I don't know how many of you are the same way, but my wife and I buy a whole heck of a lot of stuff from Amazon. It's just easier to shop there, and as Prime members the two day wait for goods is no big deal.

But now it's hard to shop anywhere else online.

I know there are other Monoprice users here, and I have to ask: do the shipping times bother you too? It is incredibly slow and expensive to ship things from Monoprice. For example, I ordered something five days ago and it's expected to get to me tomorrow. Granted, I chose their slowest delivery option (UPS Ground), but I did so because it was the cheapest option and it still cost me $12 (for a couple switches and a few cables).

It's hard to complain when the prices for their products are so low, but personally, I really wish they'd get snapped up by Amazon, so they could hopefully get some of that order fulfillment magic the company could give them. Amazon could keep the company running like they do with Zappos, or Monoprice's stuff could get pulled into the Amazon Basics brand. I don't care, I just want my stuff to get here faster.

In many occasions I end up just biting the bullet and ordering cables and stuff through Amazon instead because I know it'll get to me faster, especially when I need something for work. I can't do that through Monoprice, though, because getting something overnighted with them can sometimes cost twice as much as your order!

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I'm trying to set up my new home, and I'm having to wait over a week to get the equipment

Yup, and what is worse, I got hooked on the year of free Prime they gave us under Amazon Mom. It is my default place to looking to buy something, and yes, I do know that some time I'm paying more for something that is Prime eligible, but dammit, it is so convenient.

Am I reading you wrong, or does your gripe boil down to the fact that UPS ground isn't faster than Amazon Prime's 2-day shipping? That doesn't seem like much of a mystery to me. You (and I) are paying $79 a year for the 2-day option (and the cheap overnight option.) If we use Amazon enough (I know I do -- my dog is on a first name basis with the UPS guy at this point) the $79 amortizes out to a very small cost per order for a shipping upgrade that chops a day or three off the shipping time. It also provides Amazon with extra business they might not have gotten. I don't think this has anything to do with wizardry on Amazon's part. You chose a cheap and slow shipping option at Monoprice, so you got cheap and slow shipping.

Also, I disagree that Amazon snapping up Monoprice (or any other online retailer that beats Amazon in any particular area) would be a great thing for customers. Maybe in the short run it'd be fine, but the way it's supposed to work is that competition from Monoprice and other retailers should force Amazon to deliver lower prices.

You do see some of that with their Amazon Basics line of cables, which are pretty cheap, though not quite as cheap as Monoprice, because at some point, most people would rather just deal with one or two online retailers instead of hundreds of them. Amazon Prime is another advantage they have -- I can't imagine anyone would pay for "Monoprice Prime" unless they have a serious cable addiction.

My fear is that if Amazon were to simply acquire every business that comes close to them on price and customer satisfaction, the quality would eventually suffer. This is pretty much the case in any market that gets dominated by a single player, and we're pretty close to that with Amazon. I'm actually glad states have started pushing on them to assess sales tax, and even though I have to pay 6% more at Amazon, they're still usually the cheapest option from a reputable retailer, but at least they're not taking advantage of loopholes to take money away from state/local retailers.

I guess what I'm saying is that I loves me some Amazon, but they're at just the right size right now that I'd be scared if they got much bigger.

I also tend to buy things from Amazon simply because of Prime. I've used the cheap next-day and Saturday delivery options a lot as well. It really comes in handy when you're in a pinch.

I only learned about this a couple months ago, but you can share your Prime membership with up to four "family members" for free. So, you could potentially split the cost between friends and family. Just FYI...

Hello, my name is John and I am a Prime-aholic.

Not only is the two-day shipping convenient, they always ship the same day you order (if you order before a certain time). Sometimes I'll order expedited shipping from another retailer and they won't ship the dang product for three days and I still get it after my deadline.

Another thing I LOVE about Amazon, since I live internationally is that they'll drop-ship any item at any time to anyone without question. I constantly ship to people who are coming down to visit so that I can avoid international shipping and customs. Some retailers have made me fax a copy of my ID and front and back of credit card, etc. before they'll ship to an address that's not my billing address. Again, I miss my deadline.

My deadline is usually people traveling down, and if I miss, then I not only have to wait a month or more before the next person comes, but I have to pay to ship it to the next person because the shop I bought from can't get their stuff out in a reasonable time. Super frustrating.

So I just use Amazon almost exclusively and pay extra for Prime when I can.

Just think of how addicted we'll be when they offer same day delivery. I'd even buy my groceries from them.

You should see if Rob will share his Prime with you, he might be your long lost brother

I spend probably $1000 a year or more with Amazon, and I do not have Amazon Prime.

