MakeUseOf » price comparison

Get $15 Off Purchases Through Amazon Price Check App Today Only [News]

Yaara Lancet — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:31:25 +0000

On December 10th only (today), Amazon will give a 5% discount on up to 3 items for anyone who buys products through Amazon’s Price Check app. According to Amazon, the discount is valid “on selected items in electronics, toys, sports, music and DVDs, just by checking a price”.

So what do you have to do for this? First, you’d need the latest version of Amazon’s Price Check app for iOS or Android. You can also read the promotion’s fine print on the app’s page. Once you download the app, do the following steps:

Enable location services on your mobile device to let the app recognize your location (see here how).
Launch the app and choose a product either by snapping a picture of the product with your device’s camera, scanning the product’s barcode, saying the products name or typing the product’s name into the app.
The app will show you the available deals, and if you find that Amazon’s price is the best and the product is eligible for the discount, go ahead and place it in your shopping cart. You must complete the purchase within 24 hours or the discount will expire.
The 5% discount will be automatically applied to your purchase when you check out from within the Price Check app.

The catch? The discount only goes up to $5 per item, and is limited to three different items. This can still amount to a $15 discount, which is not so bad a deal.

What do you think? Is this actually a good deal or simply a shameless promotion from Amazon, trying to get more people to use its Price Check app?

Sources: Amazon, Price Check app

Amazon Launches Flow For iPhone, Augmented Reality App For Product And Barcode Scanning [News]

Yaara Lancet — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:01:42 +0000

Amazon has launched a new augmented reality app for the iPhone called Flow. With Flow, you can use your camera to scan either a whole product or a product’s barcode, and get an overlay of Amazon details on top of it. The app recognizes products such as CDs, DVDs, games, books, and tens of millions of other packaged products, such as “a box of cereal” (Amazon’s own example).

By pointing your camera to the front side of the packaging or the barcode, you get Amazon’s price, product details, customer reviews and ratings, and you can also share the product on Facebook and Twitter. If you find that Amazon’s price is better than the one you’re holding in your hand, you can tap the “Buy Now” button in the app and get the product through Amazon. It can also be quite useful if you simply want to check if the product is good or worthless, and if you’re getting ripped off at the current store.

By providing this app, Amazon are probably assuming that their price will beat the one you’re holding in your hand at least some of the time. Otherwise, why would you choose to order from Amazon when you already have the product right there?

The app is apparently only available in the US iTunes store. If you find it anywhere else, you’re welcome to let us know.

What do you think of Flow and of augmented reality apps in general? Will you use something like this to check products before you buy?

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Hard Drive Prices Begin To Rise Because Of Thailand Flooding [News]

Matt Smith — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:31:09 +0000

As large as our world is, industries sometimes converge geographically because of local policy, labor prices, and convenience. Such is the case in Thailand, a place that hosts many of the world’s hard disk manufacturing facilities – and a place that’s recently been struck by tragic flooding.

Because of the floodwaters, companies like Western Digital have had their supply of products drastically cut. Some analysts began to warn of potential price increases several weeks ago, but they are just now becoming a reality.

Western Digital’s Caviar Green 2TB hard drive, available through Amazon.com, has soared from a price low of $69.99 on October 15th to a price high of $149.99 on October 28th. While some other retailers do still offer the drive for under $100, their number seems to dwindle with each passing day. Other hard drive manufacturers have been impacted as well, which means they too have increased prices.

It’s hard to say when prices will return to normal, as the flooding in Thailand is ongoing and no one knows when the floodwaters will recede. Readers in the market for a hard drive should likely hold off on the purchase and keep an eye on price tracking services and extensions.

Alternatively, this could be a good time to justify spending money on a solid state drive. The flash memory used in them is made at different facilities, so SSD pricing shouldn’t be impacted (and has not been so far). Solid state drives will remain much more expensive per gigabyte of storage than their mechanical brethren, but this turn of events does close the gap a bit.

If you know of any online places where the prices for hard drives still remains cheap, help out your fellow readers by letting them know in the comments.

Source: PC Perspective
Image Credit: This Is My Next

Leatherbound – eBook Price Comparisons for the Kindle, Nook & iBookstore

Steve Campbell — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:30:45 +0000

By now I think we would all agree that eBook readers are here to stay. Judging from all of the people I see with them on the subway, I’d say that’s a fair assumption.

Regardless of what hardware you’re carrying, however, we all generally get our content from the same places. Whether you’re reading eBooks on your iPad or iPhone, chances are you purchased them through iBooks or Amazon. If you own a Nook, you may have used Barnes & Noble.

