[pchelpers] Comparing many items of a single type on a site

Hi, folks!

Inge, you said that you're looking for suggestions for a new computer.
Most techs will probably not have time to do thorough research on
parts for a custom system. You might therefore want to see about doing
some of the research yourself.

When I'm buying something for which there is a large selection, it's
convenient to put everything into a spreadsheet, and then sort,
compare, use a PivotTable (you should play with these if you haven't
done so before), and so forth.

The site that I'm going to talk about is NewEgg. It has several
features which make it good for buying parts from. There are other
sites with similar capabilities.

1. Ratings are a 1-5 (5 is best) ranking of the product by the buyers.
Like any such measures, you should check to see how many people are
voting for an item. A rating is not very useful if there's only a
handful of votes. On the other hand, a rating of 5 in which several
thousand people voted is significant. This is one of the most valuable
features of NewEgg, compared to some other computer parts sites. If I
buy an item with a rating of 1, and it's a lemon, I have only myself
to blame.

2. Reviews are written comments on the product provided by the buyers.
Often, it's useful to see why some people vote low. This is especially
useful sometimes because a number of people will vote weeks or months
after the purchase, after the product has been in use for a while, and
has had plenty of opportunity to show issues. Also, ome people will
complain about issues which will not apply to you. For example, most
people can ignore a comment that an item does not perform well in
Antarctica at a temperature of -50C.

3. Powerful search features. Right now, for example, I'm looking at
CPUs which are retail (have a 3-year warranty, as opposed to OEM,
which only have a 1-year warranty) and which support 64-bit,
virtualization, and multi-core, among other things. For retail,
64-bit, and multi-core, I can select options for that. For
virtualization, or for selecting multiple choices for a single option
(such as everything except Celeron and Sempron), I can use the Power
Search. Without the Power Search, I'd have to winnow out some of the
results manually, later on, although that's easy if you have Excel or
(probably) OpenOffice, as you can see below.

4. Bulk comparisons. I can set the number of results per page to 100
(the max), then check the box next to each item in the results list,
then click on "Compare Selected". The resulting page shows all of the
items in a row, with ALL of the details itemized, in table format.
Some sites limit comparisons to something like 3 at a time, which is
ridiculous when you're wanting to compare dozens of items.

The table is the good part. I can mark the entire page, copy, and then
paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. I then go through the list and
delete the columns for any items with a rating which is too low. I
then mark and copy the table itself, go to another page, RIGHT-click
in the first cell, select Paste Special, check "transpose", and then
click Ok. This organizes the items by rows instead of columns (which
Excel can handle better), and also gets rid of the graphics (which is
why I check the ratings first, since that is indicated only by the
graphics).

Once I'm at this point, I can now use the PivotTable feature to
manipulate the table in various ways, and can easily compare all of
the items in columns, and so forth. For example, I can sort by price
and then easily delete all of the items with prices that make me
cringe.

Note that the listings often have errors, so you may want to
double-check the listed specs against the manufacturer's site. For
example, the AMD CPUs show a frequency for "HypherThreading", instead
of the "Yes" or "No" that it should show. Also, some items may or may
not support something, but the field will be blank or inapplicable.
HyperTransport, for example, does not apply to Intel CPUs.

-- 
Scott.




-- 
-------list-services-below-----------
Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig>
Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi
List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers
PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig
Latest news live feeds at http://modecideas.com/indexhomenews.htm?sig
Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied.

Other related posts: