APlus.net Should Go Out of Business
Well, it has been a while since I have had a post like this. I believe it might have been Home Depot. I considered changing the name of the company, but decided against it. The reason? Everything I am going to say here is true. I won’t call names. I won’t make idle threats. Just the facts. And it will be damning enough all on its own.
Aplus.net was chosen to host the website and email for my family’s business around 2001 or 2002. I didn’t work at the company at the time, but I set it up. I had read about APlus.net on websites like CNet and the prices were slightly inflated, but it seemed reputable from what I could tell. Even today, APlus.net is well represented on CNet as the #1 provider on the list of most popular web hosts. I have no idea what criteria they use for those rankings, but whatever.
I signed up for the professional plan with APlus.net. At the time, I think that included unlimited email addresses and a modest space limitation of 250 megs. I am not sure what the transfer limits are. Anyway, at the time, I remember thinking it was pretty competitive and I hoped the uptime would be good.
The uptime was good. And the account really worked out pretty well for a while. It was no frills, but it fit our purposes. Then, as we started getting bigger and having bigger needs in terms of space I started looking back into the hosting company. I had finally joined the family business so I thought it would be good to check into it anyway as the resident geek. What I found was that we were still paying $20 per month. We still had the same now antiquated limits of 250 mb hosted space. That couldn’t possibly be right!
I went to Aplus.net’s homepage to see a current pricing plan called Professional, which our plan was also called, that gave its users 250 GIGABYTES of storage. 1000 times as much as we were being afforded. The real kicker? That brand new plan is listed at $14.96 per month! Now, that price isn’t exactly a bargain by today’s standards, but consider we were paying MORE MONEY for ONE THOUSAND TIMES LESS IN SERVICE. That couldn’t even be possible, I thought.
I got on the phone to APlus.net and told them my situation and what I was thinking. First of all, I told them that I thought it was nearly criminal to not upgrade their standard plans as the service had grown. The fact that they could have me locked into some antiquated plan that I wouldn’t even be able to buy today from them if I wanted, is offensive. So, I told the lady on the phone that I wanted to “Upgrade” so that I could SPEND LESS MONEY. How do I go about doing that?
I was then told that in order to “Upgrade” to a new package, I needed to back up all my files, and copy down all my email address info so I could manually enter and upload it to the new server. You see, the new packages are on completely different servers, and subsequently, APlus.net can’t just “physically” move my account to a new plan.
Now, I started getting sarcastic and nasty.
Craig: ”Of course you can’t “PHYSICALLY” move my account to a new server. It is data. Why don’t you COPY it to a new server, get me set up and stop ripping me off for $20 per month?”
APlus.net: “We just don’t operate like that.”
Craig: “Well, then please just give me the “Personal” plan that I see on the front page of your website and I won’t move my account at all. I will agree to keep working with 250 megs hosted for the time being while I get ready to switch. I am clearly not getting the level of service you describe in your current “Professional” plans, so I want to pay $5.95 per month like the “Personal” customers.”
APlus.net: “Sir we don’t do that. You are a legacy customer on a legacy pla”
Craig: (Getting enraged.) “And this is how you treat your “legacy” customers? You rip them off by making them pay more than modern prices for antiquated plans?”
Aplus.net: ”Well, sir I suggest you sign up for the new plan and move your data to one of our new servers. I can’t just put you on the Personal Plan.”
Craig: ”I would, except that you have no migration plan to get me there that doesn’t require me to do all the work. I think you must be the only hosting company in the world that does business this way. I have experiences with other companies and have never dealt with anything like this. Most hosting companies upgrade your plan automatically as they modernize and change the plan details.”
Aplus.net: “Well, sir, I am sorry you are not happy. Think of it as you are buying a new car…”
Craig: (Interrupting) “This is NOTHING like buying a new car. That is a physical asset that I can have possession of. This is more like Cable TV. And when they upgrade Basic Cable to include 5 extra channels, everyone gets those 5 extra channels too.”
Aplus.net: ”Well, I don’t know what cable company you have but mine doesn’t work like that.”
Craig: (Enraged IE hands shaking) “Yes it does. That isn’t true. What cable company do you have?”
Aplust.net: “That is irrelevant to the conversation.”
Craig: ”So is a new car analogy.”
APlus.net: ”Well, sir let’s get back on track. How about if I credit you the next two months to give you time to set up your new hosting plan?”
At that point, I begrudgingly accepted the offer. They are probably aware that I am going to find a new hosting company. One that doesn’t build “ripping customers off” into their business plan. I will not continue doing any business with APlus.net. That’s for sure. I have Dreamhost right now and I have been pretty satisfied with them so far. I also know that they are super attentive, communicative and would help me in a nanosecond if I needed to move my stuff to a new server. In fact, they did a data migration this year to some new servers. They moved all my stuff over and other than a couple little glitches after it was moved, I was fine. They also fixed my two little glitches within a day.
But by all means, stay away from APlus.net. A few years down the road, you could be paying the internet equivalent of $1000 per month for 5 cable channels.
My First Apple Complaint
It has been quite a while since I jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I mean, I certainly don’t have two feet on it because I still love my PC’s, but still. I bought my original 40 gig iPod with the monochrome screen. Then I bought the 60 gig iPod photo. Then I bought my first Nano, which was 4 gigs. That led to an 8 gig Nano as I fell in love with the Nike+ running rig. Mixed into the iPod craze, I bought a MacBook Pro and a copy of Apple LogicPro so that I could do music production at home. Finally, yesterday after my hold button broke on my 8 gig Nano, it was time to buy a new one.
I am a bigtime power user of my Nano. It isn’t Apple’s fault that the hold button broke on my 8 gig one. I use that thing every day for hours and hours on end. In all, over the last year, I have listened to every minute of two national radio shows whose running times combined regularly hit 7 hours per day. Combine that with all the Smodcasts (Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier,) audio books, songs and other pieces of audio that I listen to, I certainly get my money’s worth out of the device.
So, now I needed to replace my Nano with a new one so it could keep track of my renewed interest in jogging with the Nike + system. I spent $200 for a 16 gig of the latest variety of Nano and I started using it. For me, this means plugging it into my PC. It means plugging it in in my bedroom to my Altec Lansing peripherals. It means plugging it in in the car with my iPlay and headphone jack into the car stereo. That is how I listen to it and keep it charged throughout the day.
Well, the latest version of the Nano works just find syncing with the PC, but none of my other charging options work. The Altec Lansing speaker system which has worked on every iPod I have ever owned tells me that charging is unsupported on this iPod. Then this morning it told me the same thing in the car. Great.
A little bit of research reveals that Apple decided to cut some corners. Apparently when apple moved away from the Firewire charging process to the USB one, they begged all the peripheral makers to do it too. This is a change from 12v to 5v in the adapter. So, finally, in this latest generation, Apple has decided to save a few cents per iPod and do away with the converter that would allow me (and countless others) to use the peripherals that I have surrounded myself with over the course of not 1, not 2, but 5 different iPods. All those dollars that I spent are now completely worthless because they no longer serve a purpose in the way I have it set up in my life.
And maybe it isn’t a big deal to me to have to go out and buy a new charging cable for my car and a new speaker system for my bedroom, but that should be for me to decide, not Apple. Backwards compatibility is important when you are trying to make people adopt you into their culture, or even adopt new culture. Since I spent all the time and money doing it, Apple shouldn’t punish me after they have me all committed. Certainly they shouldn’t do it over what some people describe as a few cents.
Marketing Companies Should Have Websites
If you pick my name out and call me asking me to be a client for your marketing company, and I ask you what your website is first so I can check you out, you should probably have one. Marketing is kind of a big deal nowadays, and every company’s strategy (and yes, I think I mean EVERY company) should include a website. Even if you are a therapist dealing in technology addiction and how to escape it, you should probably have a website so that those who are addicted to technology will be able to find you with a Google search.
I know that our website is lacking any real good functionality, but it is there. You can find our phone numbers. You can send us email. It is a means to something. I am just saying. I am considerably less likely to employ your agency to market my business if you haven’t embraced the web as a tool to market your own business yet.
So, maybe you shouldn’t call me anymore.
Sirius XM Should Acquire Pandora
Today on ArsTechnica, there was a story about Pandora and how they can’t make any money. The Cliff’s Notes version to get everyone up to speed is this. Pandora is a revolutionary online radio program that uses the music genome project to take user preferences based on a few songs and program a customized radio station just for you. If you like your death metal technical, and swedish like Meshuggah, Pandora will play some Meshuggah. And then they will find other bands that sound similar like Lamb of God, or At the Gates or some other Scandinavian death metal.
