Posted 08/27/08 at 09:32:10 AM by Chris Moody

Nothing is worse than when the government decides to levy another tax someplace. Newegg customers of New York were irked on June 1, 2008 when they found out that Newegg was being required to collect sales tax to orders sent to New York, even though Newegg doesn’t have a store there.

However, Newegg has backed away from that stance, sending out an email from Newegg Company Spokesperson and Vice President of Merchandising, Bernard Luthi, saying that it reversed it’s decision based on feedback from it’s customers.

“This decision was driven by your direct and candid feedback and our continued commitment to you as our valued customers.” He went on to thank customers for their patience as they worked things out.

Of course, New York residents are still responsible for paying their sales tax.

Newegg should be applauded for taking a stand. Collecting taxes for different states, counties, and localities would be a terrible mess for any online retailer to wade through. It would only serve to drive up prices for consumers and stifle internet commerce.

How do you feel about taxes on items purchased over the web?

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12

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law, consumer, Newegg, new york, taxes

Posted 07/22/08 at 02:51:37 PM by Chris Moody

The guys at CruchGear want to design a web tablet that would cost $200 and they want your help to do it. I’ve always liked the idea of a tablet for doing little things like surfing from the sofa. With netbooks catching on, can a net-tablet be far behind?

They pitch this basic idea; make it as thin as possible, run low end hardware, headphone jack, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, microphone, wifi, USB port, a built in battery, 512 RAM, and a 4Gb solid state hard drive. No keyboard, input is via a touch screen. It will run on some flavor of Linux or BSD.

The extra twist is they want to build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create and improve on them. I like the idea! You can read about the mock up here, and the article that started it here. 

I see it as handy item for browsing the web and reading email, but with it's only interface is a touch screen, don't expect to write a book the size of War and Peace on it.

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1

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pc, Build, tablet, consumer, netbook, cloud computing

Posted 12/06/07 at 05:57:45 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

There are tons of great deals out there for holiday shoppers, but the road to gift-giving bliss is fraught with peril. Gordon Mah Ung shows you how to protect your purchases

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3

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news, Watchdog, consumer, help, Holiday, safe shopping

Posted 10/21/07 at 01:20:11 PM by Erin Simon

After flatly denying throttling its subscribers' Bittorrent traffic, Comcast gets busted doing exactly that.

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14

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news, bittorrent, ISP, Comcast, P2P, law, filtering, consumer, bandwidth, user, subscriber, ecpa, fraud, pretexting

Posted 10/14/07 at 10:34:24 PM by Erin Simon

Consumer backlash goes litigious as two class actions are filed against Apple for disabling unlocked iPhones.

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6

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apple, iphone, lawsuit, law, antitrust, at&t, consumer, class action, bricking, unfair competition, monopoly