These days, it seems everyone wants your money. We want your business.

That means we want to sell you the best products at competitive prices while providing outstanding service. Here are some things that we do toward that end.

• Personal attention to your needs. No matter what your problem is, a real person will help you with it.
• Personal response. You might have to wait for an e-mail reply or the return of a phone call, but it won't be a canned response.
• No automated messaging system. You might have to leave a phone message, but you won't have to "Dial 8 if your name starts with D."

Integrity. This is a concept lost in most of corporate America. However, it runs strong in small businesses. It runs strong in some not so small businesses, too. In any case, all of our vendors pass the integrity test.  We have vendors in New Zealand and Australia (3), and all of us have actually talked a customer out of buying a product. Why on earth would we do that? Deliberately selling someone a product that doesn't meet their needs or solve their problems is just not honest.

Pricing. Mindconnection has competitive prices that save you money. But, they aren't always the lowest prices because some merchants price too low. You may be able to find an item cheaper elsewhere, and if all that is important to you is the lowest possible price, then the poorly-priced (read "poorly run") businesses are the ones you will support. We do have several items "on sale," because we are volume buyers at wholesale and can pass the savings on to you. But, we don't try to play "gyp the customer" with low-ball pricing that the customer pays for in some hidden way.

Quality products. There's a lot of stuff we just don't sell. You may have heard the expression, "Too poor to buy cheap." That expression has to do with the concept of value. Shoddy merchandise may cost less to buy, but it delivers less satisfaction. So, we don't sell it.

Here's one final reason: Giving back. Mindconnection is a small business, with many advisors and contributors. Because of the horsepower brought to an operation of this size, Mindconnection is able to provide a great deal of good at no charge.

Dollars you spend at Mindconnection don't go up someone's nose in the form of white powder, they don't go to outsize payrolls of senior executives, and they don't go to socially debatable causes (for example, did you know that Monster.com contributes to organizations dedicated to better working conditions for violent criminals? Yikes!).

You can look at the free library of articles at www.mindconnection.com, www.crystalkeen.com, www.supplecity.com, www.codebookcity.com, or any of our other sites--very valuable stuff that makes the world a better place as more and more people read those articles.

Plus, there are the donations of time and other resources to non-profits such as the IEEE and the 7x24 Exchange--groups that help make our way of life possible by taking care of our electrical infrastructure and our data center.

OK, that's a lot of reasons. Thanks for your business!