deals

I've tried a lot of online movie rental services, and the fastest service, delivery, and widest selection of movies can be found on Netflix. Netflix lets you rent, watch, and return DVDs from home. Try Netflix free for 2 weeks. You can now also watch unlimited movies instantly on your PC or TV (using IE6+; not currently compatible with Mac or Firefox). Still, it is an excellent deal and will help you catch up on all of those movies you've missed!

Site5 has just doubled their already ridiculous offer for $5/month web hosting! Check it out:

This is no wimpy web hosting deal; this is a full-featured web hosting package with unlimited email, mySQL, and FTP, 110 domains, 110 GB storgage, and 5 TB of monthly transfer! Wow!

Give it a shot. With their 60-day money-back guarantee, what have you go to lose?

I've had a website of one sort or another for over 10 years. It is fun, informational, and an outlet for my ramblings. A few years ago, however, I discovered that my website could also be profitable.

At first, I toyed around with the highly popular Google AdWords. My site began making me over $10 per month. Sure, this isn't going to pay my student loans, but it certainly pays for the server space and domain name I pay for.

I am now making double what I was making with Google AdSense, I can choose the ads, and they are less obtusive. Google Ads were great, until they canceled my account and never paid me the $149 they owed me.

I was jaded and removed every profitable aspect from every web page I could.

Then I discovered Text Link Ads, a service that sells small text links on your site (see the ones to the right) for a monthly fee. Currently, I earn 1/2 of the $20 per month they charge for these ads. Easy money. I am now making double what I was making with Google AdSense, I can choose the ads, and they are less obtusive.

The best part is that I am paid monthly via paypal. I never have to wait for a check, wait for clicks to be approved, wait for the ads to load on my page, or wait for people to click them.

Go ahead... don't click the ads on my site!

BoxedArt.com offers the largest collection of web templates, flash templates, logo templates, print templates, and graphic elements found anywhere on the web. And unlike other template sites, your low subscription price buys you access to unlimited downloads!

BoxedArt is the only template site that I know of that offers an all access membership package, allowing you to test a few designs before committing. Additionally, when you sign up, you gain access to their entire collection of graphics and templates which are guaranteed to suit a variety of projects. You'll find far more than just web templates. They offer Full Flash Sites, Flash-Buttons and Flash Intros, Logos, Corporate IDs, and Ad Banner Packs, Mascots, Product Box Designs, eBook Cover and CD Cover Designs, Newsletter Templates, PowerPoint Templates, Music and Sound Libraries, Brochure and Flyer Templates, Vector Icons, Postcard Templates, Menus, and more. They even offer Total Identity Kits, which contain matching logos, letterhead, business cards, website templates, and banner packs.

All of this for one extremely low price. A BoxedArt membership is truly an excellent deal.

Built2Go offers the best ready-made instant turnkey websites. Each site comes complete with full editable PHP scripts and programs with fantastic template designs. They offer website solutions without the need for expensive web design or web development.

Whether you are looking to start a new Shopping site, Auction site, Dating or Personals site, Movie review site, Rate-My-Photo site, Real Estate site, Search and Links site, or a Classifieds site, they have an easy to impliment and well designed solution for you at a fraction of the cost of development. Many of the advanced features that you will crave are already built in to their scripts and templates.

Their search and links solution really helped me with a custom web application I was developing. Rather than scrapping the project, I found a ready-made solution that fit my needs. Check it out!

StockedPhotos.com offers thousands of exclusive royalty free photos for one low price. Unlike other sites which charge by the photo, or by the use, StockedPhotos.com allows you to download and use unlimited photographs for one single subscription.

Their site has recently been redesigned, too, and now offers many new browse and search features, including by color, and has a great lightbox feature. It is a great site to browse for imagery for your next design project.

StockedPhotos.com offers a wide selection of photos for a variety of needs in high resolution. Their photo membership is the best value offered today, and is growing rapidly.

Dotster is offering domain name registrations for $6.99 until Dec. 31. This is over 50% off their regular price.

Visit dotster.com to register a domain name today!

Hooray! I finally switched back to Site5 web hosting. I was with Site5 for over a year when I decided to start selling off some of my webspace. For this I needed a reseller account, which Site5 was not selling at the time. Now, they're back in the reseller business, and I am happy to be back with Site5!

Switch to them now (try them free for 30 days) and they'll buy out your current contract and move your site(s) for you. They're a fantastic company, and the best part is that their average customer support response time is 15 minutes! Sign up today!

If you've read my previous story, A powerful computer for under $300? It is possible, I've now added some suggestions for keyboard, mouse, monitor, and optional video card. I've attached a PDF version to print as a guide. View the guide to building your own computer.

Want an even more powerful system? Here are some suggested upgrades.

Case and Power Supply
COOLMAX CS-480 BLACK 400W +$5
Larger Power Supply, and door to cover the powerswitch helps with accidental shutdowns.

Motherboard
GIGABYTE NF4 GA-K8N PRO-SLI +$60
This is a state-of-the art board with a 939 Socket which can take any of the modern AMD chips, including the newer dual cores! It also has 2 PCI-Express slots which can be bridged to add two video cards!

CPU
AMD Athlon 64 (939) 3000+ 512KB Venice +$66

Memory
A second 512MB DDR400 DIMM +$37
This allows you to run dual-channel memory (super fast)! Plus, more memory is always better.

Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA 7200RPM drie with 8MB buffer +$55

Optical Drive
LITE-ON Dual Layer DVD+/-RW +$14

Video Card
Gigabyte Geforce 6600 256MB 128-bit DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card +$112

Now that's power! And value!

I've been on the quest for an inexpensive, but powerful computer for our Computer Graphics lab at CLC, and I thought I might share some of what I've found. Keep in mind that we already have keyboards, mice, and monitors.

Case and Power Supply Cost: $35 (22-Oct-05)
A good, solid case with a decent power supply. APEX PC-336 Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply

Motherboard Cost: $41 (22-Oct-05)
Here's a great deal on a motherboard with built-in 100MBit LAN, USB 2.0, and Video. ECS 760GX-M Socket 754 SiS 760 GX Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

CPU Cost $64 (22-Oct-05)
The CPU is just one key part of the whole system. While some people focus heavily on it, I try to pick a processor that balances the system. Here, I chose a high-end, fast CPU that was very reasonably priced. AMD Sempron 64 2600+ Palermo 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor.

Memory Cost $37 (22-Oct-05)
512MB should suffice for most applications. pqi POWER Series 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory

Hard Drive Cost $54 (22-Oct-05)
While we don't need tremendous drives (40GB should suffice), we don't want the speed of the drive to be a bottle-neck. Thus, we opt for a fast (7200RPM) drive with an 8MB buffer. HITACHI Deskstar 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Combo Drive: CD Burner / DVD Reader Cost: $28 (22-Oct-05)
A quick CD burner and CD-RW drive is nice addition to this computer. LITE-ON Black IDE Combo Drive

Floppy Cost $8 (22-Oct-05)
We need a floppy drive for the kids to transfer files between school and home. SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive

Total Cost: $273.97 (22-Oct-05)
How's that for a budget system?!

You can build one cheaper, but these are fast, quality parts. You can't beat this value.