Amazon Prime would benefit me very little, because even though it would get to my mail forwarder in Texas a day or so quicker, it still takes my mail forwarder two to three weeks to get the package through customs and delivered to Ajijic. For that "service" I pay the forwarder 50% of the invoiced value of the package, plus a flat "transportation fee" ranging from one to three dollars (10 to 40 pesos) depending on the value of the shipment.

The reason I shop Amazon is their customer service. If there's a problem, they will take care of it absolutely and without question. Their willingness to forgo short-term profit in order to ensure customer satisfaction is, in my opinion, the reason they are so dominant in the market today. Unless the Amazon price is outrageously more expensive than some other source (does that ever happen?) I always shop Amazon. Even while shopping within Amazon, I will spend a few dollars extra to buy directly from them rather than one of their subsidiary merchants, simply because if it's from Amazon I know I will be treated right should something go wrong.

The Amazon model should serve as a shining example to anyone who wants to run a business.

tanstaafl.

We have that in Phoenix if you order early enough and it is in the local warehouse (pretty sure it has been available since before that article). I've used it a few times (like that power supply I had to replace a couple weeks ago). It costs the same as next-day ($3.99 per item) and is called 'Local Delivery' or something.

I use Amazon many times per year and I am a gold member at Monoprice. I hoe the two never combine in any way. Amazon's customer service, to put it kindly, is shit. Amazon's UI and order process is shit. I much prefer Monopice in these regards. Customer service is excellent there.

Amazon also treats its fulfillment employees worse than shit. Read the wonderful undercover stories. I've read two so far.

Super-saver shipping at Amazon takes longer than Monoprice's standard shipping. Yes, it's free. I'm surprised Monoproce's shipping isn't a bit cheaper - I'm sure it could be, but they're likely trying to make a bit there to offset their otherwise low prices on goods. I know what kind of pricing UPS offers to even marginally high-quantity shippers and the discounts are out of this world.

So, in summary, I'd like slightly lower shipping at Monoprice, and better web and customer service experience at Amazon.

My current fav online ordering site is digikey.ca.

They ship from North Dakota (that's what the -ND in the part numbers stands for), for a flat rate of CAD$8. If I order before 5pm or so, it arrives at my front door the following morning (Fed-Ex).

Outstanding service, that!

They also take care of collecting HST, so the parcels arrive sans brokerage hassles too.

That's amazingly convenient - they must do large volumes to Canada to get low enough rates to offer $8 flat. I'll have to keep them in mind when I'm looking for the stuff they carry. $8 and essentially overnight is definitely worth saving me a drive to Burlington or Mississauga to visit a Sayal location.

Another, similar worthy site is robotshop.ca in Montreal. Great stock, decent pricing, and under $8 for next day ExpressPost delivery. That's where I go for Sparkfun stuff when I'm in a rush. Similar stuff can be had for 1/3 the price from China on eBay, but with multi-week delivery times.

Humor me and explain why you think so, because I happen to find their order process quite convenient and the site acceptible (not superb though). Like Doug, I've also found their customer service to be fantastic. (and we're talking about over 100 orders in the last few years)

I was wondering that myself. Nothing about the ordering process or UI says 'this sucks' and I don't see any obvious needs for improvement. I've only needed to talk to their customer service twice, but both times they were exceedingly pleasant and helpful.

Not exactly. I'm complaining that to ship a thing at Amazon, it could have shipped in two days for "free." To ship that same thing at Monoprice cost me $12 and took a freaking week. To match the shipping speed at Amazon I'd have had to spend $24 dollars, and even then the store tends to take a day to ship stuff out. I realize I can't call my Amazon shipping free, but as others have pointed out, I share that subscription with another family member who splits the cost with me. So now it takes two shipments at Monoprice to already exceed the cost of shipping stuff at Amazon, and I usually don't even get things shipped out the same day.


The reason I purchase things at Monoprice is only partly for their prices. The primary reason is that their selection is so much better. I can get a 1.5' ethernet cable in a dozen colors. I can get (as I did earlier this week) a full selection of keystone jacks to customize a wall plate to my liking. Some of the more specialized things just don't show up at Amazon. But the thing is, I'd pay half again what Monoprice charges for their products if I could get them delivered in the same manner I get things at Amazon, because in the end I'm not sure how much I'm saving if I'm spending a large chunk on shipping.


Bruno, I agree with you on one point: they need to shape up on their fulfillment center practices. Those sound pretty damn bad. Not Foxconn-bad, but they only just got air conditioning in some of these places that are in warm climates. I hope they change their act there.


