New 'Mega Shopbot' Tool: Please give us your feedback

mountainchrisriver

Tojo_Ralph wrote: »

Affiliate links?

The kelkoo link is an affiliate one... hence the asterix...;)

Gemmzie

No Price-runner and one other blank page on a DVD search

Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4

fsdss

well i tried it (for mamma mia) and what a pain!! gave up the ghost when multiple new pages flew up - i wouldnt use it on that basis. surely there's a simpler way of doing this.

is it just going to be for cds / books / dvd's? i was asking as just a thought though...as today i drove round to 3 garages to get 2 new tyres and the price difference was incredible for the same make of tyre - in the end i saved near £180 just by driving round..Would something like this on a search engine be useful?

EssexHebridean

OK - at first sight good functionality using Opera (v.9.62) with Vista. I've just done a CD search and it looks like having saved me a couple of ££'s on one my Dad wants for christmas. A good start!

Second attempt - looking for a book this time - have deliberately only input part of the author's name - Media Pricer is blank here too. Maybe an error in the phrasing used to search? The pop up thing is easily dealt with in Opera - simply hover at the bottom right of the screen as the shopbot does its thing and then just allow each pop up as the notification tells you it's there. Once all search options are enabled though that could become an issue just because of the sheer number of tabs opening into the browser - I can see those running Vista on lower spec'd machines or those with older machines generally might have a problem as the machine stuggles to cope. (4gb of RAM here - so throw what you like at it!) I can understand why it has to work that way though and can't see a work-around being likely.

As well as the five search/comparison windows I'm also getting a sixth window appear - it opens into a tiny box sitting above the others on screen and appears to just have the standard mse header above a blank box.

Third search - CD again and just inputting an artist name - I disabled Media Pricer for this as there didn't seem to be much point in using it. I like the inclusion of find-cd.co.uk by the way - seems to be consistently finding the cheapest too. Pricerunner required further information from me to go anywhere with this - the search was on Queen & Paul Rodgers and it should have found an album called Cosmos Rocks - it didn't find anything until I typed in the album name though. Shopping.com claimed that it hadn't been released yet (it has!)

A potentially handy little tool - good work.

Tojo_Ralph

MSE_Martin wrote: »

The new windows system is the only way we can do this ....... This isn't without precedent. Its how tripadviser does its comparisons for example.

Which begs the question ..... how many people use tripadvisor for price comparisons?

janet6267

I searched a DVD and four windows opened, only two windows worked. It is a great idea but would be much better if all the info was in one window. It gets a bit confusing.
www.find-dvd.co.uk is the one I use and this is so easy, all set out in a list with the cheapest at the top.

Hope this helps.

squeaky

Is there no way to open a single new window and then open each search engine in a new tab?

It's scriptable, so your guys should be able to write it in. Yes/no?

Morning_Glory_2

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Hi folks,

Thanks for all the open feedback. The new windows system is the only way we can do this. Otherwise the whole system simply doesn't work. There's no consistency of information from teh sites so they can't be produced in a results table.

Also we dont want to be responsible for providing the info in case it is incorrect. When you get a price - i want that to come from teh other shopbots not us and the new window system does that.

This isn't without precedent. Its how tripadviser does its comparisons for example.

The problem is not all sites come back with results so you can end up with a few empty windows. Could MSE simply not invest some time in creating its own comparison website?

krazykidskate

I tried a few books and DVDs and it just seemed to be Amazon coming up each time with no other choices, WHS came up as well on one occasion but was showing as out of stock. Would be good to have eBay New BuyItNow prices in there too.

Great idea though!

gaspodethedog

I got a pop up blocked before the page had even loaded, using opera web browser. I stop if i get a pop up.Sorry if this is no help.