Category: Shopping (Page 1 of 3)

Traptops in 2023 v2.0

August 26, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 3 Comments

Just last month, I went on at length about traptops on this blog. I’m sorry to say that I have to return to this topic, as people are bringing to my attention some even sneakier traptops. Let’s pull open the drapes on these shenanigans, so fewer people get taken by this trickery. Here we go with Traptops in 2023 v2.0:

I Was Almost Fooled

This new type of traptop almost fooled me. I recommend you check out this listing over at Amazon. Here’s another comparable listing, also on Amazon. If I go digging, they’re on Wal*Mart, as well. I had to stare at these for a few minutes; I truly doubted my spidey-sense at first, because these products really look good. They feature:

a big name brand (HP)
shipped quickly through Amazon’s Prime program
sold as a New item, with Windows 11
tons of storage space and RAM
a reasonable price

But I think the tip-off to me was that these computers sport too much RAM. 8GB is enough, 16GB is a lot, but you don’t typically see 32GB of RAM in a $500 computer 32GB of RAM is only expected inside of professional-grade or top-tier gaming computers.

Next, I noticed the processors: Intel Pentium and Silver CPUs. The same bargain-basement, ultra-low-powered chips found in those sub-$200 traptops I’m always going on about. The combination of amazing RAM/storage with a low-rent processor caused my facial tic to act up. So I dug in further.

The Plot Sickens

Reading the finer print, other details stuck out to me:

These computers are sold by mystery companies (Oydisen, Snow Bell, etc.) and not HP or Dell.
They are “new” in the sense that no other consumers have used them before. But these computers have been opened, unboxed, dissected, and “upgraded” with components from other sources.

I had to sit with this and imagine the path of one of these computers, from its birth to arriving at my doorstep. Here’s my hot-take on how this happens:

HP manufactures too many computers, and they are left with some extra pallets of traptops from last year. They sell them off cheap through remainder programs or other ersatz methods, to companies like Oydisen. These fringe companies crack open the laptops, take out the 128GB SSDs and swap in 1TB SSDs, take out the 4GB of RAM and put in 32GB, slap it all back together and try to move them on Amazon, eBay and Wal*Mart, where the return policies will discourage anything from being sent back. The newish computers are then sold off at a big profit, and they also get to sell off the harvested parts in bulk, too.

If I had to guess, they likely bought these 2022 traptops for less than $200 a pop. If they buy the SSDs in bulk, they could be less than $40 apiece. And RAM also can be found cheaply, for under $50. All told, these outfits could be moving $250 computers for $500 or more.

Now, I don’t want you to get angry about them making money. This is America, and everyone marks up every piece of merchandise. What I want you to focus on are the problems and dangers with the computers they’re cranking out.

What Can Go Wrong

As I’ve detailed before, traptops are built to go wrong. They’re underpowered, deliberately hobbled, have insufficient cooling and are largely non-upgradeable. Adding an unbelievable amount of RAM and massive storage does not change this.

In fact, it increases the risk of problems. More RAM creates more heat. The laptop was designed with its original hardware in mind, and it may not be able to exhaust the heat created by the upgrades heaped upon it.

Please consider also: What happens if you have any hardware problems with this computer? Are you going to call HP Support? Let me stop you right there: HP will not help you with this “new” computer. The warranty was voided by the company that cracked the seal and removed the HP parts. If you have any warranty, it’s now with Oysiden or whoever sent you the computer.

And if you are upset or disappointed after buying such a computer, the deck is stacked against you for returning it. Even if you are well within the return-window, Amazon or Wal*mart may resist accepting the computer back. Because: Can you truly prove there’s anything wrong with it? They’ll help you with defective merch, but not with anything they think is buyer’s remorse.

And finally, good luck tracking down these seller, for support or complaints or anything. I went looking for Oydisen and never found a website or phone number. I can find their warehouse in Delaware, and their awful BBB profile, but no sensible way of calling them. Another seller, Snow Bell, tracks back to a lovely $1M residential home in Fairfax, VA, but I have a feeling they don’t welcome customers or calls there.

Stay Safe Out There

Buying from big box stores is generally safer than buying from Amazon, Wal*Mart and eBay. When you buy from a big name store, the computer is coming from them. But Amazon and Wal*Mart consider themselves “marketplaces”, where anyone can sell anything. And they don’t take much responsibility over what their marketplace sellers’ behavior.
If you do buy from Amazon, take special note of the Sold By info in the product details. “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” is safer than “Sold by Hot Mess Express Tech Deals”.
I recommend you choose new computers over refurbished/renewed/open box systems. And read the fine-print to make sure they are truly new-in-box, unmolested, all quality seals intact.
Know where your computer warranty lay. If you buy from Costco, that’s where you go with warranty questions and tech help. Best Buy, Staples, MicroCenter will steer your warranty concerns to the original manufacturer’s number. If you find out that the warranty is through some unknown third-party, that should raise a red flag.
Please feel free to email or call me about any computer purchase you are unsure of. I will quickly offer an opinion about any PC you send me details about.