Lastly, I couldn't disagree more on Amazon having bad customer service. Sure, I've never called them up for something, but that's only because I've never had to. Their automated systems take care of me just fine. The one time they didn't, I was able to chat with a representative. I had purchased a behind-the-head headset that simply broke after a couple months of use (the plastic just snapped). Amazon sent me a replacement set well after I thought any grace period would apply, and when I said I didn't have anything but the headset and the receiver (no packaging, manuals, or install discs), they said it was okay and that I could just drop what I had back in the box. Then I simply throw it at someone in a UPS store and they take care of it for me.

I've never had a bad customer service experience at Amazon.

I'll slightly agree that their site has issues. It can be a bit of a mess to do some things, but for 99% of my usage I have zero trouble.

Ok, while Amazon's customer service is not PayPal-bad, I've only had bad experiences with them and my brother even worse. Every case was due to returns and happened before Amazon Canada started shipping consumer electronics.

I had order stuff to ship to Canada from them and stuff to ship to the US (depending on the product and their policies). Over the course of a single year I had to return a few things, so let's say it was 4 returns. Always because the products were defective. When I finally got pissed off at them was when they told me that I'd already returned to many items and they were cutting me off, no more returns, PERIOD. I had to call my credit card company to issue a charge-back to get my money. I would have been happy with a replacement product but they would do neither. Pretty much all communication had been over the phone.

Maybe they've changed or turned over a new leaf since then, but I haven't heard about it. They really like to give non-answers and might be trouble free the first time, but after that they're going to push you out to sea.

Now on to the web site...

It's confusing as hell, bad layout, stuff all over the place, every square millimiter of the page occupied. You get multiple results for the same product, prices are constantly changing, you're presented with adds and other upgrades at various points in the order process and it takes way too much clicking to check out even when you have an account and card on file in my experience. I've never seen this "one click" thing they'v supposedly got patented. Try ordering from Monoprice or Apple or my site sometime for a completely different experience. Amazon is just badly done.

Honestly, a lot of times I just search using Google and go to Amazon pages directly from there. That doesn't help with the check-out process though. Yes, they have a tremendous amount of different products and it's hard to keep so many SKUs organized within a single store, but seriously, they can start by redesigning the web site's layout which will go a long way.

I agree the UI stinks. I hardly use Amazon because of the poor searching (especially when you want to sort your results) and the cluttered web page when I finally do find what I want.

I'm more of an eBay fan just because I can find what I want better.

Unfortunately eBay/PayPal fees are starting to drive me away.

You've never seen one click ?

That is how 99% of my Amazon orders are done, I click the one click button and the product turns up on the doorstep the next day. There isn't even a checkout process involved.

Their customer service has always been first class when I've needed it, returns sent out immediately, often with no need to even return the faulty item.

I place 50 orders a year with them, they are excellent despite their slightly hodge podge website. And Prime is such a bargain, next day free delivery for me, my father, my wife and two brothers.

Andy, you get next day delivery on Prime? To the US it's 2-day. And you can get an entire family, at different addresses with one prime membership? I'm not sure that applies to the US.

I think we need to keep in mind that Amazon in the UK is, from a product availaility and service perspective (everything other than overall UI and branding) a different entity. Similar to Amazon in Canada, only with a lot more/better stuff.

I typically order from Amazon US and get delivery to my US mailbox, since Amazon in Canada doesn't have the same selection. I think I've only ever ordered 1 or 2 non-media items from Amazon in Canada and probably less than 5 orders total ever.

What special setup is needed to use the one-click ordering? And why does the non-one-click require half a million clicks and 6 pages?

It does. I linked to that earlier in this thread.

You can share your Prime membership in the US with up to four people. Their physical address doesn't matter.

WTF. That might be worth it then. Crap, why didn't I know about that? (rhetorical )

Yes, Prime is next day in the UK. And sometimes you can order very late in the day and still get it next day (depends where you are in the country).

Yes you can have five completely different addresses, as long as they are all in the same family (the surnames don't even need to be identical or anything like that).

We are a reasonably small country (and no doubt the next day thing doesn't apply if you are living on some distant Scottish island), otherwise next day wouldn't be practical.



Nothing very special, you just go into your account settings and tell it which card to associate with which address for 1-click. You can set multiple addresses, with a default, the extra addresses appear in a drop down under the 1-click button.

Could well be slightly different in the US/CA of course (at one point you could change the url on Amazon.com to Amzon.co.uk and the UK page for the product would load, can't do that now it appears the platforms they use have diverged a bit).



