In US, most people have the experience of buying use cars. Since the value of a new car drops fast in the first several years, it is wise to buy a used car with optimal performance price ratio. Sometimes consumers are in the middle of transition, indecisive to make car selection, or short of budget, so they have to buy used cars. In this article, we would like to share some best practice with you. Hopefully, it helps.

1. Identify car brand and model under budget

The most critical factor of buying used cars is reliability, because consumers always worry about the high repair cost. To understand and compare the reliability of different cars, we recommend you to read Consumer Reports. This magazine does not publish any ads to ensure the fairness, so it is very helpful for our daily life. Regarding used cars, it provides detailed annual assessment data from many repair shops based on the repair ratio and recent 10 years’ reliability evaluation of different car models.

According to the recent trend, Japanese cars are the most popular used cars, and European cars and American cars are followed. In general, Japanese cars last longer, and their scrap length is the longest in the junk yard. We always see Japanese cars over 15 years still running on the road. Another advantage of buying used Japanese cars is lower repair cost compared to European cars. Although the overall quality of American cars improves a lot recently, they are still far behind Japanese cars. In particular, Toyota and Honda always have outstanding reliability.

2. Where to buy used cars

There are many free used car ads in every city. You can also find them in local supermarkets. craigslist.org is another active online media to exchange information between buyers and sellers. After contacting the seller, buyer can ask for more details about the car, such as year, brand, model, mileage, title status, condition and etc. If seller is willing to provide CarFax or VIN#, buyer can check the car history and schedule the test drive.

By the way, CarFax is an agent to provide car history report. Once you input a car’s VIN #, you will see the details of Accident Check, Mileage Check, Recall Check, Emissions Inspection and car transaction history. It is very helpful reference if you decide to buy used cars.

3. Identify the price of used cars

Kelley blue book provides a good reference for use cars pricing. Once you input year, brand, model, mileage, and zip code, kbb will provide different prices based on different conditions. Kbb normally provides private party price, suggested retail price and certified pre-owned price. In general, the price of used cars is below book value.

4. Buy car insurance

After purchasing the car, it is necessary to buy car insurance. Here is a list of auto insurance web sites to provide free quote. You may compare their prices to make a wise decision.

5. Change title and apply for a new plate from DMV

Changing title always involves pink slip. During the transaction, seller’s signature on the title document is required to release the title, and then buyer brings this signed title to DMV to change title. Both buyer and seller need to fill the address and price on the pink slip. Based on the price, buyer needs to pay the local sales tax. Buyer also needs to bring the car insurance card to apply for a plate.

If you still have your old car to throw away, please click here to get a free estimate. If the price is acceptable, your car will be picked up at no cost.

Save some money on Gas too, CashBack on gasoline credit cards

6. Best practice (You are very welcome to send your story to editor@dealmoon.com.)

To summarize, the following four steps provide a useful guideline to select used cars.

Inspect. If there are some remarkable problems on the body or in the parts, you may get a professional inspection or negotiate price with the seller.

Smell and hear. If there are any strange smell or noises once the car starts and runs, further mechanical inspection is recommended.

Ask. During your conversation with the seller, you should ask for car history and why the seller is selling the car.

Test. During the test drive, you should try different speeds/functions and observe any potential risks involved.

If the used car has salvage title, you should be more careful of checking the detailed damage condition in the accident.

At the end, we wish you the best luck in all your future endeavors to buy a satisfied used car.

From the Mac to the iPod, iPhone and iPod, Jobs defined a generation and single-handedly shepherd an entire industry from humble beginnings to great heights, and turned Apple into one of the world’s most influential companies.

Steve jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco. Adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs, he grew up in Mountain View, attending Cupertino Junior High School and Homestead High School in California during his teenage years.

1972: He met Steve Wozniak through a mutual friend, and the pair worked at Hewlett Packard and attended meetings of the influential Homebrew Computer Club during the early and mid-1970s.

1976: Jobs founded Apple with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, and the first Apple computer was created at Jobs’s parents’ house. Its successor, the Apple II, went on sale in June 1977 and became a huge hit, setting the foundations for the company’s continued success.

1983: Jobs lured John Sculley (vice president and president) away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple’s CEO, with a very famous question:

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

1984: Jobs introduced a Macintosh to a world, and it became a initial commercially successful tiny mechanism with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The Mac’s growth was after taken over by Jobs.

1985: An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs’ working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May 1985 following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs because of disappointing sales at the time Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division. Jobs later claimed that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him; “The pressure of being successful was transposed by a levity of being a amateur again, reduction certain about everything. It liberated me to enter one of a many artistic durations of my life.”

