So, I’m here at Best Buy looking for that $250 Acer Laptop that was posted on WalletPop the other day. After walking up to the laptop section, I see it right in front of me. I was so excited because it was perfect timing. My father’s birthday is tomorrow and he’s been looking for a cheap netbook or laptop with a webcam.  I was kind of afraid that the specs posted on WalletPop wasn’t going to be the same specs when I actually saw it for myself.

I quickly notice that the price tag has no specs on it. But, I see the specs on the sticker and noticed it was the one I was looking for. Also, it came with an on-board Webcam. Oh joy! I asked the Best Buy employee for the laptop. The employee responded with “Sorry. We are sold out of those. But we do have optimized ones still.”

I quickly learned what the difference between a regular laptop and an “optimized” one. An “optimized” one has the “awesome” feature of having no bloatware. To have an “optimized” one, you need to pay $39 more. WTF?

Isn’t that backwards? To have NO extra software or trial ware installed costs extra? If they wanted, I could pull the laptop out, hook it up to their wireless hotspot, and install all that bloat crap myself to keep the price tag to $250. But of course they wouldn’t allow me to do it. I complained a little more towards the employee. She talked to her supervisor and came back to offer me a half-off discount on the “optimization fee.”

I agreed to the “deal” just so I can get this present to my father. Ugh. Best Buy, you win, but never again.

I guess shes more leet than me.  I still look at my keyboard when I’m typing. =\

An old friend of ours, DJ Fillmatic, was able to review the Razer Sphex Mouse pad & laptop sleeve. Here is his review:

So I was chatting with Razer|Grl the other day and she said “Hey Fill, we have a new mouse pad called the Sphex” I said “Oh really?” she then said “Yeah, I’ll send you one to try out.” Lo and behold, a couple days later UPS knocks on my door and the driver says “This is for you.”

Now I’m thinking “how does he know this is for me?” Driver turns out to be a gamer, the box says Razer on it, I’m wearing a shirt that says 1337 on it when I answer the door. Anyway I get this big box like “This is a huge mouse pad.” In true kid like fashion I immediately opened it before even walking back in to the laboratory. Turns out Razer|Grl sent me the Sphex and 17″ Razer Gear Laptop Sleeve (awww, she remembered the size of my laptop without even asking.)

So I pulled out the sleeve, read the Certificate of Authenticity, suspended my laptop and put it in the sleeve… Like a glove. Ballistic nylon goodness with shock absorbing interior. On top of that, nothing says “I’m going to frag you” to people before you even open your laptop like the Razer logo on the sleeve. I mean what more can I say? It’s a laptop sleeve, it fit my laptop, it does it’s job. Thumbs up.

(more…)

Now you can rest your head without that embarassing homerow imprint on your forehead with the laptop pillow. Oh, and for your MAC vs PC freaks out there, its a hybrid of the two. Mac wallpaper with a Windows toolbar. So everyone wins.

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Today was my nieces 13th birthday.  Because she is growing up and almost in high school my dad/her grandpa, bought her a compaq laptop.  Now, being the nice geek uncle I am, I told her I would help set it up for her. And by setup, I mean:

• Install FireFox 3
• Delete all Internet Explorer shortcuts
• Install AVG
• Uninstall Norton Antivirus 60day trial version
• Stop all programs from launching when Windows starts up
• Install Windows Updates
• Install Adaware
• Run Adware
• Make recovery discs

Wait, wtf? Make recovery discs? Yes. I had to make recovery discs because the box didn’t come with one.  Instead it came with this paper:

My first thought after reading this was, “Since when did this type of thing started happening?” Then I thought, “This isn’t a good feature at all.  What if the hard drive completely dies?”  You wouldn’t be able to do a full recovery when you put in a new hard drive. Or would you?  So, just to make sure, I created those recovery discs. What surprised me was that it took 2 DVDs and 2 hours to create them.

It was no big deal to me.  I just kept playing Street Fighter 4 on Xbox Live while the recovery discs were created.  But all these procedures to get a PC laptop running out of the box and smoothly completely made me hate Windows even more and OS X less.

Out of the box, OS X takes less than 30 minutes to setup.  That’s even with the software updates.

Looks like Microsoft’s marketing campaign taking shots at again.  I really doubt its working.

“Macs to me is really only about aesthetics more than computing power.”

Being an Apple Fanboy, Mac’s are about sexyness and being user-friendly.  They have as much computing power as that crappy-ass HP you bought and you can run almost any OS on it. Also, it’s easy to buy a PC laptop when someone is buying it for you.  I mean heck, I’d buy a PC laptop if someone handed me straight cash after I bought it.

Congratulations, Giampaolo.  You’re a PC and a hired actor that might have received an HP laptop.

(Yes. I understand I’m going to get flamed for this.)

So I was sitting here booking a suite for E3 (Thats right, a suite, penthouse even. I’m not a gamer, I just want to drink and party with you guys. Pixelated Geek Private Party!!!) Darth Fader (My laptop I use for general purpose, yes Fader cause I DJ) turned off suddenly. So I said “What the fuck just happened?” Under further examination I heard some electrical noise. It was the battery. OK, so I take the battery out plug the power cable in and start it up. Well, it turned on but would not boot all the way up. “Oh fuck” I thought to myself. Restart, f8 f8 f8 f8. Ran some diagnostics “shit, I have bad sectors on my primary hard drive, ok no problem I have a clone of it anyway.” My main question is what caused all this shit to happen. Well I’m glad it happened. Because of this I’m able to write a few articles to follow this post.

One upcoming one will be how to clean your laptop internally. That is right we’re popping off the hundred screws the manufacturers went crazy with. You will be able to get out all that dust and lint. You’ll be able to get out that pubic hair that got in the fan and heatsink while you were taking a shit.

Remember I said the battery was making noise? Well I’m not the type of guy to say “Oh crap my battery is done” then go throw it away and order a new one. No, I’m the type of guy that wants to know why then pops it open. Upon opening it up I found inside six 3.6v 2200mah 18650 Lithium Ion cells.

So what did I do? I found a place and got 6 2400mah replacement cells. Thats right whores. Not only am I going to show you how to replace the cells but your geek ass will have even more battery life than ever. I’m even going to show you how to build an extended battery pack.

There’s a couple other things that you’ll get out of my hardware failure but thats all I can tell you for now. If you’ve read this far you’re probably creaming your manties (man panties) and cant wait to see how to do these things. That or you’re just a bored geek with nothing better to do.

Alright, I’m being told it’s sexytime so I have to go. Peace out bitches.