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Acer Aspire 5738G is home

Short review of Acer Aspire 5738G laptop and things to note while reading online reviews and opinions. And, a bonus tip where you could win a HP dv6 laptop and a HP Mini, together!

This post was typed on the good looking, great performing, well-built and extremely power efficient Acer Aspire 5738G laptop. After an extensive research on the laptop market, I made my decision in its favour and I must say, it proves to be a wise decision indeed.

Acer Aspire 5738G

My requirements just didn’t fall entirely under one category and that’s a big reason why it took a bit long in the research phase! I needed a pretty much powerful processor – Core2Duo to be specific – and enough memory to complement it. I wanted the screen to be at least 15″ in size. And in order to stand eligible for the free Windows7 upgrade program, I needed at least Vista Home Premium to be factory-installed on it. Above all, I was on a limited budget. And there was this one, Aspire 5738G offering all these plus many features more (including a dedicated nVidia 512MB GPU). There wasn’t any reason at all, to keep me away from buying it. I got it for Rs.42,500 (including tax of 4%) which on batteries with power saver mode enabled, lasts for around 5 hours on minimal use and 3.5-4 hours on normal use and 2.5-3 hours with WiFi on; which is pretty great considering it’s performance.

The thing about product reviews

One thing that I learned about the (user-contributed) product reviews and opinions is that, always take them with a pinch of salt. Some people tend to talk about a product or post a review, when it malfunctions or doesn’t work the way they expected it to. Remember that while there is this guy who is disappointed with the particular product, there are hundred others who is satisfied and are happily using the same product.

Read (user-contributed) comments and reviews only to shortlist 3-5 products. Do not base your final decision on them. And it’s advised to read the reviews at CNET, TrustedReviews (UK targeted), PCWorld and such corporate reviewers. In this context, Test Freaks deserves a special mention. It’s a review aggregator. You specify a product and you get to see reviews and comments on it, pulled from all over the web. But what makes it really stand out is that they’ve got expert ratings and reviews too, apart from user reviews.

And one question I’ve been asked much is, how is it possible for a company, to offer something at a much lower price than another company’s product with similar specs. I think it’s the brand value that plays the big part there. For instance, HP has got a higher brand value than Acer and costs more with similar specifications. Also factors like place of assembling influence the price.

And hey, a bonus tip: HP is giving away 25 packages, each package containing a Hp dv6 entertainment notebook, a HP Mini, an awesome backpack and Syncables software to keep the note and net books in sync. A friend of mine, @binoyxj won a HP Mini the last time HP did a giveaway. Give them a try. You never know what’s the next awesome thing gonna happen to you.

Creative Commons and the like should go mainstream

It could be said without a doubt that there is a huge volume of proprietary scientific and technical information going under-utilized just because the licenses prevent them to be re-used or to derive from them. If CC and such open-rights are used to license these data, much more development could happen. Don’t you think ?

CreativeCommons explained

If you aren’t familiar with “Creative Commons (CC)”, here is what it is (quoted from the official website).

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration.

That is, unlike the mostly used copyright license, “All rights reserved”, which strictly restrict the use of works licensed under it, CreativeCommons allows the content to be licensed in a variety of ways so that it will benefit more people in more ways. There are four basic CC licenses:

Attribution: You are free to re-use the specified content, provided you give due credits (as set-forth by the creator)
Share Alike: If you re-use some CC licensed work, you should license the new work under the same license as that of the original work
Non Commercial: You may use the content freely (attribution not necessary), but ONLY for non commercial purposes
No Derivative Works: You are asked to use the work/content as is, and not to modify or derive from it

You can license your work under any of these four or their combinations (like Attribution – Non commercial – Share Alike which is the license I use for this post and all other posts of mine on this blog)

Why CC should go mainstream

Why not yet?

Because where CC license stands legally is still not clear. Thus, it is understandable that people refuse to license the results of their hard work under CC and see those get adapted or published without any credit.

Personalize a real book. Decide the storyline. Get it printed.

IAndMyStory.com gives you the flexibility of naming the characters and deciding the story line of real printed books. You can make customizations to the book, personalizing it to your tastes and can then order a print. An awesome gift idea for children that’ll be treasured long.

kidsbooks Coming up with a wonderfully interesting business model of Personalized books, IAndMyStory.com will get you surprised for sure. The very new Indian startup, offers the flexibility to name the characters of pre-written stories, make changes to the storyline and get it printed and delivered to you as a REAL printed book.