To encourage you to use 1-click

I'll answer anyway: you didn't actually read Rob's post or my post where we mentioned it for you :p

Bruno, I really don't think your experience with Amazon is the typical one, however, I can't comment on what the experience is like in Canada. In the US, though, I've had nothing but good experiences ordering from Amazon and everything else pales in comparison, thus the reason for this thread


The whole next day shipping thing definitely depends on where you live. In the UK I'm sure it's easier for them to get things to customers that quickly. Even in the US, though, it really depends. They only promise free 2-day, but they can over-deliver and occasionally do (not as much as Zappos does, though). One weird thing is that even when I lived 10 miles from my mother, she was able to get same-day shipping and I was not.

Mainly, I meant, why didn't I know about this BEFORE. Like when I did the Prime try-out for a month. Or when I knew my brother was a Prime member.

And then I did quickly read Rob's post but it didn't click that it applied to family members outside the same house, let alone that they didn't need to have the same last name - I didn't click on the link obviously.



This was all with Amazon US and with shipping to the US. But like I said, Amazon has grown since I had these issues and perhaps they've cleaned it all up. It's been over 5 years since it happened, and I stayed away from Amazon for a long time. I haven't had to use their customer support since that time and since most of my orders are typically from third-parties through Amazon, I've dealt with those parties directly.

I'm always willing to give a company the benefit of the doubt especially if it's clear that the issues are caused by a lone gunman at their support desk. But my experience involved at least a couple of people (probably 3).

The support contact I've had with Monoprice seemed a lot more personal and personable, which could very well be because of their smaller size. And that they don't run their shop like a slave labor camp.

In the US, all you do is go to your payment method and address, I think. Just go to your account and search the page for "click" or something and you'll find it. You have to choose an address and a credit card as your 1-click preference, and then you're set up from then on.


Andy was mostly joking, but Amazon tends to design for the people who shop there often. For the majority of purchases I use the 1-click button, but sometimes I need to use a different credit card, so I'll just add something to my cart and go through the longer checkout process that asks me for all my preferences regarding the order.

Besides, it doesn't take that long to check out the normal way. It verifies the same stuff I see on most web checkouts, particularly for first-time visitors on other sites.


The one aspect of the Amazon website that has always annoyed me is the lack of ability to take a single step back. There's a terminology I'm not getting here, but the basic idea is like what you see on a site like Newegg, where if you're looking at a WRT54GL router, at the top of the listing there will be a series of narrowing categories, and you can click on just one to take a step back and see all the Linksys wireless routers, then one more to see all the wireless routers, then one more to see all the networking equipment, etc.

I'll agree on that. Monoprice has pretty good service.

The thing is, there's no reason that would have to change if Amazon bought them. So far, Amazon has been great at acquiring popular web stores and combining the positive features of both parties. Look at Zappos, for instance. They are widely considered to have the best customer service of any store on the internet, and as far as I've heard, that hasn't changed since Amazon bought them. Amazon could continue to let Monoprice run its ship the way they already do, but give them the ability to get their orders out to customers in a better way.

Matt, you're thinking of "breadcrumbs" - a trail that allows you to click back to a previous point in a linear navigation path.

I thought so! Ugh, my brain is fried. Moving is stressful.

I dunno, I think Amazon has a pretty robust filtering/breadcrumb system.

Search for "WRT54GL" brings up the top hits, with the "Department" sidebar showing (hierarchically) "Computers & Accessories" and then "Computer Routers." If you then click on "Computer Routers" you see all the items in that category, with breadcrumbs at the top showing:



You can mouse over the "wrt54gl" to remove that search string from your query or you can go over to the left sidebar to filter by brand, features, average review, etc.

What's missing?

I think Matt was talking about breadcrumbs for the check-out process when not using one-click.

But when you get to the page for the actual product, all that vanishes, which is less than useful.

Ah, right. I usually Cmd-click all item links to keep the search results / product list pages up in another tab, so that one doesn't bother me.

Yeah, I often go to Amazon with a specific product in mind, then I want to see what else is available and what gets good reviews. I think that in general they've gotten better with their breadcrumbs (probably homemade instead of store bought ).

I've also noticed that Amazon seems to be attempting weighted sorts of user reviews. One of the things I do more than anything else on Amazon is sort items by user reviews to see what the community thinks of the products. A year ago, such a sort would result in an initial page of 5-star products with 1 user review each. I'd then have to go to the second or third page to get a 4.7-star reviewed item with 300+ reviews for it. This was a constant annoyance with their interface. However, now it seems they've addressed that problem, though it still seems a little...off.


