'Gun drawers' to fit 100 Series

[grantw]

@Chris best way to do last minute bidding is something like Gixen (www.gixen.com) I've used it many times with 100% success so far.

@Graham to do that it would require a level of sophistication way way beyond a small piece of software (think bourne identity type scenario here.)

 

[Gary Stockton]

Sniping isn't done from your PC, Gra - it gets done off a server. The seller would need to have all the details of everyone watching an item to do that - and the server should be sufficiently firewalled to prevent that anyway. My bids always get through - I just sometimes don't place a high enough value on the item I want so get out-bid.

Trick is to determine an upper limit and stick to it. If you didn't value it highly enough and it goes elsewhere, well, tough. If you didn't win because of a technical failure, that needs investigating I guess.

 

[Gary Stockton]

And I always use Goofbid to bid with, and www.checkwatch.com to see how many people are watching an item. Doesn't mean they're going to bid, just gives an indication of interest and potential competition.

 

[Chris]

Guys, I know how to buy stuff on e-bay. I live on there. Something odd happened this time. Dunno whether computer, server, ebay related, just that I clicked and my bid didn't appear.

Oh well.

Chris

 

[Chas]

Like you Chris, I live on eBay, it's my home page and I've had this happen more than once. Another thing is sometimes I have placed a bid with 5 seconds left to the end of auction only to be told bidding has ended, go figure!

 

[Gary Stockton]

Real time and machine time are not always the same Chas

And you need to factor in any network latency between you and fleabay. I personally wouldn't leave it chance that my uplink of data takes place exactly as you expect - uplink appends are way way slower than downloads - typically your upward data packet (typically, note) is tiny compared to the in-bound data packet so the WWW is backbones with that in mind.

It's like assuming that just because you've driven your truck all day every day that you can just waive all responsibility for there being air in tyres or oil in sump. You can't - assumption, as you know, is the mother of all fubar results

 

[Chas]

Real time and machine time are not always the same Chas

Yes I know that but I've had the bidding ended message BEFORE the 5 seconds were up so the machine was telling me there was 5 secs left when there wasn't?

 

[Gary Stockton]

Yes and your page may not have refreshed for 6 seconds. There are so many variables that to try and predict the right second to click 'bid' is nigh on impossible

 

[Chas]

Yes and your page may not have refreshed for 6 seconds. There are so many variables that to try and predict the right second to click 'bid' is nigh on impossible

NO, the page did refresh and came back with that message instantly, before the 5 seconds were up. Not frequent but this has happened more than once.

 

[Graham]

Yes and your page may not have refreshed for 6 seconds. There are so many variables that to try and predict the right second to click 'bid' is nigh on impossible

.
.
But you see the seconds counting down from 59.
And you can also see the bidding go up, as other punters are bidding, so it is as live as it's going to get.
I can't believe there is a 5 second delay.

Gra.

 

[Gary Stockton]

If you're bored, go read through this and run some of the tests

http://www.wikihow.com/Test-Network-and-Internet-Latency-(Lag)-in-Microsoft-Windows

enjoy