These stores all work the same way, for the most part, but eBook prices are not standard across them, so how do you find the best deal? In this article, I’ll show you how to use Leatherbound to search for books from the three stores I’ve mentioned, all in one place.

A Little Background, Please?

The Rails Rumble is an annual 48 hour web application development competition in which teams of skilled web application developers get one weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web property that they can, using the power of Ruby and Rails.

I’m telling you this because it was here that Leatherbound was made. The creators decided to create a really simple website that would address this problem:

The reading experience on Kindle, iBook and Nook apps are nearly identical, but it’s extremely tedious to find the book your looking for, at the price you want for each platform. Sometimes the book is cheaper on Kindle, other times iBooks doesn’t have what you’re looking for, but Nook does. That’s where Leatherbound comes into play.

How Does It Work?

As I said, the site is very simple. Enter any book title or author and Leatherbound pulls book results on iBook, Kindle and Nook in a single click, along with price, availability, description, etc.

First, head over to Leatherbound.me and enter the title or author of the book you want. The site will automatically post your search results off to the right, and if you change your search query it will continue to display updated results in real-time.

By default, results are displayed in a list and, judging by how common the title of the book you’re looking for is, you may need to click on the More Results button to see all of them. The books I searched for generally showed up in the top 2 or 3 results though, which is good.

If you know what the cover of the book you’re looking for looks like you may want to switch to the grid view. You can do this by clicking the little square button at the top of your search results. This will display all of the covers of the books so you can compare them side-by-side.

Clicking on a book instantly takes you to that book’s individual listing. Off to the left, you will be able to see the book’s cover, title and author, as well as a one or two paragraph description of its contents.

On the right, you will see that book’s availability for the Kindle, Nook, and iBookstore, along with the price at each one. Clicking on the Buy button takes you directly to the listing page pertaining to that store.

You can also tweet your findings and even grab an embed code to place a widget on your website.

Will you be using Leatherbound to search for eBooks? What type of eBook Reader do you own?

5 Computer Hardware Review Sites For The PC Enthusiast

Mike Fagan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:30:16 +0000

Whether you are looking into building a new computer or just like to keep up with the latest in computer hardware, the internet provides a whole smÃ¶rgÃ¥sbord of options when it comes to computer hardware reviews. Here, you will see some of the better, more reliable sites on the internet.

A few things must be considered when looking at computer hardware review sites. First, quality. Are the reviews useful and balanced? Second, quantity. How much of the current hardware does the site review? Third, method.

Does the review give evidence like benchmarks and comparisons, or does the reviewer go on their feelings?

Most people’s first instinct would be to just Google the name of a component when they want to see what people think of a it. This method works fine if you just testing the waters or you already know which sites know what they are talking about and which don’t. However, if you don’t have a component in mind and are just starting out, or are new to the computer hardware review world and don’t know which sites have good reviews; this list should get you started.

Let’s get to it.

Tom’s Hardware Reviews

Tom’s Hardware Reviews is a UK-based review site. I have relied on them many times to get good, honest reviews. Their site is offered in a bunch of languages, making it a great resource for non-English speakers.

The reviews are thorough and give a good feel for the hardware. Reviews provide technical specs, benchmarks, and nice comparisons with alternatives.

On top of what you’d expect, Tom’s Hardware Reviews also has a number of features useful to someone just starting out looking at hardware. Some examples are monthly looks at best values in several areas including CPUs and Graphics Cards.

Overall, Tom’s site is nice, but does have some shortcomings. Although everything is nicely organized on the site, it is sometimes difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. A search doesn’t always bring up an exact component and a little digging is required. I find this to be an uncommon issue, but felt it should be mentioned.

Overclockers Club

Overclockers Club is another great resource. Like Tom’s, the site provides reviews of all sorts of computer hardware, but also has some nice guides for a beginner overclocker. You can access the guides by clicking “Guides” in the top navigation bar.

Overclockers Club is laid out in a very fluid way, making finding an article easy as pie. If you just click “Reviews” at the top, you are given a list of reviews in chronological order.

If you are looking for a particular piece of hardware, you can just search for it and it comes right up with what you’re looking for.

The reviews are quite good. They provide a lot benchmarks and explain them in context.

They give a nice feel for all aspects of a component, even down to how they look and feel physically.

Overclockers Club does not suffer from the issue I found with Tom’s. Searches always seem to return just what I am looking for.