It is brilliant. It is the future of radio. It has no business model yet.
SoundExchange is all but guaranteeing that the business model is going to fail. They are the royalty-collecting wing of the RIAA. They are in the process of imposing a fee of 2.91 cents per hour per listener for the right to broadcast music. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. Satellite radio has a rate of about 1.61 cents per hour per listener. The reasoning for making Pandora’s rate so much higher is basically because their service is so cool. SoundExchange treats Pandora differently because it creates something of a 1 to 1 relationship with each member of its audience whereas SiriusXM has a single playlist for a station that maybe thousands of people listen to at the same time.
I wrote about the satellite radio merger the other day and mentioned that the whole satellite delivery method of radio was eventually going to become obsolete with the proliferation of mobile internet. I still believe that, but here’s the thing. The proliferation of mobile internet is far from upon us.
So in the left hand, we have a brilliant company that can’t seem to make money and faces the eventual shuttering of its doors. On the right hand we have a company that looks to be healthy in the short term as time starts to run out on its proprietary music delivery method. Somewhere in the middle, these two companies need to meet.
SiriusXM is only going to survive in the long run with a mix of content and technology. The first portion of that is to have original, exclusive content. Their exclusive deals with sports leagues like MLB and the NFL are a great way to start. Having Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, and Ron and Fez is also a part of the equation. So where does the music fit in?
In the age of iPods you aren’t going to compete with an all-encompassing programmed radio station. So imagine if there were no music channels on SiriusXM. No adult contemporary channels. No hardcore punk channels. No hip-hop channels. Instead it was Pandora. Every listener has a few artists or styles and as they ride around in their cars listening to the music and giving minimal feedback, they are creating individualized music stations that will grow and change with them wherever they go.
It would be a big win for SiriusXM. It would be a big win for fans of music to not lose Pandora. Pandora needs subscribers. SiriusXM has subscribers and needs to make sure they futureproof themselves past the whole satellite delivery method. Pandora is a good way to do that.
Sirius-XM Merger Finally Approved
The FCC finally approved the merger of the only two satellite radio services in the country. It is kind of funny that it has taken this long, but we are starting to see the future for this new company. The funny thing is that I am betting it will only have to do with satellites in the very very short term.
The reason? This product.
This, looks like an ordinary wireless router, but it isn’t. This is a mobile wifi router from a company called WAAV. It has been announced already that mobile wifi technology will be available in some of next year’s Chrysler cars. This device grabs the mobile data signals from cellular carriers like AT&T or Sprint and broadcasts it inside your car (and about a 50-100 foot radius outside your car) so you can access the internet on the go. This means laptops, video games, and soon enough wifi radios.
This is an important point because if the internet starts being an accessible network on the road in every car, it will certainly marginalize the need for a lot of satellite technology. All that money that Sirius and XM have spent over the years will seem completely wasted as more and more people stop bothering with satellite antennae.
Then, the new merged Sirius/XM company is no longer anything more than a content company. Instead of selling a technology, they are just selling Oprah, Martha Stewart, Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, NFL Football and Major League Baseball.
Except those last two will probably stop renewing their contracts with Sirius/XM because they won’t need a middleman to broadcast the radio descriptions of their games straight to consumers. So there is one lost selling point for Sirius/XM.
Also, the Sirius/XM music channels will have stiff competition from Slacker and Pandora that use user data to customize radio stations just for you, not to mention iPods which will easily be connected in any car on the road in the next couple of years. As it stands now, I would guess that at least 50% of cars being produced today have MP3 player functionality, at least by way of headphone jack.
It is through this filter that I find all the debate over Sirius/XM so hilarious. These two companies have done an amazing job developing a technology that will be completely unnecessary in a matter of years. As that happens, the content producers will be able to go directly to the consumers more and more, thus marginalizing the need for a company to consolidate talent into a service platform once and for all.
Does this sound like a monopoly to you? It doesn’t sound like a monopoly to me either.
Hat tip to MisterCrunchy, who actually commented on this site well over a year ago that satellite technology was going to be marginalized and obsolete.
