CompUSA 6-hr sale starts 6PM 3/21

[KCheng]

Originally posted by: rile0161
I went to the Lansing, MI store at 6:03, all of the CD wallets were gone...they only have one peg that I could find that held maybe 3 of them. I looked all over the place but no luck. Lines weren't as bad as other places apparently, but there were a lot of people in the store. Anyone know if I can get a raincheck for the case?

Most likely not. Still a misconception to MANY apparently...The CD wallet deal (and everything else on the backpage of the ad) was available at the FIRST opening of the store Friday morning. Though many CUSAs still had the case for the 6pm deal, anyone could have gone in there in the morning and bought every single one for $9.99.

What's more is that, the back page deals are still valid through closing tomorrow, for those CUSAs who still have wallets remaining.

 

[MarthaLynn]

Originally posted by: amgine
Anyone know what is going on with the Buslink drives? They changed the packaging so that it no longer says smartburn or justlink.
Did anyone pick one up at Compusa and open it already, very interested to see if its another manufacturer than we've seen before.

I did. The little red/blue label on the box said "Buffer Under Run Protection" and "Get Best Burning Quality & Avoid Buffer Under Run".

It's an aopen
Can I return it?

 

[dethman]

Originally posted by: MarthaLynn

Originally posted by: amgine
Anyone know what is going on with the Buslink drives? They changed the packaging so that it no longer says smartburn or justlink.
Did anyone pick one up at Compusa and open it already, very interested to see if its another manufacturer than we've seen before.

I did. The little red/blue label on the box said "Buffer Under Run Protection" and "Get Best Burning Quality & Avoid Buffer Under Run".

It's an aopen
Can I return it?

they'll charge you 15% restocking.

 

[dgouldin]

I've been running the "175gb" (180gb actual) hard drive for a little over 12 hours now, and I'm noticing that cpu utilization seems to be pretty high. I'm not sure if it's a result of using the controller card (my mobo recognizes it as a 137gb drive without it) or if it's the 2mb buffer that's doing it in, but if this keeps up I'm going to have to take it out. If I were trying to record 8 tracks of 24/96 audio with this thing simultaneously I'm pretty sure I'd have a dropout in no time.

 

[amgine]

you try loading the special drivers for the drive? might help it run better...

 

[dgouldin]

There are no special drivers for the drive itself. The only drivers are for the controller card. I checked on Western Digital's website, and I have the newest drivers for the card installed already.

When I tried watching a divx avi, about every 30 seconds it would skip frames. I checked the performance tab in task manager and cpu utilization shot up to 100% when that happened. Is this normal for a hard drive controlled by a PCI IDE controller??

 

[dethman]

Originally posted by: dgouldin
There are no special drivers for the drive itself. The only drivers are for the controller card. I checked on Western Digital's website, and I have the newest drivers for the card installed already.

When I tried watching a divx avi, about every 30 seconds it would skip frames. I checked the performance tab in task manager and cpu utilization shot up to 100% when that happened. Is this normal for a hard drive controlled by a PCI IDE controller??

sounds like something is weird with your system. i don't get any problems like skipping divx or abnormal cpu utilization. in fact the drive runs quite smoothly with relatively low cpu utilization.

 

[jaybert]

its sounds like what would happen if the drive was runnign in PIO mode, though that doesnt really explain it since you are running it off of a card. How fast transfers do you get? Does it max out at like 4-5mb/sec? If so, you will need to figure out how to reset it so it is recognized as DMA.

 

[dgouldin]

I transferred 11 gigs from my old drive to this one (both off of the pci controller card) in about 8-10 minutes, so I don't think there's anything wrong with the transfer rate. I took a look at the cpu utilization while I was installing a program and when it was copying files it was steady at 100% the whole time. It's getting pretty annoying ...

 

[Wag]

This WD 180GB drive appears to be a POS. If I try to use it as a master on my 8RDA+ it BSODs XP (which is a mean accomplishment). I even tried to do a clean XP install and the same thing happened. I don't have the same problems with my 100GB WD.

I'm going to try to exchange it tommorow- let's see what they do if they're out of stock.

 

[zzt711]

Originally posted by: kidsafe
I was able to walk into to the San Bruno, CA CompUSA at 9 PM and buy the HDD just like that. They handed out vouchers for them before 6 PM, but I knew people would change their minds...

