Talk:Prusa i3 Buyers Guide

I just added prices to this page, but then noticed under history that the last edit was "No prices, please". I don't want to step on any toes, but to me pricing seems like an important part of a "buyers guide". Thoughts?

Bad idea, unless you guarantee me to check all prices every week for the next two years. Prices change very often and vendors rarely care to adjust them here in the wiki. Also, a bare price says nothing about the value, as the completeness of kits differ. High quality kits tend to be more expensive than basic ones. --Traumflug 09:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Maybe out of date prices are still better than none. Perhaps an "As of" tag would be appropriate.

The ideal solution would be for this to update automatically. The Wikipedia market indices page is updated by an approved bot. The bot takes the values off of the yahoo finances page each day. Perhaps I could get the source code for the bot, and modify it to keep the prices here up to date. Anyone have any thoughts? --Macon 21:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

By the way, this is the bot I'm talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DinojermBot --Macon 21:34, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I think the best idea is to simply stop looking at solely the price. If you promote the price as the only relevant argument for a buying decision, you also promote low quality. Because then sellers have to make their kits lean, have to fool buyers with marketing tricks and have to stop development. If a RepRapper in spe can't click through a number of links to find the best offer for her, we can't help anyways. --Traumflug 10:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Vertical Text

Nice addition, this table. Perhaps there's no need for an electronics and an extruder section, because there are no i3-specific electronics or extruders. An i3 can be controlled by any electronics, right?

Regarding vertical text, here are two screenshots. One from this page (top), one from RepRap Buyers' Guide (bottom). As you can see, the graphics version doesn't exactly look better. Because graphics don't recognize fonts, background colors, etc., so it fits only for one specific browser/OS combo.

--Traumflug 09:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)