You may not have noticed but I recently bought myself a toy. Brace yourself: it was a black Macbook. I know, right? Who would’ve guessed? My friends all snickered. The others that had already “converted” let out their sighs of relief (aka “finally!”).
…when they want to get your money. A few weeks ago I was mailed a coupon for $50 off any computer system over $800. Plus, I’d get free ground shipping. Dell saw me coming a mile away. I’m sure I was flagged “addcit” once I bought two LCDs and opened a Dell Preferred Credit account.
Rightfully so.
…I’ve always built my own computers. I think it was a mixture of having an abundance of free time and lack of abundance of cash. My “barebones” system was slowly upgraded over the years. I was running at a whopping 200mhz when I first started computing. Yikes. It was uber exciting when I upgrade my 4G drive to an 8G. It was so expensive too. I had no choice though: XP and Office took up like 3.5G alone. Oh the memories. I even remember installing my motherboard, looking at the processor, playing with Serial ATA cables. I hated putting in drives becuase of those cables. They were old and un-keyed so it took about 3 reboots to realize that something was upside down. Sigh.
I’m currently working on my second generation DIY machine. I’ve been pleased with it. I built it about 4 years ago after doing all kinds of research. So far I’ve had no issues with it… which is why I’m scared. I’m worried that these older drives will crash soon. If they don’t the PSU is going to go (it’s getting a bit noisey). Something is bound to happen and I don’t want to wait for that day.
I’m done building computers, though.
I used to know a decent amount about PC hardware. Lately I feel like I don’t know jack. I feel like I’m surrounded by a world of Pauls that could jump on NewEgg and build the best computer imaginable. I don’t think I know nearly enough of that stuff anymore. I didn’t even realize people were actually installing 1TB of RAID drives… in PCs!? I hadn’t even heard of a Pentium D, now I’m supposed to find out which motherboard to get for it? Ugh.
I’ll let Dell do it for me.
I played around online and made a bunch of configurations the other night. I ignored one minor detail: each time you hit submit order your coupon is rendered as ‘used’. I guess I forgot to tell Dell.com that I was just looking for the subtotal and tax. Jerks. My coupon was quickly labeled ‘invalid’ though I hadn’t even bought anything. I had to call Dell.
The guy I talked to was friendly and clever enough to solve my problem. I walked him through my configuration and we arrived at my subtotal. He understood my situation and disappeared to talk to a supervisor. In the end I got a free video card upgrade and my free shipping. That’s in addition to the free 19″ LCD upgrade. Overall I’m pleased with the experience.
…but that’s becuase they wanted my money. He made sure he “verified my needs” and made sure I was completely sure I didn’t need dual-DVD drives. No guys, I really know what I want, thanks for being so “helpful” though. I’m sure the post-sales experience won’t be the same. Oh well, I don’t plan on having to verify that anytime soon. I’m just excited to play with a new toy!
Oh, and if anyone is looking to buy a 19″ LCD (Dell 1907) for a good price be sure to let me know. I figure two monitors is enough for me.
Are you a entreprenurial web developer? If so, Brian Balfour is looking for a partner. Check the listing at yopos.com.
From CBS4Denver.com: The Downtown Denver Partnership introduced free wireless Internet access along the 16th St. Mall Monday … The partnership said the downtown Wi-Fi project was among the first in the country to provide larger-scale free public Internet access.
Filed under the “you can’t make this stuff up” category is the following email I received from Microsoft today. (Click for full view)
Look carefully and see if you can spot the typo. Hint: how does a company misspell it’s own product name?
Scoble is upset because people are talking more about Google than Microsoft. Nathan is also expressing his concern.
Guys, the reasoning behind all of this is pretty clear. Yes, MSN has a much larger user base than GMail. But, all the popular nerds with blogs, all those guys ‘buzzing’ about Google Domains: they love Google. The people who know what an MX record is don’t really want their domain on MSN Live Messenger nor MSN Live Mail. They want to use the weapon-of-choice for nerds everywhere: GMail. I’ve used both, I express the same sentiment. I’m a Live beta tester, I use the new MSN, I use the new email… I like GMail better.
Oh, and why would people have ever said ‘MSN goes after Outlook’? I’ve used a product called the “MSN Outlook Connector“. Hey, when/if Google comes out with a calendar are we going to get upset because we didn’t mention MSN has one, too?
Put simply, MSN jumped into the email game far too late. I think we all can agree on that. GMail changed the way many people do email and it will always attract the related ‘buzz’.
Okay, guys, for once somebody copied Microsoft. ;-)
A friend asked me a great question about laptops today: why not have the typing action recharge the battery? Hmmm, yeah! Why not?!
I ran into the weirdest thing the other day and I want to share my experience in the hopes it will help someone else. I drive to school and listen to music with a Griffin iTrip. So, I got to school, disconnected the iTrip and went to class. I came back to the car, hooked up the iTrip and nothing. The red light was on as if it were broadcasting but it definitely wasn’t. I checked every radio station: nothing. I came home and decided to re-load the ‘station’ which luckily worked. Just make sure that you select the station you want to play, and hit pause/play once it starts blinking rapidly. After the fact I found this article from Griffin. I just thought it to be pretty weird to suddenly ‘forget’ how to broadcast. Oh well!
Why the hell is it that computers will crash and eff up if and only if you’re in the middle of a pretty important task? Honestly. I was having website issues the other day and then this evening Windows crashed hard (and by hard I mean it rebooted saying it had to do registry recovery, none of my cookies are saved, etc.). This is such a waste of my time. All those days I sit around poking people on Facebook though, nothing! Not even a frozen browser… thanks Murphy.
Over on BusinessBits I asked why we don?t see enough ?desktop web apps? (or is it web desktop apps?) out there these days? Well? Lifehacker has posted a very useful one. It puts input boxes on your desktop and you can press Alt-W to search Wikipedia, Alt-G, Google, etc. This is exactly the useful stuff I?m looking for! Anyone know of other cool things like this?