Traptops in 2023

July 13, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 2 Comments

There is a class of laptop that I refer to as a “traptop”. Buying this class of computer is akin to stepping in a trap, and I have warned my readers about these in past years. And here I am again, writing about Traptops in 2023, because they are changing and still causing harm to my customers.

Traptops lure in people with great, low prices and amazingly positive descriptions. Consider this laptop on special sale right now at Amazon for the Prime Days. It looks like a pretty sweet deal at $287 for a 17″ Windows computer! But it isn’t. Please do not consider buying this dreadful device. As I say often: You will live to regret it.

Here are the criticisms I can levy on this computer:

Storage: These laptops start at 128GB of storage. And that’s not so bad, but please know that Windows 11 and its initial big updates will gobble 30-40GB of space. If you plan on storing much data, you’ll need more storage capacity. And this laptop only offers a slot for a MicroSD card. Those are extra-fragile, and I would not recommend using them for anything important.

Processor: A traptop often comes with a very underpowered processor, like an Intel Celeron. That CPU is not good at handling the weight of Windows 11. It will bog down quickly, if you leave Chrome open for too long, or during a virus scan, or even during a big Windows Update. And you cannot upgrade the processor down the road. If you plan on running Windows, avoid processors with names like Celeron, Silver, Gold and just Pentium. Those are fine for Chromebooks, but not for heavy-lifting.

Deliberately Hobbled: These computers are designed to spare all expense. They cut corners and then they cut corners off of those corners, to drive the cost down as far as is possible. And to the regular consumer, these tactics are invisible. But I and others can describe what’s going on, under the hood.

A traptop’s build cost can be cut if you eliminate the cooling fans. But to eliminate cooling fans, you must also eliminate heat. A processor has to create some heat, though. So to reduce the heat, the motherboard is programmed to throttle the already-pitiful Celeron processor.

Lack of Support: You can get into trouble with any new computer, and your first call might be to the manufacturer. No one wants to call the maker of the computer for help. But at least you can do that with an HP laptop or a Dell desktop. I have a feeling it’s not the same with a SGIN computer.

I’ve looked over the Amazon listing for their cheapest SGIN computer. I’ve done a bit of Googling and other searches. I cannot for the life of me find a website or contact number for SGIN. How would I contact the manufacturer, if I have trouble with this device? Send a message through the Amazon website?

PS: While I do not put much faith in Amazon reviews, they do reveal how bad the support level is with SGIN. Pick a SGIN computer, go to the Reviews and click on the 1-Star ratings. You’ll quickly see the suffering others have gone through.

There are many other traptops out there to beware of, so take this info and apply it wherever you see a computer that has a too-good-to-be-true pricepoint. Amazon is the worst offender that I see right now for traptops. But I should like to heap shame also on Wal*Mart and eBay for permitting these to be sold on their platforms, as well.

In general, I want to see a Windows computer with at least 8GB of RAM, a true Solid State Drive and at least an Intel i3 processor. Less than that is asking for trouble. And stick to the big brand names: HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, Lenovo. Pass over that Liánjià Lèsè Laptop or anything with a similarly curious name.

And please feel free to reach out to me before you buy your next computer. I am happy to give you my opinion on your future PC purchase!

Online Piracy

May 16, 2023 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Please avoid online piracy. And by piracy, I mean: Downloading movies/music/software from ersatz sources without paying for them. Just don’t do it. You’ll live to regret it.

I won’t preach or get all moral about this. That’s for other people to do. And I can’t judge; I’m sure I’ve poached an album or two, back in the day. Instead of appealing to your ethics, I want you to appreciate this matter from a computer security standpoint. Pirated downloads carry with them a risk of infection.

When you obtain and open a cracked software package, or start to watch that movie you saw posted on Twitter, how do you know what’s in there? Some of these popular pirated movies come with a dose of malware. Your antivirus may not block the viral load. Your VPN doesn’t matter. And the infections can range from nuisance pop-up ads to serious password and data theft. Yikes!

Look, I’m as excited as many of you are to own and re-watch the new Super Mario flick. But online piracy has a cost that you can compare against the price of what you want to enjoy. Weigh it like this: You can buy a streaming copy of the aforementioned movie, through legitimate means, right now for $30. (That price will come down as the Blu-rays are released in a month or two.) Or you can take your chances with a torrented copy or pirate download from some shady link, and then pay me to fix your computer. My labor fee for virus-cleanup is typically a bit higher than the price of a properly-bought film.