After his departure, Jobs wasted little time, founding NeXT, a place where Jobs could continue to execute on his vision of desktop computing outside the sphere of Apple’s drama and bureaucracy.

1986: Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division for the price of $10 million. The new company, which was originally based at Lucasfilm’s Kerner Studios in San Rafael, California, but has since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer. After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films

1996: Steve Jobs returned to Apple after Apple’s efforts to develop its own next-generation operating system failed, the company had been widely reported to be interested in acquiring a company called Be and the BeOS, but at the last minute chose to acquire Jobs’ NeXT, Inc, instead. Jobs returned to the company he’d founded as a “special advisor” six months after Apple formally acquired NeXT, Amelio was forced out of the company and Jobs took over as the de facto leader. Jobs was officially named the “interim CEO” of Apple in September 1997, which caused some in the industry to jokingly dub him the “iCEO.”

1998: The iMac was released. The iMac was a nearly complete reinvention of the personal computer, and returned Apple to a leadership position in the PC industry. The computer daringly did away with traditional PC components such as floppy disks and serial ports, while helping to popularize the USB standard and the concept of out-of-the-box internet connectivity. It was a bold move for a newly minted interim CEO, but it proved to be a huge success for Apple. The company lost $878 million in 1997, and earned $414 million in 1998.

2001: Jobs introduced the iPod. The product, over the years, went on to sell over 300 million units, and redefined Apple from simply being a computer company to be a consumer electronics company — in 2007 Apple Computer, Inc. officially dropped the “Computer” from its name.

2004: Jobs diagnosed with pancreas cancer. After a surgery, Jobs, announced in his e-mail to Apple employees that he will take a whole Aug off to take caring of his health, and expects to redeem from a pancreatic cancer. He designed to lapse to work in September.

2006: The iPhone went on to the market appeal of the smartphone, and fundamentally altered the mobile phone industry in everything from spectrum utilization to phone carrier plan pricing. The iPhone also created an entirely new market of third-party mobile applications, leading to a boom for software developers.

2010: Steve Jobs introduced the iPad at a special event in San Francisco. The device essentially kick-started a new industry of touchscreen tablets. Both the iPad and its successor, iPad 2, have been remarkably successful. As with the original Mac, the iPad was Jobs’ attempt to re-think computing with a human focus. It set the stage for what Jobs called the “post-PC” era of personal computing.

January 17, 2011: Apple announced that he had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his decision was made “so he could focus on his health”. He made appearances at the iPad2 launch event (March 2), the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud (June 6), and before the Cupertino city council (June 7).

On October 5, 2011, Jobs’ family made a statement that he “died peacefully today”

When he left, he left behind a great deal of legacy of things he created and accomplished. He changed the way the world interacts with gadgets and computers. Thank you so much for all the years of inspiration and brilliance. Thanks for everything, Steve.

The new iPhone 4S offering the A5 processor, which is same  as the iPad 2. Dual-core graphics, up to 7x faster than the iPhone 4, 8 megapixel camera, 1080p video recording, 1GB of memory, HSDPA data, for up to 14 mbit download speeds  and Screen mirroring

Apple has also unveiled Siri, the new voice control feature for iPhone4S. This feature capable of parsing natural human language, understands context rather than simple commands, for example, if you ask “Will I need an umbrella this weekend?” it understands you are looking for a weather forecast. Siri is also smart about using the personal information you allow it to access, for example, if you tell Siri “Remind me to call Mom when I get home” it can find “Mom” in your address book, or ask Siri “What’s the traffic like around here?” and it can figure out where “here” is based on your current location. Siri will come with built-in support for English, French and German. It will start out as a beta but continue to evolve over time.

The iPhone4S with a new 2-year contract, a 16GB iPhone 4S will sell for $199, while the 32GB version will sell for $299 and a 32GB model for $399. Pre-orders starts on Friday will be available Oct. 14 in US, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan.

The world’s largest online retailer Amazon’s First tablet, the Kindle Fire, was finally introduced today for $199 ,a good three hundred dollars cheaper than the iPad.

Kindle Fire, $199, Pre-order now, Kindle Touch 3G $149 、Kindle Touch $99 、Kindle $79.

It’s a 7-inch tablet running Android and delivering streaming video and a heavily customized interface, there’ll be 8GB of onboard storage and a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, while the display runs at 1024 x 600 and uses an IPS panel with toughened Gorilla Glass like the iPad 2. Amazon has built their own custom version of Android and it utilizes their own Android Appstore, with Amazon’s media and app store the focus of the user experience. While that store doesn’t offer all the apps found in Google’s Android Market, Amazon has been rounding up the big app makers to get them on board for the Fire launch.  Buyers of the Fire will get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime, the Seattle online retailer’s $79 yearly service that provides free video streaming and free shipping for items purchased from Amazon.com. The Kindle Fire might be able to challenge Apple’s iPad, given that Amazon’s ability not only to sell hardware at a low price, but also to offer a full suite of downloadable music, movies, TV shows, eBooks and apps.

