Current Deals : Dec 28th

The entire Crucial M500 series drop slightly in price. At the moment, they stands at $139.99, $279.99 and $469 respectively for the 240GB, 480GB and 960GB respectively. For buyers from Singapore, the 960GB versions attracts GST. It does sounds like there's some downward pressure on SSD prices these days.

Cetaphil Cleansers & Moisturizers has an on-going $1 coupon for qualified products. 4 days left.

If you need large capacity optical discs, Optical Quantum OQBDR04LT-50 4X 25 GB BD-R Single Layer Blu-Ray Recordable Logo Top 50-Disc Spindle is now going for $20.99.

Shop Amazon - $15 Off $75 Athletic Shoes. Not a bad deal if you're shopping for a running shoe. It represents a 20% discount if you buy exactly $75. The problem with this type of offer is that the more you buy, the lesser the discount quantum will be, percentage wise. Note also that the discount only applies once per order.

Tutorial : Processing Returns

There will be times when you need to return the items for various reasons. Some of the common ones include -

• Items are defective or damaged
• Items do not matched what you've ordered
• You regretted

There might be others, but the process is exactly the same. The easiest method is for you to chat up with an CSO. Describe to them politely the problem. I know it can be very frustrating when you get damaged/wrong items but venting your anger at the CSO won't speed things up.

The CSO might offer you a return label from UPS. There is a problem with this approach. You have to send the item to UPS Singapore. The address given is within the security zone in the Airport Cargo area. I wouldn't want to go there.  So if they do, tell them it's very inconvenient to return the items at UPS. Note that not all offers this return method.

The next option will be likely for you to return it via the most economical method. With this method, the CSO will create the return label for you, which is essentially an 'RMA' number and the Amazon address where the returns will go. You'll receive an email from the CSO, giving you instructions on what to do next. Essentially, there'll be a link for you to click to print out the return labels. There are 2 parts to it. The first part is for you to include it INSIDE the package. It basically says what you are returning. The second part is the actual address for you to paste OUTSIDE the package, for the postman to deliver it.

Next, go to your nearest post office and get those bubble envelop or the shipping box. Ask for standard registered parcel. It cost about $10 to ship an SSD, about $12-$15 to ship back a boxed DVD/BD set. Get receipts for both items (the box and postage). Fill up the postal form which you're going to get back a copy of it, as well as an RA number. Scan both the receipt and RA number and email it back to the Amazon CSO. Just reply to the original return label email will also do. For me, Amazon took a total of 5 minutes to respond and start the reimbursement process.

What will happen next varies. In my case, the moment the return label is created by the CSO, he went ahead and ordered a replacement for me straight. According to Amazon's own SOP, they need to receive the returned items first before they ship out the replacement. So YMMV here. You can try to ask for priority shipping but I personally feel it's bad form to do this if you did not pay for priority shipping originally.

It take about 2 weeks for the parcel to go back home. When Amazon received it, you'll get an email telling you so. And that completes the returns procedure. The replacement order is treated like a new order.

A few thoughts -

• I don't really advocate harassing the CSO for a speedier replacement. Just let the process run its course.
• This applies only for items shipped directly to Singapore, and for items fulfilled by Amazon.
• If you're returning due to reason #3 (as in, You regretted), please man up and pay for the return shipping. I don't think it's fair for Amazon to foot the return postage because you bought the items on impulse.
• If the items are shipped to you via a forwarder, you'll likely need to pay the return postage as their return label is valid only in US for items shipped domestically. They have no other options.

I hope this is useful information to you and also hope that you don't really have to go through this. I also want to appeal to my readers to not kick up a rookus due to minor cosmetic defects or packaging defects which do not affect the product itself (which is very common). Amazon, as a company, takes your words for it most of the time, so don't abuse this trust.

Read my other articles and tutorials starting with Shopping at Amazon Starts Here!

On the Mac : Windows, VMs and Flash Drives

If you do not prefer the Bootcamp approach describe in my other article, obviously you can just run Fusion or Parallels and have a virtual Windows environment running alongside your Mac. But again, due to the precious disk space on some Airs, carving out this 20GB to run a VM might not be something you can afford. In reality, this article also applies to Windows laptop with a similarly sized SSD on board. If you have such a machine and just need another Windows VM for testing, continue reading.

Now, there are obvious workarounds to this problem. You can, for example, run it on an SD card or run it on a thumb drive or external portable disks. If you can use an external portable disk, it'll be the most economical way. Read my other article about them. There's one problem with running it off an external disk. It's not exactly very portable since you have to move around with the drive attached to your Air (or laptop). It works, but there's this caveat. If you're going to be sitting on your desk while running the VM, then I think this approach works well. It's not going to be very high performing, but it's reasonable. I do have a few test VMs running off 'Desktop' class external disks.

I've hunted for some time since getting the Air, for a thumb drive/SD card that is reasonably fast so that I can just stick it to the USB port (or SD slot) and carry it around with me. SD card never works, period. They are just too slow. I must admit that I haven't really tried many of them, but I don't really want to waste any more money. The seriously fast ones (as claimed by Sandisk) cost multiple dollars per GB. Unless Sandisk wants to send me one to play with, I'm not going to outright buy them and pray that it works. For the record, I tried a Sony Class 10 and an HP Class 10. Both are 32GB, and both never complete the Windows installation after 1 hour, as far as I can remember.

So I'm left with thumb drives. I had a SanDisk Ultra 64 GB USB Flash Drive SDCZ45-064G-U46 at that time and I decided to try it. It's ok, but still slow. I didn't wait for the Windows installation to complete. I ended up putting Diablo III client on that thumb drive. Yes, that works reasonably but you can get killed due to disk read latency. I know I did a few times. At this point, I realized what I need is something which performs well for small I/O read/write. And it just happens that SanDisk announced their latest thumb drive, the SanDisk Extreme 64 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive up to 190 MB/s SDCZ80-064G-X46. This is an interesting drive. It sports an USB3 connection and some insane claimed transfer speed. And the best part? It costs about SGD1.4/GB locally here.

