Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive

Remember, this sale is TODAY ONLY! And if you need a reference as to what all this jumble is… read a quick overview on storage here.

• ASUS TS mini home-server. [engadget]
• 802.11n Wi-Fi is now finallized, after more then 7 years. [engadget]
• Buy a Dell 24-inch LCD monitor for just $599 [engadget]
• Dell is giving a 15% discount for Zune HD when it launches! [engadget]
• A glimps at the Toyota’s plug-in hybrid Prius [engadget]
• Sony is now offering to custom-colorize your PS3. [engadget]

• Since there are two new OS’s (or soon will be), here is a guide to get you started. Windows 7. Mac OS X.
• Solar roads in the future? [engadget]
• Surf the web and put your notes on a Scratch-n-Scroll noteable mousepad. [engadget]
• LG HS200 ‘pocket projector’ has an embedded FM transmitter and DivX [engadget]
• The new ThinkPad keyboard. Better, cheaper. [engadget]
• Sony plans to enable 3D gaming for old titles. [engadget]

Wired.com has a pretty fascinating article regarding this exact phenomena.  In general, and especially today, the American public would take a larger savings on a product than overspending on extra bells and whistles.  In fact, more often than not it is the bargain brands or the middle-of-the-road products that are the hottest sellers.

With the exception of Apple products, technology is no different.  You are certianly more than welcome to go out and spend $1,500 on a laptop that you plan to use for nothing more than web surfing, e-mail and maybe downloading the occasional song or photos from your family.  In fact, if you’d like to do that, we’d really appreciate that you click on of the nice ads on the right side of this page and start shopping.  But there’s no reason to do it (unless you want to send us money, in which case, I’ll be happy to set you up with a PayPal account to drop some cash into…)

If you’re just looking to get yourself a new gadget, there’s rarely any justifiable reason to buy something state-of-the-art.  Technology, in general, is obsolete within 2-3 years of production; is it really worth it to spend an extra 20% now just to have to spend it again three years down the road?  This is a lesson I learned the hard way when I bought my first computer system for college – I bought everything state-of-the-art and spent nearly $4,000 on a system that was completely obsolete and rebuilt before my graduation day four years later.  In the end, I probably could have spent less than 1/3 of the original price if I’d just cut corners on a couple of unimportant parts and then rebuilt as needed through the years.

With some technology, you can actually save yourself money in the long run by spending more today.  Today’s desktop computers are one area where spending a little extra on higher end parts will usually give you a longer lifespan on your system, as well as an easier transition if you decide to make changes down the line.  But items like laptops, camcorders and cameras, portable music devices… things like this are ever-changing and always getting more and more complex.

Ultimately, you have to decide if a little more productivity in the beginning of your ownership is worth the major uptick in price, or if you can take a few less options and save the money now.  You know, so you’ll have it in the bank when you’re ready to buy the next big thing.

• Microsoft annouced that the Xbox 360 has a 54.2% failure rate. Yikes! [engadget]
• Snow Leopard is Shipping on the 28th, but its not 64-bit compatible [gizmodo]
• Intel buys RapidMind [pc world]
• PCI Express 3.0 release delayed until 2011 [engadget]
• Rhapsody music on iPhones/iPod Touch. If Apple approves. [engadget]
• Instead of having your wireless router sit there on the table, D-Link incorporated a photo frame with it! [gizmodo]

The Xpal XP8000 (Amos) from Energizer provides portable battery power (see hours below) to many small peripherals, iPhones/cell phones, iPods/mp3 players as well as netbooks. But the best part about this portable power is the free tips for life. Not really free… you do need to pay for shipping and handling and you only get 2 a year. But it isn’t like you need a lot since they do give you about 15 tips to begin with… and you can use your current USB power cable to charge devices. Otherwise, this was a great buy, fits neatly in my leather portfolio with my netbook and digital camera. Everything I need for a conference.

By the way, it also worked nicely with my camcorder…

$180 at Amazon.com (I guess the price went up a lot)

• Western Digital’s new TV media player (WD TV-2). Its way better then their first version. [engadget]
• Take a look at the MacBook Micro! [engadget]
• Nissan’s “The Leaf”, to be able to get 367mpg! Wow, that’s impressive. [engadget]
• IBM’s future microchips will be built using DNA [gizmodo]
• Liquid OLED technology bringing more reliable and flexible displays. [gizmodo]
• Comcast is on the move to control pipes and content. [gizmodo]

• Vizio VBR100 Blu-ray player. To get one, currently only available at Wal-Mart. [Engadget]
• A look at the Motorola Morrison Android phone. [Engadget]
• RF remote without wall limitations [Engadget]
• Here is a video on the Zune HD inferface. [Engadget]
• Toshiba went Blu-Ray… finally! [CrunchGear]

• Apple is coming out with it’s Tablet PC this year! In September that is. [engadget]
• Imagine a world in a clickable interface where robots obey your commands! [gizmodo]
• A look at OCZ’s Colossus SSD. They will be expensive, but huge amount of data storage [engadget]
• Reveiw: Dell Studio 14z laptop. [engadget]
• Asus O!Play media player. Quite similar to the Western Digital version. [engadget]
• I know Kurt had the opportunity to experience a touchscreen table, but here is a video of one with gameplay. [gizmodo]

Now, here’s the difference.  Whereas you might expect to pay a lot less for anything from Sony, JVC, Mitsubishi, Samsung, etc. while on the Pacific Rim, you might not expect to see major discounts in American-made products while travelling abroad.  Remarkably, that seems to be the case.

Microsoft is licensing new copies of it’s Office products for just $29 in China, slightly less than the $300+ retail tag for a copy of Office 2007 here in America.  And the reasoning?  Apparently, Microsoft was losing too much money to pirating in China – where it is estimated that 95% of all MSOffice software on computers is pirated – so they decided to slash the price by some 90% in order to try and earn a legitimate market share.  Looks like it’s working – Microsoft is reporting a jump of almost 800% in sales since dropping the prices.

Of course, that means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of all MSOffice is still pirated in China, but at least Microsoft is making progress.

But why reward a market where people would clearly rather steal than pay full price?  If Microsoft can still turn a profit by slashing their prices to ridiculously low levels in the largest market in the world then why can’t they lower the price here in the US, where people generally fork over the money instead of pirating?  Simply because… people in the US will generally pay up instead of pirating.  No major company is going to “kill the golden goose” as it were.  If Americans are still willing to pay $300 for software that could easily sell for $50 or less and still allow the company to make a healthy profit, they why should that company cut their profits by 5/6?

To put it another way – if you ran a company and consistently sold out of a product at $300, making you boatloads of money, why would you ever consider lowering the price?  If anything, yo’d be more likely to raise it and see just how high it could get before people would stop paying…  You know what?  Forget I said anything.