pricing

I don't know about you, but I often find myself saying "I'd totally buy that if it cost $__ less." It happens to me all the time with items such as RAM, video cards, Windows Vista (joking), and the Amazon Kindle. Luckily there are two handy services to help keep tabs on prices for online goods.

The first, and newer of the two is called Waitable. It simply monitors the price of whatever items you put in either by URL, Amazon.com sales number, or UPC code. All you need to do is plug in what … Read more

A fresh crop of mid-range graphics cards based on Nvidia's newest chip is threatening to make ATI an also-ran--at least until ATI returns the favor and puts Nvidia in its place.

It's not easy competing in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market. One minute you're the star garnering all the awards for crunching through games like Crysis, Company of Heroes, and Call of Duty 4, the next minute you're toast.

That's what may be happening to ATI in the mid-range graphics market. Cards based on Nvidia's just-released GeForce 9600 GT are streaming onto the … Read more

Intel is expected to bring out new Core 2 Duo processors and a Celeron in the April-May time period, according to Chinese-language Web site HKEPC. These are minor models that do not constitute a major model rollout like the mobile Montevina processors due late spring or early summer.

HKEPC cites motherboard manufacturers as the source for this information.

New processors include the 45-nanometer 2.83-GHz Core 2 Duo E8300 (6MB L2 cache/1333-MHz front-side bus), priced at $163, the 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo E7200 (3MB cache/1066-MHz FSB), priced at $133, and the 2.0-GHz Celeron E1400 (512K cache/… Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--The global rise in power consumption isn't bad for all species, it turns out.

Sun Microsystems is seeing increased customer interest in its Sun Ray, a thin desktop client, as electricity prices climb, said Subodh Bapat, vice president and chief engineer in the Eco Responsibility office at Sun. Bapat's comments came in a presentation during Sun's global media day taking place Wednesday.

Thin clients like the Sun Ray consume far less electricity than conventional desktops, he said. A Sun Ray on a desktop might consume 4 to 8 watts of power. That's because … Read more

U.S. law often comes down hard on price fixing. That's why a magazine story in October about efforts to create a music subscription site potentially backed by the top four music labels may have sounded alarms in Washington.

Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have received requests for information from the U.S. Department of Justice about a proposed music site called Total Music. The DOJ interest comes after an October BusinessWeek story that said Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, pitched an idea for a subscription site to at least two of his three main competitors, … Read more

AT&T has increased the price of its DSL service by $5 a month as the company faces slowing broadband growth, the company confirmed Tuesday.

The pricing change will apply to existing and new customers in AT&T's original 13-state territory who subscribe to one of AT&T's three lower-speed tiers of service.

Customers subscribing to AT&T's new U-verse service will not see a change in their bill, nor will customers who have service in the old BellSouth region. The company is not changing pricing on the $10 and $19.95 standalone … Read more

By 2010, Wal-Mart and its suppliers are going to be a lot more energy efficient.

The retailing giant has set a goal of getting suppliers to increase the energy efficiency of its products by 25 percent in three years. For some suppliers, the standards are a little more stringent. By 2010, the company will only sell Energy Star-rated air conditioners. Flat panel TVs will have to be 30 percent more energy efficient than they are now.

"If we achieved our 25 percent goal just in the U.S. we would save enough electricity to power 3 million homes per … Read more

From the earliest days of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s up through the early 1960s, kids bought "45s."

The albums of the period typically had just a few good tunes, and the rest was crap. Then The Beatles changed the rules. Their albums were so chock-full of great stuff, you wanted to hear every tune. Sure, singles were still important, but most of the bands that mattered didn't rely on singles, and even The Beatles stopped putting out singles tied to a specific album (there were no singles released from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club … Read more

In a study that could make marketing managers and salespeople rub their hands with glee, scientists have used brain-scanning technology to shed new light on the old adage, "You get what you pay for."

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford's business school have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.

Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher … Read more