I missed it!

My E-reader post was ok, but there was more important news yesterday and I did not find out about it until today!  Yesterday was Bubble Wrap Day and that awesomely annoying invention turned 50 this year!  I love bubble wrap, using it for shipping and of course popping it.  If I had enough of it I would do a video of my children beating me while I’m wrapped in bubble wrap to celebrate!!  I will have to mark it in my calendar so I don’t miss it next year.  For your pleasure though, check out this site:

Virtual Bubble Wrap

E-reader anyone?

I am not an early adopter.  It took me over a year of ogling over a Solid State Drive to finally purchase one.  I did jump on the Netbook bandwagon pretty quickly though, however I was still cautious with that.  It is really strange to me when I think about it.  My oldest son has a $150 cell phone, I still have my crappy “free” one?  When I see new technology like Netbooks and E-readers, I honestly think of my wife.  She is the one that likes cute little things, probably explains why she is semi-happy in the bedroom!  Anyways, when I first saw these E-readers I was quite interested but the early prices killed any chance of me purchasing one.  She is always reading books and I have wasted spent hundreds of dollars on her goofy romance novels and paranormal crap.

Now it appears that I may need to save up about $200 to get her one?  With recent promises that they should go down to $150 I am now finally interested.  I say $200 because I am not cheap.  Just like her Netbook purchases, the first I spent $400 on and the latest one cost $350.  I like to get a slightly better model with a better battery, I feel it is $50 extra well spent.  So I will hopefully find a decent model for $200 some time soon?

I do have a few questions that will need to be answered before I purchase one.  For one I wonder about the hard cover books I have already purchased from her.  It would be really nice if you could just prove you bought the book and they would give you a digital copy at a fair price ($5?).  I also wonder about new book purchases, how many will offer a digital copy for free or nominal fee when you buy the book?  Like most E-reader buyers my wife would want the paperback or hardback copy and the digital one.  I have hours of research to put into this and will share more thoughts on this when the time comes.  For now I will just keep my eyes open to $150-$200 E-readers, once I see that then I will start researching which would be the best buy.

Do any of you have any experience with the E-readers out there?  How do you like yours?  Please post any comments or suggestions, thank you!!

My SSD

My SSD arrived Monday morning and I was pretty excited.  I spent the weekend researching it and how I should set it up.  First I tried to clone my old drive to the new one.  I didn’t see the performance gains I wanted to I ended up doing a clean install.  I needed to get my system back to Win7 anyways so this was the perfect opportunity.

Install was about 20 minutes which I think is pretty much normal for my system, so I don’t think there was much of a gain there.  Start up and shut down are looking pretty good though.  I love Vista’s sidebar so I always “hack” Win7 by adding the old sidebar because I like it on the side of my screen.  Now when I start up the sidebar and Trillian are pretty much instantaneous.  That impresses me quite a bit because on my old drives it would take about 30 seconds for the both of them to load up.  Reinstalling most of my software onto the system was a treat.  Files on the hard drive loaded fast and the install process for most programs took seconds!!

My verdict is uncertain.  I’m mixed at what to think of the drive.  While it is faster, I expected more especially when the drive cost $220.  As long as I get the $40 MIR that will make me feel better but I’m still left wondering if it is worth it?  The access time benchmarks show it is about 3x times faster than the 5400RPM drive I currently have as the second drive in my laptop.  I am in the process of moving my 7200RPM drive in here though and will do more benchmarks.  Programs load faster and I think it is saving me a little time.  I am happy with it and would recommend one only if you have the money to spend on one.  Even though I really don’t have the money, it was just finally time and I needed to get one.

Acer 20″ LCD $104.95

I try not to “push” my Burrows Solutions site here too much anymore.  I want people to visit this blog for news about UBCD4Win, our other projects, and for my wacky thoughts.  However for this deal I just had to try and inform more people about this deal.

