Written on 7:42 AM by TSO
Have realised for a person who claims to be interested in technical reviews, I own some pretty low fare stuff. Let's review:
- Motorola W375, fuchsia at that (it was a phase, I almost opted for a pink credit card)
- Verbatim 2GB pen drive (I woke up at 8 am on a Saturday to pick that up for $10 @ a one day only sale)
- Seagate standard 3.5" 80GB hard drive in a local USB casing to make it portable
- Dell 1525 - that's after 2 months of soul ravaging conflict between economy and a MacBook Pro :(
- Transcend 1GB mp3 player (bought based on experience with friend's model and lack of drive to shop around)
- DLink DIR300 wireless router, coz it was the cheapest!
No iPods, no piano black 8GB N95's.
Who cares actually, this was a fun exercise though!
Written on 7:31 AM by TSO
My new Ubuntu CD arrived. Unfortunately haven't had the time to install/run it on the fly. Will do so next weekend.
Am planning to buy a Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB drive as a gift for friend who's going abroad soon except there is no reliable looking online retailer that will ship to India. Seagate website has a weird bug that changes the website to the US version despite repeated efforts to keep it on India. Am thinking of simply going in for 250GB WD Passport instead. Same price, 100 gigs more. I wonder. But the Seagate's so pretty with the whole orange sidebar softly blinking when in use! Plus it's on-the-go security promises to never leave a trace on any public computer where you will use it. And since the bloke I'm buying it for will be using it while @ university, that is a definite plus. Anyway, here the 2 are, will let you know how it turns out.
Seagate 
WD
Written on 6:57 AM by TSO
Have ordered 3 books @ Amazon. My first Amazon purchase.
1. Princeton Review with DVD (unfortunately was brainless enough to not realise 2009 version would be available in June, so have ordered 2008 one!)
2. Official Guide to GMAT Review
3. Official Guide to Verbal Reasoning
4. Official Guide to Quantitative Analysis
Cost me AUD103, including a $25 delivery. Not bad I say, compared to the $200-odd I would've shelled out buying it straight off www.mba.com (the official GMAT site) or at Borders (not that they would've had it, the fiction loving idiots!). Downside - Expected delivery date is late June!
As for the Manhattan Guide to Sentence Correction so widely renowned in the GMAT blogosphere, I simply printed out the 77-pager from the free pdf download at manhattanguide.com, punched it and put it into a ring binder! Also printed and bound Spidey's and Sahil's SC notes while I was at it (Confession : used office printer).
Intend to do same for rest of mg's stuff. Brilliant, I say.
Also made an account with www.mba.com and downloaded their free GMAT software.
Have placed GMAT in large red letters on a spirax and written pattern on inside cover. Intend to practise in this notebook as well, as practicing on sheets of paper leads to trouble later as one tries to remember past approaches to questions.
Plan till books arrive - GMAT Prep software/mg SC/all mg stuff.
Once books arrive, will start with PR and then move on to OG's. Expect to finish all this by end of year giving 5-7 hours every weekend. Then will buy Kaplan in 2009 and take a week's leave and book GMAT exam. That's the plan, amigos, that's the plan.
PS: Am using Windows Live writer to write this. Its a free blogging software downloadable off the Microsoft website. For once, Microsoft has done something right - they kept it free. Brilliant for blokes (blokies?) like me who need to quickly and painlessly post to multiple blogs.