In addition to the new Kindle Fire tablet that’s unveiled today, Amazon has also presented a new touchscreen Kindle the Kindle Touch. The Kindle Touch will be priced at $99, this small device are  8 percent lighter and 11 percent smaller than the older Kindle, has a traditional Kindle E-Ink display, employs a new menu system the company is calling EasyReach and can be navigated in three touch zones on the front of the reader. A second version equipped with 3G called the Kindle Touch 3G which will work globally will be offered for $149. Both versions will ship on November 21^st and can be preorder on Amazon now.

Kindle Fire, $199 Pre-order now, Kindle Touch 3G $149 、Kindle Touch $99 、Kindle $79.

	Kindle	Kindle Touch	Kindle Touch 3G	Kindle Fire
	$79	$99	$149	$199
Connectivity	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Free 3G+Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi
Content	Millions of books, newspapers, magazines, games, and docs	Millions of books, newspapers, magazines, games, and docs	Millions of books, newspapers, magazines, games, and docs	18 million movies, TV shows, apps, games, songs, books, newspapers, audiobooks, magazines, and docs
Web	Experimental browser	Experimental browser	Experimental browser	Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated browser
Display	6" E Ink Pearl	6" E Ink Pearl	6" E Ink Pearl	7" Vibrant Color IPS
On-device Storage	2GB for 1,400 books	4GB for 3,000 books	4GB for 3,000 books	8GB for 80 apps plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books
Cloud Storage	Unlimited for Amazon content	Unlimited for Amazon content	Unlimited for Amazon content	Unlimited for Amazon content
Demensions	6.5" x 4.5" x 0.34"	6.8" x 4.7" x 0.40"	6.8" x 4.7" x 0.40"	7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45"
Weight	5.98 ounces	7.5 ounces	7.8 ounces	14.6 ounces
Interface
	5-way controller	multi-touch	multi-touch	multi-touch

Kindle Fire, $199 Pre-order now, Kindle Touch 3G $149 、Kindle Touch $99 、Kindle $79.

DealMoon’s editor strongly recommends a reading and learning set from hooked on phonics for dads and mums who wish their kids to have an early and proper develops on the language skill. It’s designed for children from 3 to 8 with the help of leading educators and researches about how children learn best. The set includes story books, reading card, DVD, CD, pasters, cartoon character cards, practices notes, game mat and so on. Presented in colorful, vibrant, visually appealing ways. Children learn at their own pace, mastering each new skill before them move on to the next. It is designed to be fun and every experience ends with a celebration.

Hooked on Phonics not only was named one of the top 100 classroom products, and the Teachers’ Choice Award celebrates products.  It is also recognized by Learning magazine as educational products teachers recommend for children’s continued learning at home. Check out Hooked on Phonics’s homepage, they are offering a special deal, plus you may get extra 35% off on top of their discount via promotional code “HOP35″.

We recommend this complete learn to read program developed and designed for children 3 to 8 of all needs. It was $299 and during their promotion it’s $199, including a $120 gift. You could also simply type in our promotional code “HOP35” to get yet another 35% off on this product. (the coupon is used during checkout, you could find “Enter Promotional Code” on the checkout page).

It’s also okay to try it before you decide whether or not you want to buy it. Simply choose their 30 days risk free guarantee for $14.95, if you don’t like it you can send them back to get your money back and keep the gifts that are worth $120.

Here’s a Demo Video that introduce how this product is designed to ensure success on your child’s learning.

This product includes:

• 28 Storybooks
• 8 Celebrated Author Storybooks
• 8 Workbooks
• 8 DVDs
• Quick Start Guides
• 8 set of stickers
• 4 sets of letter and picture flashcards

Access to my.hookedonphonics.com online Learn to Read experience for each lesson and unit

The gifts that are worth $120:

• 3 Phonics flipbooks
• 4 Review workbooks
• 1 Sing-along CD
• 1 DVD with music and cartoons
• 1 Make-a-book kit

Other products:

• Pre-K: 3-4 years: Reading, Workbooks
• Kindergarten: 5-6 years: Reading, Workbooks, Spelling
• 1^st Grade: 6-7 Years: Reading,  Workbooks, Spelling,  Math
• 2^nd Grade: 7-8 years: Programs
• 3^rd Grade & up: 8 years &up: Programs

1. Model selection

Everyone has their favorite models in mind. Although a test drive can provide real world experience, there are too many models on the market to try. Therefore, it is wise of you to read some review and finalize a few top candidates.