On another note, I just received two Monoprice switches (the items I ordered last Friday) - an 8-port and a 24-port, both gigabit. I'm quite impressed with the build quality, though the 24 port switch has pretty loud fans... Anything I might be able to do about that? It's going in a basement where it should be pretty cool. Is it possible to replace the fans in these things?

Hurry up and test it Matt, I need to put in a Monoprice order soon and would love to add that 24-port switch. I've been needing one for a long time now but was originally hoping to get something that supported teaming and jumbo frames. I think I'm just not going to bother with the potential extra headaches and keep it simple.

I've had a little mini rack and 24-port patch panel sitting here for almost 2 years waiting for a bigger switch. It just so happens that I'm doing some re-wiring over the next few days too, so this is good timing.

Heh, I'm not sure how to test it What would you like me to do? I currently have it hooked up to my router (thankfully, Fios now has gigabit routers with 802.11n), and the only thing that's connected to the switch is a long run to my family room where I have the 8-port switch (also gigabit) located for serving all the internet-connected devices in my home theater (currently just the Google TV and Tivo).

I will say that the switch seems sufficiently well-built for the price. It's a pretty nice piece of hardware. Basically, it seems better than the similarly-priced alternatives on Amazon, but I don't really have any way of knowing that.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that my entire network has the potential for 1000Mbps now, and the whole house is wired. Sweet.

If you previously had a gigabit switch and also had some file transfer benchmarks you might see if this new switch behaves any differently. Results are more relevant if you were already pushing some high numbers before like with a NAS. On the ReadyNAS forum for instance, some customers have had varying results with different model switches from different manufacturers.

If you have a supposed problematic device that does a lot of unnecessary broadcasts like the Boxee Box hooked up, can you report if there are any issues on your network that might not have been there before? Again, on their forums, some customers have seen any number of devices on their networks reacting poorly to all these queries/broadcasts from Boxee Box.

My main switch is already GigE, but it's only got 8 ports. This means that I have a few network jacks around the house that currently have no connectivity. Since I'll be adding more this week getting this switch now would be super convenient. I'm moving my office to a different room and adding new port location in master bedroom for a new SageTV extender location. I just have to figure out how to drop the cable from a hole in the mirror in the ceiling. Kidding.

Probably because it's not difficult to ship anything next-day in the UK - the distances are such that it can be trucked overnight to anywhere on the mainland.

When ordering items £50+ I usually get them within 1-2 days with the *free* Super Saver Delivery!

It's been a year plus since we installed a Trendnet 24-port "Green" GigE switch here. Works fine, fast, cool, quiet (no fans), built-in PSU (no "brick").. very power efficient and trouble free. Highly Recommended. 13W max compared with 30W on other switches (eg. Monoprice). Also, 48gb/s switching fabric compared with 32gb/s for Monoprice switch. Plus, 9-Kbyte jumbo frames capability.

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=58253&vpn=TEG-S24DG&manufacture=TRENDnet

It has come up "on sale" for $100 or so in times past.

-ml

SOLD. Except I think I'll grab it from Amazon. I can't believe I didn't consider the power consumption. 13w may even be lower than the Dell 8 port model I have now.

Yeah, I might return the Monoprice switch for that one, especially now that I've heard the fans...

btw.. We use that switch here with a mix of old cat5 and newer cat5e cabling, and it all works for us at GigE speed.

I have only cat5e in this house, so I don't anticipate any issues with the wiring. Found Newegg selling on eBay at the same price as Amazon so I'll probably go that route to avoid paying NY sales tax. Canadian tax will then be a total gamble, depending on how the customs officials are feeling that day.

I can't believe you guys need 24 ports in a house

I probably only need 12. But I'd rather have free ports than not enough ports (what I have now).

I have a lot of empegs.

More seriously, when I hook up a customer's rack mount "NAS" unit, that often chews up 4-8 ports all by itself. And my new thermostat (under development) will need one.

PLUS the empegs.

Likewise, I won't need all 24, but I'll need a good amount. For example, my house is wired (hooray!) with drops in 8 rooms, I believe. In the room where all my networking equipment is located, I'll also have my main desktop PC, a NAS, my Vera Lite (for home automation), and a couple other devices I'm forgetting at the moment. Additionally I'll frequently be working on peoples' computers, and it's always good to have wired connections for those.

But yeah, what Bruno said...

I have two of these 24 port switches in my house. No issues whatsoever, quiet, cool, just works.

These replaced a bunch of smaller 5, 8, 12 port switches, each of which probably used the same or more power.

