Whenever it comes time to buy a laptop, I always have to do a little pre-buying decision dance in my head.  How much do I want to spend?  Do I really need to spend that much? Or can I get away with some lesser specs and spend half of that amount?

Buying a computer definitely feels like a major purchasing decision. After all, unless you have money spewing out of your water faucet at home, you usually won’t be buying a computer everyday (or even every year).

So, to splurge or not to splurge, that is the question.  To make a smart consumer buying decision like this a little bit easier, let’s use two real-life laptop options from opposite ends of the price spectrum:  the premium HP Envy 14 and the budget-friendly HP dm1z.

The Price Difference: ~$500

The high-end, premium HP Envy 14 usually runs about $900, depending on your preferred configuration.  Conversely, the cheaper HP dm1z would usually be in the lower end of the $400 to $500 range.  Price tag difference?  A cool four or five Benjamins.

Let’s be honest. Both of these laptops can handle basic computing tasks without issues.  And you’d be surprised what “basic” entails these days.  Not just browsing the web, sending email, listening to music, and editing documents or spreadsheets.  We’re talking streaming 1080p HD movies from the laptop to an external monitor or HDTV, transferring files through gigabit networks, even playing 3D graphics games that would have required a $2,000 desktop tank of a machine only five years ago.

Because of this, sometimes I think it’s odd to even consider buying something more expensive than a little dm1z when it will do most everything I’d need.

The newly refreshed HP dm1z after coupon, is now available for $370 to $400 depending on the configuration option you choose.

The Performance Difference

So if both of these computers at vastly different prices will cover the basics, why would anyone splurge on the pricier option?

Good question, young grasshopper.  The thing is, although computing power has significantly advanced through the years, some of the more sophisticated software programs have also grown to require more power to run them well.  Video and photo editing takes as long as ever (if not longer) due to upgrades to higher resolution images and video.  Modern computer games with more detailed graphics also require stronger, dedicated graphic cards.  And with our habit of running so many of these things, it’s nice to have a new multi-core processor, or one that can scale up its speed when necessary.

Whether the performance difference should factor into your buying decision basically boils down to this — Do you just consume content? Or do you produce or manipulate it, or play a lot of video games?

If all you do is watch Youtube, talk on Facebook, check your email, and occasionally write papers or make presentation slides for school or work, then lower-end option like the HP dm1z can be a great fit for you while being kind to your budget.

On the other hand, if you handle video/photo editing (or you plan to in your next classes or job) and other computing intensive tasks (such as CAD work), you probably should move up to something like an HP Envy 14.

The Style and Look Difference

One bonus of splurging on a more expensive laptop is that you usually get a “nicer looking” machine in addition to the better internal hardware.  Design and style is of course always subjective, but most people will agree that the HP Envy line of laptops are pretty slick, thanks to their clean lines and the smooth silvery or black finishes.

Other nice (and functional) eye-candy includes a red LED-backlit keyboard on the Envy 14 Beats edition, letting you know exactly where you’re typing — while looking like a hotshot as you’re composing the next literary masterpiece at the local cafe shop.

Finally, lets not forget screen size.  Budget netbook-class laptops are usually around 10 to 12 inches.  Premium laptops are rarely in the 11-inch size (although the mighty expensive Macbook Air is one of the few exceptions).

The Bottom Line on Splurging

When you “splurge” on a laptop, do it because its features are exactly what you need, whether that’s more RAM, faster processor, bigger hard drive, a better graphics card, or all of the above. And if you do that, you probably aren’t splurging at all.  You’re buying a laptop that will fulfill your needs and last for several years to come (after all, laptop performance across the board is far advanced from just a half-decade ago).  Like every big ticket purchase, your best bet is to first consider your budget, and then consider how much of your needs can be met with the finite budget you have.

This is a guest post by Dave at Dealzon.com, thanks to the folks from HP.

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It has been one month since I got my Amazon Kindle reader and I really like the little device. Now I find myself read more and more on Kindle than on my laptop. The main reason I bought the Kindle is to use it for some PDF documents which until a month ago I can only read on my computer. That usually means hours everyday sitting still in front of the computer, which I really don’t like. Now, with the 6″ Kindle that’s also very light, I can read anywhere and most of the time, I prefer to stand up.

But there’s a problem. The latest version of Kindle supports native PDF, but it’s not optimized for that format, meaning that the device takes the document and just displays it without any processing. For PDF documents, there are usually plenty of empty spaces on each page around the texts and displaying the pages on Kindle, the texts are rather small because the useless white spaces also take up a large part of the 6″ screen. Even though I set the Kindle in Landscape instead of Portrait, the texts are still not that easy to read some times. If only I could get rid of all the margins and make the texts bigger.

