There are two perennial types of questions that pop up here. The first is typically "what should I buy?" This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and the regulars here will always try to help out as best as they can.

Once that's answered, the question then becomes "Where should I buy?" As hard as it might be to belive, that's can be much more complicated than deciding on what to buy. The following is a summary of some oft-repeated advice that is unfortunately in some parts very US-centric. It pretty much goes like:

1. Shop around, if possible.
2. If the price is too good to be true, then it probably is.
3. Check the retailer.
4. Always use your credit card.

A longer version of each point will follow, starting with...

Shop around, if possible.

While nothing is more instantly gratifying than walking into your local big box electronics shop and buying what you want there and then, it's usually one of the more expensive ways to go about doing things.

Sure, the fact that you get the item you paid for in your grubby mitts there and then is a big bonus to some people, as is knowing that if something goes wrong with the item, you can go back in person and argue your case at the shop you bought it from. That's worth paying extra to some.

However, the markup that these shops get on the stuff they sell is huge, and the service you get is often mediocre at best. Sure, some of them let you fondle the goods for a bit, but after all, when was the last time you walked out of the likes of Circuit City of CompUSA thinking "wow...that was a really great experience," huh?

The advent of the internet has seem a lot of retailers push into selling their wares over the new medium. After all, in the case where the buyer knows exactly what he or she wants, having to deal with some of the know-nothing salespeople isn't what they're looking for - they just want to hand over the cash and get their shiny new toy in return with the minimum of hassle. These retailers cater to that sort of buyer well - they just stock the products, and provide a way for the buyer to do the work of selecting what they want. In return, the retailer doesn't have to employ as many sales drones, and they can take orders from anyone with internet access at any time of the day, even if that someone is blind drunk, sitting in their underwear at 3:30 in the morning, thinking that a shiny new Canon 1D Mk. III would make their life complete.

Because more or less anyone can sell over the internet (and from pretty much anywhere), competition tends to be more cut-throat, which results in lower prices. Additionally, the reduced cost of their sales presence (stick up a website instead of having to rent and run a store) tends to also drive down prices, too.

The resulting price difference from local stores selling at close to MSRP can easily be 10% or more. Witness the flyers in your Sunday paper advertising Canon XTs for $700 (I saw this this past weekend) and compare that to the $570 asking price at reputable online shops. That extra cash could stay in your wallet, or it could fund your addiction by paying for some trinkets to go with your new toy.

Of course, not everything os kosher on the internet. There are a lot of places that would love to take your money and give you nothing but a good shafting in return (the profit margin's a bit higher on those). Basically...

If the price is too good to be true, then it probably is

It's one of the unfortunate facts of life that in camera land, there are a lot of unscrupulous dealers out there that will try to draw you in with a low price quote, then pull a bait-and-switch on you and at best only offer that price if you happen to buy a pile of other junk you probably didn't want from them. Either that, or it'll be an import with none of the normal in-box accessories actually supplied. You know, minor stuff like USB cables, manuals, batteries, chargers, lenses. That sort of thing.

The outstandingly low prices quoted by these outfits is a clue in itself - it's just not possible to sell stuff at that sort of price and stay in business for long.

For current equipment, be it compacts, digital SLRs, lenses or even iPods, there is a sort of "normal" price to be paid for that item. There isn't much to it, after all. The manufacturers sell their products (typically in bulk) to various companies either directly or through distributors, and those companies then mark up whatever price they paid by however much they think is best to obtain a profit from selling those products and yet keep the price down somewhat to entice you to buy from them (assuming there's any competition from other vendors).

Although buying in enormous quantities will likely result in a lower price from the manufacturer, there isn't a lot the retailers can do to reduce their cost per item. In the grand scheme of things, everyone kinda sorta pays the same.

Given that's the case, there usually isn't a whole lot of leeway for a retailer to massively cut costs. So, if you see the camera of your dreams listed on your favourite price search engine, just ignore it. Run like crazy to a more reputable dealer.

So how do you tell who's reputable? Well...

Check the retailer.

When online shopping became big, we got the benefit of competiton at the cost of too much information and a bunch of scam artists. The invention of the price search engine made this worse - it initially helped in finding the lowest price possible for a particular item, but the scammers cottoned on to the fact that the simplest way to get a lot of attention was just to quote an insanely low price and let the price search places pick up on those. A lot of them bubble up to the top of the search listings as a result.