HardOCP

HardOCP is another great computer hardware review site. What I like about this site is it’s overall layout. Instead of a traditional navigation bar, the site has a drop down menu with the links to the other sections of the site.

This helps keep the page nice looking and uncluttered.

The reviews on the site are well done, providing great information on all sorts of computer hardware, including harder to find things like water cooling systems. They even have a very goofy “Miscellaneous” section which provides reviews of anything from solid state drives to eyeglasses.

Another nice feature of the articles is a good level of humor that keeps you entertained while reading what could quickly become a very dry topic.

Some reviews do not provide as many benchmarks as I would like to see. For this reason, I wouldn’t rely on just HardOCP for my reviews, but definitely use it as a great supplement.

Legion Hardware

Yet another great review site, Legion Hardware should be a stop on the path of anyone looking into computer hardware. This site has a lot going for it, including the best organization style of any site I have seen as of yet.

First, when you click “Hardware” at the top, you are brought to a page that lists the different sections very clearly.

Then, when you navigate to the type of hardware your looking for; all of the reviews are listed in such a way so that finding a particular card is extremely simple.

The articles can be sorted in a bunch of different ways, making it even easier to get to the particular article you are looking for.

The reviews on Legion Hardware are of superb quality, providing a good number of benchmarks and describing all aspects of a piece of hardware. Also, they have a good database of articles, so it should not be hard to find what you are looking for on their site.

Hardware Canucks

The last review site I will list is Hardware Canucks, a Canadian-based site. This site has a large number of review sections, even including things like consumer electronics.

The reviews are quite good, providing a lot of benchmarks, which are always good when looking to buy hardware.

The search feature works very well, bringing up exactly what you are looking for without any hassle.

A built in “Price Compare” feature is also good and helps differentiate Hardware Canucks from other review sites.

Of course, these are not the be-all-end-all of review sites. Everyone has their personal favorite website for one reason or another. All of these sites are great both for a beginner, just getting into hardware, or a seasoned veteran trying to keep up with the latest technology.

Know any other great review sites? Let us know in the comments below.

computer hardware review

Flying on a Dime: The 3 Best Websites To Find Cheap Flights

Karl L. Gechlik — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:01:32 +0000

The holiday season is upon us and many of us are planning trips. A question I get all the time is how can I find a cheap flight? To answer that question, I will cover 3 cheap flight websites for your flying escapades ““ 2 of them have worked great for me flying from the United States to all over the world and the last one was suggested by the MakeUseOf founder Aibek Esengulov for being a great website for finding flights from Europe to elsewhere.

So hopefully we have got you covered with these 3 sites:

CheapFlights (US only) ““ CheapFlights is my first go-to cheap flight website to start looking for inexpensive flights. I have probably used them over 100 times in the last 5 or 6 years. I consistently find good deals and most of the time at the last minute.

The beauty about CheapFlights is that you can let the site tell you when it would be the best time to fly. By checking the check box on the homepage that says your dates are flexible, it will do the leg work for you trying to discover the best date and time to fly for the best price.

Go ahead and fill out where you are coming from and going to select your flexibility and hit the find deals now button.

Once you hit that button, the site will do its magic searching like so:

You will see the dates are scattered over the next month or so ““ see if one floats your boat and click on it to go to the corresponding site and book it!

Next up is Cheapo Air. Cheapo Air has international flights both ways. When you get to their homepage it will look like every other major air flight finding service but it will find you some seriously cheap flights ““ there might be 2 or 3 stops or even a layover ““ but if cheap is your goal here you will find a flight.

You have to specify an exact date and time range to where you are going and it will find you the cheapest rates available.

Cheapo Air returned cheap flights as you can see below:

$219! That beats our original site by $70. For someone looking to to save some money, not bad! The trip includes 1 hour and 2 minutes of a layover in Atlanta and they switched my home airport from JFK to Newark, not bad!

Our last site is called SkyScanner which does United States flights as well as European flights. SkyScanner should be your site of choice for booking flights that start or end outside of the United States.

Fill out your information and let’s see what she returns”¦

So going from the United States to the Bahamas costs a lot more from here, but looking for airfares from the United Kingdom to New York we see some great deals:

They let you build your round trip by selecting one flight from the left and one from the right.

You can find some great deals from all three of these sites. But I’m sure there are plenty of other sites where you get your cheap flights from. Feel free to share your favorite sites in the comments!

Milo- Find Cheapest Local Store for the Item You Want to Buy

Karl L. Gechlik — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:00:04 +0000

Have you heard about Milo yet? According to the their website they dub their service as: “Your local shopping companion”

What does this mean exactly? Milo is an online service that will search the inventory of major retailers in your local area to advice you of the availability of the product which you’re looking for. In other words, it’s a multi-search engine for shopping.