It could be worse, I have 50 of them. I'm not saying this to brag, it's a simple fact. When I built my house, I wanted ethernet drops in every room. Usually more than one, like 3-4 per bedroom, 6 in the office room, 3 in the kitchen, 6 in the attic, 2 in the garage, even 2 in the garden house... All cables are Cat7.

Not all of those are for internet access. I have one connection in every room for Sonos. (I know I can do that wirelessly too, but I always prefer wired) Almost every room has a TV connection (coax), and there's an ethernet connection next to it for the uplink of the digital TV.

I know I could have used a switch in every room, but I didn't want to do this, for two reasons:
1) All those little switch boxes quickly clutter up a room with cabling
2) The power used by all those little switches would quickly add up
3) They would also occupy a power socket in every room.

So in essence, I think it looks a lot cleaner. It probably cost me a lot less as well (not in effort when laying the cables, but I only had to do that once) AND I have full bandwidth on every cable (you never know what that's good for).
All those cables come together in two 24 port patch panels in a rack cabinet. That rack cabinet also houses the switch, so it's very easy to switch ports, create VLANs and actually have them ordered physically in a logical order etc...

I could really use a 48 port smart switch, but I haven't found one so far that is fanless. So I'll probably go with 24 port switches for just this reason. I like the this D-link one. For now I'm still using an HP Procurve 1400-24, but that's not a smart switch.

That is genius. I do wish I had more ports in my home theater area. I now have my Tivo, Boxee Box, Google TV, and Vulkano (like the Slingbox) hooked up to the 8-port switch in my system, and it does add a bit of mess, takes up a power port, and uses power. Oh well, maybe in the next house

Awwww... big deal. I have four in my house, and I'm actually using three of them.

Somehow I suspect that my electronic situation just might be a bit less complex than yours!

It sounds like you have a great setup.

tanstaafl.

Hardly genius. Insanity, maybe. At least my electrician thought so. (but it was me who did all the work so he had no right to complain anyway )
If you ever get the chance to build your own house, I can strongly advise you to do this as well. You'll love the result, because it provides you an enormous amount of flexibility. You're almost as flexible with wired ethernet as you are with wireless. Very handy!


Thanks, I agree, I'm very happy with it. But I had the luxury of being able to design it from the ground up. I realise most people are not so lucky.

Edit: here's a pic of the cabinet. You can see the patch panels are actually Cat6 and so are the used patch cables. Cat7 patch panels were not available a year ago, at least not at consumer prices. (are they today?) This Cat6 panel works just as well. The orange cable is real Cat7 cable. In that back of the cabinet, you can see I didn't cut the Cat7 exactly up to length but kept a few feet extra, in case I ever wanted to reposition the cabinet.

Yeah, the best I could do was that we had a small unfinished storage room in the basement that was right under our living room where the home theater would go. Long story short, I needed to supply the workers who were finishing it with whatever cables I wanted run ASAP. All I had was enough CAT5e and speaker wire to run wires for one ethernet and two surround speakers, plus another speaker cable is a pull cord. I didn't even have any purpose for the ethernet, but I figured you could do worse than have CAT5 running place to place. Perhaps down the road I'll mount a flat screen TV on the wall and run HDMI over ethernet so I can put the equipment out of the way.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: more ethernet is better

Such a tiny little cute little country!

In our household, we like to joke that we think the English are quaint because they think 100 miles is a long distance, and that the English think we Americans are quaint because we think 100 years is a long time.

We've got four wall jacks for ethernet at the home theatre position. Very very useful there, and saves a switch and power dongle.

The only other place with tons of ports is my home office, where the switch resides. Most of the end devices are in the same room. We do have some runs to elsewhere in the house, but just single ports here and there.

Cheers

Sorry to take the thread back on topic... So one of my Amazon peeves just kicked in again today.

I added a TV to my cart a few days ago intending to order it this week. Bam, today it went up $22 (and change). Arrgh.

I'm not sure what you're blaming Amazon for here. Are you trying to say that you should be able to freeze a sale price on something in your shopping cart?

If you're concerned with price fluctuation, let me introduce you to the greatest site I've ever found for Amazon shoppers (which has one of my favorite site names ever): camelcamelcamel.com

On camelcamelcamel you can see the price history for nearly everything sold through Amazon. Then, you can set up alerts to tell you when items drop below a certain price. It's invaluable to my Amazon shopping experience. It's how I bought my new office printer, and I saved about $30 over the price I first saw it listed for.

Oh, sorry, this doesn't have anything to do with the fact I added the item to the cart. So I'm not complaining about expecting the cart price to be held, just that the prices seem to fluctuate kind of randomly and without notice.

I can understand if the product were listed in the market and fluctuates depending on seller. I can understand if the price a few days ago was promotional. Neither of those was the case.

