Have Laptop Will Travel

CompUSA closing its doors, to begin sales soon

Originally posted on December 8, 2007 @ 12:55 am

In what could be considered as signaling the end of an era, CompUSA has reportedly been sold to an arm of Gordon Bros., a restructuring firm. This means only one thing folks, CompUSA will be closing its retail stores.

At this early juncture CompUSA has not yet issued a definite timetable on when its stores will close. The only information given was that all 103 stores will remain open for the holiday season and will all be fully staffed. There are reports that some stores will be sold to other retailers.

Gordon Bros., on the other hand, announced that consumers should expect bargains on computer and electronic products as it beings its store closing sales.

CompUSA.com as well as CompTechPro will still be run by the company while sales are ongoing.

It is sad news that CompUSA is finally closing its doors. But as a consumer I am also quite excited about the possible bargains that I may be able to get when the closing sale does start.

OLPC begins “Give One, Get One” project

Originally posted on November 12, 2007 @ 11:48 pm

My favorite social responsibility organization, the One Laptop Per Child initiative, officially started its very useful “Give One, Get One” funding project.

This project essentially gives a computer to the person who purchases the said PC while also funding one other PC that will be given to a child in another country. The said project will last for 15 days. The amount given/donated is 399 dollars. As an additional incentive any participant who lives in the United States will get a free one year access to T-Mobile’s HotSpot broadband service.

The OLPC has said that it is committed to deliver these laptops to children within the holiday season although they also know how daunting this task will get so they have also said that there are no guarantees at this point. Only purchasers who were able to buy the laptops early will be sure of getting their units during the holidays.

As I have previously posted, Quanta Computer will be manufacturing the XO laptops. Mass production of the units actually started last week.

Dell releases WoW laptop

Originally posted on December 4, 2007 @ 10:45 pm

World of Warcraft players are an obsessive bunch. I’ve never attempted to play MMORPGs precisely because of what I’ve been hearing about WOW obsessives who take the game so seriously to the detriment of their social and family lives.

Well, blame Dell for fueling the WOW bloodlust of its nine million players by announcing the release of laptop systems that are specifically geared towards World of Warcraft fans.

This genius in merchandising comes in the form of Dell’s very cool XPS M1730 chassis that has a very formidable spec sheet:

* Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 CPU at 2.8GHz
* 2GB dual channel DDR-667 memory
* 2 x 200GB hard drives, set up as a 400GB RAID 0 array
* 2 x Nvidia 8700M GT GPUs in SLI configuration (each with 512MB of video memory)
* AGEIA PhysX 100M physics processor
* Integrated HD audio with Creative Labs Audigy software stack
* Intel 802.11 a/g/n wireless networking plus integrated gigabit Ethernet for wired connections
* Windows Vista Ultimate Edition preinstalled

But what makes this a truly WOW product is not the specs but the sundry items that Dell has put into the system. First, it will come in customized World of Warcraft box. You can then customize the laptop based on your WOW preference — the Alliance or the Horde. The laptops will ship with customized wallpapers, too. But the merchandising does not end there. the box will also come with the following:

* World of Warcraft & Burning Crusade, in retail boxes
* Strategy guides
* A “making of WoW” DVD
* Fantasy novels set in the World of Warcraft universe
* WoW soundtrack

And not only that you get to receive a beta key card with five keys that can be used for upcoming betas of WOW. Now that is one impressive package. Now, if only I have $4,499 to spare.

AMD reports 5th straight quarter loss but still remains optimistic for ’08

Originally posted on January 17, 2008 @ 11:14 pm

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has reported its fifth straight losing quarter today. But the company is still optimistic that it will turn things around with the arrival of its quad core processors.

With the books closed for what is one of the worst 12 months of the company, AMD executives have revealed its plans to make the company profitable this 2008. Among the many strategies is the release of its quad core desktop and server processors as well as bringing in new products, among them Puma, its new mobile platform.

Most of the problems the company has encountered is being blamed on AMD’s acquisition of ATI. Up to now, nothing profitable or significant has come out of this move, but AMD executives are firm in their resolve that the ATI acquisition was the right decision.

2008 will be a key year for AMD and it may also be the year when consumers will finally see if the ATI decision will bear fruit or become one of the biggest business duds in years.

4Tb hard drives possible by 2009 — Hitachi

Originally posted on October 15, 2007 @ 11:43 pm

I run a very small buy and sell business. I bring in a number of nifty gadgets from China and Hong Kong and sell them to people. It’s still too small an operation to really be called a self sustaining business but I’m happy with the way things are going. One of the items I usually buy are Hitachi hard drives. The brand is kind of hard to come by but the price of Hitachi HDs is very competitive especially for a businessman like myself. The build quality is also top notch. Being a satisfied Hitachi user and reseller I’ve always wondered why they do not have a bigger presence in the market.

Hitachi may not have a big presence right now but the company looks like it has what it takes to compete with the big boys in terms of product innovation. Recently, Hitachi through its subsidiary Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced that they have developed what is said to be the world’s smallest read/write head for hard drives.

The small size will allow for magnetic densities that are so fine that it will be possible to make 4 terabyte capacity hard drives and terabyte sized notebook drives by 2009.  The new technology will supposedly mature by 2011.

This is good news for storage junkies like myself who are more confident in the capability of hard drives to store sensitive information rather than transferring it to DVD-Rs for storage. Hitachi seems to be on the right track with this new technology and I hope that this could lead to more presence from the company in the hard drive market.