I began trawling the web for benchmarks. I found exactly 1 (I can't remember the site, sorry, but it compares this drive with a ton of others). Remember this is more than a year back (probably towards the end of 2012) and USB3 drives with real performance isn't that common place. Most USB3 drives at that time are just their standard USB2 parts retrofitted with an USB3 port. I knew this drive is going to be the one when I saw the benchmarks. The CDM 4K readings are unheard of. They read close to 10MB/s write with the default 4K test. You just have to trust my word as I don't have the URL anymore. Just for comparison sake, almost all flash drive at that time managed barely 1MB/s read/write on the default 4K CDM test.

I took the leap of faith and buy the 64GB version. I popped it into the Air's USB2 ports, format it to HFS+ and straight away put a Fusion VM on it running Windows 7. The speed is incredible, even on an USB2 port. It feels faster than those VMs running off normal external disks. I've been running my primary Windows VM on this drive since. After a year of hard hammering, it's getting slower and slower. I've yet to research this. You can start to feel the momentarily freeze at times, Outlook is not as responsive opening a cached Inbox etc. I'm not exactly sure why this is happening at this point. However, that said, it's still plenty fast mind you.

Even though I'm extremely happy with the purchase, there's a few things I ought to mention.

• This drive is expensive! Price is relative when I said it cost SGD1.4/GB. The other 'normal' flash drives cost like SGD0.80/GB. Price is lower now compared to a year ago.
• If you need to just copy huge files back and forth, you might want to look elsewhere. This guy doesn't score number 1 in sequential transfer. Nor is it the most cost effective for bulk storage.
• This drive shines only if you have a workload which requires small random read/write IO. Running VMs off it is one example.

If you skip all the post and come straight here, I'll say just buy this guy to run VMs off it. You won't go wrong. 

Current Deals : Dec 21st

Here's a summary of items which you can consider buying, either because you have a use for it and it's cheaper or you can use them as cart fillers to hit $125. Over the past few months, I have bought quite a number of items from Amazon, ranging from electronics to shoes to baby toys so I'm afraid there won't be a fix themed for this column. However, I hope there will be something for everybody.

Since the deals on Amazon can be quite 'volatile', some lasting only a few days, I'll try my best to put up a summary at least once a week under the column 'Current Deals'. Moving forward, I'll also try to put 2 featured deals on right panel of this blog so you just need to hit this blog and you will see them.

For now, here goes the summary of the deals for this week -

Logitech K360 Wireless Keyboard - Coral Fan
This keyboard is pretty no-frills. However, the current price of $14.99 makes it a great cart filler. Note that the K360 comes in a variety of design. Only the Coral Fan is $14.99. Maybe it's not selling? I don't find the design appealing personally. But aesthetics aside, this is a great keyboard.

Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 with Built-In Multi-Touch Touchpad
At $19.99, this is a steal and a much better value then the K360. It works perfectly for my 'HTPC' since it has both a keyboard and a touchpad on it. I can even surf the web on a 40" HDTV with it comfortably.

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB Thunderbolt Portable External Hard Drive for Mac + Cable & Adapter (STBW1000403)
This bundle is actually the Thunderbolt Adaptor plus a 1TB Backup Plus 1TB portable drive. The good thing is it came with a Thunderbolt cable! But the downside is that the Backup Plus drive does not come with the USB3 dongle, making this drive Thunderbolt only. The bundle is also cheaper than what it would cost if you buy the items separately. For some strange reason, this bundle does not ship to Singapore.

Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTB220XK3CA)
The price of this 2TB portable disk has been consistently at $99. It went down to $84.99 I believe during one of the 'Lightning Deals'. However, it's still the cheapest among the name brands.

Toshiba 3TB Canvio Desk Desktop External Hard Drive (Black/Black) (HDWC130XK3J1)
The bigger brother to the portable version. $107.29 at the moment.

Bioshock Triple Pack [Online Game Code]
If you're a fan, this download-only code is $14.99. Consist of Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite.

Philips Norelco 1290x/40 SensoTouch 3d Electric Razor
There's a coupon for $50 off, effectively $169.95. Ships directly to Singapore (and India) for free, no need to pad shopping cart.

What to Buy on Amazon : External Disk Drives

Buying cheap external HDDs is always an evergreen topic on the local forums. Now that Amazon offer free shipping to Singapore, I think it'll be difficult for the local retailers to match the price you're going to see on Amazon.

As with the case of SSD, there are many vendors who sells external disk drives. There are basically 2 types, 'Desktop' or 'Portable'. What is the difference between them? 'Desktop' means it requires an external power source, will be more bulky and as a result, not exactly portable. The upside is, it's cheaper in terms of $/GB of storage since it uses 3.5" drives. 'Portable' means it'll be powered by your USB ports, is small and as a result, extremely portable. The downside is, it's more expensive.

I'll talked about 3 vendors, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba. Why these 3? Briefly

• Seagate's Backup Plus series offers a unique proposition and is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Western Digital is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Toshiba is cheaper. At least at time of writing.

I'll start with Toshiba as there's really nothing much to say about their Canvio Basics series. It currently offers the best bang for the bucks among the 3 vendors. Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTB220XK3CA) is currently priced at $99. You really can't fault the price point. This also means you need to pad your cart to $125, another $26 at least, in order to qualify for free shipping back to Singapore (or India). One thing to note, Toshiba offers only 1 year warranty for this item and whether or not it's valid in Singapore is also another question.