Yeah, I was there around 2PM during the day and everything was in stock. I just went straight to the BusLink 48x, and they had over 50 in stock at the time. I wish I picked up the APC though, and the free notebook accessories (they had them in stock too, grumble)

I feel pretty lucky in the S.F. Bay area with the amount of locations available (Best Buy, CrapUSA, name it, and the weekly computer shows), so it's not hard to get in on a deal. And then we have 4 Fry's locations, I think that's another big reason why there's so much availability. On the weekend I picked up a Plextor 48x for $55, and then I ended up returning the BusLink (I don't think it was a Light-On anyway, but got charged $5 for restocking fee, damn CrapUSA).

If you are looking for a Plextor, go to the next Computer show at Oakland or San Francisco, a vendor (United Microsystems) is willing to pop the 48x for $69, and then you can use the $20 rebate : )

-zzt

 

[ViperV990]

I have an 800JB in addition to the 1800BB I got on Friday. I was running the JB off the mobo's VIA 8235 southbridge, while the BB was connected to the Promise controller. Running HDTach 2.61, the onboard controller had a CPU util. rate of ~50% while the Promise card only took ~10%. Now I'm running the JB off the Promise card too.

Although, I've not figured out why the JB has a burst speed of over 80MB/s while the BB is stuck with ~60MB/s. Both are running at UDMA 5 (aka ATA100).

 

[dgouldin]

I'm thinking my problem might be that I used the promise driver off of the western digital floppy ... I went through device manager and updated the driver and asked windows to search for the best one and it installed its default driver over the (supposedly newer) driver I had installed. I'm doing some major downloads so I haven't rebooted yet, but I'll let you guys know if that helps any.

 

[soogiebro]

i got in on the $9.99 200 cd-wallet deal. picked up 2 of them at compusa and there were at least 20 left on the shelf (this was on friday). thanks allisolm for the deal!

 

[Ranger X]

Originally posted by: soogiebro
i got in on the $9.99 200 cd-wallet deal. picked up 2 of them at compusa and there were at least 20 left on the shelf (this was on friday). thanks allisolm for the deal!

I got the CD wallet too. The case is not too bad but the CDs don't quite fit well in those CD pouches.

 

[SharkyTM]

syracuse NY is sold out of almost ALL of everything... just an FYI

 

[bentwookie]

Originally posted by: SharkyTM
syracuse NY is sold out of almost ALL of everything... just an FYI

wasn't the sale over yesterday?

 

[dgouldin]

It was the driver ... I have to train myself not to think that the newest driver will be the best one.

It's a surprisingly hard concept for me to get through my thick skull ...

 

[Salvador]

Am I too late for this deal?

Sal

 

[Pardus]

did anyone get this, HP photosmart 1115 refurbished 300871 $29.99

i havent been to compusa in a long time and missed this deal, just wondering if that printer works for anyone or was damaged.

 

[zippin44]

Anyone know which is the better printer, the Epson 820 (six color ink, 2880x720 dpi) or the HP 1115 (3 color ink 2400x1200 dpi) that Comp-USA had on sale last weekend? I have both new and unopened and need to give one away to my brother.
Thanks.

 

[baclips6]

Originally posted by: ActiveX
did anyone get this, HP photosmart 1115 refurbished 300871 $29.99

i havent been to compusa in a long time and missed this deal, just wondering if that printer works for anyone or was damaged.

mine works well

 

[tadpole]

i picked me up one of those wireless keyboards and mise.....USB....and for the record, they suck, i'm taking both of them back today.....just in case anyone cared

 

[amgine]

Damn hard drive won't format....gets to 100% and fails, no matter how small I make the partition.

 

[Doug117]

Originally posted by: ViperV990
I have an 800JB in addition to the 1800BB I got on Friday. I was running the JB off the mobo's VIA 8235 southbridge, while the BB was connected to the Promise controller. Running HDTach 2.61, the onboard controller had a CPU util. rate of ~50% while the Promise card only took ~10%. Now I'm running the JB off the Promise card too.

Although, I've not figured out why the JB has a burst speed of over 80MB/s while the BB is stuck with ~60MB/s. Both are running at UDMA 5 (aka ATA100).

JB = 8MB buffer
BB = 2MB buffer

theres your difference