The End of An Over-Reaction
Well, folks, the Janet Jackson / Justin Timberlake nipple-gate-pasty-wardrobe-malfunctioning affair is finally over. The date Justin Timberlake attempted to but really didn’t make Janet Jackson “naked before the end of this song” was February 1st 2004. Yesterday, a Federal Court of Appeals struck down the fine against CBS stations nationwide that totaled $550,000, levied by the seemingly toothless FCC. It makes me happy that the legal process played out this way, but the effects have already been so sweeping that the $550,000 is really the least of the country’s problems. This Janet Jackson nipple has caused sweeping puritanical change in the last 4+ years since it all went down because the FCC was able to get the maximum penalty raised from $27,500 per incident to $500,000 per incident.
Let’s count the ways:
- Television had to institute delays in most live broadcasts
- Television producers stopped pushing the envelope on nudity and language in their programming, even after 10 PM
- Radio tightened up their rules about language. It is to the point now where lawyers for CBS have instructed the Opie and Anthony Show that they can’t say “douche bag,” or “scum bag,” but they are allowed to use the word “douche,” and “scum,” individually. The (over)thinking is that the addition of the word “bag” constitutes a “description of a bodily fluid” and thus potential for FCC fines.
- Howard Stern moved to Sirius Satellite Radio at least partially as a result of the climate created by the event. Within a month of “nipplegate” Clear Channel, a syndicator or Stern’s show, removed Stern from its stations, citing raunchy material.
And who knows how many more examples there are of “standards and practices” departments at networks getting out of control with censorship. And this all went down as the result of an event that was EVENTUALLY OVERRULED IN A FEDERAL APPEALS COURT!
That’s just awesome.
How many comedians, entertainers, writers, and other artists have been stifled in the last 4 years, unnecessarily. The people that live on forever generally push the limits of what we are used to seeing. How much farther have we been set back?
Luckily, I don’t think we have been set back. While these companies were overreacting to the FCC and all the mock outrage over this incident, it has caused other avenues to thrive. Today, some of the most popular shows in the country have existed on HBO, Showtime, FX and other cable outlets that don’t censor themselves. While the networks have spent time nitpicking show creators on their networks, we have had the pleasure of watching the final seasons of The Sopranos, The Wire, Weeds, Dexter, Lucky Louie, Big Love, Rescue Me and what is reportedly the only show that Comedy Central doesn’t censor, South Park.
While the satellite radio companies seem set to merge because of negative economic realities facing the two companies, it isn’t a referendum on the content that the companies tend to put out. It is more a statement about the delivery method that the companies bought into with satellites. Still, as the first “cable” networks for radio, XM and Sirius have thrived content-wise with Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, Ron and Fez, and others who all do uncensored talk. In addition XM and Sirius have channels that play songs and comedy unaltered for language like terrestrial radio has to play them.
I would like to think that the tightening of rules has actually pushed people to these alternative outlets over the years. So while I think that the reaction to this event was stupid, maybe we will look back at it one day as the catalyst that the U.S. needed to push the boundaries in different directions to places outside of the ridiculous realm of “indecency” that is created and monitored by a governmental group that has almost no checks and balances.
It may have taken more than 4 years, but there is some sense of justice in seeing these fines overturned.
Caught in the Apple Waiting Game
For those of you who don’t know, I am a musician and a computer geek. I have been building computers and playing with them and doing all kinds of other stuff with them since I was about 14 or 15 years old, in my basement, attempting to pass the time when I couldn’t play sports after my first of two knee surgeries. I am a PC guy at heart, just because that is where I started. Technically, I guess I started with an Apple IIe sometime in the 80’s, but I hardly think that counts. That was when monitors were monochrome, printers had ribbons, and mice were the furry rodents running in the shadows of the basement. Today, we have a very different landscape, which I don’t need to really say in a post on the Internet. But I digress…
I am ready for a new computer. I want a snazzy piece of equipment that I can use to do all my silly hobbies. I want something that I can use to update this website. I want something that I can use to record my band’s music. I want something to do minor photo editing. I want to edit vids for Youtube that might feature the band playing music or just goofing around. On top of that, I want convenience, portability and elegant design. I want a computer that I can be proud to own and will also do absolutely everything that I want it to do.
Cue the trumpets. The big winner is the MacBook Pro.