Next, Western Digital Passport Ultra offers a very sleek looking package in multiple vibrant colours to boot. They don't cost that much more over the Toshiba offers. At the moment, WD My Passport Ultra 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup - Black (WDBMWV0020BBK-NESN) is going for $114.75. For that $16 premium, you get a nicer looking package, multiple colours options and a standard 3-year warranty. I've read that the warranty checks out locally in Singapore too. Personally, I'll go with this.

Lastly, Seagate. If you are looking at making full use of your Thunderbolt port on your Mac to connect external drives, then Seagate has a much better value proposition. The Seagate Backup Plus Series has a unique feature in that it can be 'upgraded' to fit into your Thunderbolt port or the Firewire 800 port.

How does it work? Basically, all the drives in this series (sans  the Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive - Black (STDR2000100)) has a detachable part that contains the USB3 connector. If you remove this, it will expose the native SATA connector of the drive itself. You can then plug this drive into the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128) (for 'Portable' drives) or the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE129) (for 'Desktop drives). These adaptors then connects to the Thunderbolt port of your Mac, turning it into a Thunderbolt external disk! The Desktop Adapter comes with 2 Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining another Thunderbolt device.

Another advantage of these adaptors is that they sport a standard SATA connector. As a result, you can stick just about any SATA drives to it. I plug the Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 into the STAE128 and run Windows off it. Read about my experience here.

These drives come with a standard 2-year warranty and they are valid locally in Singapore. Prices at Amazon is always better then local. The only thing is you have to wait. And some drives are so cheap, you need a cart filler. Do check back this blog for ideas on what to fill the cart with to hit $125!

Be sure to read the tutorials on this site to get started!

On the Mac : Bootcamp, Thunderbolt and SSDs

I'm going to side track and talk a little bit about my experience trying to bootcamp my MacBook Air (mid-2011). Now, I'm sure everybody with a MBA that sports either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage will be able to attest that we are always doing some house keeping to prevent our apps from overwhelming the puny storage. I am no different, especially when I also need a Windows environment to get some of my work done.

In short, I'm ill equipped to run a VM using the internal disk. Fusion wants 20GB (which I think is reasonable for a Windows 7 Setup) and that will leave me with even less storage to deal with. The options I have is either run the VM off a USB stick (which I eventually did and will be a story for another day), or run the VM off the Thunderbolt port, which I did as well, but it's a little clumsy and not exactly very portable.

But what if I want to 'boot camp' and play some Windows-only games? The storage consideration alone will be daunting as there's really no way both partitions can fit into the internal 128GB SSD. Not for me at least. And so I have a thought, to simply put the Windows partition on its own disk and run it off the Thunderbolt port!

First, let's talk a little about the hardware I actually use. I opted for an SSD instead of a traditional spinning disk for obvious reason. In my case, I picked Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5.

Now, I need some kind of a disk enclosure or an adaptor which can convert the Thunderbolt port to a SATA port. Seagate has exactly this contraption, Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128). This adaptor is actually designed for the Seagate Backup Plus Portable series of external disk drives. This family of external drives (sans the newer 2TB versions) come with a detachable USB3 dongle, which you can remove and expose the naked SATA connector on the disk itself. You then plug this into the adaptor and it will then becomes a Thunderbolt portable external disk. Neat! And since the connector on the adaptor is a standard SATA connector, you can plug any standard SATA 2.5" disks to it and turn it into a Thunderbolt portable external disk.

There is one caveat. The adaptor itself does not provide 12V power and as a result, it is unable to power certain drives, notably the Seagate Constellation.2 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST91000640NS. This guy requires both 5V and 12V rails to be available and will not work with the adaptor.

So now I have these, how do I put Windows on it? We're going to make use of a lesser known technique in the consumer world to install Windows : Windows Automated Installation Kit. Windows AIK tool is a free download from Microsoft, you can get it here. In reality, you only need 'imagex.exe' from the whole bundle so you probably can find just the binary alone by searching the web. In addition to Windows AIK, you'll also need Apple's Bootcamp drivers. It's easy to get the drivers, all you need to do is just run Bootcamp Assistant and it will download the correct drivers for your Mac. Put these drivers onto a thumb drive or something. Lastly, you'll obviously need the Windows installer itself. It can be a physical disc or an ISO image.

Next, you'll need a Windows environment to prepare the drive. It can be a physical desktop/laptop or a simple Windows VM. I'm going to assume you have access to all the components on the same desktop/laptop/VM -

• Target disk drive you're putting Windows on
• imagex.exe
• Windows installer disc or ISO

Step #1. Wipe the drive and create a primary 350MB partition. Format it with FAT32 and make it Active. Assign a drive letter to it, let's call it 'B' (for Boot).

Step #2. Create a second partition consisting of the rest of the drive. Format it with NTFS. Assign a drive letter to it, let's call it 'W' (for Windows).

Step #3. Determine the INDEX number of the desired Windows edition you want on the Installer disc/ISO. You need to do this because your disc/ISO may contain multiple versions of Windows, like 'Professional' or 'Enterprise' etc. To do this, you need 'imagex.exe'. Assuming your disc/ISO is mounted on drive I:, the command to do this is

<PATH to IMAGEX.EXE>\imagex.exe /info I:\wim\install.wim

It will list out all the available editions you have on your current disc/ISO. The output is quite lengthy but otherwise very self-explanatory. Let's assume the edition you want is located at INDEX 0.

Step #4. Deploy Windows. The command to do this is

<PATH to IMAGEX.EXE>\imagex.exe /apply I:\wim\install.wim 0 W:

This will take some time so you have to wait patiently for it to complete.

Step #5. Install the boot sector.

W:\windows\system32\bcdboot W:\windows /f ALL /s B:

Once you reached here, you're done with the disk. Shutdown your Mac. Stick the disk onto the Seagate adaptor and plug the adaptor into the Thunderbolt port of your Mac. Remove ALL USB devices from your Mac now. USB connected drives will prevent your Mac from booting up from the Thunderbolt disk correctly. Check that you have nothing on your USB ports and also no SD cards in the SD slot (if you have one).

