Pugwash

You mean Swiss reps. About $100. Asian reps have movements made in China, whereas Swiss reps have movements made in ... er, China. Usually, Swiss reps use ETA movements destined for real Swiss watchmakers in the Swatch Group. They're of a higher quality than the no-name chinese generics.

Nothing says "Alienate the newcomers" like an old in-joke involving passing off a genuine watch for a rep. (edit for posting before finishing typing...)

Stock photos, probably of genuine watches. You can find the same pics on other bait-and-switch sites. "Differences only detectable by most skilled jewelers" You've got to laugh.

And ... They want you to email them so you're into a dialogue and will feel you've already invested time in the deal and made your mind up, so you're probably going to pay. It's a standard sales technique whereby you get people into the shop, and once they're in, they'll think it's not worth their effort leaving to get a cheaper price.

The Sub's pearl fell out ... A replacement is on its way, thankfully

Carry on, there are more faults. I'd like to know all of them.

So, my crappy beater has a better strap than the fancy ones? It's got 5-part links and a long second-hand. I still refuse to believe I've stumbled on a holy grail Seamonster, but it's nice to imagine the small victories even if my dial is crappy.

...and hide the honking great pictures of watches in people's posts. This is an excellent solution, by the way.

The real problem with browsing at work is the [censored]. People with hot babe Avatars and sigs (even though an avatar is supposed to represent you, which means you want to me a girl guys drool over ... hey, I'm not judging!) can cause more problems than text. There are risks inherent with surfing dodgy sites at work. I get away with it because ... um, I'm the guy that monitors the internet. Still, if certain graphics bother you, you can use Firefox with Adblock, like ehtolcad said.

... and there was me thinking it was a new ETA Nickel movement. Yup, there's the ETA logo.

Howay the, um, Tic. Pugwash comes from my days on the cracking scene in the 80s where it paid to have a handle. I used Pugwash because Captain Pugwash was my favourite pirate. Since then, I use the nick for all torrent and replica related forums.

You could do the lot in a day's coding. Interested how? Run a free porn ring with a free-text entry saying "write something nice about watches for free porn" and you can fill 'archives' of crap to be trawled. From then on, pay some eastern-europeans or other labour-exporting regionals to feed in several personas discussing watches, culling the prize picks from the porn ring and other rep sites. Photos can come from other forums, google images and legit sites. One week later, you have a convincing site that can get onto google if linkbotted from several PR5+ link exchanges. In a month, you have a realistic site that shows up on google caches, etc. Before you ask, I wear a white hat.

They could be using a botnet or a Tor proxy ring. Posting from several thousand exceedingly varied IPs isn't really that difficult. The hard bit would be buying an admin's password on a moderated forum.

Damn, I'm going to have to distract everyone again! Look over there, something shiny!

A stroke from which he recovered and realised there's more to life than struggling with Windows? Honestly, I don't get people that think the Mac is some sort of inferior machine. It's like the largest community of blinkered groupies on the planet that chant to the song of BillG. You do realise you were conned, right? Oh, the fact that you won't try anything else answers that for me. Tear down the wall.

I'm a UNIX/NT Admin that uses FreeBSD/XP/OSX at home. I describe myself as Platform Agnostic, but still rate OSX as the finest workstation OS to date.

Not at work, but I am in the evenings. In the daytime (french hours), I'm on only googletalk and IRC.

... and here: http://www.[censored]-[censored].com/mailm...nfo/osx-nutters

Nice one! I've been on the Mac side for ... um, 15 years. Welcome. If you need anything, give me a shout. You're going to love it, particularly the fact that colour calibration is built-in to the system.

We all want to know.

You've bought a house in Thailand? ps. Gis a cheap LV-ETA for a good price then, eh, eh?

Wow, please reduce the size of the pics if you want anyone to read your posts. Horizontal scrolling should not be necessary on 1280x1024.

Me. You pp me cash and you never receive a watch. Ever.

No. Still, I don't make the rules. I hate feeling like a tyre-kicker when I'm shopping around. I recently decided it'd be nice to get a Tourbillon watch and looked at Jos_Nana's ample collection of Vachequirits and Buggerits and decided to ask the price, all enthused about getting a technological marvel. I got the reply of around $650-900 or so, which depressed me. If I'd have seen the prices, I'd not have messaged him. I'd have looked at stuff in my price-range to get enthused about and he'd have possibly got a sale. I'm now feeling a reluctance to IM dealers in case I get that same disappointment. I'll stick to dealers that post prices from now on. Precious Tim, TimeToKill, Narikaa ... you are the sorts of dealers that will be getting my business from now on. You and Silix-Prime, when their site responds faster than a turtle wading through treacle with a brick duct-taped to its back. For the record, I believe trustywatchguy also posts his prices, but I've not had any dealings with him yet. Hmm ... I wonder if he takes pp.

As an englishman, I support two teams: England and ... er, Celtic. No, really. I know it's unusual, but I lived in Glasgow for 8 years and my Missus is from there. As for the world cup, this year, England are seeded 9th, but they'll do better than that. They'll get to the Quarters and maybe the Semis. Beyond that is but a hopeful dream I'll be chanting for in the ex-pat pubs of Paris.