This has been a week of new toys. On Wednesday my new laptop arrived. Thanks to Slick Deals, I was able to get in on a great deal at Dell for $500 off an Inspiron 8600 laptop, plus an additional $200 rebate. It's got a great 15.4" widescreen and 128 MB Radeon 9600 video card, and with a Pentium M 1.8 Mhz processor the little fella's way more powerful than my desktop P3-550. Maybe now I'll finally get to play Neverwinter Nights which has been gathering dust for a year. On Monday I should get my wireless LAN set up, and I'm looking forward to surfing and working from the couch or bed.
If anyone has any laptop software to recommend, I'm all ears.
This weekend I paid my first visit to Fry's where the motto is "If it runs on electricity, we sell it." I can see why the Silicon Valley crowd goes gaga for this place-- it's like a Radio Shack, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart combined. Geek nirvana. I went to pick up a laptop carrying case, but wound up getting a backpack instead. I've been carrying the same backpack around for fifteen years and this seemed like a good time to retire it. The backpack form factor just seems more versatile than a shoulder-strap laptop bag, especially since I'm used to schlepping one anyway. I also picked up another 512 MB of memory to bring the laptop up to a healthy 768 MB.
Meanwhile, someone at work was selling a used Game Boy Advance SP package (with headphone adapter, power charger, Final Fantasy Tactics, Warioware, and Yoshi's Island) for $100, which also seemed too good to pass on. I wanted all three of the games anyway, and even used they'd have set me back at least $60. I was getting tired of having to angle my GBA just right to catch the light. I foresee much lost sleep in the future.
And the parade of toys continues later this week, as (if FedEx can be believed) the long-awaited free iPod finally arrives! More on that as the situation develops...
Posted by Peter at October 17, 2004 10:06 PMThat Dell $200 deal is expired.
Posted by: Dave on October 18, 2004 12:37 AMToo bad. Happily, it was still valid when I purchased my laptop. Dell seems to offer these kinds of deals periodically, so I'd recommend monitoring slickdeals.net to catch the next one.
Posted by: Peter on October 18, 2004 2:33 AMSo, has anyone else below you in your list qualified for their free ipod?
Posted by: Larry on October 18, 2004 5:55 AMI'm sure you're loving your GBA:SP, it�s just about as perfect as a portable system can get. However, there�s always the next thing� so I guess I would have held out for the DS, which launches in less than a month (and is backward compatible with GBA games).
Speaking of GBA games, you wanted FF:Tactics?!? I thought you were adamantly against tactics games. But if you�ve finally seen the light, then you must check out Advance Wars 1 & 2!!
Posted by: Jake on October 26, 2004 11:31 PMI thought about holding out for the DS, but for $100 bucks I got the GBA and three games I wanted anyway. Too sweet a deal to pass on. And the SP is smaller than the DS, so it's easier to stash in a coat pocket and carry around. If I eventually pick up a DS, the SP might just get passed on to one of my nieces.
Posted by: Peter on October 28, 2004 11:07 AMHave you hooked in to www.woot.com yet? Seems like your kind of site! And with being on the west coast, it is a doable nightly experience... enjoy!
-- Danielle
Posted by: Danielle on November 3, 2004 10:50 PM