PS: Besides the viral risk, there is also a non-zero chance that you could get in legal trouble. It’s rare, I’ll admit, but I have seen a few people get some nasty threatening letters from lawyers, over the years. Getting one of those letters is sure to ruin your weekend.

Brushing Scams

November 27, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Here’s a scam that you should know about, but not because it’s particularly dangerous. It’s just weird. But once you know the details about brushing scams, they won’t creep you out, and you can quickly move on from them.

Surprise‽

When an unexpected item arrives at your doorstep, it may be part of a brushing scam. The item may be lightweight or small or just plain curious: people have reported receiving packets of seeds, hand warmers, “dragon eggs“, and even Bluetooth speakers. The packaging often shows an international return address, but no further clues about the point of sale. No bill is included, no company name or URL can be spotted.

Nothing “killer” about this, just an artsy rock…

In general, the items are harmless. There have been no reports of hazardous items being shipped with this scheme. Whatever you receive, you do not have to pay for it, and you are under no obligations regarding what you do with it. Keep it. Donate it. Trash it.

Why Send Me Junk?

This scam is harmless to you specifically, because it isn’t targeting you. Certainly, someone used your mailing address in this scheme. But don’t take it personally. Your address was probably chosen at random, from any number of online public information sources.

The scam’s target is an e-commerce website. It could be Amazon, Wal*Mart, AliExpress or others. They are gaming the reviews in order to sell more merchandise. Their process is:

Create a new account and buy an item.
Have the item shipped to a random address in the USA.
Once the item is shipped, the new account is considered legitimate, and can leave a review. So the account holder leaves a 5-Star review on the item and for the seller.

If they repeat this over and over for a particular item/seller, that item will soon show a lot of trustworthy, 5-Star reviews, even though it may be a new listing or a shady, fly-by-night vendor. This can help encourage a lot of future sales.

Final Takeaways

Most brushing scams give you no info to act on. But if you spot a clue on the parcel and you manage to determine what site it was purchased through, you could follow-up with that company. Don’t call any number listed on the package, but you may, for example, go to Amazon.com or Walmart.com and contact their support about the item. If they care to listen to you, you may ask that they:

File a fraud report for the item you received.
Find and remove any reviews associated with your name or address.

Brushing scams are actually incredibly effective at what they do. Amazon and similar stores are constantly battling fake reviews. But brushing reviews is where the bad guys have the upper hand. Brushed reviews are almost impossible to suss out, even with sophisticated software tools. So at the end of the day, I have to advise you: Don’t give 100% of your trust to online reviews. Sure, read them over, but take them with a grain of salt.

Fake Hard Drives for Sale

November 11, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

A couple of years ago, I blogged about Fake Flash Drives, and now I have to write a refresh article: You also need to watch out for Fake Hard Drives and Fake Solid State Drives. Please make sure you don’t buy these things!

Good & Bad Examples

First, some examples of legitimate, reliable storage drives:

These items are all fine choices for your data storage. Please note that they are recognizable, big-brand names within the $50-100 price range.

Now for some fakes for your consideration (PLEASE DO NOT BUY THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS!):

If you regard those items, you should notice some clues that something’s not right. First, there’s no noticeable brand name, or if there is, it’s a name you’ve never seen before and won’t see anywhere else on the web. There’s a big price disparity, too; charging a few dollars per Terabyte of storage is too good to be true.

16TB storage drives do exist, for the rare few of you that need one. If you buy a legitimate 16TB hard drive, expect to pay around $300 at the time of this writing.

Details & Dangers of Fake Drives

The dangers of this scam go beyond losing some money. Your files are at risk if you fall into this trap. These fraudulent devices are mis-manufactured to offer 16TB of storage to your computer. And your computer will believe it when you attach the drive! But there isn’t really that much storage in there. It’s more like a couple of 64GB microSD cards glued to a reader board in these sham drives.

So what happens is that you can try to put data on the device. And it will work, up to a point, but then catastrophe will strike. As your computer pipes data into an area that it thinks is huge but is really much smaller, your data will fall into oblivion. Like lemmings walking off a cliff. And this won’t be apparent until later, when you try to open or retrieve those files. Then you will meet with errors and irrevocable data loss.

Dos & Don’ts

The Too-Long;-Didn’t-Read advice I can finish up with is:

Do pay attention to brand names, and buy something from a recognizable manufacturer.
Don’t jump on amazing prices/deals. If the price is too good to be true, it probably is.
Don’t believe the posted reviews! Amazon and other websites are commonly gamed by the scammers, and a sham product can have thousands of 5-star reviews below it.
Do be judgmental about where you buy (online). Costco, Staples & Best Buy vet their vendors more than Wal*Mart, Amazon and eBay. Avoid those free-for-all marketplaces where anyone can hawk their wares.
Do feel free to report scam products to the website’s support team, but don’t spend a lot of your time or emotion on it. I did that 2 years ago with the flash drive debacle, and it became obvious that these big companies don’t care about or can’t fix the problem from their side.

