Archive for March, 2010

This week Newegg is featuring the Lenovo G530 4151A2U for $399. This basic laptop has 15.6-inch widescreen, 3GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. You can burn media with the DVD burner/rewriter and get internet through the WLAN. The onboard Intel GMA 4500M graphics is great for internet surfing, multitasking, and office applications. Battery ranges from 4 to 4.5 hours. You won’t be buying the G530 4151A2U for playing high def movies or gaming, just everyday basic computing.

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Top end laptops: everybody wants one but most of us can't afford one. Those lucky enough to have an extra $2,299 laying around can purchase the Sony Vaio VPCZ116GX/S and be happy with high end componets! This 13 inch Ultra Thin has a CPU (2.4GHz Intel Core i5 M520) and Graphics Card (Nvidia GeForce GT 330M) that packs enough power to play mid level games and multitask with ease. The high end 256GB SSD hard drive is very fast and outperforms older SATA hard drives.  The thing weighs 3.0 pounds and has a battery that lasts about 3 hours. Other nice features are the optical drive and the Windows 7 64 bit OS. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine yourself standing in line at Best Buy to buy new laptop. As you stand there you feel yourself in the “outer body experience” of joy and wonder. You’ve been scrimping and saving for 5 months! You are actually holding the brand new unopened box in your hands! You can’t wait to take it home, boot it up, and play with it. Your thoughts of bliss screech are  interrupted by the teenage cashier who mindlessly asks “Do you want to the protection plan for this laptop? It’s $199.”

One Hundred Ninety Nine Dollars! That’s like 35% of the total $799 cost! Wow. Is that worth it?

I’ve been asked these questions over and over for the past 10 years. Ah – the protection plan. Every major big box seller has one. Best Buy, Fry’s, Staples, Radio Shack, on and on. Always when you’re in the middle of the purchase some type of sales person interjects one reason or another to buy their plan. Madness. Read the rest of this entry »

Those scouting for a low priced netbook with long battery life should checkout Toshiba’s Mini NB305-N410. This 10″ netbook has a widescreen (1,024-by-600 resolution), long 9 hour battery life, and has an easy to use keyboard and trackpad. PCMAG gives the NB305-N410 a “very good” rating because it’s such a great all around machine.

Netbooks like the Toshiba’s NB305-N410 are best used for everyday basic computing (surfing the net, typing documents, & watching videos). It’s 1.66GHz CPU gives average performance levels. The NB305-N410 comes with a 250GB Hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and a 3G wireless card (for getting mobile internet through a wireless carrier). Included are 3 USB ports can charge any USB device while the netbook is turned off. It also comes with all the standard ports: VGA Out, Ethernet, Headphone, Microphone, and an SD slot.

The best thing about the NB305-N410 is the $399 price. Not bad for a 9 hour machine! This would be a great portable netbook for business or personal travel. The great thing about the NB305-N410 is being able to get internet most everywhere with the activated 3G wireless card. Netbooks like this are taking off and becoming more popular because of they’re lightweight, have a long battery life, have mobile internet, and are easy to use.

Think about all the digital pictures, videos, and documents you have. I just took at look and found that my digital collection includes 7 years of pictures, 3 years of videos, more than 500 music albums, and countless documents. All this data takes up a lot of space – my hard drive is now 2/3 full. It’s definitely time to buy myself another hard drive.

Do you know how full your hard drive is? Do yourself a favor and take a quick look right now. How much data is on it? How much free space do you have? My 250GB hard drive (232 gigs of usable space) has 147 gigs of used space and only 85 gigs of free space. From my experience I’ve found that it’s never good to fill a hard drive more than 2/3 full. Hard drives tend to crash if they’re filled beyond 75%.  Read the rest of this entry »