Boot your Mac and hold onto the 'Option' key. You know this will lead you to the Boot Drives selection screen. You should see a disk named 'Windows' along with your usual Mac boot disk and also the Recovery partition. Use your arrow keys to select 'Windows' and hit 'Return'. If you have done everything correctly as listed, your Windows partition will boot and installation starts. Just follow the on-screen instructions. It should be no different from a normal installation procedure.

At this point, Windows might reboot a few times during the course of installation. You have to remember to do the hold 'Option' key dance and select 'Windows' on the selection screen. After the installation completes, login and run 'setup.exe' from the Bootcamp Drivers thumb drive as Administrator. Follow instructions to complete the installation.

You should now have a fully bootable and working copy of Windows on the disk. Note that this procedure also works on a USB adaptor as well.

Something to take note -

• If your installer is 64-bit, then you need 64-bit versions of everything, including BCDBOOT, Bootcamp drivers etc.
• Make sure you don't have any USB devices attached when booting. Otherwise, it will not boot correctly.

Since this procedure works also for external USB disk, you can also use any of these types of disk. The BUFFALO MiniStation 1 TB Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive with Thunderbolt Cable - HD-PA1.0TU3works pretty well. It comes with both USB3 and Thunderbolt connector. However, it is a spinning disk inside. If you must have an SSD, then using the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128)might still be the best bet.

What to Buy on Amazon : Solid State Drives (SSD)

One of the most popular items, at least in the Computer and Accessories category, are Solid State Drives, otherwise known as SSD. Now, for the layman, SSD are straight forward drop-in replacement for your existing Hard Disk Drive (HDD). SSD uses flash as the storage medium, as oppose to a spinning disc in a traditional HDD. As a result, it offers a much lower access latency which results in a huge boost in performance most of the time.

There are currently many SSD vendors, offering a myriad of combinations of controllers and capacity. However, in my opinion, there are only 4 which are worthy of consideration. They are

• Intel
• Crucial
• Samsung
• Kingston

The main reason is that Amazon offers AmazonGlobal Saver for SSDs from these manufacturers. One thing to take note that SSDs today are very much capable and you won't notice any performance difference between the different models in your everyday home and office type of workload. If you do a little bit of searching, you will see that all of them performs differently and have different controller and flash characteristics. In my opinion, these are academic in nature and I must re-iterate that you will most likely not see nor feel any difference between them. In short, just buy the cheapest, but do read on for some other pointers.

The best value for money capacity at the moment is the 240GB/250GB/256GB version. Let's take a brief look at the SSDs offered by these manufacturers.

Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5
This is a pretty recent model and it comes in 2 variants, the bare drive or the Reseller Kit (featured here). The bare drive, as the name implies, is just the drive alone and is not eligible for AmazonGlobal. The Reseller Kit version is another story. At the moment it qualifies for free shipping (unless the price drops below $125) so you don't have to 'pad' your cart to qualify. Intel offers a massive 5-year international warranty on these drives. According to their warranty statement, all you need to do is call the Intel Customer Service in your region to request an RMA. The Reseller Kit also comes with a 9.5mm spacer, a SATA cable and a 3.5" to 2.5" bracket.

I personally bought this and bootcamp off the Thunderbolt connector on my MacBook Air. I also have Intel's older model, the X25-M G2 80GB and the 320 series 160GB. My experience is very positive with Intel.

Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW
Samsung offers 3 versions of the 840-series SSDs. The standard 840, the 840 EVO and the 840 PRO. The 840 and 840 EVO are priced similarly but the 840 EVO out performs the 840 just about in every single benchmarks. The 840 PRO commands a higher price premium and for the extra performance it offers, I don't think it's value-for-money when used in an office or home environment.

Another thing to take note is that the 840 and 840 EVO uses a 'one of its kind' type of flash, known as TLC. It stands for Tri-Level Cell, as opposed to MLC (Multi-Level Cell) or SLC (Single-Level Cell). In theory, a TLC flash will wear out faster than an MLC flash, all things equal. I strongly believe that by the time the flash is worn out, you'll be looking at a better, faster and cheaper drive. In other words, whether it's TLC or MLC, it doesn't matter in reality.

Samsung does not provide international warranty unfortunately. If you need to RMA the drive, you'll have to send it all the way back to Samsung USA. It should cost you about $10-$15 SGD to send it back via registered post.

Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1
I do not have any experience with Crucial drives. However, the M500 series has got good reviews, is very price competitive (it's the cheapest of the lot at the time of writing) and ships for free to Singapore. RMA requires you send the drive back to Taiwan and it cost lesser than sending it back to the US. It comes with a 9.5mm spacer as well.

Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive SH103S3/240G
Kingston is also a name brand which offers good performance SSDs at relatively competitive price. If you have a grudge against the other 3 manufacturers, then you can consider this model. I do not believe Kingston offers any international warranty and any RMA will have to go back to the US.

Now, if 240GB/250GB/256GB is not your cup of tea, let me introduce the massive 960GB version of the M500

 

In all honesty, the 960GB is way overkill. For your data, like your movies and music, it's more cost effective to store them on traditional HDD.

Some shopping tips

If you are going to be shopping at Amazon frequently, here are a few tips which should help you.

Tip #1. Set your default payment and shipping address. Every time you check out, you'll be given an option if you want to set the current selected payment option and delivery address as default.

If you tick the checkbox, Amazon will default to this payment option and delivery address. This is just to help you breeze through the checkout process.

Tip #2. Always check out in USD. Amazon's in-house foreign exchange rates is very unfavorable to us. Even SCB's rates looked good in comparison. Now, I believe you can just switch the currency of your credit card to USD and Amazon won't bother you about the conversion. However, I have not actually tried this so YMMV!