I was thinking the 15.4 inch screen with Boot Camp so that I can dual-boot it to run Mac OS and Windows XP simultaneously. I am going to use Logic Pro Studio for music production instead of the clunky ProTools LE that I am using today. I will try out all the Mac programs for photo editing, web page design, and if I am feeling froggy, possibly even try to edit a font or something equally Mac-like.One problem though.
When do you buy a MacBook Pro? I thought I was being smart. I waited until after MacWorld where Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air. (Did you know that it fits inside of an envelope?) He made no announcements about the MacBook Pro at Apple’s biggest event of the year. So, I should be good to go, right?
Wrong.
The Apple rumor mill is INTENSE. It never stops. Will Apple update the iPhone? Will the iPod line get a “refresh?” How about the new features on the MacBook Air? Will any of those make their way to a mid-term refresh of the MacBook Pro? It is enough to make a man insane.
Look. Here is the bottom line. I want to spend a lot of money on a new computer. I am making a monumental jump from PC to Mac in order to spend more money than I have on any computer since 1997 when I bought individual components and a server-sized case to build a beast of a PC with two video cards before ANYONE had two video cards, and a CD burner that cost $400 because the technology was so brand spanking new. I want to spend this money and get started computing in a new age. Help me out Apple. Let me know that it is ok to buy. Don’t leave me hanging onto the words of a bunch of Mac Fanboys who run unsanctioned rumor sites in order to make the biggest computing decision that I have ever made ever.
Tell me that you are going to make an announcement at the end of February, or on February 10th, or whenever the hell you are going to make an announcement. I need you to make this easier for me. I realize it could throw off sales of your products for a week or two, but I don’t really care. All I care about is my purchasing decision and not having to bow to the pressures of your announcement timings and rumor mills any longer. You are making this very difficult on me and I don’t appreciate it as I listen to Justin Long and his thinly veiled Bill Gates bashing.
Death to the HP 2575
I don’t know if any of you remember this entry about the HP 2575 and how it made me want to crash my car into Staples, but it is GONE! I finally have had enough of its blatant horrendous-ity and I have sent it out of my life on a rail. The software was impossibly large. The network printing was a joke. The stray that broke the even-toed ungulate’s back was that the paper feeder wouldn’t work no matter what type of paper I had in the tray. This came to a head a couple weeks ago when I was prepping my notes for my Saturday morning radio show.
I was having problems getting the USB to connect consistently. When that was working, the pages weren’t feeding into the printer. I had about 15 minutes before I had to walk out the door to go be on the radio. My head starts to shrink onto my brain when I am nervous and don’t have my precious notes to refer to in the moment. So I sat there feeding a sheet in at a time so that the HP 2575 piece of shit would glob some infinitesimal ink blots onto the page for me.
No more. It is GONE. In its place is the Canon Pixma. I will have more on the Pixma later, but it is off to a great start in my mind. It does everything well, and the software footprint is variable. You can install just a basic driver, or you can give the Canon tools a shot if you feel like.
Configuring Slingbox Is Not For the Faint of Heart
The Slingbox might be one of the coolest gadgets that I own. When I originally bought it, Jen wondered why I needed to spend the money on such a device. “Need” is probably a strong word for the situation, but she has finally seen the light as it has given us greater flexibility in our travels over the last year. I haven’t had to go out of my way to find a sports bar or anything like that. All I had to do was get my laptop in reach of a wifi connection and I could watch whatever sporting event I needed to see. Again, “need” is a strong word, but I digress.
The only problem with the Slingbox is getting it set up. I am not sure exactly how I did it the first time, except that it wasn’t working even though I thought I had all the settings done correctly. Then all of a sudden, my friend who was acting as off-site tester, told me that it magically started working. And it worked perfectly from that point on.
That is until I decided to buy a new, faster router; the D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router. Sure, it sounds like a code-named hate group from some earlier time, but it is a heck of a lot faster than the router I was using before. For one, it is a gigabit router for all the computers that are physically connected to it. This means it is 10 times faster than the 10/100 router that I was using before. On top of that, it uses a new protocol on the wireless side to boost up connections that have compatible wireless network cards capable of running the draft-N protocol.
(NOTE: If you hate complicated network-y geek conversation, you will want to tune out now)
What this really meant was a re-install of all the complex internet setup and routing that goes on in my network, including, but not limited to my Slingbox.