The problem is that a lot of these places look and sound pretty convincing (other than the unbelievable prices). Their websites are slick and often talk about being long-established and highly trustworthy. However, a lot of these places operate out of Brooklyn, NY and are hole-in-the-wall operations that will try to part you and as much of your cash through whatever means necessary.

I mean, come on...look at the state of some of these places:

http://www.donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/

Shocking, huh?

Even better, as the scammers start to get a reputation, they just set up a new website under a different name with a slightly different look and just keep going. It's cheap for them to do and takes them very little effort at all.

Thankfully, all is not lost. Once this became apparent, someone had the bright idea of starting a site where instead of rating and reviewing products, you voice your opinion of the merchants themselves. Isn't democracy wonderful?

The site that I (and a lot of others on a lot of other tech. sites) recommend for checking out businesses is Reseller Ratings:

http://www.resellerratings.com

Anyone that's ever bought anything online from a merchant can register and post a review of that seller, good or bad. The reviewer rates the seller numerically on a bunch of aspects and can add their own particular comments alongside the number so that others can see. The numbers are all tallied up, and as more and more reviews are posted, each merchant ends up with a score from zero to ten that should be a fairly decent indicator of how they are in general.

For example, if you were going to spend a lot of money on a camera, which of these two merchants would you buy from?

http://www.resellerratings.com/stor...Video_Pro_Audio
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/DigitalSuperDeals

The former is where I just bought a Nikon D80 plus a bunch of stuff from, and the latter is a company that came up in a recent thread. There's a teensy bit of a difference in their scores that you might not have noticed.

The other nice part about RR is that they try to keep track of each particular merchant as they create new aliases for themselves so that their reputation tends to follow them regardless of what they're calling themselves this week. At the bottom end of the ranking, stores with 4 or more aliases are not uncommon.

Basically, if you're looking to buy online (and this applies to any electronics and some other stuff, too), check out your retailer at RR before you plunk down the cash. Oh, and if you do choose a merchant based on their rating, please go register and review the company. The more reviews the better, regardless if your opinion is good, bad or indifferent.

Speaking of plunking down cash...you'll have to skip to the next post. Bleedin' 10-thousand character limit!

Always use your credit card.

If you get this far, you've chosen what you want and where you want to get it. Now for the last part: coughing up the readies.

By far and away the best way to pay for any online purchases is with your credit card. There's no competition.

On top of whatever points/rewards stuff your card might offer you, your credit card provides you the best possible protection. Basically, you are only obliged to pay for charges that you made and where you received the goods or services that were charged on the card.

To put it more simply: if you don't get the stuff, you don't pay for it.

OK, so you can't just decide not to pay your credit card bill out of the blue when something goes awry. Your credit card company will have procedures that you need to follow to report a problem. However, once a charge is disputed, you are not liable for that charge in any way until the matter is resolved. You don't have to pay up front and then try to settle things. The charge cannot accrue interest while disputed. The company that made the charge doesn't get a penny until things are sorted out.

The credit card companies take this stuff seriously. They honestly couldn't care less about you personally or your little life. However, the only way they make money is if you use the card, and fraud tends to have a bit of a limiting effect on that, so they do sit up and take notice when they're told that someone's been playing silly buggers.

OK, so you may have a zero-liability policy on your debit card and as such you might be tempted to use it instead. However, think about this: when a charge is made to that, real money is lifted from your bank account and goes into the pockets of whoever's messing you about. Even if you make a claim to get it back, the money is still gone in the meantime. It's a lot more hassle and a lot more risky.

There is also the likes of Paypal, which is a staple of payments for eBay. Now, you might fund your paypal account with a credit card, and they may have their own protection policy going on, but at the end of the day, they actually remove some of the protection your credit card offers you.

This occurs because the contract for a payment becomes a matter between you and paypal, not you and the seller. If you don't receive your stuff, it's up to Paypal whether you get your money back. If you ever dispute a paypal charge to your credit card, Paypal says they'll suspend or even terminate your account, plain and simple. You're basically at the mercy of Paypal, and their reputation is less than perfect when it comes to disputes.

Anyway, I'd only use Paypal for small amounts, or where you absolutely trust the seller.

Anyway, that's pretty much that. If you got this far, I bet you're either bored stupid or exhausted from sticking with my various ramblings. Anyway, I'm going to sticky this, so feel free to PM me with any additions (or subtractions) that you'd like to see.