After long deliberation between the Lenovo and the Dell, I pretty much went with the Dell. After looking at the XPS and the Latitude, I decided to go with the Dell Latitude and the specs below. I placed the order around the 2nd week of March and I’m expecting it sometime over the next couple of days. I’m hoping soon, the best part is that it comes with a clean install and no crappy software like HP or Sony install on their machines, you can even ask for it without Antivirus or Productivity software. I will install AVG or NOD32, and Microsoft 2007 later and all the other list of softwares that I install when I’m making a clean install, I especially like the case of the machine.

Specifications

• Intel® Coreâ„¢ 2 Duo T9550 (2.66GHz, 6M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• Windows Vista® Business 64-BIT SP1
• 15.4” UltraSharpâ„¢ Wide WXGA+ (1440×900) LED Display-Regal Red
• NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M
• 4.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 1 DIMMS
• 128GB Dell Mobility Solid State Drive
• 8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio and Cyberlink Power DVDâ„¢, Red
• 9 Cell Battery
• 90W A/C Adapter (3-pin)
• Additional 9 Cell Battery
• Intel® WiFi Link 5300 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini Card
• Dell Wireless® 370 Bluetooth Module
• Integrated Webcam with digital microphone
• PCMCIA & ExpressCard

Link: Dell

I have been eating at unhealthy pace for past couple of weeks. You know your not feeling well when you get that feeling at the end of the night, you feel a bit over-stuffed. I felt good the other day when I had a decent lunch and a couple of mangos for dinner, I know that mangos are not the healthiest fruit but still better then any other fried food I had in mind.

I know what I have to get moving these days while the weather is cool. My goal is to walk about 2-3 kilos a day, every day for the next couple of weeks and that will get me going, then I plan on hitting the gym. Walking isn’t a hard start, but thinking about following a difficult routine at the gym from the start isn’t really going to happen and I probably won’t go back again for a while if that happens. So I start off a bit slow

Driving in GulfRun 4 I have gotten a better understand of my car, to be exact how it acts or reacts to all the different inputs I give it and the extremes. I haven’t learned the limitations of my car to degree, I’m not a race driver but I am better driver then I was before GulfRun. I have improved both power and braking power of my car since GulfRun 3

At this point my car can really take off, and I do love the sound of the car. And it is able to stop on a dime when I put my foot on the brakes. I brake late going into turns because I’m confident of the capability of the car, but I faced issues with understeet because its a heavy car. After seeing a few pictures of my car in corners while I was driving, I realized how loose the suspension was even after stiffining it. At this point I have looked into all possible options, after four months I have decided to go with Moton Suspension. This might make the car a little stiff for the road but a lot better handling then before. Some work needs to be done to work around the custom fabrication but I’m hoping this goes smoothly, but the important part isn’t the suspension but tuning it so that the car acts accordingly. On another note my warranty ended last year so I’m not worried about that too much, and even if I had warranty it would have been long gone after all the modifications I have made.

This has been a crazy day and half, I know its a crazy day when I didn’t even get a chance to take a look at my Google Reader. they added up very quickly, 638 to be exact. And when you go one stretch not going home until really late, your brain stops functioning at one point, all I kept thinking about was food. It was just one of those days, I know that I’m probably going to crash early today while watching some anime or tv show, something that requires the littlest amount of thinking possible.

I have fallen prey to the Blackberry Virus!! It seemed that it was just a matter of time until the switch happened. There are a few simple reasons but its stability and usefulness appealed to my gadget sense.

Now 99% of our friends have Blackberries making communication extremely simple and rather funny. BBM or Blackberry Messenger is fantastic, its so fast and you can images to group conversations and the best part it is included in the service so matter how much you BBM there is not cost to it. Then there are the simple GPS capabilities of this phone which make very easy to integrate and use, and its internet capabilities are far better then any phone I have used before, even though I prefer to use a normal screen for surfing, this is great for quick look ups.

The switch has been a bit confusing, and one thing is for sure. Anyone that thinks they can text with a qwerty keyboard and driving at the same time is suicidal, just wait to for a red light. I picked up the Blackberry 8900 Javelin for 190 KD from the shops in Sharq, it was his only one and I asked about the warranty and there is only want repair center for Blackberrys in Khaleejeya complex. The phone has been great, I don’t have any contacts yet on it but I will figure it out and slowly transfer numbers, might be a bit lazy to transfer everything. I put a lot of songs on it, since I am charging it through a PC and it acts like a Mass storage device. Do I recommend it as the only phone, No, but if you have a large group of people who have Blackberries for work or friends then I think its worth it. Especially if you like being connected and having internet access, I know I don’t like being connected to the work email so I’m not connecting, or else there would be no end to it.

