Review: PricePirates price comparison software
Sunday, August 17th, 2008PricePirates is a piece of Windows freeware that lets you compare prices in eBay auctions ( you can select what country), Amazon.com and Shopping.com. Each of those product sources show up in different tabs in the software and automatically populated once you switch to a tab. There is also a tab with a Web search (although I don’t know why you would bother with this when there are much better search engines out there).
I found that the results were a bit hit or miss on the Amazon.com and Shopping.com tabs, although eBay results looked fine. For example, a search for ‘ipod touch 8gb‘ did not return the actual iPod listed on Amazon. On the plus side, search results came back quickly and re-sorting results by description, price, time left, etc. was also very fast.
PricePirates also features your own personal watchlist, the ability to search multiple eBay and Amazon stores in other countries, eBay store searches, and even the ability to submit a bid directly from the app.
PricePirates has potential. If it could search on multiple shopping sites ( a la Pricegrabber), or perhaps focus on auction sites, and compare items across multiple auction sites, then it would become a lot more valuable. Otherwise, if you’re strictly an eBay/Amazon person, then this is a good way to compare whether bidding for an item or buying it outright/used on Amazon is the better way to go.
Posted in Miscellaneous
AMD’s going through some rough times, no doubt about it, but for fanboys of the CPU maker (wait, do CPU fanboys still exist?) here’s your feel-good story of the year. The always-thorough Tom’s Hardware has pit Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor against AMD’s Athlon 64 2000+, and the results just might surprise you. The 1GHz Athlon (with a core voltage of 0.90 volts and a power draw of just 8 watts) managed to best the aforementioned Atom in both energy consumption and processing power tests. The gurus at Tom’s credited the more modern 790G platform and the highly efficient K8 architecture as big players in the Athlon’s strong showing, finally deeming said chip “more economical, faster and quieter” than the Atom. We know you’re in disbelief — good thing there are 14 pages of proof waiting in the read link.
AMD’s going through some rough times, no doubt about it, but for fanboys of the CPU maker (wait, do CPU fanboys still exist?) here’s your feel-good story of the year. The always-thorough Tom’s Hardware has pit Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom 230 processor against AMD’s Athlon 64 2000+, and the results just might surprise you. The 1GHz Athlon (with a core voltage of 0.90 volts and a power draw of just 8 watts) managed to best the aforementioned Atom in both energy consumption and processing power tests. The gurus at Tom’s credited the more modern 790G platform and the highly efficient K8 architecture as big players in the Athlon’s strong showing, finally deeming said chip “more economical, faster and quieter” than the Atom. We know you’re in disbelief — good thing there are 14 pages of proof waiting in the read link.
Indilinx just recently caught eyes with its Barefoot solid state drive controller, which has reportedly shown a read speed of 230MB/sec. Merely days later, it’s already talking about the next best thing. Said firm, along with Mosaid, is preparing for a third-generation of the controller for the SATA 3 interface, which will provide a mind-boggling 600MB/sec. Unfortunately, no other details were provided, but just in case you were terrified that the internal drive you purchase in 2013 wouldn’t transfer files any faster than the one you’re using now, at least you’ve one less worry on your mind.
