Parents' Weekend

Had a fun time in front of the bookstore Friday and Saturday, showing off the great deals on Lenovo computers that we're carrying here. As you can see, the bookstore slashed the price on the 15.4" ThinkPad T61 to $649!! This is an incredible deal, only 3 left! Mike Hagerty, Account Executive for Lenovo, showed me the ropes talking to parents, students, and faculty that stopped by our booth. Mike has been a great resource and guide concerning my job as campus student representative for Lenovo. He's given me plenty of freedom to do what I want, but is always there to confirm or correct any questions I have. Not to mention, he has shared interesting insight into the odds of betting on sports teams' games, from a purely educational standpoint, of course. Lookout Fantasy Baseball, here I come loaded with knowledge of probability!


We had a ThinkPad X300 on display, and I had not realized how incredibly thin and light this notebook was. It sizes up at 12.5" x 9" x less than 1" at its thickest, and is just over 3 pounds . Thought it was funny that just like a cell phone, the SIM card for the WWAN connectivity rests in a slot under the battery. The LED-lit display looked great outside, the best out of the 4 we had out. Somehow, they packed a 1440x900 pixel resolution into 13.3 inches, which looks very nice. This machine packs a low-voltage 1.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 64 bit processor, 64GB solid state hard drive, and up to 3GB of RAM. It meets RoHS and EPEAT Gold environmental and energy standards compliances, and got 3.7 hours of battery life on the CNET DVD drain test with the smallest 3 cell battery. The higher capacity 6-cell battery extends just 2 milimeters out from the front third of the bottom of the notebook, and gives 7 hours of battery life. WOW!

Gathered some great ideas from the guys I was working with today, hopefully I can get them rolling soon.

One funny story is that I lady came by asking about getting a new computer to replace her iMac Remember the colorful apple shaped computers? Yea, I do, they were the staple of my elementary and middle school computer use. Anyways, she was checking out the new Macbook Pros, and asked if she could connect to dial-up internet on them. The apple rep thought she just meant non-wireless internet, but no, she was actually referring to the "dial-up through your phone" internet of the '90s! Luckily, after a quick google search, a solution was found in the form of a USB adapter. Coincidentally, I just watched a clip of the Colbert Report where Colbert pulls out an apple green iMac to "dial up" to the internet to buy some stocks after wall street recently had 1997-like trading numbers. Anyways, I had a flashback to the awesome sound that phone modems used to make, all that dialing, ringing, scratchy noise that accompanied AOL internet. That reminded me of walkie-talkies, which reminded me of astronauts and houtson, so I used Audacity, the open-source audio recording and editing software, to quickly make this:


Click on the picture to listen to the 36 second clip.

Well that's all for now!