I currently have on hand some nice 20″ Acer LCD monitors.  I personally do not like built in speakers but they are good for some people and this monitor has them built in.  At only $104.95 (plus shipping) it is a steal.  Really, check out some other sites and you will quickly see this monitor selling for at least $139.  So if you need a monitor or have a friend in need, I really suggest you pick up this great deal!  Quantities are limited and I’m sure they will sell out within a couple days.  Check it out here:

http://www.burrowssolutions.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5&products_id=67

Nice UBCD4Win mention

This was brought to my attention a few days ago.  I was too busy freaking out because I some how managed to order a SSD for my laptop.  Man, in about 50 hours that bad boy should be in my hands!!!

Anyways I found out about a little mention for UBCD4Win in Maximum PC magazine.  They didn’t do an article (which is what I always like to see) but put some kind of mention on the CD that ships with the magazine.  I haven’t had the chance to hunt down a copy but this screen shot was sent to me:
Pretty cool stuff!!

LONG weekend

On occasion I have a long weekend because I have extra work to do.  However there are times like this weekend when I will be going crazy waiting for Monday!!
This is basically an update to yesterday’s post. I can already feel your excitement, yes I am getting that SSD!! After suffering and wanting for over 6 months I’m finally doing it. Thanks to a very nice boss that let me borrow the money.

NewEgg was pretty good, I quickly placed my order and the processing began.  Less than 24 hours later my drive is on the way to Columbus, OH where it will be rerouted and shot my way on Monday.  Man, I think I’m gonna pee my pants a few times this weekend just thinking about it!!!  The really sad part though is that excitement will die in a few days and it will almost be forgotten?  That is one really bad thing about computer hardware, it gets stuffed into your system where it isn’t easily visible to everyone.  However it’s gonna be awesome when I show a customer how to do something, “damn, how did that load so fast?!?”

Now I have too many drives though.  Back in December my 200GB 7200RPM Seagate died HARD and rather than wait a few weeks for the RMA replacement I purchased a new 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital drive.  The sad part to that is back 1 1/2 years ago that 200GB drive cost me roughly $140, a few weeks ago my 320GB only cost about $60!
So now I will have the original 250GB 5400RPM drive, 200GB 7200RPM drive, 320GB 7200RPM drive, and this new super fast SSD.  I think I’m going to have to sell the original two drives?  I really won’t have much use for them and it’s silly to waste the remaining warranty on the second drive having it on a shelf.  The extra cash will help me pay the boss back too.  With prices continuing to go down though, those drives aren’t going to make much of a dent in the $210 price tag of the new drive.

So look forward to a few future bragging reports on the real world experience of these super fast drives.  I will let you all know if it’s really worth the $210 and if the bragging rights are warranted.

SSD excitement

For some reason yesterday I jumped back into my SSD “kick.”  With memory prices doubling over the past 6 months I assumed that all memory went up and there was no reason to waste my time on looking at a Solid State Drive.  I had to check prices yesterday and it didn’t seem too bad.  I was staring at a nice Patriot drive that was a pretty good balance between price and performance.  However a quick email from NewEgg this morning has me checking out a drive by OCZ.  It offers close to the same performance as the Patriot but is about $80 cheaper thanks to a MIR.

My biggest hurdle though is always money!  The Xmas season is over and I’m getting a bearing on the credit card bills and other people I owe money to.  It looks like I might be getting closer to purchasing one of these speed demons?  Have any of you purchased one of these drives yet?  Are all the good reviews really true?

No more football

All of you can be relieved now.  No more football crap, evidently I suck and can’t figure out who is going to win.  We’ll just stick with stuff I know, computer stuff!  Sorry for wasting your time!

More football

I was so close with the Jets score, at least I had the right winner.  I didn’t think my Philly & Dallas game through, score was close but for the wrong teams.  I need more time to think about the GB game but I’m pretty confident that they will win.

For now though, I do know who will win the Baltimore game.
As much as I hate them, New England wins 35-10.

The Bungles helped prove yesterday that the wrong teams are representing the AFC North in the playoffs this year.  If the Steelers wouldn’t have had that losing streak, they would have had at least enough in them to win one playoff game…..unlike the Bungles and Ravens.  Oh well.

Quick football predictions

The game starts in a few minutes so I better kick out a quick prediction. I have to analyze the rest of the games more and will post again later.
Rookie QB hangs in there, Jets win 24-21.
Cowboys choke again, Philly wins 31-17

I’ll follow up tomorrow with the rest and my Super Bowl pick.