Cody Taylor

Harry writes “I was amused, appalled, and angry — yes, all three — when I spotted signs above every register at my local Office Depot with handy scripts for clerks to use in ‘recommending’ that customers buy extra-cost, extremely profitable protection plans. And now Laptop Magazine has posted an eye-opening investigative report that charges local Office Depot stores with instructing staffers to lie and tell people who want to buy laptops without service plans that they’re out of stock.”

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MessedRocker writes “I have at least a few USB flash drives around that I haven’t needed since I got my 16GB flash drive, a 40GB external hard drive which I haven’t needed since I upgraded to 500GB, and a couple of SATA hard drives I have pulled out of laptops which are either as large or smaller than the one I have in my laptop now. Furthermore, I don’t really know anyone who needs any hard drives or flash drives. What should I do with my small, obsolete storage devices?”

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So, what do the good people of digg think… is the mac mini worth buying? Do the pros outweigh the cons on this little laptop in a box?

The laptop features a 1080p hi-def display, a Nvidia GeForce GT 130M graphics chip with 1GB of GDDR 3 video RAM andan Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, and 4GB of RAM. A true “Lamborghini” of laptops.

Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef is a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. He spent almost four years in Guantanamo. He wears a black turban, has a thick beard, and is never without his Apple iPhone… said he has always been interested in technology despite his militant links. He used a laptop and satellite phone to access the Internet

When you’re strapped for cash for a can’t-avoid-it purchase, sometimes it’s worth sacrificing a few frills. We zeroed in on a desktop, a laptop, a color laser printer, a camera, and an HDTV. Each represents a great value in its category.

Gov IT writes with this excerpt from NextGov: “Just days after President Obama signed a law giving billions of dollars to develop electronic health records, a university technology professor submitted a paper showing that he was able to uncover tens of thousands of medical files containing names, addresses and Social Security numbers for patients seeking treatment for conditions ranging from AIDS to mental health problems. … The basic technology that runs peer-to-peer networks inadvertently exposed the files probably without the computer user’s knowledge, Johnson said. A health care worker might have loaded patient files onto a laptop, for example, and taken it home where a son or daughter could have downloaded a peer-to-peer client onto the laptop to share music.”

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With news that users are hacking Windows and Linux Netbooks to run OS X–and run it pretty well–Apple needs to release a Netbook of its own before it loses ground in the highest-growth laptop category.

An anonymous reader writes “If you’re planning on traveling internationally with a laptop, consider the following: District Court Overturns Magistrate Judge in Fifth Amendment Encryption Case. Laptop searches at the border have been discussed many times previously. This is the case where a man entered the country allegedly carrying pornographic material in an encrypted file on his laptop. He initially cooperated with border agents during the search of the laptop then later decided not to cooperate citing the Fifth Amendment. Last year a magistrate judge ruled that compelling the man to enter his password would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Now in a narrow ruling, US District Judge William K. Sessions III said the man had waived his right against self-incrimination when he initially cooperated with border agents.” sohp notes that “the order is not that he produce the key — just that he provide an unencrypted copy.”

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christian.einfeldt writes “According to an article in Laptop Magazine on-line, one-third of Dell Inspiron Mini 9s netbooks are sold with the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Dell senior product manager John New attributed the sales volume to the lower price point of the Ubuntu Linux machines. And the return rate of the Ubuntu Linux machines is approximately equal to that of comparable netbooks sold with Microsoft Windows XP. Dell spokesperson Jay Pinkert attriutes the low return rate to Dell’s good communications with its customers, saying ‘We have done a very good job explaining to folks what Linux is.'”

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