The price when I added it to the cart was what I thought was Amazon's own "regular" price. Guaranteed to be the lowest price. Today it's almost $23 more. Still guaranteed to be the lowest.

Using that history site shows that the price jumps between the two amounts every couple of months. I would have pulled the trigger on Friday had I known it was about to go up. It just wouldn't have been as convenient.

Yeah, I can see that. I read an article recently about how companies will change the price of their products on Amazon based on what their competitors are doing, or something like that. It can be annoying, but I tend to not add something to my cart until I'm ready to buy it, otherwise it goes onto my wishlist. Then I'll use camelcamelcamel to alert me when it's at it's lowest historical price, so I feel like at least I've gotten it at as low a price as it's ever been. Rarely have I bought something at that alert price and then seen it go down from there.

The guarantee Amazon offers on TVs will refund you the difference if the price does go down later. Within a limited time period of course.

Looks like they also sell it in a wider format for rackmounting, with the rackmount ears included: TEG-S24G.

I picked up the smaller form factor a few hours ago for $105 shipped (to my US mailbox). I have a few sets of rack mount ears here from other products which i hope to use with it. If the fit isn't exactly right I can easily tap some new holes in the ears.

Peachy. That's pretty much how I've done it here too -- reused some ears from the switch it replaced.

I'm looking forward to getting it installed as I've now got a few additional cable runs just hanging in the basement that need to be terminated. 2 drops to the room I'll be using as my new office and 2 to the master bedroom. Oh and a third drop from the family room that's been waiting a couple of years to go live.

I can also finally use the 24 2ft patch cables I bought from Monoprice over a year ago for their intended purpose.

Now if I can just find a decent floor-standing rack enclosure at a bargain-basement price. Time to set up some filters on kijiji.

Or just side mount it on the wall / wiring panel area.
Unless you've got a few other racky things to mount/remount.

Cheers

I just found someone selling a bunch of Dell 42U rack enclosures for $200/ea. The issue is that they're right smack downtown, Yonge & Adelaide. Ugh.

I've got all my stuff on some strong chrome steel wire shelving now, but I'd like it a bit more organized and taking up less floor space. The shelving unit is something I already had and re-used - I can put it to better use elsewhere now.

3 APC UPS
PVR Server
14" LCD
ReadyNAS
Router
Modem
VOIP Adapter
7-ch Power Amp
24 port switch
24 port patch panel
some other odds and ends

If we're doing server/comms cupboard porn...

From the top, that's: ADSL (FTTC) modem (white box); Netgear WNDR3700 running OpenWRT; Netgear GS108 switch; 1 empeg mk2, 1 empeg mk2a; AMD E-350 in a Chenbro NAS case (4xHDD, 1xSSD), running Windows Server 2008 R2; Synology NAS box; Acer Revo R3610 running Ubuntu.

Here's a silly question: is there any way to get my cursor to automatically go into the search box when I go to Amazon?

I really like that on the few times I open a Google search tab, the cursor is already in the search box and I can just start typing. I'm not sure why they wouldn't do the same on Amazon.

Any ideas how I can do that myself?

Javascript injection. On the Mac I'd use Glimmerblocker to inject the script. Greasemonkey or something else for Firefox on Windows?

I thought Greasemonkey might do this. I use Chrome, though, and I don't know if it's available to me...

*edit*
Looks like there's an extension called "Tampermonkey." Hmm... Not sure if I'm comfortable with a knock-off...

In a word: yes.

I found a Firefox plugin that did that, and it worked, but it wasn't what I needed so I deleted it. Don't recall what it was called, but a quick Google look brought me back to it: here

It wasn't what I wanted because it only went to the search box when I loaded the Amazon site, rather than every time I wanted to do a new search while the site was already loaded.

tanstaafl.

Edit: Ooops... too late.

Update: I now have had two more experiences with Monoprice that have turned me off of their site. Not permanently, but for now.

1) I had been waiting to hear back from a client that they wanted to go ahead with some work. By the time I heard back from them, it was Friday afternoon and the work was to be done on the following Wednesday. I need about $60-90 in parts, all from Monoprice. I add it all to my cart. Unfortunately, I need to be guaranteed that the parts will all get there by Tuesday. The only way I could do that was to choose a shipping method that added up to $50. Even then, I've had bad shipping experiences with them before, where things don't get there on time. In the end, I ordered it all from Amazon, paid twice as much for most of the parts, but the total ended up being MUCH lower and I now have a guarantee of a Tuesday delivery date.

