Hey everyone,

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a long time but have been so busy with the holidays and now getting ready for Vegas.  For Christmas I got an MSI Wind laptop, and it is like the best thing since sliced bread.  It is so small, fast, and overall intelligently designed.  The 10.2” screen may sound small, but most people get laptops and then never carry them around [or at least want to].  My Dell’s 17” may be nice and big when it’s stationary, but otherwise it’s a pain to move around.  Plus this screen is backlight with LEDs, so it’s really nice and bright, which pales in comparison to the old TFT I was dealing with.

Mine also came with the 6-cell extended battery and 802.11n WiFi card, which are both nice upgrades.  The 6-cell provides about 5.5 hours of work time, although you can get more or less depending upon brightness, power saving options, or if WiFi/Bluetooth is on.  It doesn’t have an optical drive, but I got a slim external USB powered DVD burner for only $60.  I rarely use an optical drive tho, since almost everything is digital or can be made digital.  I even got a high speed USB memory stick so I can install Windows/etc faster than CD/DVD.

The best thing of all?  The price: currently $370 with free shipping and no taxes [except in NY I think].  I got mine for almost $390 all-in, which was currently the lowest price before Christmas.  Most of the cheap models don’t have a bigger hard disk drive, faster wireless, Bluetooth, or the 6-cell extended battery.  This one in particular is made for the Canadian market, but the only difference is the keyboard, since it has a couple extra keys added for French users.  As a result, the enter key is bigger while others are smaller; some people like it, some people don’t.

I’m just glad to finally have a laptop that’s really portable, which is what a laptop is suppose to be.  Plus with most other laptops running at least $500 or $1000, this one offers a great package for a low price.

As a result, both me, my Mom, Peyton and James have one of these laptops [James got the 3-cell version tho, he wants a 6-cell battery].  Actually, James is responsible for all this Wind madness, since he told me about finding a netbook for school.

If you’re looking for a laptop, I definitely recommend checking out similar netbooks, although the differences can be big, so be sure to check reviews and specs.  One other laptop I was looking at quite closely was the Samsung NC-10.

@Matthew

PS—For all you Mac OS X lovers out there, it can run it too, with very little modifications now.  I’m running Vista and XP now, want to add SUSE, 7 and maybe OSX to the boot menu too.

Hello world,

I am back home this week for Illinois' General Primary Election on Tuesday.  I forgot to register in Chicago, so I took the train on Wednesday to vote and also participate in the election as an election judge.  Also known as elections inspector, elections officer or poll worker, basically I'm the person who hands out the ballots.  I have to be at the polling place by 5 am and I probably won't get back home until 9 or 10 pm.

In other news, I have decided to change my e-mail address to my initials at live.com [spam spiders have apparently found my e-mail address, so if you would like to know, please message me], so please add me to your contact/Messenger list.  I have made this change because I get too much junk at my Hotmail alias.  My new alias is synced up to my mobile phone through Windows Live for Windows Mobile, so I will be able to respond to messages on the go and also instant message.  My Hotmail alias will still be accepting mail, and I will still continue to check it, but I want to use the Live alias for all things personal.  That way I won't miss a message from you because there's too many newsletters or other junk.  If you would like to give Windows Live a test drive yourself, go to http://www.windowslive.com/.  TrueSwitch has an excellent service that can import your contacts, e-mail, and calendar!

I will be returning to Chicago on Thursday evening, and I can't wait to get back.  I've been busy pretty much everyday helping do things for my parents or friends.  My parents and I all got new Samsung BlackJack's because of an antenna issue, and they've all been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6, yay!

I'll be happy to relax once I get back to Chicago.

@Matthew

How exciting: item number 230189249580!  I've actually never made an eBay listing before, but Peyton needed my help, and I think I did a good job.  I've never made one before, probably because I usually hold on to things once I buy them.  I am accumulating a lot of junk tho, so I may need to start listing stuff myself.

Peyton bought three laptops for Yerzhan to send to his home country of Kazakhstan.  He went back on July 13, and e-mailed me shortly after he got back asking for my help purchasing some cheap, yet good laptops.  I found some on sale at Best Buy, but we haven't heard from him in a while now.  I don't know what's happened to him, I hope he's okay.

