God forgive me, but I bought that DELL 640m laptop today. The special offer they had just for today was just too good to pass. The only additions I made to the default was to get the higher-res screen and the internal Bluetooth module. Overall, this laptop costs $1203 normally, but I paid only $859 because of the -$344 special offer (and with free shipping).

Thom tells me that this laptop won’t last more than 2 years (he has the same casing for his Inspiron laptop and he has already seen parts of it falling apart), but for the price I think it was a good purchase. I made sure that the laptop came with an Intel card instead of ATi/nVidia (for better Linux compatibility) and WiFi. The special offer includes a free upgrade to DVD-+RW drive, 2 GBs of RAM, the enhanced 9-cell battery (instead of the normal 4 or 6 cell batteries) and a 120 GB drive. I like the fact that it has a firewire port, 4 USB ports, Express card slot, S-Video out, SD/MS flash reader. Because I am pretty sure that this laptop won’t last for too many years, I decided to purchase it with a Core Duo CPU instead of a 64bit Core 2 Duo (I saved $125 this way).

Overall, I am very happy with these hardware specs and the 5.50lbs it weighs. The only thing missing from the laptop is an integrated webcam in my opinion. I am looking forward to resizing the Vista Home Basic partition and install Linux there too. Hopefully, this trick will let me enable Aero on Home Basic too. As for Linux, I am toying with the idea of going Ubuntu instead of Arch Linux simply because of the desktop-oriented conveniences that Ubuntu features compared to labor-intense Arch.

Regarding a Macbook, I decided to get one only if my Powerbook dies for good. Until that happens, I will just purchase the Leopard OS for use with my PPC Powerbook when it’s out.

We spent the weekend in Reno, Nevada. We had a great time if you do not account for JBQ’s fall while skiing and my face looking like a tomato after getting burned by the sun in the snowy mountains of Sierra Nevada. In fact, I look like Ms Piggy, being all red in the face and wearing my pink pajamas.

JBQ shot this picture of me right after I woke up in our hotel in Reno on Sunday morning. He said that I look like a beloved little fat Buddha, so I took the appropriate pose for him.

JBQ and I in Mt Rose, near Reno.

Dell has a special today for their Inspiron 640m that includes 2 GBs of RAM, 120 GB disk and a 9-cell battery for only $800 ($860 with my inclusion of the higher-res screen and Bluetooth module). This is a very good offer, given that the laptop is also 100% Linux compatible out of the box (even its WiFi). It comes with Vista Home Basic, which is ok (no Aero, but I don’t mind that).

On the other hand, I also want a Macbook with Leopard. But Leopard is not out, and even if it was out, the Macbook is about 80% more expensive when similarly configured (it only has better build quality, a webcam and a faster CPU compared to that specific 640m, while the 640m also has flashcard reader, Express card slot, modem etc).

My idea now is to get the 640m instead of the Macbook and later only buy Leopard for my old Powerbook. But my Powerbook is seriously at its end of its life (its hinges are almost dead) and pretty slow while running Tiger already (I had to disable javascript/plugins to get internet browsing to be as fast as I want it to be in the past 2+ months).

But then again, I feel like a fool for even considering buying a laptop after reading things like these. I can’t understand how my mother can make a living with 600 Euros per month. No, the life in Greece is NOT cheap. Renting a house is cheaper than in the rest of Europe/US, yes, but everything else in every day life is crazy expensive. I read in that article that some drugs got a 96% price jump while most kinds of foods got a 7% jump in just a day.

Umf… I am seriously depressed now.