Follow us on TwitterAmazon: 0% 6-Month Financing On Netbooks
Posted by Tom Greer on March 3, 2009 in Netbook Market, Site-related
Amazon.com is currently offering a special financing program
Not that’s the type of stimulus this country needs!
New Product Search Feature
Posted by Tom Greer on February 1, 2009 in Site-related
When we upgraded our site a few night back, not only did we make the user interface more elegant, but we also incorporated a number of new features.
Search Box
The biggest improvement is the product search feature.
Our new search box is located in the upper right corner of the page.
Our old search features retrieved articles only. However, our new site allows you to search our product database as well.
Ti search the product database, be sure that the radio button labeled “Products” is selected.
The will return a list of matching products. Here is a screenprint of the results from a search for “Red”:
Search results for "Red"
The search process seeks matches against the product name, description, color, model and part number.
From the results, clicking on the Go! button will take you to the Price Comparison page to the chosen netbook.
Guidelines for using this feature:
- Search words must be at least 3 characters.
- Words prefixed with a plus sign (e.g. +linux) are included in results.
- Words prefixed with a plus sign (e.g. -vista) are excluded from results.
- Words without prefixes are scored higher in results.
- Use parentheses () to group words into expressions.
- Expressions enclosed in double quotes (e.g. “vista business”) will be matched explicitly.
We’ve got bigger plans for our product search feature. We’ll be adding more functionality down the road.
If you’ve got ideas on how we can make this better for you, then use the comments below to tell us.
Rebates Now Included in Price Charts
Posted by Tom Greer on January 30, 2009 in Netbook Market, Site-related
We have enhanced our Price Comparison Charts to include rebates.
Some of our merchants have started to provide information about rebates in their data feeds. We’ve now incorporated this information directly into our charts as shown below.
Our charts show the price after the rebate is applied. That let’s us show the best price at the top of the list.
Please be aware that when you click through via the Go! button, that the merchants usually show the price before the rebate (along with a comment about the rebate), like this:
So when you click through and you don’t see the price you expected, look for the notes about the rebate.
There are quite a few rebates available right now. Be sure to check our price charts before you buy.
Moved To New Host in < 24 Hours
Posted by Tom Greer on January 9, 2009 in Netbook Market, Site-related
In my last post, I told you that we had outgrown our server and would need to move. Re-reading the article, I am impressed at how well I painted a positive spin while, in reality, I was operating in a crisis mode.
Our site is dedicated to providing news and information about netbooks. Our most popular feature is our price comparison charts. They have become a true differentiator for us.
Price Comparison Chart
There are two things that make our price comparison charts different from the rest:
- We make it easy to find prices on the specific model that you are seeking.
- We have pricing and current availability for every specific configuration. You want to know who has the pink version with a 160 GB hard drive in stock at the best price? No problem.
Gathering, assembling and displaying this information has been a labor of love.
First of all, we get daily downloads from many online merchants including: Buy.com, BuyDig.com, CompUSA, Dell, Fujitsu, Geeks.com, HP, Lenovo, NewEgg.com, PCMall, Super Warehouse, TigerDirect, Toshiba and Wal*Mart.
For all of these merchants, we get their complete product catalog daily. We download it from them via FTP, import it into our database and link only to the netbooks that we feature.
When you request a price chart, we extract the price and availability for each merchant that handles the requested model. Next, we query Amazon.com’s web service to get their real-time data. Then we query Shopzilla’s real-time web service. Next we sort the data from lowest to highest price. At the same time we filter out any duplicates (some of our direct merchants partner with Amazon and/or Shopzilla).
Finally, we format the data and display the page for you. All of this typically happens within 1-2 seconds. Whew! Read the rest »
Wishing All A Merry Christmas
Posted by Tom Greer on December 24, 2008 in Acer Netbooks, Asus Netbooks, Dell Netbooks, HP Netbooks, MSI Netbooks, Site-related
Over the past month or so, we have shifted gears from primarily providing netbook news and information to searching and reporting on the best deals on netbooks. At times we became almost obsessive in keeping our price comparison charts current and relaying the best deals to you.
We had a lot of fun in doing this. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether our work is beneficial, but the big jump in page views tells us that you appreciated our work.
Acer Aspire One Netbooks
Based on page views at our site, here are the top five netbooks:
- Acer Aspire One 160G 6 Cell XP
- Asus Eee PC 1000HA 160G XP
- Acer Aspire One 120G 3 Cell XP
- Aspire One 16G 3 Cell Linux
- Asus Eee PC 1000H 160G XP
While I’m not pretending that this is representative of the entire marketplace, it does reinforce recent reports that Acer has transplanted Asus as the top manufacturer of netbooks. Based on our activity, Acer and Asus dominate mindshare. We have to go down our rankings a good bit before we get to rhe HP Mini-Note, then MSI Wind and later Dell.
Now that it is Christmas Eve, we are shutting things down for a few days. But before we do, we want to wish a Blessed and Merry Christmas to all of you.