Options are good.

How do you know if a domain name is really available?

When you want to reserve a domain name, just typing it into the browser isn’t a good enough check to see if it is available.  Someone might have registered but didn’t set up any DNS or hosting for the domain.

To find out for sure if a domain name has been registered or not, you’ll need to visit a domain name registrar and do a search either through their registration process or through a whois lookup.

This is what returns for Niftygeek.com at Godaddy after doing a whois lookup.  I prefer to use the network solutions whois lookup but I used the godaddy whois lookup just for the heck of it.

I have to preface with a note that I registered this domain quite some time ago.  They send me notices every so often that the contact information has to be correct for the domain.  I didn’t do it correctly and I haven’t yet updated it.  I’ll should make that a priority to fix. [Note, I've since updated it to the correct contact information]

That said, here is the results from the whois query for niftygeek.com:

The whois results for niftygeek.com courtesy of godaddy.com

You don’t have to use the whois tool.  You can check if a domain is available simply by starting the domain purchasing process available on the home page of either Network Solutions or Godaddy.

As a side note, for more choices in price or different types of top level domains there is the complete list of Accredited Domain Name Registrars.  This is useful to have on hand when someone needs to register a .tel, .info, or .aero instead of a .com.  This will show you not only the list of registrars but when ones are allowed to let you register which top level domains (a top level domain means .com or .net or .org, etc…).

If you are registering a domain and you are not entirely sure what to choose, you could give domain tasting a shot.  Domain registrars are required to offer a five day grace period during which time you can get a full refund for the domain.  This is good to use for instance if you have ten options for your domain, but you would like to see if any traffic will naturally be going to one over the others.  The benefit should be clear there.  Free traffic!  Unfortunately, people abuse this to register thousands of sites at once to determine advertising viability to create useless websites.