Tip #3. Unless you're buying an expensive item which cost well over SGD400, it's always good to split up the order so that each one is less than SGD400 to avoid paying GST. Amazon will collect the estimated GST amount upfront from you and will pay Singapore Customs on your behalf should your shipment attracts GST. Amazon wouldn't know what kind of conversion rate Singapore Customs will used so they tend to be a little bit more conservative. Generally orders less than USD280 should not trigger this collection.

Tip #4. Keep a list of items you'll need but not urgent handy. Why? This is because if a relatively big item goes on sale like the 'Lightning Deal', you'll still need USD125 to enjoy the free shipping. These 'reserve' items will help you make up the number!

Tip #5. Turn off 1-click! This is really to prevent 'accidental' purchase and the stress that follows. How do I do that? Go to Your Account -> Settings -> 1-Click Settings. The option is in that page.

Tip #6. It pays to read the reviews. However, do note that Amazon has the bad habit of lumping the same item but different options (like size, color, platform etc) together. Sometimes, the same item but different options (like HDD capacity) can end up with a sizable difference in say performance. An example will be Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST4000DM000. The entire family of Barracuda Drives sport a 7200rpm spindle speed except for the 4TB version, which spins at a lower speed.

Tip #7. After you have logged an order, it pays to keep the items in your 'Save for later' section of your cart. This is so that if the price drops substantially, you can either cancel the original order and logged another order at the lower price, or simply ask the CSO to 'price-match' at the lower price.

Tip #8. Do your research. Not all items are cheap on Amazon. Some are more expensive than the local prices. So know what to buy and what to avoid. But no worries, do bookmark this blog and I'll be sharing good deals that I can find.

Tip #9. When determining if you have $125 in your shopping cart, Amazon uses the pre-discounted price. This means that if you have an item with a discount due to 'Lightning Deals' or Coupons, and the original price is >$125, you'll get free shipping even though the price may drop below $125 after applying the discount. For example, the item cost $129.99, so you'll qualify for free shipping. If the item has a current 'Lightning Deal' and you successfully claimed the deal with an additional discount of $10, making the effective price $119.99, you will still qualify for free shipping!

That's all for now. Happy shopping at Amazon!

Tutorial : Getting the Deals

Prices on Amazon are generally decent. However, Amazon runs deals 24x7 and if the items you wanted appear in any of them, you can generally get even better pricing. What are the deals available? There are a few types and I'll try to describe them and also how to get them. The types of deals available are

• Deal of the Day (fka Gold Box Deal)
• Lightning Deals - Time sensitive discounts
• Savings and Sales Across Amazon
• Digital Deals
• Amazon Local Deals
• Coupons

We'll eliminate Digital Deals and Amazon Local Deals as these are not exactly applicable to us. You can look at the summary of the current deals by clicking Today's Deals right at the top of Amazon's homepage.

Deal of the Day
Every day, Amazon will post a 'Deal of the Day'. As the name implies, the deal will only last for 1 day, starting at midnight Pacific Time. This translates to 4pm Singapore Time during winter (like now), or 3pm during summer. This deal can be a single item, or a group of related items. Depending on what you're looking for, deals under this category can be 'wow' or 'meh'. However, they are generally ok and offers slightly more discounts than usual.

The only caveat is that you have to check out the item by 3pm (or 4pm) in order to enjoy the pricing. This is because items in your shopping cart do not hold their pricing and once past the dateline, the price will revert back to the original one.

Lightning Deals
As the name implies, these types of deals happen quickly and is extremely time sensitive. It starts at a pre-defined time and usually lasts for a few hours only with a limited number of quantities available. Most of the time, the items offered has no options and you just add them directly to your cart when it becomes available. Other times, there will be options available, for example, you can select the size of a thumb drive or the platform of a game. When you're done, you add it to your cart.

Now the caveat. Once the item is in your cart, you have to check out within the next 15 minutes, and there's a timer to remind you. Otherwise, you'll be deemed to have forfeited the chance. You can then add it back again if you wish, provided it's still available. There is a countdown timer in red, just underneath the picture of the item of the deal, which indicates for how long more will this item be available with the special price.

Some popular items, or items which simply has such a huge discount (you then tend to exhibit 'Buy First Talk (Regret) Later' syndrome), will get sold out very fast. I have come across some items which, upon refresh of the browser, it's already sold out. How do you know if it's sold out? There is this line at the bottom of the picture of the item that reads 'XX% claimed'. Once it hit 100%, it means it has sold out. Normally, the yellow button will also say 'Add to Cart' if the item is still available. If the item is sold out, then the button will read 'Join waitlist'.

What is this waitlist? It is as the name implies, a queue on the waiting list to be offered the lightning deal. If it's already 100% claimed, why is there a need of a waitlist then? Now, the reason is simple. If you 'Regret' before you check out the item, or you simply remove it from your cart, then the item will be offered to the next in line, and so on. Once you join the waitlist, you'll be told your queue position and then a quick assessment on your chance of getting it. You can then continue your shopping while waiting. If you're lucky, you'll see a flashing notification on your right upper corner of the browser window, telling you that the item is now available! You have to act fast because you only have THREE (3) minutes to add the item in your shopping cart. Once it's in your shopping cart, the usual 15 minutes to check out timer starts.

Lastly, you're allowed to buy 1 each of the items offered on Lightning Deals. So if you're buying for yourself, you can't be buying it for a friend for the same price. You can still buy additional quantities at the prevailing price.

Savings and Sales Across Amazon
These aren't as exciting as the previous 2 types of sales described. This is also a time limited sale, although quite a long one, lasting several days. Just like the 'Deal of the Day', it can be a single item or a group of related items. If you're eyeing these, just take note of the expiry of the deal itself. There is a countdown timer, similar to the 'Lightning Deals'.