Although there won't be much of a profit on these laptops, Peyton does need to be reimbursed, so he asked me to sell them ASAP.  I tried my best to create the best listing as possible, answering some questions most people would have, and ease cautious buyers.  eBay can be a little overwhelming, especially with certain sellers who are very vague on what they're really selling.  I was pretty detailed, yet cautious myself since there are scammers out there.

I am also going to try Craig's List, Windows Live Expo, and Pricegrabber to see what I can get.  I'll let you know how it goes!  What do you think of my listing?  Anything that would stop you as a potential buyer?

Thanks!
@Matthew

PS--If you do want one of the laptops, please let me know!

Update:  This sale is now over, but Buy.com has brown for brand new at $140!  Check out Pricegrabber for all the latest prices.

My brother just passed along the word to me last night, and I picked one up.  He's purchased stuff from woot.com before, and they do have a return policy.  For the price, you can't beat it.  And if you want a different colour, you could always try to buy one at another store and return the one from woot, but don't tell anyone I said that.

@Matthew

A Not-So-Open Letter

Oct. 5th Logistics Update:

Wow, you guys must have a bunch of friends. To put it mildly, we’re a bit swamped with orders between this and the woot-off. Thanks for your patience as our crew works at maximum capacity to get these shipped by early next week (most by Monday).

Hello Zune Wooters,

Thank you for supporting the amazing new social ecommerce entertainment web community 2.0…er, well, thanks for picking up the cheap Zune deal at Woot.com the other day. We hope you are enjoying it as much as we enjoy your cash. We have some updates just for you:

First, as many of you may have heard yesterday, your Zune woot just got better – Microsoft will offer automatic software upgrades to improve the functionality and feature set of the Zune(s) you own. Yes, you heard correctly – Microsoft. Early-adopter support. Whoa. You can be assured that Woot staff will stay tuned and report the amazing developments in this area—for now, we’re consolidating all previous Zune threads to the latest sale here. Please share any information you have with the rest your fellow new Zune owners there. There’s a nice Zune news roundup post here.

Second… shhh… don’t tell anyone! We have a limited quantity of official factory-refurbished black Zunes (now aka Zune 30’s) to offer effective immediately. Our elite strikeforce of pirate-tongued, ninja-trained negotiation commandos worked their powers of persuasion to obtain every single official factory-refurb Zune 30. No, no blackmail, extortion, or coercion was involved (as far as we know). The point is, you won’t see these anywhere else. These units are Microsoft-certified with full accessories, full warranty and even factory fresh retail packaging. And – in an ironic twist you’re sure to enjoy – you get the scoop first. In fact, as a previous buyer, we’re notifying only you (and your fellow Zune buyers) of a VIP behind-the-scenes event prior to their hopeful full day in the Woot sun: http://www.woot.com/special.aspx?k=vipzune. Slide on in past the velvet rope – these units are available immediately on a first-come, first-served basis at $99.99 each + $5 shipping. Sneak a friend or two in if you want – this is indeed an exciting chance to join the Zune in-crowd, but please, no “Welcome to the Social” jokes. (Unless you’re as good at satire as fake steve jobs, that is.) We’ll hold this sale open for as long as we can, but as with most Woot items (infocus projectors aside), quantity is limited.

Hey, cheapskates: don’t forget your credit! Some of our own “early adopters” may have missed our follow-up Zune event, Open Letter spoof and all. Make no mistake, though, all buyers at $149 have real $10 credits on their accounts, ready to use on any sale over $40. Your discount code is BUMPYROAD. (Before you ask, yes, it will work on the VIP Zune sale, 2 magnums of Polyphemus, 3 yet-to-be-reckoned Woot tees, or anything else you can find that we sell for more than $40.)