Yes. You can gift your kid with a real story book, with your child and his/her friends as the characters. IAndMyStory puts it this way: “Imagine a book where your child becomes the star of the story, making reading enjoyable. The story comes to life with the child’s name, age, hometown, family, friends and uncles & aunts all being part of the adventure”. I was nothing short of surprised to see this.

The catalogue is short, understandable as they’re just launched. Writers and illustrators are invited to join them. Affiliate dealerships are encouraged too.

The books are priced at an average of Rs. 380 per copy which seems very reasonable, if not low for what’s offered. The service is primarily focussed on India but they take international orders too. A comprehensive list of supported payment options including International/Domestic Credit/Debit cards, netbanking facilities of 10+ Indian Banks and other options like ItzCash and Mobile payments, makes it more accessible.

This is a perfect gift for children anytime. Congratulations to the ones who conceived and created iAndMyStory – they’ve done something that stands out and makes sense.

Discovered with a tweet by @manuscrypts linking to a review at StartupDunia. Image courtesy: Carf

Be practical at GMail with the labs

A short look at some of the most useful GMail Lab Features, encouraging you to start using them, if you’re not using them already. Also, some talks of some ways to backup your gmail and managing To-Dos.

GMail Labs is no new thing. It’s been around for many months now, churning out nifty and usually, very handy features every fortnight or so. Who doesn’t want something that adds value to something that you use very much ! At the time of writing this, there are 46 active features in the lab, ready for your use. If you use GMail, you should be using GMail Labs too. Take a look at some of the great ones.
You can start using labs by enabling labs for your GMail account at Settings > Lab

Photo by: Novembering

1. Offline
Take your GMail entirely offline with this lab. This one makes use of Google Gears to backup and localise a copy of your GMail account, allowing you to browse through your GMail through your browser, even when you’re offline.

Make Gmail go where the Internet doesn’t. Access your inbox through your browser and use Gmail’s familiar features when you’re offline. To get started, enable this lab and then click on the “Offline” link in the upper-right of your inbox.

Tip: If you want to keep a backup copy of your GMail, you may use GMail Backup (FREE) app. You can use that backup even Google Apps accounts.

2. Tasks
Gives you an overlay box titled “Tasks” that’s similar to the chat boxes. You may close it anytime and reopen it from the “Tabs” button located below the main navigation buttons.

Tasks adds a to-do list to Gmail. After adding the lab, click the Tasks link above the chat box on the left-hand-side of the page. Your task list will appear on the right – click anywhere in the list and start typing to add a task.

Tip: If you’re looking for a light and efficient desktop To-Do app, MiniTask is for you. Powered by Adobe AIR, this one is so light and just works brilliantly.

3. Rich Media Previews (YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Yelp!)
Shows an inline preview of any links to above mentioned content.

4. Mark As Read Button
This is a really tiny feature but a killer one. Gives you a dedicated ‘Mark As Read button’, eliminating the need to check the mails and then access “Mark as read” from the drop-down menu. Saves precious time. (I realized, how great is this tiny feature, when I had to use an uncustomized GMail account. )

5. Multiple Inboxes
This one is seen as the second-best lab after Offline. This one enables you to have multiple panes on your traditional Inbox, that can display mails according to custom preferences, that are accessible at “Multiple Inboxes Settings” area. A screenshot will make it clear for you.

Add extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.

Tip: You may read about using this feature to transform GMail into your feed reader.

6. Filter import/export
Filters could be rightly called as the biceps of GMail. And this one makes it possible to export your filter list and to import them to another account or to use later.

Tip: Use filters to keep those forwards, promotions, and notifications away from your gracious inbox !

7. Inserting images
Till now, GMail did not support inserting images into an email. There have been workarounds to do this, including the simple way of dragging an image and dropping it into the message. But now with this lab, GMail adds an “Insert Image” button to the rich text editor Toolbar. You can upload images from your computer as well as from any other place on web.

There are many more available for you. I use 17 labs. Take a good look at ’em. Check ’em frequently, as newer labs keep on coming. I believe you are rushing to GMail to get the labs activated, if not, gone and activated it midway, reading this !.
Oh yeah, some time back, I had written about Visiting the Labs, once in a while ! Cool.