One problem with this section is that there usually are a lot of items on sale at any one time. A quick tip is to just to filter off everything else except the category you are interested in. You can do this via the selection drop-down on the top right corner, with a label that says 'Sort by Category'. The 'Lightning Deals' section features the same filter as well. If you don't see the category you are interested in being listed, then there are no items within that category is available.

Coupons
The working mechanism of coupons are not as straight forward as the three types of deals just described. However, they are simple enough and you just need to understand a few rules.

• Coupons are applicable usually to a group of items and sometimes a single specific item.
• Coupons discounts are applied upon checkout.
• The same coupon can only be used once per order.
• Coupon may be one time or multiple time use.

If a product has an eligible coupon, you'll be informed on the product details page -

If you add go ahead and add it to your shopping cart, it will be indicated, like this -

And if you actually check it out, your Order Summary will look like this -

When you purchase items with coupons, please do make sure it's clipped and discounts duly applied on the Order Summary page.

Alright folks, it's another pretty long post and I hope it is helpful. Another nice feature will be Amazon Prime. Learn more.

Tutorial - Tracking Prices on Amazon

You might have placed some items in your cart and have not checked out because you didn't reach the USD125 threshold. The next time you login, and went to your shopping cart again, you saw a yellow box at the top of the page.

This is really to inform you that the price of the item has changed the last time you reviewed your shopping cart. This is very common as prices fluctuate, sometimes quite drastically, on Amazon. Note that by putting items in your shopping cart does not means you have 'locked' in the price. Items in your 'Saved for later' section of the cart get the same treatment as well.

How do I then know I'm getting a good deal? Or is there a way to track the price changes over time for the items I'm interested in? In other words, in ultra geek speak, is there an 'MRTG' of the price? Yes, there is. Let me introduce to you one of the most popular price tracker : Camel3.

The UI of the website is very user friendly. All you need to do is key in the URL in the search box above, or the ASIN (which can be found in the Product Details section), or just the keyword.

Let me use the ever popular Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 as an example. If you follow this link and look under the Product Details, you'll find that the ASIN is B00DTPYT78. Key this into the search box on the Camel3 website. Immediately, you'll be greeted with a wealth of information. Let's take a look at the big price chart first.

The bottom axis is the date while the vertical axis is the price. There is also a red dotted line above, which represents the highest price and a green dotted line below, which represents the lowest price. On the right hand side, there's are 'Price Type' check boxes. Since we're only interested in items sold by Amazon, we'll only need to enable the first checkbox.

From the graph, we can now tell that the highest price is $300 (on Sep 17, 2013), the lowest price is $149.99 (on Nov 19, 2013) and the current price is $164.29. I'm sure you know the lowest is not $149.99 but $149.00, and that Amazon offered this item at $149 on not one, not two, but THREE occasions. Yes, that's right. Amazon offered this item on 3 different 'Lightning Deals' over the Black Friday 2013 week. It's a buying frenzy. So why am I not seeing $149 reflected? I read that Camel3 does not capture 'Lightning Deals' price information.

If you think the graph is too long a time frame (because you may not be interested in price changes a year ago), you can always zoom into the graph by sliding the bar under the 'Date Range' label. This particular item is relatively new so there's only a few months of data at the time of this writing. You can get a really huge graph for items that are available for a long time.

OK, $164.29 is a decent price but I'm betting it will go lower. But I don't want to check back every minute I'm awake to make sure. Sure, just set up a price alert on the website! Let's go back to the page again (I hope you didn't close it). Right above the chart, there is a kind of table, like this

Again, we're interested only in the first row, which is for items sold by Amazon. Just key in the desired price, your email address and hit 'Start Tracking'! If the price went below that of your desired price, you'll be alerted via email. Neat huh?

Some other tips. I also suggest you create an account with them. Include all the items you are interested in the price alerts. You can then view all your items under the 'Your Price Watches' page. I hope this enhances your ability to grab good deals off Amazon.

Thoughts on Amazon's shipping partners

First thing first, these are just my thoughts and personal experience so most likely than not, they are not exactly accurate. You should take this with a very tiny pinch of salt.

Amazon uses a number of shipping partners under this AmazonGlobal Saver program. They are

• DHL
• UPS
• iParcel

Sometimes (although rarely), Amazon will, for one reason or another, uses DHL Worldwide Express to get the parcel to you. This is like striking the jackpot in terms of shipping speed. Generally, the parcel will get to you in less than 4 days. Considering that the parcel has to travel half the globe, this is amazingly efficient.

Regardless of where your parcel originates, it always end up at Cincinnati, Ohio before it flies over the Pacific to us. Usually the next port of call is Incheon, South Korea and the flight time in between is more than 12 hours. The next leg is either Shenzhen, China or straight to Singapore. This leg probably takes about 9 hours. So you see, including refueling, waiting, local ground pickup and delivery, it is amazing that the parcel can get to you in less than 4 days. Once it cleared customs, you should be able to get your hands on the parcel by the next working day.

Next, iParcel. iParcel generally is able to get the parcel to you within 2 calendar weeks. It looks like iParcel's administrative office is in Carlstadt, NJ, so whatever updates you see on Amazon's website will have Carlstadt, NJ tagged to it. It is slightly different on the ground. iParcel looked like they have 3 hubs, in CA, NJ and IN. If you want to know which hub your parcel is delivered to, you can go look it up on iParcel's website.

From experience, parcels originating from CA is pretty ok while parcels coming out of NJ is slower. I might guess that the parcel from NJ could have taken a longer Europe route back while the parcels from CA took the usual Pacific route.

