Introduction

This would be the first installment of our weekly price update. With any luck it'll be updated next week, and the week following that, in what may seem to be a weekly fashion. We're going to lay down some ground rules though. The prices we list here might not be the drop dead lowest on the `net, but we're going to try to make sure that we don't post prices from companies that might be shady.

The First Rule about…

Do not talk about the Weekly Price Guide! (I couldn't resist.) Anyhow, we're going to be choosing the companies we list somewhat carefully, and our methods have some reason to them. If you go the Mecca that is www.resellerratings.com, you'll see that they list a score for almost every company that sells computer parts on the web. Our goal is to only use companies that have a rating of 5.6 or higher, keep in mind that their scale is out of 7(who knows why?). If you divide 5.6 by 7, you'll see that we were shooting for a "B", or eighty percent. We feel that should sufficiently keep us safe from companies that happen to have one-room operations with their phones off the hook.

Rule Number II

It is not enough to lay down this rating scheme. Anyone could write one glowing review of a company, and bam! They have a perfect rating, and you still have no clue how this company functions when stuff goes wrong. We decided that fifty or so reviews would be enough to weed out numerous companies, thereby making sure that at least a few of those reviews consist of people that are impossible to please. Sure this makes it hard for good small guys to get their foot in the door, but word of mouth is viral with a community as small as this. Heck, look at Plycon, they've done mighty well considering their size.

Disclaimer Number III

We're sure somebody is going to start some conspiracy theory about FiringSquad being in cahoots with some company or another. Let's just get that out of the way, there is no such thing; if there was, I'd want my piece of the pie. The companies picked here are based solely on price and a decent Resellerrating (which is largely determined by people like you). And another thing, if some price looks too good to be true, don't go blabbing to the companies about some great price, chances are we were probably snorting up while trying to type. Errors happen, we'll try our best to minimize them.