Then I did some searches and found a few free tools that can crop the margins of PDF documents while keeping the texts intact. After some quick testing, I think I got the perfect tool to solve my problem. It’s a free, open source software called Briss. What it does is cropping PDF files (single page or hundreds of pages) as long as it can load the PDF file you want to crop. As you can see from the screenshot below, after loading the PDF file into Briss, you can define the regions you want to crop (the whole page or a portion of it) and how much space you want to keep, for odd and even pages. And after you apply the action, crop that is, the software will automatically save the cropped document using the same file name as the original one but adding “croppped” at the end, so you have both the original and the processed documents.

Here’s what the original PDF document looks like on my Kindle. As you can see, there are a lot of empty spaces on the sides and top and bottom (the blanks on top and bottom don’t really matter though) and the texts are quite small.

And here’s what the same page looks like after the margins are removed using Briss. Much better isn’t it?

If you have the same problem, you may also want to try Briss (you can download the latest version on Sourceforge.net). There’s no installation required, just download, extract the files and use it. But you do need the latest version of Java Runtime Environment to run the software. The software will prompt you to download (also free) and install it if you don’t have the right version installed in your computer.

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Yesterday, when I was writing the post on shopping and credit score, I thought it would be nice to include the actual video in the entry so people who missed the program on TV can watch it while reading the post. The problem is on Good Morning America, there’s no code to link to the video and embed it in my story. I also searched YouTube, but didn’t find the video. It seems that the only solution is to grab the video from GMA myself and post it. But how? There’s no URL to where the video file is actually stored on GMA. If I can find the address of the video, then I am sure I can download it and use it. So now the problem becomes how to find the URL of the video that is hidden.

As I was searching for solutions, I noticed that there are quite a few commercially available software can get the job done. But I don’t want to pay for something that I may use only once in a while. I want to use free tools.

After some Googling, I found all the tools I need to download and convert the video and they are all free. If you are interested in doing this yourself (not videos on GMA of course), you can follow these simple steps to download any videos whose URLs are hidden, as long as the videos are downloadable

Step 1: Download and install a software called URL Snooper, the software that lets you locate URLs of video and audio files so you can download them. After the URL Snooper is downloaded and installed, run the program. Then go to GMA and click the video that you want to watch and download. In this case, it’s the Watch Where You Shop from yesterday (actually it’s the day before yesterday).

Step 2: As the video Watch Where You Shop is playing on GMA website, URL Snooper successfully detects the URL of that video (the last one in the following picture). That’s all you need to download the video.

Step 3: Now that you have the URL of the video you want to download, the next job is to get a downloader, if you don’t already have one, to download the video. The downloader I am using is Orbit, which is also free. Once your downloader is ready, whatever it is, highlight the last URL in URL Snooper (the one for the GMA video), right click your mouse and Copy Selected URL(s) to Clipboard.

Step 4: Now paste the URL to Orbit by clicking New and the URL will be automatically added. Click OK and the downloading starts.

Step 5: The download won’t take much long (depending on the size of the video of course) and when it’s done, you will have the video in flash video format with FLV as the file extension. You can play the video with a FLV player (I am using IrfanView). If you want to convert the video to a more common format, such AVI, you can use another free tool called FLV to AVI Converter.

Add the video file you just downloaded to the converter then click CONVERT. The conversion will start and it won’t too much time to complete.

Now that you have the video in AVI format, you can upload the video to YouTube and share it, just as I did

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Did you download Firefox 3 already?

Yesterday, the Download Day, was a big day for Firefox as it released its latest version 3.0. When the Download Day was first announced last month, I pledged to download the free browser within 24 hours after it’s release to help set a Guinness record.

I have been using FF for years and always got the latest update when it became available. While FF is great, the biggest headache as I experienced is its memory consumption. I am using quite a few extensions and always have a lot of tabs opened. If I don’t restart the browser for a couple of days, its memory usage just keeps growing. It’s not rare to see that Firefox uses some 700MB of my memory. I have tried many memory tweaks with pretty much no luck. Since Firefox 3 is supposed to do a better job in keeping memory usage under control, I decided to get the browsing software as soon as it is released.

Anyway, I got the software yesterday and it looks good so far. The only problem is that the browser is up-to-date, but not all the add-ons. Some of my favorite ones have been disable due to incompatibility with FF 3. One of them is called AutoCopy, which allows me to copy the text by just selecting it, no Ctrl-C needed. It’s a very convenient extension. Losing it all the sudden caused a lot of pain.

So I searched a little bit and found this workaround to let me continue using the add-on until the FF 3 compatible version is available.