Once the parcels left US, you can forget about the tracking status. They are slow and just cannot be trusted. It will take about 3-5 days to reach Singapore. iParcel does not do the delivery to your doorstep themselves but sub-contracted this job to a third party. One of them is SpeedPost, the other is WMG.

What you can do is go to the SpeedPost website and key in the iParcel tracking number. If there's no result, it means the parcel has not yet reach Singapore or it's not handled by SpeedPost. If you're in luck, SpeedPost will return a positive result to indicate that SpeedPost will be the one doing the final delivery. There will be a status on the result page and there are a few possibilities.

• Empty. Probably indicates that SpeedPost has not got the physical parcel from iParcel yet.
• It says 'Pending shipment from Merchant/Shipper'. Probably means it's waiting for iParcel to hand over the parcel.
• It says 'Shipment ready'. SpeedPost has got the stuff and is ready for delivery.
• It says 'Item picked up'. It's assigned to somebody already.
• It says 'Out with delivery courier' (or something to the same effect). Well, it's on the way to you!

Your parcel might also be handled by WMG. They are located somewhere in Kallang and will also not do the delivery themselves. They will mail the parcel to you via SingPost registered mail. I wouldn't bother asking the iParcel CSO for the RA number here. Just wait and it'll show up.

Now, let's talk about the last shipping partner, UPS. Amazon uses 2 types of services offered by UPS. They are UPS Worldwide Express Saver (aka UPS FAST) and UPS Worldwide Expedited (aka UPS SLOW). Judging from the nicknames given, I'm sure you know which one you want.

There's nothing much to say about UPS FAST. It's similar to DHL and will deliver the parcel to you in less than 4 days. The record I experienced is 2.5 days (minus away the TZ difference) from Amazon's warehouse and my doorsteps.

UPS SLOW will be the one most of us will be getting, other than iParcel. Amazon must have felt that iParcel will do a faster job because the delivery estimates for UPS SLOW is always longer than iParcel. All action for UPS starts at Louisville, KY. UPS FAST took a few hours to get there while UPS SLOW can take days.

But once it reaches Louisville, KY, then it's pretty much predictable. It will go to Anchorage, and then maybe Incheon or Hong Kong and finally Singapore.

Once in Singapore, UPS FAST will deliver the parcel to you on the next available business day. For UPS SLOW, it is claimed that the parcel will be delivered only from Tues-Thur. I know this is not true since I have had UPS SLOW delivering on a slow Friday afternoon. But whatever it is, UPS SLOW has a lower priority but rest assured that it will still be delivered.

How do I tell which UPS I have? If your tracking number starts with 1Z240F5, then you have got UPS SLOW.

Can I choose the carrier? Of course you can. But you must forget about what I taught you in the tutorial and pick priority shipping when you check out. You will definitely get DHL or UPS FAST.

PS : There was once when iParcel actually handed my parcel over to DHL in Elizabeth, NJ and DHL got it to me in 3 days.

PPS : If you can't wait, please then either buy locally (and get the item on the spot) or pay for priority shipping where you'll get DHL or UPS FAST. Please do not agree to use the free saver option and bitch about slow delivery.

Amazon Prime

I'm sure you've seen this Amazon Prime being plastered all over Amazon's website. What is it exactly? Simply put, it's a subscription service with the following benefits -

• Free 2-day shipping on eligible items. Note that this applies only within the States. Don't dream of having free 2-day shipping to Singapore. I think it's almost impossible.
• Free Prime Instant Video access. Amazon claims that their collection is well over 40,000 movies.
• Borrow Kindle books, once per month.

All these for $79/yr. Let me analyze the major benefits.
[Update : Amazon has since increased the subscription to $99/yr]

Free 2-day shipping. This is of almost no use to anyone of us here in Singapore as it applies only to US addresses. But, if you are a spree organizer and frequently ships to freight forwarder, then you might want to consider. The best part is that you don't have to satisfy any minimum orders (except Add-On items) in order to have Amazon shipped your items out for free.

Prime Instant Video. This is the one that interests me the most. I have a current subscription to Netflix that cost me $7.99/month, or about $96/yr. The content on Netflix is ok and for $7.99/mth, I think it's good value. First impressions of the collection at Amazon, I really really like it. I'm currently watching The Blue Planet with my trial Prime membership.

There's one caveat. The Prime Instant Video is only applicable within the US. So folks in Singapore are actually missing out quite a fair bit. But fret not, we do have workarounds. If you're a ViewQwest subscriber, you can add-on their Freedom VPN service and you'll have access to this Prime Instant Video service from Amazon automagically. If you subscribe to the 'You can't go wrong' traffic lights telcos, then you need slightly more work. You have to hunt for a VPN provider and sign up with them.

What's the difference between the 2 approach? The ViewQwest approach is transparent to you. All your devices within your household that are connected to ViewQwest's network get full access. If you have a PS3, it works. If you have an iPad, it works too. The VPN approach is not that transparent. In order to watch the videos on Amazon, you have to connect to the VPN server. What this means is that if your VPN provider does not work with Android devices, then you can't watch it on your Android devices! The same holds true for your PS3, your xbox360 etc.

Lastly, borrowing Kindle books. I love to read. I have a 6" older generation Kindle with no back light and no touch screen. But borrowing just 1 book per month is a weak effort on Amazon's part. Bookworms like us can potentially burn through a few per month. So, I won't take this seriously. It's a sweetener for sure but not a deal breaker.

In any case, Amazon offers a free trial for 30 days and you can sign up directly here -
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

Just remember to cancel it after your 30 days are up. For me, I'm now seriously considering terminating my Netflix subscription instead.

Tutorial - Why don't I get free shipping?

This is one of the most common questions asked. There are many reasons why your cart doesn't qualify. First, let's get the most obvious reasons out of the way. According to Amazon, in order to qualify, you need to satisfy at least the following criteria -

• Have > $125 (USD) worth of qualifying products in your shopping cart
• AmazonGlobal Eligible
• Ships to a single address in Singapore or India
• Items must not weigh > 20 lbs or be over-sized

Let's take a look at them one at a time.

