netbook

A Road Warrior Plans To Shed Some Weight: Part 1

samsonite-silhouette-11-softside-shoulder-bagLike many people I’m making a New Year’s resolution with respect to losing some weight. However, in my case the sphere of concern to be addressed is my computer bag. It’s simply too heavy and I’m finally planning to do something about that.

In truth I’ve needed a new shoulder bag for some months. I’ve had the same one for about five years. It’s an HP branded ballistic nylon bag that I got two laptops ago. I really like the design of the bag, but recently it’s started to look a bit ragged. One of the zippers is even broken.

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Mini-Me And The SSD

SanDisk-SSD & HP-5103A couple of weeks ago one of the daily deals emails from New Egg made an offer that I found I could not resist. I am weak, it’s true. The offer in question was a 120 GB SanDisk Ultra solid state disk (SSD) drive for a mere $120.  Most SSDs of that size are $180+.

The appeal of SSDs is rooted in the same kind of sensibility that had me building Asterisk appliances that boot from flash media. Flash offers an attractive combination of performance and reliability.

The trade-off presented by SSDs is very high cost-per-gigabyte of storage. This offer, which was basically $1/GB, seemed like a nice chance to try an SSD for the first time. I wasn’t really certain how I’d use it, but I ordered one anyway.

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Deal Alert: HP Mini 5101 & 5102 Netbooks from $297!

The HP mini 5102 has only been shipping for a few months. I’ve only had mine for about a month. Even so deals are starting to show up.

These corporate class netbooks are head & shoulders better than the consumer offerings you’ll see at retailers. Today’s email list of overstock and refurbished systems from the HP SMB Outlet includes 20 different configurations of the 5101 & 5102…starting from only $297!

The SMB Outlet even have a number of systems that are not the Smart Buy configurations.The Smart Buy configs are kinda bland, but faster to ship. To get the more interesting options you had to order a custom configuration and have it made to order. This is why it took three weeks to get delivery of mine…and it cost just shy of $800.

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The HP Mini Twins

I've been toying with my new HP Mini 5102 for a couple of days. It'll take a little longer before I can get into the details of it, but it's a nice little machine. Here's a pic of the Mini…

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One Mans Decision: Netbook vs iPad

On this weekend that Apple is launching their latest revolutionary wunder-device, the iPad, I find myself thinking about the past year carrying a little netbook.

It’s about a year ago that I bought my first netbook, the HP Mini 2140. I pondered that purchase for several months wondering which model netbook was best suited to my needs. There were and remain are so many models, so very similar in most ways. In particular I needed insight into using the smaller keyboard.

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Traveling Light The Rest Of The Week: Mini 2140 & Win7

hp-compaq-8510pLast Friday my trusty HP 8510p laptop developed a serious problem. The connection between the LCD and the motherboard went bad rendering the display useless. The system is only about 16 months old so it’s not quite time to replace it, at least according to my employer.

Thankfully I bought a 3 year extended warranty so HP is going to take care of the trouble. Monday I spent half an hour on the phone with HP support getting the case logged and ordering a return shipping box. Initially they didn’t have the extended warranty on file, but I had the receipt to prove it. The system was ordered from their SMB Depot so all the records are email, which I could immediately produce as proof.

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