Tuesday, November 13, 2001

Site Seeing
Think the web can be fun and useful?
Follow one student’s journey through the virtual world.
Tour by David Reese

www.oldnavy.com
Many TCU students love the Old Navy clothing line and it is available without leaving your house. As you enter the site, you choose what type of clothing you are looking for whether it is men, women, boys, girls, baby or maternity. Within the sections, you can decide from all types of clothing including denim, pants, sweaters, graphic tees, etc. To play around, I selected the women’s denim section to find a pair of jeans.

There were a variety of 30 separate denim items to select and jeans varied in price from $19.99 to about $30. I was amazed to see how many varieties of jeans that actually were available on the Web site. It is also easier to find exactly the pair you are looking for with the click of a mouse than perusing through racks and shelves left disheveled by holiday shoppers. The Old Navy site carries a great selection of clothing and the prices are similar to those in the stores. All in all, the only negative aspect is there may be too many selections to choose from.

www.spencergifts.com
If you have a practical joker or humor-driven person in your life, the Spencer Gifts site may be the place to find a Christmas gift. The Web site has 26 different categories and each category has a list of items available with pictures. They have funky items available such as glow-in-the dark straws at the low price of $3.96 to blacklight fixtures for $59.99 each. You know you are in for a ride when a Web site sells whoopee cushions and accessories for bachelor parties.

www.cdnow.com
The Web site cdnow.com is a great place to do all of your music shopping for yourself or your friends. The hottest artists are known to have new releases during the holiday season and many of them can be found at cdnow.com. Included on this list are Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Enrique Iglesias and Britney Spears who all have newly released albums. This Web site offers its visitors an amazing selection of artists and musical styles whether it is rock, Christian, country, classical, Latin, hip-hop or pop. Their prices are comparable to most retail stores including Wherehouse Music.

This site offers convenience and variety. If you want to buy music for lower prices, go to Wal-Mart. But if you are looking for older material or little-known artists, this Web site is the place. It has the entire Madonna catalog of albums from her debut in 1983 to her most recent greatest hits, which is supposed to be released today. This is a great site if you want music that is difficult to find in stores, but for mainstream artists I would continue to buy at regular record stores.

www.bn.com
If you are a person plagued by extreme laziness and do not want to walk to the TCU Bookstore (which is also a Barnes and Noble bookstore), then you can get all your book-loving friends their Christmas presents on bn.com. This Web site offers all the greatest selections in newly released novels, college textbooks and e-books as well as out-of-print books. This was the first Web site on my search that offered lower prices online than most of their retail stores. But shipping costs may eventually bring the total to a higher price than what a customer would pay in-store. I did not find any problems with the Web site, but it is a little slower than a lot of other sites. However, their search engine was incredible and I highly recommend this site.