The following table provides the review links of different car brands, so you can check the details conveniently. In addition, one of the most significant factors of selecting cars is quality, that is, minimal maintenance and repair. We summarized expert opinions from professional magazines such as Consumer Reports and list the brands by the order of quality statistics in the following table (smaller number below means better quality).

Some brands are not included in the statistics due to low sale volume：Mitsubishi |  Jaguar |  Suzuki |  Land Rover |  Mercury |  Rolls-Royce |  Ferrari

2. Price check

There is no doubt that price is the most important factor. Before negotiating price with the dealer, you must do some research. Generally, dealers only show MSRP which is meaningless. We recommend you to check a more realistic price — "invoice price" which is the average price in the dealer’ inside sales calculation. In fact, the dealer’s purchase price is still lower than invoice price. The manufactures adjust the price based on the dealers’ inventory turnover and sales volume. From the dealer’s view, faster turnover means less interests occurred and lower purchase price from the manufacture. In summary, if you select best selling cars, it is easy to get close to or even lower than invoice price.

How to find invoice price for free and encourage the nearby dealer compete price for you?

Click here to begin searching. Or when you browse cars in the above review catalog, click "Get a Free Price Quote".

Input your model, and click "Go".

As a next step, the dealers you picked will provide quotes for your favorite cars. The dealers know that you have consulted several dealers, so they will not raise price too much. Moreover, some dealers will lower the price to beat other competitors. Consumers finally control the price.

3. Price negotiation

Now you know that the dealer’s purchase price is lower than invoice price, and you can start to negotiate price with the dealer within the given profit of $500-$2000. According to our experience, European cars are close to MSRP, and Japanese cars are lower than MSRP but less likely to be lower than invoice price. How much lower depends on your negotiation skills. American cars are close to invoice price. During the negotiation, you need to be patient but not shy. Finally, you may say, "The dealers on edunds.com provide lower price. If you beat their prices, I will buy from you locally. " In general, it is easier to reach lower price in July, August and December, because models are updated every July and August and the dealers need to prepare annual report and clear the inventory every December.

After price negotiation, the dealer will ask the finance officer to discuss with you. The manufactures often offers low APR or 0% APR and etc. We suggest you to check your credit score with no cost here, print it out and bring it with you. If some dealers play tricks on your credit score, you can show the printout handy.

(Note: please cancel Free Trial within 7 days. Otherwise, you will be charged $19.95 monthly fee. During registration, you will be asked "3 Bureau Credit Report for $29.95". Don’t select it. Otherwise, you will be charged $29.95. This is a free check for Experian credit score. Equifax and TransUnion is not free.)

In addition, the finance officer always recommends extended warranty. According to some statistical analysis on 8000 randomly selected consumers, you may decide whether you need it. The findings are as follows:

• 42% respondents said that they didn’t repair cars during extended warranty.
• 65% respondents said that they spent $1000 for extended warranty, but only got $700 benefit.
• Only 20% respondents said that extended warranty was worth.

Get the new car!

We sincerely wish you buying your favorite car with a reasonable price.

After buying the new car, you may check USInsuranceOnline.com for free quote on auto insurance. You may compare different insurance companies’ quotes in real time. By the way, as shown in TV ads, 21st Century Insurance always offers cheaper rate. Please feel free to check it.

If you have an old car which may not even run, you may try to get a free quote from Junkmycar.com. You get paid and they will tow away your old car for free.

In addition, following car purchase, you will drive your new car on the road. As gas prices are climbing so fast, please check the following credit cards which offer 3%-5% Cash Back on gas purchase. Don’t miss these great offers!

Dealmoon.com is 2 years old as of today! We are so grateful that many of you have been with us for the past 2 years, and we wouldn’t have gone this far without your support.

On this special day, we are very excited to announce that a new version of dealmoon will be released around 3/21. It will contain a brand new homepage, a “hottest deals” section, better categories, single deal pages (so that we can show related deals and related coupons), and best of all, we will have a dedicated “Coupon” section which will provide our users the most up-to-date coupon codes from major online stores.

This is just the beginning! In the next few months, we are planning to roll out more features, and make the site better and better! If you have any suggestions to our site, we would love to hear it! Just send us your comments to admin@dealmoon.com, or write to us here. Please continue supporting our site, and help us grow!

Best yours,
Dealmoon.com Team

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