I was then shocked to see them say that 95% of sales happen at real stores in the real world. That is brick and mortar shops as opposed to somewhere on the Internet. Are you surprised as well?? Crazy, right?

If you have shopped for something in the real world recently, you’ll know that the stores with the cheapest prices are also usually sold out of what you want. And when do you find that out? When you get to the store, of course.

I hate taking pointless trips! And I hate being unhappy even more! What about you?

Enter Milo, which will help you answer these three questions:

What’s available at local stores?
Which product is the best for me?
Where is it cheapest and available in stock?

Sounds pretty good, right? Well, it only searches 21 large chain-stores shown in the picture above. But heck, that’s good enough for me. Let’s try some searches in my hood!

I decided to look for a Nintendo Wii locally. Even this long after its release, it is still an issue to find one in stock. Let’s see what Milo can do for me.

Well, that gave me way too many choices. So, I decided to narrow it down with Wii Console instead and that brought up what I was looking for.

I selected my console which was conveniently the first item and then it loaded up local spots that may or may not have it in stock. And just as I expected, they didn’t

I decided to expand my area and search Manhattan as well but no luck. I could find it online but I wanted it NOW! So for giggles I searched California and what do you know?

That’s really not fair! But hey, Milo saved me a trip to the stores or even a phone call! Milo is currently in beta and only works in the following locations:

New York
San Fransisco
Chicago
Miami
Los Angeles

If you try to search another location you will get this cute response.

What do you think? Do you use an online search tool to check for a product’s availability before heading out to the store? Do you shop online? If you do, I suggest checking out 5 Online Shopping Sites That Will Actually SAVE You Money.

Let us know what you think of Milo in the comments.

Compare Online Prices & Reviews On Your iPhone With SnapTell

Sharninder — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:00:36 +0000

I don’t remember the last time I just barged into a brick and mortar store and purchased something on a whim. I like to research before buying almost anything and most of my research is done online. When I’m in a store looking at a product I’m interested in, I like to know the price it is available for online, and the reviews – they help me make a quicker decision.

When was the last time you were in a brick and mortar store checking out a book (or a video game) and wondering if it’ll be cheaper to get it online ?

I don’t know about you guys, but this happens with all the time when I’m out shopping.

Just last week, I was at this cool bookshop near my house browsing the shelf looking for a copy of Shantaram (which by the way, is an awesome read). I found it alright but for some reason, I thought the price was a bit more than I thought it should cost. I had my iPhone with me and I could Google the price up but seriously, what’s cool about that?

Instead, armed with my iPhone, I used Snaptell (iTunes Store link).

Snaptell is a cool and free application for the iPhone which uses image recognition to identify photos of books, CD/DVDs and video game covers and tells you their price at various online retailers.

So in my case, using Snaptell, I took a picture of the front cover of Shantaram in the store. Snaptell then uploaded the image to its servers and within a couple of seconds, told me that the book was available at more or less the same price at Amazon and Barnes & Noble as the bookstore I was at. Obviously, I decided to purchase it there and then, saving me a couple of days and shipping costs.

Of course, this is not the only use of Snaptell. Along with a comparison of products’ prices, Snaptell also displays other useful information: it also links to the Wikipedia entry for the product, if it exists; Google Product search results, results from eBay, Half.com and Yahoo search. If you can’t find the product you’re looking for in all those places, I’m not sure you’ll ever find it online.

So, books aren’t really your scene, eh ? Snaptell is an excellent app to have even if you’re searching the back alleys for DVDs of the latest blockbuster or yesteryears’ hits.

Snap a pic and let Snaptell work its magic. Snaptell also helpfully includes links to reviews from IMDB and RottenTomatoes and search results from YouTube. How’s that for convenience ?

Since Snaptell uploads a photo each time to its servers, the application obviously works best over WIFI but the speed is quite acceptable over cellular networks. Also, since you’ll need to take a photo, this will not work on the iPod Touch.

If books, DVDs and games are your thing AND you’re an online junkie like I am, give Snaptell a try and you won’t be dissappointed. Oh, and the Geek cred that you get will definitely be priceless.

Another good article to help you find good buys online is “5 Online Shopping Sites That Will Actually SAVE You Money” which I wrote not long ago.

How do you normally research about the product you plan to buy? Online or physical store? Share with us in the comments!