Okay, it's not Monoprice's fault completely on that one. So here's one where it is:

2) This one really peeved me. Different client, finally got back to me to tell me we're on with the project. Great! I go to Monoprice. I log in. I go to the wishlist I've created just for this job. I then call the contractor I work with for TV installations to confirm a day/time to do the project. After this 3-5 minute phone call I turn my attention back to the computer and move all the parts to my cart. I'm taken automatically to my cart...but it's empty. Curious. I then see I'm logged out. Okay, fine, I'll just log in. Not only is my cart empty, my wishlist is also empty! What the hell? What the hell kind of design is that? I chatted with support who said they were having shopping cart issues at the moment (no mention of that on their site), and my wishlist - which I spent a good 30-60 minutes putting together - is now lost. I have no record of what I added, because I didn't think I needed it.

Amazon, on the other hand, lets me create multiple wishlists and doesn't delete items you move to your shopping cart until you do it manually.

Sorry, I needed to vent. Amazon wins again. Monoprice is great when you can pick the absolute slowest shipping available, or when you need that thing that you can't find anywhere else. But I keep coming back to Amazon when stuff like this happens.

One of the reasons why I like this place is that if find similarities with people in here also in small things. Like being addicted to Amazon. very addicted. On-click is my drug

At work, security desk (where packages get delivered) guards expect few packages for me every week. That is because I use Amazon for both personal and work purchases. Today I received three. A book for SWMBO, a wireless keyboard for my HTPC, three CDs for myself.

Amazon Prime in Italy has no general delivery time, but for every item you order you're told beforehand when delivery will occur; they are right 99% of the times. Actually, based on my experience since Prime started (I subscribed as soon as it was available too), they are only wrong, and rarely, when a third vendor is involved. Otherwise, they're just always right in their estimates. Most times, that is 2 days. But very often it is just 1 day. And they keep improving by the day. Few times, I ordered at 10:00pm from home while watching TV, and got the package on my desk the morning after. That means, I would say, that if I had ordered in the morning, I would have received the package that very day. Amazing. Really.

Interestingly, packages are most times not from Italy, in spite of me ordering from amazon.it . Most packages are from France, several from Germany, less often from the UK, but that happens to. Once I got a package fro Poland, so they must have some storage facility there too. Clearly Amazon has a network of storage facilities in EU that all ship to several countries in the union.

More interestingly, I've been a customer of Amazon.com (meaning US) since before amazon.it was available. Prices have typically been so good, often due to the favorable exchange rate, that on specific items it was still convenient to order form the US in spite of custom taxes. That was particularly true before 9/11, after which Customs got wild here in the name of safety and security, adding a great deal of uncertainty in terms of custom taxes and delivery times.
Well, my account immediately and seamlessly translated to every other amazon site. Carts and related features (save for later, for example) are obviously separated, but wish-lists, logon credentials, payment methods and most (not all) shipping addresses are in common, which made Amazon a quite unique case in my experience where nationalized websites did not add confusion and frustration.
Superb is the currency conversion service they add between the Eurozone and UK. Even there, they proved excellent.

Today, I often check from amazon.co.uk if a specific item is more convenient in Pounds rather than in Euros. Unlikely, but it happens, and because they let you switch prices from Euro to Pound and vice versa, you can see it right away. And, by letting you pay in Euro if you purchase in the UK, they take the currency conversion risk. Again unique in this compared to any other on-line store.

Prices in the Eurozone are now identical, but there used to be some inexplicable differences between Italy and France and Germany, for some reason.

I now buy even just a 8 Euro CD from them. I'd rather wait one day than having to drive or even just walk to the music store round the corner. Because they still exist - music stores, I mean -, don't they? I haven't checked for a while now...

I mean, I look at their website (I agree it could use some improvement in various areas, but that really is not enough to make me less than enthusiastic with the purchasing experience from them) and I am amazed to how their product range is expanding. And they're so good that I feel they deserve their success.

I've returned items foru or five times for various reasons, and while I had (and gave them) some suggestions to make the return process smoother, all cases ended up well.

What did you guys buy from Amazon? I bought all sorts of IT hardware, ranging from mice to some rack shelving to Drobos and Synology NAS units to networking devices of all price ranges to cabling of all sorts - and edned up loving Amazon Basics products and packaging - to HiFi components; a couple of Cisco IP Phones I could not wait to get from Cisco. Tons of CDs. Shoes. Clothing (including --> Steampunk Corsets <-- for SWMBO's halloween costume :D).
I am indeed spoiled. I forgot how the world was before Amazon. I shiver at the thought of it. Worse than that is just the world without the Internet.

... Oh, and Lego Kits.