Stefan Mileschin

A couple of days ago, I sold my old dSLR body and lens locally through a popular online classified ads website. For the veterans among us, you will know this is usually a straightforward procedure -- someone contacts you, agree on the price beforehand, set a time and location to meet up, show them the product, and cash exchanges hand. But with anything that involves humans, there are always exceptions, and this is what I want to talk about this morning. The person I sold my camera to came with her mom in a late model, fully loaded Nissan Pathfinder SUV with a fancy vanity plate. After checking out the camera, her mom tried to pull a fast one on me, and said she only has $300 on her, and told me to just accept it. Well, as someone who is born in Hong Kong, the land of haggling masters, and a guy who has been in and out of car dealerships ever so often since I was nine years old, obviously it did not work. I have haggling, and thus, anti-haggling skills, in my blood. To make a long story short, she magically "found" the missing $20 in her purse, and we both went our ways. The way I see it, she probably thinks this was a smart thing to do. After all, she could have saved $20, right? Saving money is smart; this is more or less common sense to people of all ages. In the computer world, it is no different. But as most of us came to realize that not all power supplies are created equally, Thermaltake has a new line of PSUs called the SMART series to take on a very simple concept: Budget price, no frills, and eco-friendly performance. That's smart. But is it right? We cracked open a Thermaltake SMART 730W to see what's inside the brain.

http://aphnetworks.com/reports/thermaltake_smart_730w