Year: 2009

Mark this one on your calendar! MPH / Top Gear, 5FM motoring enthusiast Sasha Martinengo of Supersport fame teams up with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond in JHB and Cape Town end of next month/beginning February. BTW if you though Jeremy Clarkson is funny you must get his books – brilliant and oh, so true! Not for the politically correct or for tree huggers in general but he always raises some humerous points.

http://www.southafrica.info/news/conferences/mph-live-130109.htm

Is it my imagination that if one needs to get an obscure part that you have to hunt high and low through the pages of the internet to come up with nothing?  I did three searches this week for a Ford Escort XR 3 part and although I was highly pleased with the search results not one of them pointed me in the right direction. Actually, why worry?

I had a good cackle the other day.  Without going into too much detail, have you ever noticed how arrogant some people are when it comes to computer repair? 

I’m experiencing high levels of anxiety these days trying to find a retailer that hasn’t put his prices up because of the recession. Interesting to note that NIMH batteries in some shops are 50% more expensive than in others. Reason being that the distributors have pushed their prices up, I believe.

Well here we are again – why do I write about databases in a Parts-Ring website?  Well I have to tell you about this (besides the fact that you need a database to control your spares)…

It took me exactly 3 hours to make a comprehensive music library with Alpha Five. It took me slightly longer to make it look more professional (another 3 hours) and guess what? I can now play all my music files – it does a search, lookup and possibly inother 20 hours it will automatically add the files I want at the click of a button. It’s better than what you can buy because you make it do what you want it to do. I deliberately kept away from writing code – there is a little bit of course – but their action scripting does most of it.

Guys I am impressed!  And so should you be. I am currently using version 9.  Go to their website and grab the free download trialware of version 10 – http://www.alphafive.com. You won’t regret it.

An often asked question is whether it is not perhaps faster to sell or find used parts through the classifieds in printed media. My own choice was and to a certain degree still is to look in local printed media but the problem is – as I found out to my dismay that purchasing something now may end up in the same paper a week later at a few bucks less. One of the intentions of this website was to make it easier for anyone to come straight to this site and do a search in the classifieds – even possibly in the auction section.  As we have by no means sufficient readers at this stage to even think about being a one stop shop we do hope in time that this will happen. And with a bit of luck have enough hits to get viable sponsorship. I’m not going to advocate that we start crawling websites and make duplication postings – we need to sit it out and do more marketing.

A raeder recently asked us about shipping and the safety and security aspect. This is always going to be a problem – ensure that you have enough information on a would be buyer or seller before making a commitment. This applies to your own personal safety as well. There are a lot of scam artists out there wanting to make a quick buck – make sure you have the money first before passing over or shipping the goods. Likewise when buying the goods know that is is what you are looking for and the seller is legit. Our website cannot be held responsible for a sale going wrong as we are essentially only middle-men and not charging for the service. If in time we do start buying and selling used parts then the story would be different but at this stage the risk is yours. Please always remember that when making a sale to someone coming to your premises that you take your personal safety into account. This just as equally applies to you if you are buying.  Make sure a purchase or sale is done in the public eye and with witnesses. Ensure you have paperwork and identification of buyer or seller. The law makes no exception to anyone buying or selling off stolen property.

I recently lied. Yes, I lied about when I was going to buy version ten of Alpha Five. I actually purchased version nine when I said I was going to get ten.

Having searched high and low for an obscure part for my Suzuki I decided to post a site where the used parts community could get together and discuss issues, get parts possibly through an affiliate but most importantly – use our services to find the part you were looking for.

This article is open to debate so please give us your comments. What would you say is the main difference in your (our trusted reader) experiences between Thermionic Tubes, Bipolars and Mosfets in amplifier sound.