Online Shopping
A great way to find just about anything for less
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www.amazon.com - A good place to find discounted GENUINE ink.
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www.fetchbook.info - A good place to find discounted books.
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www.buy.com - A good place to find anything with very good shipping rates.
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www.tigerdirect.com - A good place to find electronics.
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www.ebay.com - A great way to sell things you don't need and buy things you do.
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www.searchtempest.com - Search all Craiglists at once for specific items.
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As for new laptop purchases, often you can find deals at local retail stores such as Best Buy, Office Max, Office Depot, and Walmart as well.
I am asked this question a few times per week and work for a real estate company supporting more than 500 real estate agents. I personally don't think one manufacturer to another makes much difference. I recommend spending between $350 and $450 on a second generation dual core laptop. This comes with a 1 year manufacturer's warranty. I typically browse between Best Buy, Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and Tiger Direct (www.tigerdirect.com) All new computers will come with ample hard drive, ram, and Windows 7, most of which will come with a starter version of Microsoft Office Word and Excel. You can use Gmail, Hotmail, or Windows Live Mail for your email and calendar.
Search your local retailers for Laptops:
After the first year or two, you have the option of reselling your laptop for around $300-350 on Craigslist or Ebay and purchasing a new one for the same price. This ensures you have a working up to date laptop with a warranty ever year or every other year by budgeting about $50 per year.
You can download Open Office for free instead of spending over $150 on MicrosoftOffice.
You just need to change the preferences under TOOLS and OPTIONS and LOAD/SAVE and GENERAL to save Text Documents as Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP documents instead of the OpenOffice format.
As for antivirus programs, I recommend the free version
If you purchase an Apple, expect to pay about 3 times as much new, however, there are some benefits over windows machines:
1. Virus risk is much less
2. No slowdown issues (Due to lack of registry and registry startup)
3. Resale value (Macs retain resale value better than PC's)
You can also purchase Refurb Macbooks for much less.
A 2009 Core 2 Duo Macbook should run you about $600 including a solid state hard drive which means it will start-up in about 15 seconds from a cold boot.
I often have refurb macbooks with Applecare for over a year for sale.
Contact me to find out.
As for Printers:
$199.98 with free delivery from Staples
For its Platinum Pro905, Lexmark cartridges now cost $4.99 for black ink which equates to about $0.01 per page.
The three color cartridges cost $9.99 each at about $0.10 per page
so a replacement for all four cartridges will cost about $35.
- 4-in-1; Print, copy, scan & fax
- Ethernet and wireless 802.11 b/g/n network capability
- Automatic duplexing (2-sided printing)
- 150-sheet capacity, 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF)
- 5 year warranty. 1 year limited warranty and 4 year extended limited warranty upon registration within 90 daYS
- PRINTS 10.2 PPM BLACK, 6.4 PPM COLOR (ISO-BASED)
Here are some camera recommendations:
Sony - Cyber-shot WX50
$199.99
f/2.4 (light intake - lower is better)
25-140mm focal range
(lower end enables wide angle, higher is zooming ability)
Takes SD Memory and Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo Cards
You’re not going to get better light intake or a better wide angle shot from a point and shoot camera.