Published: March 05, 2008 06:12 am         

Web site has just what the geek wants

Pssst. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. You look like a person of refinement and taste, someone who might be looking for something a bit ... out of the ordinary. Something for the discerning individual.

Step into my office and I’ll let you in on a little secret. Yes, right here, behind the trash bins.

Now tell me what you’re looking for, and I’m certain that I can supply it. See (looking nervously about) I do my shopping at Newegg!

Newegg — at for those of us in the know — is the place to fill your technical jones, man. It’s got everything. Everything a geek could want, y’know what I’m sayin’? Computer parts. Digital cameras. MP3 players. Networking stuff. Cell phones and accessories. Software. It’s the real deal.



Newegg is one of the many online shopping sources for electronic and computer equipment that have sprung up over the last decade.

It carries a wide range of items, from home electronics to professional computer tools and equipment. It offers frequent sales and is generally quick on shipping out items.

The website is nice and simple and easy to use. The first page has links to all of the categories of stuff that the site sells, as well as a search bar and a list of the specials of the day.

Clicking on the category headers gives you a drop-down list of the sub-categories so you can start refining your search before you even start it, if you like.

You might want to look up “cables” in the “computer networking” area, for example, so that you don’t have to wade through the list of printer cables, USB cables, audio cables and so on.

Clicking a sub-category will bring up the daily deals in that category; you can also choose to see all of the products in that area. When you do that, you have the usual options to sort by, like price (low to high or vice versa), best rating, most reviews and so on, and you also have a set of automatic filters on the left side of the page that can be applied to the list of results.

The filters are nice, because (at the minimum) you can filter the list by manufacturer or price range, and frequently you can filter by features of the products as well, so you can make sure that you’re getting the exact power supply you need for the machine you’re building.

When you add an item to your cart, you can check on shipping cost immediately, rather than having to go through most of the checkout process, which is a feature I quite like.

When you are ready to check out, Newegg will prompt you to create an account; it’s fairly quick and painless, and makes future shopping even quicker.

You have the option to store your credit card information or not; this is an excellent thing at a time when we so often hear of retailers’ customer databases being compromised. If you’re concerned, don’t save your card on the site.

Shipping has generally been amazingly fast in my experience. I ordered an item, later realized I’d gotten the wrong thing and called to cancel it about an hour later. The customer service rep told me that the company had already shipped it.

I would have suspected that the company was trying to avoid an order cancellation by telling me that it had shipped, but the rep had a tracking number already, and UPS’s site showed that the package was already on its way to me.

The rep was very nice about helping me get the order sorted out, though.

Newegg is my usual go-to site for electronics and computer stuff; it’s easy to find what I want, easy to order and quick to ship. What more could you want?

Scott Wilson, Stillwater, can be e-mailed via .

     

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