On a final note, I’ve been asked to forewarn our newest members that the shop may be a bit busy on Friday — not to tip you Wooters Off or anything…

Thanks for your support,

Matt Rutledge

Woot CEO

Warranty: One year

Features:

• 30GB hard drive stores up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures or 100 hours of video (128 Kbps)
• 3” bright color LCD display can be customized with your photos for a personalized appearance
• Resolution 320×240, vertical or horizontal orientation
• Ultracompact player measures just 0.6” thin and weighs 5 oz.
• Supports MP3, WMA and ACC audio formats, displays JPEG image formats plus displays WMV, MPEG-4 and H.264 video formats
• Built-in FM tuner with RBDS broadcast signal support to display artist and track title
• Equalizer for a customized listening experience
• USB 2.0 interface for fast transfer speeds
• Zune-to-Zune sharing allows you to use a built-in 802.11b/g wireless interface to share tracks, homemade recordings, playlists and pictures with other Zune users; received tracks expire after you have listened 3 times or 3 days
• Flag shared tracks you like for easy downloading later with your Zune Pass (subscription required) in the Zune Marketplace
• Up to 14 hours battery life with the built-in lithium-ion battery
• Compatible with Windows only - big surprise
• Dimensions: 4.4×2.4×0.6 (HxWxD)
• Weight: 5.6 ounces

This is pretty cool, www.bink.nu owns the domain vista.aero, and Windows Live Domains is issuing Windows Live Hotmail addresses for anyone who wants to sign-up!  .Aero is actually suppose to be for aviation-related businesses, but it's also the name for Windows Vista's graphic engine, so hopefully the aviation people don't mind.  I already have numerous e-mail aliases, I always use my matthew_weyer at hotmail for everything since it's so old, and I do have matthew at liveside on my phone, but I'm thinking of switching over to mdw at live [my middle name is Dustin BTW].  I also have matthew at windowslive, but I love how short mdw is.  It also hasn't been getting a bunch of spam, much to my surprise.  I registered numerous friends with their first names at live, but I think they get a little bit of spam since they randomly spam addresses, even if they don't know if they're valid or not.  I tried to get mw at live, but Windows Live Hotmail requires at least three letters [gmail requires between 6 and 30].  What do you all think would be a good alias for me?

I thought this was kind of interesting:

Domain Owner's agreement

vista.aero is an organization that provides e-mail addresses powered by Windows Live Mail. Although you are a Windows Live customer, vista.aero, as the domain owner, controls your e-mail address. vista.aero may decide to discontinue your e-mail service at any time and you will lose your e-mail address and the contents of your e-mail account. We have asked them to notify us before they discontinue your e-mail service. When they notify us, we will try to contact you so you can save your e-mails. We will also provide you instructions on how to choose a new e-mail address.

I wonder exactly how they would have someone choose a new e-mail address.  Hopefully they would save your e-mail and let you choose an existing @hotmail, @msn, @live, etc and port all of your account settings over.  I'm assuming they would at least let you choose to keep your Windows Live ID [Microsoft Passport] like they do now.  For example, if you sign-up for a Live ID using an e-mail address you already have, like yahoo.com, then if you switch e-mails, you can change the e-mail account you sign-in with for Live ID.

However, I'm sure Bink is going to keep that domain for a very long time, and if they needed to hand over control of the domain to someone, domains are very cheap, especially since Windows Live Hotmail is taking care of the e-mail storage.

@Matthew

Wow, I got a shocker today when I logged into my eBank - $17.95 deposit from Amazon!  I got an e-mail from Amazon Associates just the other day about quarterly payments, but I didn't know how much I got total.  I know I purchased things myself using my own ID, but now I see that much more people have purchased things I recommended or using the same session.  Additionally, I see I should be getting even more money on the next quarter, because my year to date is $19.92.

In other Amazon news, one great deal is the "Windows Live Coffeemaker" or officially known as the Melitta ME1MSB Smart Mill & Brew 10-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker is on sale for only $99.95!  I remember when this first came out to the market, I happened to stumble upon it after searching for MSN Direct watched on Amazon.  The product wasn't even officially announced, but Amazon has been known for putting products on their site before they're announced.  So, I broke the news on LiveSide, although the coffeemaker was a little costly at $200.  That's not terribly bad because it includes both a weather station [which can easily be $100] and a self-contained grinder and coffeemaker in one [which can easily be $100 as well].

It's been very nice having the grinder inside the coffeemaker, you can even stick the beans in the night before and have it make a freshly ground pot in the morning!  It's a little more cleaning work since it's a metal filter and not paper, but you save on the costs of the paper [which can be a little pricey with cone filters], and most coffee experts will tell you anything short of a metal filter is sub-standard.  I really enjoy coffee, in fact it can be quite healthy for you.  It's certainly better than that soda stuff people like to drink.

@Matthew