The Slingbox is particularly difficult to get routed to the outside world for whatever reason. To make things even more difficult, the d-Link software which is used to administer features and security on the router is more complex than the software I was used to on my old Linksys. D-Link has “enhanced” their menus in an attempt to make things more user-friendly and as a result I find it much more difficult to navigate through the menus to figure out what I want to do. It has four main menu categories; Setup, Advanced, Tools, Status, and Support. Depending on which item you click, there will be some options in the main window and then different sub-menus down the left-hand side. The result is a multi-layer maze of options, some of which are seemingly redundant at first glance. Instead of just having “port-forwarding” options, the D-Link also has a “virtual server” option which has a menu that looks identical to port forwarding, even if they do slightly different things. Hell, they may do drastically different things, but I just don’t know anything about virtual servers.
Anyway, I got to port forwarding and realized that I hadn’t set a static internal IP address for my Slingbox yet.
Apparently that is under Setup and Network Settings. Once there, it was quite easy to select the Slingbox and have the MAC address associated with a static IP. But that isn’t where the process ends.
Back over to the Advanced Tab and the Port Forwarding option. I know where it is now, but is there any reason that port forwarding couldn’t be considered part of setup or some of the things in setup couldn’t be considered Advanced?
Anyway, back over there to select the special port number that will be mapped directly to the new static IP address that I assigned to the Slingbox.
Now time to test the Slingbox. Should be all good. Unfortunately, the only testing you can do from inside the house is on the same local area network that the Slingbox is on. Even if the streaming of content works there, it doesn’t mean that it is going to work once you try to load up the player from some other outside location.
Today, I tested it when I got to work and no dice. I log into GoToMyPC to check things out and play with it for a little while. Still nothing. Then I finally figure out that I had to go into the Slingbox setup itself to make sure that the Slingbox knows it is mapped to this new IP address on the network. Sure enough, I had it mapped to the old address and as soon as I matched it up with the static IP that I had the MAC assigned to, it worked.
So the Slingbox is back up and running until the next time I change routers, or this one breaks. Of course my one friend who was using it out in another part of the world will have to call me to get the new settings, but those are the breaks, I guess. Still, it is great to have the option to load up the Slingbox whenever I can’t make it to a location showing blacked out sporting events or local broadcasts that are unavailable nationally.
Now, we will see if I can somehow justify the HD Slingbox to Jen.
PS3 – A Lesson in Math
I know that most of you have probably seen the news stories about people standing in line for the last few days to get a Sony PlayStation 3. For every person who is standing in line, there appear to be about 20 who are scouring Ebay in the hopes of bidding on one. As a result, this $600 device is being sold on the secondary market for upwards of $3000.
MMM HMMM
I said $3000.
This is stupid. There is no reason to have a piece of $600 equipment for five times it’s retail price, with a limited number of games (around 20) at release time. Plus, if you are any sort of technology connoisseur, you would know better than to buy any piece of equipment on version 1.0. Doesn’t anyone remember what happened with the first batch of XBox 360’s? They had problems. Then as the shipments of the systems progresses, we stop hearing about problems as much.
Speaking of XBox 360’s, let me give a word of advice to all the people who are thinking about bidding on a PS3 this week on Ebay. I have an idea that will save you a ton of money if you have a little bit of patience.
Instead of the PS3 for $3000, buy yourself an Xbox 360 for $400 on Amazon.com.
Spend $200 on Accessories like controllers, batteries for controllers, etc.
Spend $200 on three games to hold you over for a few months.
You have spent $800 on Xbox 360 to solve your video game fix while PS3’s are in their first shipment and being bid up to ridiculous prices on Ebay.
So no, three months down the road go get your PS3. Sell your Xbox 360 and all your gear on Ebay for at least 50% of the original purchase price.
So at the end of the day the math looks like this. You spend $800 on Xbox Stuff. You get $400 back. Then you spend $1000 on the PS3, accessories and games ($600 for system, $200 on accessories, $200 on games.)
In total, you have spent $1400 and gotten to play with two systems. Also as compared with the ludicrous $3000 Ebay PS3 price, you have saved $1600.
(Or, you could just not buy anything and wait until the price drops and the systems are available 3 months from now, you dummy.)