The Best Websites for Gadget Freaks

Aibek Esengulov — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:54:02 +0000

Like any other geek I have an eternal love for gadgets, especially those shiny, slick and expensive ones. If you’re reading this, I am sure you’re in that category as well. Over time, I discovered a number of websites that I found extremely useful for my gadget mania. Some help me decide what to buy next, other for troubleshooting, and a couple to get rid of the old ones. Here you go …

Gadget Reviews

Whether you’re buying a new mobile phone, MP3 player, speakers or digicam, one of the first things you usually want to know is what other people who have used the product have to say about it. In most cases, a real feedback from someone who have used the same gadget before is far more valuable than what you get on the sales page. So what are the best websites for gadget reviews ?

TestFreaks

Original article

ExpoTV – Over 250.000 of short and unbiased consumer video reviews. [Original artcile]

Swotti – Swotti scans web (blogs, review sites, forums etc.) for product mentions and gives you a lsit of quick opinions about it. Quite useful if all you’re looking for are quick summaries and not interested in details. [Original article]

Fix Gadgets

Where do you go when your gadget breaks? Google works well but only if it’s something popular, like iPods for example. For less popular devices you might need a more specialized source. So far I am aware of two websites that can be of great help.

The first one is recently mentioned SafeManuals. With nearly 900.000 user manuals this is the first site you should visit. Go and get the owner’s manuals for the device. However if you already have one and still can’t find the fix then ask about it on FixYa. FixYa is a free tech support community for troubleshooting and fixing electronic gadgets. Ask questions, browse HowTo guides, search huge databases of previously answered questions and so on.

Sell Old Gadgets

Want to get rid of that old cell phone or digicam and get some cash for it ? Of course you can always post on eBay. But if you’re just too lazy to go through all this auction hassle then BuyMyTronics (original post) is for you.

These guys will buy pretty much any used (or broken) gadget and most importantly give you a good price for it. Quick and simple. You can check out how much they will pay for your gadget by going to their website. There are no fees here, you’re only responsible for shipping.

There is also a website called SellMyOldCellphone, it does the same thing but only for mobile phones. Check out our SellMyOldCellPhone review here.

That’s all I’ve got for gadget sites. If you are aware of another good website that should have been mentioned let us know in the comments.

5 Comparison Websites that WILL Save you Money

Aibek Esengulov — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:38:02 +0000

Probably you’re already familiar with the idea of comparison shopping. These are quite useful websites where you can compare product prices from pretty much every online retailer. During the last 3-4 months I discovered a number of cool websites that successfully implemented the same concept to other areas. Check them out.

1- Compare Product Prices with PriceGrabber

I’ve tried many comparison shopping sites and can confirm that PriceGrabber is one of the best ones. Simply search for the product you want to buy and PriceGrabber will list all available retailers starting from the cheapest. If you’re not clear about what exactly you want to purchase, then you can browse products by categories and filter them further by specs, features and brand. Products can also be sorted by user ratings and reviews.

2- Compare Banks with FindaBetterBank

Looking for a new bank account? Wondering how your current bank account stands against account offerings from other banks in the area? Find A Better Bank is the one and only tool you need. It’s very thorough and can help you locate the best bank account for your needs in a matter of minutes.

So how it works?

Enter your zip code, indicate the features that are important to you and provide additional details to help them estimate yearly banking fees. Done. Now you have a detailed comparison of nearby banks, sorted from best to worst.

3- Compare Cell Phone Contracts with BillShrink

There are so many cell phone contracts out there that it’s almost impossible to find out whether you’re getting a good deal. BillShrink is a new service that can help you with this. This handy website first asks you about your usage preferences and requirements (i.e. average daily talk time, whether you need data plan, SMS usage etc.). Then it compares over 100 mobile plans and finds the best plan for your needs. I am quite surprised that we haven’t seen something like this earlier.

The whole procedure takes about 3-4 minutes. Read more …

4 -Compare your Rent with RentoMeter

RentoMeter is a web based rent comparison service. Here you can find out whether the amount you’re currently paying for your rent is a rip-off or a bargain deal. Rentomoeter compares the amount you pay to an average rate for the similar apartments in the neighborhood area. It will also give you a mapview of nearby apartments including their rates. Check out the RentoMeter in action here.

5- Compare Budget Airlines with SkyScanner

One of the few budget flight search engines that can actually find you the best ticket. I tested it both in Europe and Asia and can confrim that it actually WORKS! It’s also the only budget airline search tool I am aware of that works for inter-continental flights. SkyScanner only searches among budget airlines so you won’t see any pricey tickets here.