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June 19, 2006

Cheap Dells through dawn Thursday; Connie Chung swan-song video; Mars: Life?; Nestle buying Jenny Craig?

Really cheap laptops: Dell Home has the following new coupons on notebooks. Restrictions apply. Inspiron notebook coupons: (exp 6/22 6am CT, or after 4000 uses). These include free Bluetooth wireless and a free Netgear router.

30% off $999 Inspiron notebooks w/ coupon code: DL6QX6MSHQV03B
30% off $1499 Inspiron notebooks w/ coupon code: 2ZT4G81K9BLPD2
$750 off $1999 Inspiron notebooks w/ coupon code: 7BPQ?QQM75GDBD

So I upgraded some more things -- 1.83 ghzprocesor, 1 gig of memory, 100 gig hard drive, 9 cell battery (vs. 6) , TV tuner, integrated Soundblaster card, etc. (I read that the ATI graphics drivers don't always play nice here, so I didn't upgrade that.)

At checkout the page showed a price of $1613 although the running total was $1290, with a 20% discount they were automatically applying. I applied the coupon code below, and it went down to 1129.10 (free ground shipping, $8 handling)

I used this code, but there might be others: 2ZT4G81K9BLPD2

By the time tax was added, I paid $1,216.69, so that coupon made it tax-free and legal.

You can start real low if you just want a basic system. (There are other models -- a 14 inch, and a 17-inch, 8-lb. widescreen that will take these coupons, too.)

What clinched it for me was the dual core processor, which is reviewed as blazingly fast.

It's getting hot in the computer corner here, and I'm ready to take my wifi laptop out to the porch. But I dropped my beloved Acer TravelMate, breaking the pins inside that connect the power cord, and its keyboard had stopped working, too.

The deadline here made me just do it. I didn't want to waste weeks researching, and it wouldn't have helped. There aren't really other low-end laptops with the dual-core processor. I spent a coupla hours configuring, applying coupons, reading reviews, then I bought it.

Google "Dell coupons" to go in via a lowest-priced, configurable link. (Some of the preconfigured systems can't be downgraded if you don't want Office included, for instance, and the basic E1505 link goes to a solo core and doesn't upgrade the processor.) There's also a 35% coupon off Dimension desktops.

Cancelled again: CONNIE CROAKS ADIEU, jabs the N.Y. Post. There's video. Connie Chung did a parody of Thanks for the Memories that fell flat, apparently. So did she, collapsing at the end of a swan song in an evening gown atop a white piano. I don't watch TV at 10 p.m. Saturday, so I never noticed the show.

At Slate: A Prairie Home Conundrum The mysterious appeal of Garrison Keillor.

Fox buying henhouse? Nestlé set to purchase diet firm Jenny Craig. Nestle's sells you the chocolate that makes you fat, now it wants to sell you diet food to fix that.

Corn burner: Dutch Company Unveils Motorcycle that Runs on Vegetable Oil

We knew it: Martian Life: The NASA Cover-Up?

Made you click: Way Beyond Stoned Why were a couple of gay Republican potheads blown away by the FBI?

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:43 AM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: liquid on June 19, 2006 5:13 PM

Posted by: trudy on June 20, 2006 2:57 PM