Recently in Geeks and gadgets Category

The Wall Street Journal investigates a plethora of possible mockups and rumours.

Bought this at the cool stationery shop at Orchard Central. I like the envelope, which can hold scraps of paper.

Designer hole puncher, bought at the same shop.

Black cotton buds.

An old black Casio watch which tells me the positions of the planets.

Black laptop cooling dock.

A little black book.

My most inspirational black musician. (We share the same birthday)

And finally, my favourite black thing:

My black Bösendorfer grand piano, which has given me many years of happiness.

Darling R bought me a new toy, a wireless SD card that automatically uploads photos to a photo and video-sharing website of your choice.

A happy distraction for me, in an otherwise uncertain month.

I was invited to the launch of the new HP Pavilion dv2 Series Entertainment Notebook PC at Supperclub. Make that two notebooks actually, one in black and one in white. Which do you prefer?

White.

Black.

Backlit keyboard.

Separate Blu-Ray DVD recorder - just like the MacBook Air.

Lots of cool HP software. You can now write Chinese characters and some other Asian scripts and manage your media files, wherever they’re stored. I feel that because Apple included its iLife software with its operating system, it raised the bar and Microsoft took a while to fill the gap.

You can also manage your photos. Looks like HP’s answer to Apple’s iPhoto.

More details on the website.

As a business student who’s learnt some things about customer segmentation, I’d like to see if more girls buy the white model and more guys buy the black model. Of course, the hardcore guy gamers will want a more powerful notebook.

I actually think this will be popular among female students, because it is slim, not too heavy, and parents won’t complain about the extremely affordable price. Especially in difficult economic times like this.

Can you guess how much this costs? (don’t peek… scroll down if you want the answer)

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In the middle of class today (yes, I had full day class on a Sunday), I took out my MacBook Pro. Soon after that, a Taiwanese classmate sitting at my table extended her hand and shook mine, enthusiastically. She thanked me for supporting Taiwanese components as I had so many gadgets (I had an iPhone and a camera beside me). She also told me that she had been responsible for this particular screen component in my MacBook Pro.

I told her that I bought this particular MacBook Pro for its screen. I had in fact requested for the glossy screen model but the Apple Store had given me the matte one by mistake, and I had gone back just to return it for the glossy one.

Later I showed her this photo, just to give her an idea of how much I supported the industry over the years:

I love making people happy.

In any case, R made me happy too. Another classmate thought my screen was dirty. That’s because I put a rubber protector over my keyboard and whenever I closed the MacBook Pro, it would smear my glossy screen. I gave up rubbing away the smear marks because the next time I closed the MacBook Pro, the screen would be blurred up again. However, since someone noticed my smudgy screen, I decided to give it a wipe tonight. But the screen cloths I bought previously were not very effective and I would spend a lot of energy and time rubbing the rubber marks away.

Then I met R for dinner and he gave me a gift. A ducky that wipes screens. See exhibit below. I’m now looking into a super shiny, glossy and very clean screen as I’m typing this post.

R makes me happy :)