The End of the Line for Windows 8

November 1, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

For those of you still using Windows 8 computers, you’ll soon meet with legitimate popup messages, as shown below:

This is not a scam, and Microsoft is telling you the truth. Windows 8 reaches the end of its lifecycle on 1/10/2023. But Don’t Panic! Here are more details to help you navigate what’s next.

You May Keep Using Windows 8

You don’t have to do anything. Your Win8 PC will keep working fine, even past 1/10/2023. But after that date, there is an unknown amount of security risk. I’m not too worried about it, but I also cannot tell you there is no risk. If you stick with Windows 8 after 1/10/2023, you must check your antivirus to make sure it is still running and updating!

Still, after that deadline, other issues may develop. Other programs, like Google Chrome, may also stop updating. And over time, with many things getting so deprecated, that could lead to unexpected security problems. You might see security errors as you load your email. You might one day be blocked from logging into your bank accounts. Zoom or Quicken or other apps may fail to load.

So while you can probably Windows 8 past its deadline, you’ll want to take action at some point before a software malfunction crops up to frustrate you. You’ve got two ways to proceed:

Option #1: Buy a New Computer

Microsoft would love for you to buy a new computer. If it’s in your budget to do so, you’ll be moving to a system with Windows 11 on it, and its lifecycle has no declared end date as of this writing. Reach out to me if you need a recommendation on what to buy from Costco or some other store you prefer.

Option #2: Upgrade Your PC to Windows 10

PCs running Windows 7 or 8 can still receive a free upgrade to Windows 10. Yes, I promise you it is a free download, it never stopped being free, despite rumors and erroneous news reports. If you want to try this:

Go to this Microsoft download site.
Under “Create Windows 10 Installation Media”, click the Download Now button.
Save and then Open/Run the MediaCreationTool.exe file.
Agree to the Licensing Agreements and choose the option to Keep Your Apps and Files, when prompted.

Please know that this undertaking could take hours to complete, especially if you are still on a slow DSL connection. The download involved are several gigabytes in size! But with enough patience, your computer will adopt Windows 10, which has a lifecycle lasting until October 14, 2025.

Pirate Ship for Cheaper Postage

September 19, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! Have ye heard of PirateShip.com? Avast, me hearties: If yer shipping out lots of booty, say, from yer eBay or Etsy stores, this could save you lots of doubloons!

At Pirate Ship, you can create a free account for calculating and creating shipping labels for your outbound parcels. It can quickly give you all of your pricing options, through various carriers (USPS, UPS, Fedex, etc.). If you compare prices here versus the prices at the counter or website of the USPS, you’re going to see a difference. It may only be a dollar or two, but that adds up if you’re in e-commerce! Or sending out lots of holiday packages…

And again, this is a free service, with no obligations or monthly fees. You can easily price-compare between Pirate Ship, USPS, eBay and Etsy shipping, and find the one that saves you the most money.

Finding Secondhand Books

August 16, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 2 Comments

“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.”
Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore

Hobby, habit, compulsion – call it what you like, I don’t judge anyone whose hobby is finding secondhand books. If you’re seeking a hard-to-find or out-of-print book, you may already know the websites eager to help you:

(Got another favorite book-selling website? Leave a comment and I may add it to the list!)

And there’s many other resources for finding that dead tree edition you need, like Amazon, eBay and Barnes & Noble. But when you’re searching for that one elusive tome that no one on the internet seems to have in stock, try this site and make it a little easier on yourself:

Bookfinder.com

Bookfinder will comb almost all of the book-selling websites out there for you. Search Bookfinder.com for your title and it’ll return all of your buying options and prices! This is now my go-to site for finding secondhand books.

I apologize in advance if this contributes to anyone’s tsundoku.

eBay Alternatives

August 14, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

eBay is the age-old classic auction website. You can get almost anything there through auctions and Buy-It-Now transactions. But eBay may not be your first choice. eBay does have its share of problems, ranging from shady sellers and fraudulent merchandise to an outright scandal that involved top execs. So here are some eBay alternatives:

eBid

Bonanza

ShopGoodwill

That last one might be my favorite right now. It is owned and operated by the non-profit Goodwill of Orange County. Purchasing items on ShopGoodwill support the missions of the GoodWill Industries.

McBroken

June 13, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Someone actually devised this little website, called McBroken, to show on a map which McDonald’s restaurants have functioning ice cream machines. And which ones have out-of-service machines. How ingenious!

This tool came about because of the high frequency of breakdowns with Mickey D’s ice cream machines. And there’s a whole story and debacle to read about that, if you have an interest.

Otherwise, just sock away the McBroken website, it may save you a trip and stave off some disappointment someday.