any of them work with linux? i'd rather not "snipe" a site while i sleep on a windows pc. they crash for enough reasons while people are awake. plus with several of my own, the wife, and both my 5 yr old and 2 yr old all running windows it can be a lot of maintenance when things go wrong.
there's some site that (for free) uses their own servers, and are they're located close to the eBay servers too. They (of course) claim to be 100% reliable, and you can set the snipe time to a mere second if you wish.
but like Jill-O said, I just bid what I'm willing to pay for it, if someone else is willing to pay more for something, then they will. But if they really want it, they better have a fast connection and even faster fingers, because they may have a long way to go, and not much time!
The only things I've found sniping good for are those things that nobody really needs/wants, and therefore no one is willing to actually offer a decent bid on it. You do however get lucky sometimes.
I kinda feel bad about this though: finding an item that's in the wrong category or poorly labeled, and likely to have few serious watchers. Then not bidding to make those other watchers think the little activity means they're the only ones watching and about to snipe... then sniping those. otherwise, make a bid, and move on.
I wonder, has anyone here ever sold anything that had no activity until--not the last 5 minutes but--the last 10 seconds or so? Did the item sell for what it was worth? More?