Philip Wen’s Virtual Residence

Everex StepNote or a NetBook?

Viable Alternative to the NetBook assault?

So check this out.  Buy.com is selling this refurbed Everex StepNote for an incredible price of $350.  This is cheaper than some of the NetBooks flooding the market right now.

For a very similar price, you get the full usability of a normal laptop.  Dual Core (T2080), DVDRW, WXGA screen (1280×800), and the usual expansion possibilities.  Downside of this choice?  Slightly bigger and heavier.  Reasonably so, you are lugging around the Optical Drive with this one.

Compared to the newer, sexier Dell Inspiron Mini 12, I think I would choose this option.  Why?  The RAM on this is upgradable to 2GB.  Unfortunately for the Dell, RAM is not upgradable.

How about to the newer, sexier HP Mini 1000?  The HP can definitely be considered geek-worthy fashion accessories, but the smaller screen and the lower performance kind of kills the deal… for now.  Plus, (and I shed a silent tear here), the Mini 1000 did not inherit the high res screen of its 2133 predecessor.  If HP ever offers the Mini 1000 with 2133’s screen resolution @ 10″ - I am sold.

Slightly heavier and doesn’t have the same pizzazz as the netbook variants. Hmm…  Difficult choices indeed.

OK I am done debating.  I’ll choose the Usability over Cool factor.  Where’s that Order Button?

Which one would you pick?

Tags: Dell, Everex, HP, HP 2133, Inspiron Mini, Mini 1000, Netbooks, StepNote

Best current deal on external storage

LaCie`s new external drives, designed by Neil Poulton

Amazon has the LaCie drives here.

Update: Buy.com has it here - at an even cheaper price.

Check out this post on LaCie’s site on how to register for your free year of Carbonite.  Not only do you get a great looking external drive, but LaCie is bundling all of their externals with 1 year of Carbonite.

The combination make this one of the best value on storage in recent memory.  The unlimited Carbonite service means you can backup the content you’ve stored on the LaCie drive and all the drives you have dangling off of the same computer.

Even though the service is marketed as unlimited backup, there is actually a limit for every subscriber.  How much value you get out of it depends on the amount of data you want to backup, and whether or not you are on a basic DSL package or the top speed FiOS package.

I can only guess that companies like Carbonite and Mozy really hate FiOS. 

In any case, deals like this is great for smaller companies with limited budget allocated for disaster prevention.  But now that such things are so affordable, there is really no reason not to implement a backup strategy.

Tags: Backup, Business, Carbonite, dsl, FiOS, LaCie, Neil Poulton

Some great HP Home coupons

HP has been vamping up its Pavilion lineup

Ben posted some great coupons for those of you looking to refresh your office workstations before the EOY tax season cutoff.  With the $400 off $999 coupon, you can put together a pretty powerful workstation for $600.

Personally, the real temptress of the bunch is the Mini 1000 - that is a pretty drool-worthy netbook.  Check it out here.  Not only is it the best looking Netbook out of the current crop, it is also nicely customizable.  The only downside is the downgrade on screen resolution from the HP Mini 2133.  Anyone tried the coupon code SV2132 on the HP Mini 1000 yet?

Tags: Coupons, HP, Mini 1000, Pavilion