuilt PC.