1. Download the AutoCopy add-on file (you can find one at here, then right-click to Save Link As);
2. Change the file extension from .xpi to .zip (from autocopy-v0.6.4.xpi to autocopy-v0.6.4.zip) and use your file compression/decompression application such as WinZip or 7-Zip to extract the files;
3. Find the install.rdf file in the extracted file folder and open it with a text editor (Notepad);
4. In the file, find this section

<!– Firefox –>
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>2.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

and replace 2.0.0.* with 4.0.0.* and save the file.

5. Drag and drop the install.rdf file onto the autocopy-v0.6.4.zip file. It will ask whether you want to overwrite (or add) the file, install.rdf, to the archive. Confirm;
6. Change the file from autocopy-v0.6.4.zip back to its original name autocopy-v0.6.4.xpi;
7. Grab the autocopy-v0.6.4.xpi and drop it into your FF browser. A window will pop up:



 Click the Install Now button once it becomes clickable and the install will begin.

However, the installation may fail if another window pops up with the following error message:

If this happens to you, then there’s a little extra work to be done before you can enjoy your old extensions. According to this discussion, the above problem can be easily fixed by adding a new value to the Firefox configuration:

1. Open a new tab and type about:config in the address bar;
2. Right click inside the window and select New->Boolean;
3. A new window will pop up and enter extensions.checkUpdateSecurity as the preferred name;
4. Set the default value to false in the next window;

Now repeat Step 7 in the above installation process and you will see the following window:

Restart your Firefox and enjoy your favorite, old extensions again

I have used this method to install two more add-0ns, MinimizeToTray and Page Title Eraser, and they all work like they used to so far. This method may not work with all the add-ons, so you have to try to see. Until those extensions get updated, I will keep the extensions.checkUpdateSecurity value and use this workaround.

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I usually don’t get Christmas gift. Not that I don’t want one, but nobody gives me, including my wife. We give each other gifts at anniversary as well as on birthdays, but not Christmas. This year, however, I did get a little Christmas gift, a Pocket Loox N100 portable GPS navigator. But it wasn’t from my wife.

About two weeks ago, I got an email from TigerDirect at midnight with an ad of the Pocket Loox N100 on sale at $99. Though we have a GPS on our 2005 Odyssey, I always wanted one that I can carry with me, one that’s small and not too expensive. One that we can use if we travel. The minute I got that email and saw the price, I went immediately to the site to check it out. Meanwhile, I did a quick search to find some reviews of the device (on Cnet.com and gpsmagazine.com) which made me feel it is the one that I want. Then, without wasting too much time, I ordered one before it was gone the next day.

Since receiving the device, I have used it a couple of times just to test it (I don’t need a GPS just to go from home to work) and here are my quick observations.

Pros:

• It’s small yet elegant. Loox is shorter than my Razor phone, but slightly wider and thicker. I can carry it in my pocket without feeling too much extra weight.
• The touch screen is clear and sharp. Some people complained the reflective screen makes it hard to see what’s on the screen at certain conditions, I found that can only happen at some extreme angles.
• The map and the navigation are quite accurate. Though there are errors, they are marginal.
• It’s not just a GPS navigator, but also a multimedia player. I can use it to play MP3 music and video.
• It supports both 2D and 3D maps with street names and POI information.
• It supports Day/Night modes, so I can switch between them to have different contrast on the screen for different driving conditions.
• It shows speed limit information and alerts me when I exceed the limit. This is actually very helpful.
• A fully charged battery can last up to four hours and the packages supplies a car charger so I don’t have to worry it runs out of battery when driving long distance.
• The device only needs to be calibrated once as long as the battery stays. And when it’s turned off, the previous session will be saved.

Cons:

• The biggest drawback is its slow response. When I turned it on the road, I had to wait several minutes before it was ready due to bad reception of the GPS signal.
• If I quit current session and restart the navigator, it takes about 50 seconds to just load the map.
• Every time the navigator is restarted, I have to choose a map before starting navigation. No default selection.
• Making a change while driving is quite difficult because of the small screen and small buttons. And because of the small size, it won’t be easy to see the map and road names if the navigator is mounted on the windshield.
• Build-in speaker isn’t very helpful even when the volume is high. To hear the turn-by-turn instruction, I have to use the ear phone.
• Though it can be used as a multimedia device, the pre-loaded maps use most of the 2GB capacity of the miniSD card. To play movie with it, a higher capacity card is needed.
• The package doesn’t include a case.

In summary, it’s an affordable device that does the job of getting me to my destination and I can use it both on and off the road. There are many GPS navigators out there that are more powerful and with more functions, but at less than $100, the Loox is enough for me.

*Photo from gpsmagazine.com

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