Posts filed under 'Hot Deals'
With HD TV becoming the standard, and digital TV in full effect, HDMI cables are more in demand than ever before. But walk into a Best Buy, or Radio Shack, and you may have a dilemma on your hands. Retailers make a killing off of inflated cable prices- But are you getting what you pay for? No, not really- allow me to explain.
Back in the days of analog signal, there was much room for improvement in A/V, COAX, and other cables. Manufacturers would gold-plate the connectors, provide special shielding to avoid RF interference, and even use gas injection in the cables. This was all good, as they pass analog signal back and fourth, and these methods have been scientifically proven to aid signal quality.
But let’s remember, HDMI is DIGITAL- so it’s basically sending 1′s, and 0′s back and fourth. So you have two scenarios; either the cable works perfectly, or it doesn’t work at all.
Monster constantly boasts and brags about their HDMI cable engineering methods, but in reality, you can get a $10.00 generic HDMI cable from eBay, and get the same picture quality as an $80.00 Monster HDMI cable. Again, because it’s all digital!
Take CD-Rs for example- it wouldn’t matter what brand of CD-R you use to burn your music, it will sound the same as all the other brands. This is because it’s using 1′s and 0′s to play the music- the quality of the sound is determined by the quality in which your music files have been encoded and ripped using.
Certain vinyl records sound better than others since vinyl was analog. So the quality of the physical record was a big factor.
So if you recently bought a PS3 or something, and the HDMI was idiotically not included in the box, do yourself a favor and use my eBay link below, and click the Best Buy link for a nice chuckle.
eBay
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Best Buy
July 29th, 2010
If you’re a designer, you know there are licensing hassles involved with using certain photographs in your commercial designs. To avoid this trouble, you can go with stock photos. These are photographs that are meant to be used freely in your brochures, sites, and other design work. A downside to this is, stock photos can be pretty expensive. Luckily, there are still sites out there that offer some great ones for free.
And here they are:
1. Stock.XCHNG
2. Unprofound
3. Morgue File
4. Photo Rogue
5. Open Photo
6. Free Media Goo
7. Free Range Stock
8. Every Stock Photo
Thanks to [friedbeef] for the list
July 20th, 2010
No, this isn’t some Warez link. Ahead has released a free, and lighter version of it’s top product Nero. Nero is one of the most popular, and feature-rich CD/DVD burning suites available.
This free version of Nero 9 Essentials comes with enough features to satisfy your casual burning needs. There are many free burning solutions out now, but to me, Nero remains the most reliable– now we have a free version!
For the more advanced user, Nero 9 Essentials Free provides an option to upgrade to the full-featured version.
Download Here!
August 15th, 2009
This is one of my most favorite video game series of all time. And now, you can get the Essential Collection on the PS2 for $20.00 (regular price: $40).
The set includes
- Metal Gear Solid [PSone]
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty [PS2]
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater [PS2]
Even if you own all 3- it’s great to have this in your collection.
You can buy it from Amazon
July 9th, 2009
Samsung 23″ Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor – Black (Mfr# 2333SW) » only $152.99 at Dell Small Business
- Dell Small Business is carrying this 23″ LCD Monitor for $279.99
- There is a $110 instant discount on this item
- During checkout, apply 10% off coupon code “22X6DLMFK6K92G” on it (Expires 07/08/2009)
- Dell Small Business is offering Free Shipping on $129 or more
- Your Final Price: $279.99 – $110 – 10% = $152.99 + Free Shipping
July 8th, 2009
Details are in on the Windows 7 pricing structure Microsoft will use during launch. Microsoft released the box art and the Windows 7 flavors you can choose from last week.
The options Windows 7 will comes in is:
Windows 7 Starter pricing N/A- For developing markets, and an option for netbooks.
Windows 7 Home Basic pricing N/A- For developing markets
Windows 7 Home Premium $120 for upgrade; $200 for full version - it’s great that they are starting off with Home Premium, and not sticking in a “Basic” version lijke they did in Vista.
Windows 7 Professional $200 for upgrade; $300 for full version – I’m assuming the pro edition will include Terminal Services, and Remote Desktop (RDP) functionality like it did in XP.
Windows 7 Ultimate $220 for upgrade; $320 for full version – the ultimate version of Windows. Basically, the Enterprise version that regular people can buy. It has BitLocker, notably, and a few other advanced features. It seems like visibility of this will be low, outside of a few “special promotions” from vendors occasionally, to minimize confusion.
Half price pre-order deal:
People in the US, Canada or Japan who already own a PC running XP or Vista will be able to pre-order the upgrade disc for half the price of what it will retail for. The pre-order deal starts Friday, June 26th, and will run for a limited time.
The Deals:
Windows 7 Home Premium, usually $120, will cost $50, and Windows 7 Professional, usually $200, will cost $100. Windows 7 Ultimate is not part of this discount plan, but it might get its own incentive plan later on.
If you buy a PC starting Friday, June 26th, you should be covered under a FREE upgrade plan. So you can buy that Vista laptop, or desktop over the weekend, and should be able to get a free Windows 7 upgrade once it is available.
The Windows 7 release date is October 22, 2009.
June 25th, 2009
Adobe is the standard in the digital design, and illustration industry. They are also moving into the audio and video sector with Adobe Premiere, and Soundbooth. One problem, they are very expensive. A struggling artist will have a lot of trouble affording it- luckily there are some great alternatives out there for free. Here are my favorites:
Photoshop Alternatives:
Gimp
Gimp is a very popular alternative to Photoshop. It has a very different interface when compared to Photoshop, but is able to perform pretty much the same tasks. It is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. http://www.gimp.org/
Paint.Net
An amazing photo editing software for Windows (XP, Vista). It has won many awards such as PC World Best Freebies 2007, the Webuser Gold Award, Cnet 5 Star review, and more.
I’ll let the following quotes review it for you:
“Impressive.” – PC World, #19 on “Top 100 Products of 2007″
“It raises the quality bar,” - Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror
Download: http://www.getpaint.net/index.html
Dreamweaver Alternatives:
Kompozer
This is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It does the job.
Download: http://kompozer.net/
Adobe Premiere Alternatives:
Avidemux
Avidemux is a free video editor perfect for simple cutting, encoding, and filtering jobs. It supports AVI, MPEG, MP4, and ASF using different codecs.
Download: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
VirtualDub
VirtualDub is a video caputure application for Windows. It is geared towards the processing of AVI files, and can read MPEG-1 (not write).
Download: http://www.virtualdub.org/
Adobe Reader Alternatives:
PDFCreator
PDFCreator allows you to create PDF documents from any Windows application that support printing. After installed, it will get added to your set of installed printers as a virtual printer. When the virtual printer is selected, for example in Word, it will output the document as a PDF file, and allow you to save it anywhere you want. Very handy for professionals.
Download: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator
Foxit PDF Reader
A true light weight champion. This application is so light, yet so feature rick, you will never go back to Adobe Reader again!
Download: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/
June 23rd, 2009
This is phone season, and there are a lot of phones, and specs to keep up with. I decided to post this comparison to put some minds at ease. Check it out, and pick your winner.
June 12th, 2009
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