I have my Dell Latitude since 2005 and it has been a fantastic laptop. 15.4 inch screen, good quality build, clean and simple design, doesn’t show how much it has been used or abused, a bit on the heavy side but not bad.

The laptop has lasted a solid 4 years with me but recently the power plug area has been a bit iffy. I have to pull or push the wire in a certain direction to get it to charge, and the problem is the plug is connected to the motherboard. I checked with Dell in Kuwait and they said they have to replace the motherboard and it could cost somewhere between 170 KD to 250 KD since it was out of warranty, I was shocked. No motherboard for desktops come close to it except the very high end ones but this isn’t a high end desktop its a normal business laptop.

So at this point I’m looking for another laptop and checking out my options. I’m thinking about getting another Dell Latitude, because I like the clean cut design, and business laptops are much better built then consumer laptops and they are decently priced.

Main Purpose of this laptop:

• Multi-Tasking
• Photo Editing
• Watching HD Shows/Movies
• Work Tasks

Requirements:

• Bright screen
• Long Battery Life (3.5+ Hours at least)
• SSD
• PC Card/Express

Thats about it for now, but I’m also looking at the XPS line of laptop. Still I’m leaning towards the Dell Latitude. I don’t like any Lenovo laptops, I keep thinking it was designed in the Soviet era. I don’t like HP laptops either, tried them and didn’t like them, I feel they are lacking in power.

After an interesting week at the seminar, I spent most of the day chilling with some family. Its funny how many people I have seen in Dubai throughout the week. I think a lot of people didn’t leave Dubai since the boat show.

I managed to go check out Dubai Mall during the time I had free and one movie, I wanted to watch other movies but I was too damn tired to do move after a 12 hour day at the seminar. I managed to buy quiet a few books, since I would spend my spare time in the bookstore (Borders or Kinokuniya).

Now packing up and getting ready to head to the airport for the Wataniya flight back home, I’m looking forward to a chill Saturday at home.

Got up early in the morning for this seminar, had a really good breakfast. Spanish omelet to be exact with some labnah on the side. Put on my dishdasha and went to the seminar, for some reason I can’t wear a suit when going to any business event in the Gulf, I always wear a dishdasha.

It has turned into a really interesting financial seminar with live case studies regarding business structures and how they needed to be adjusted for growth in different environments. It is mostly targeting young people, so everyone is relatively young in the seminar and its great meeting new and interesting people from very different fields.

With all this going on I didn’t have a chance to check my email or anything for that matter. Decided to go to a movie after the seminar, and in a day and a half my Google Reader has piled up to 607 articles to read. Now I really have to play catch up.

The Blackberry trend is in full swing in Kuwait, literally I see one every where. And now most of our group of friends have one except for a few of us, I tend to like have only 12 buttons to choose from when texting.

They have now made groups so they are texting each other instantly with huge group chats. BBMs flying left, right, and center, and for those that don’t know BBM stands for Blackberry Messenger. BBMs are free since they go through the Blackberry service and not through text messages, so you save on text messages if everyone you know is on Blackberry and in our group it seems to be the case, I am getting less text messages now then I did a few months ago.

Will I be joining this band wagon, I don’t know, I know I will get used to the full keyboard but I like just having a normal phone. The one thing that really annoys me is seeing someone trying to text while driving with a Blackberry which is suicide since you HAVE to look where you are typing. Now we have to see Viva or Wataniya bring this service on-board as well.

 

There were a lot of memorable movies in 2008, but here is the list of my favorites. Some are intricate intense movies, and a few were just pure unadulterated action. I think I watched Tropic Thunder about 15 to 20 times, I don’t care what anyone thinks, that is probably the funniest movie I have seen in a long time, Robert Downey Jr and Tom Cruise were great in it.

Intense:

• The Dark Knight
• Iron Man
• Eagle Eye
• Traitor
• Death Race

Comedy:

• Tropic Thunder
• Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
• Kung Fu Panda
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• You Don’t Mess With Zohan

Asian Movies:

• Red Cliff
• Ip Man