The first one is easy to spot. Does your cart adds up to > $125? Sometimes amidst all the excitement, you can forget about this one.

The second one can be tedious. You'll need to go into every single one of the items and look at the product description. First, make sure the item is sold by Amazon, and not other third party merchants. There should be a line (just underneath the price) that says 'Ships from and sold by Amazon.com'. If it says anything else, then it's not sold by Amazon.com and will not qualify.

Next, you can also look under the Product Details. There will be a line which says 'Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.'

99% of the time, this will mean the item can be shipped to Singapore.

Third, make sure you don't split up the shipment, or otherwise choose 'I want my items faster. Ship items as they become available'. These will surely incur additional charges.

Lastly, there is a weight limit. Shipping heavy or bulky items cost serious money and Amazon is not stupid to do it for free. Items that weigh over 20lb will not qualify. Otherwise, folks will be shipping dumbbells over. Over-sized items, like baby prams or Samsonite Luggage don't qualify! How do you know if the item is over-sized? Again, look under the Product Details. If you see this :

"Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply."

Then the item is over-sized and you will not get free shipping to Singapore (or India). The 'Additional shipping charges will not apply' is only applicable for shipping within the US so you can ignore that.

If, after going through this check-list, you are still hit with a charge, there's 2 things you can do. First, you can start a friendly chat with the Customer Service Officers (CSO) and ask them if they know why it doesn't qualify and try your luck to see if they can waive it. Or, you can just send the item to a freight forwarder, like vPost, Borderlinx or ComGateway.

Sometimes, there'll be glitches in the system that prevents you from getting the free shipping option, maybe because the items are not setup correctly for it. Only Amazon will know and there's really nothing you can do about it.

Tutorial - Placing Your First Order With Free Shipping

This post will be slightly long but I'll try to hand hold you to place your first order with free shipping to Singapore. I'm going to assume you have already setup your payment method and a shipping address in Singapore.

Step #1 : Find the items you want. Search for the items you are looking for and then check the box that says 'AmazonGlobal Eligible'.

Since I'm a fan of Terry Prachett and I particularly like Making Money, I'll use this as an example. Let's now go to Amazon. Follow me and type in 'Terry Prachett Making Money' in the search box near the top of the web page. You should see it as the first item in the search result.

Step #2 : Click the link to the item to get more details of the product. Since this is a book, there are a few versions of it.

We'll just stick with the 'Mass Market Paperback' version and add it to the cart. Leave the checkbox that says 'Yes, I want FREE Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime' alone. I'll come to that in another post, I promise!

Step #3 : Just to make sure that this item can be shipped out of US, go to your cart and pay attention to the blue-background box on the right side. Click on the link 'Estimate your shipping and tax'.

Aha! It says 'Estimated shipping & handling : $9.98'. This pretty much confirms that we can indeed ship this book out of US.

Wait, but I want free shipping! Sure, this book is so good, I'm going to buy 20 copies and give it to my friends! Edit the Quantity of the item and key in '20'. Remember to hit 'Update' to get an updated cart. Now, take a look at the blue-background box again.

The cost to ship 20 copies of it is listed as $104.97. However, there is now an entry that says 'AmazonGlobal Saver' that says -$104.97, effectively negating the shipping cost. This is the confirmation that the books will be shipped for free to your doorsteps.

Step #4 : Checking out your shopping cart. Once you are ready, hit the 'Proceed to Checkout' button on the right. It's a striking yellow button so you can't really miss it. In the next page, you will be asked to pick your shipping address. If you have set it up previously, the address will appear here. If not, you will now have to key in this information.

Once you have picked the shipping address, you will now have to choose your shipping options. If you have followed the tutorial, there will be an option for 'FREE AmazonGlobal Saver (averages 9-14 days)' under 'Choose a shipping speed' -

You have to select this option. I repeat, you have to select this option. Amazon will default to paid shipping, regardless if you qualify. I cannot stress this enough. A lot of times, newbies just click through this screen and then realize they have no free shipping! Hit continue to select your payment method.

If you have not already set up a credit card, you can do so now. Note that if you are adding a new credit card, Amazon will ask you what is the currency of your card. You can just pick Singapore Dollars. Choose a billing address next. If this sounds very tedious, it is. This is the reason why I suggest you set up your payment and shipping address before hand. You can just pick when you're checking out.

Finally, you'll be presented a final page where Amazon shows you the details of

• Item and Quantity
• Shipping Address
• Payment Method and Billing Address
• Order Summary

Take a look at the Order Summary, on the right side of the page -

You'll immediately notice that Amazon wants to charge your card in SGD. This is probably because you have indicated that your credit card is in SGD. Let's change the currency to USD instead. Click 'Switch currency' and pick USD. Your Order Summary will now show the amount in USD.

Step #5 : Placing the order. I'll suggest you go through the final page one more time to make sure

• Items are correct
• Payment information is correct
• Shipping address is correct
• Checking out in USD
• There is no shipping charges levied

Once you're happy, hit the big yellow button that says 'Place your order in USD'. Congratulations! You've made your first purchase at Amazon with free shipping to your doorstep. You'll get an email from Amazon, thanking you for your business.

Now, obviously this is just an example to take you through the process. Once you're at the final page, you can always back off by clicking a very small link right at the bottom of the page to go back to Amazon's home page.

Realistically, you will be buying several items to make up the $125 cart. All you need to do is to repeat the search, filter, add to cart until you have enough. Need shopping ideas? Check back here! I'll also be sharing a few items which I have purchased in the past with some savings.

In the next few updates, I'll try to go through some of the issues you might encounter that prevents you from getting the free shipping options. Do check back!