There I was walking around the shops one evening when this sexy number caught my eye. It's the brand new Acer Aspire 1810TZ notebook that looks exactly like my older Acer Aspire One 751. On closer examination, I noticed this little beauty comes with a flush-mounting 6-cell battery that was actually stated to last for 8+ hours. Wow I thought. Could this really be my dream come true? A subnotebook to take from K.L. to H.K. and back on just one charge? The only way to know for sure is to really bite the bullet and bring this baby home to test it out, and so I did.

I was thinking Acer's marketing department must be working overtime hyping it up again but sure enough this baby really does run like an Energizer bunny, only much much longer! I'm not just talking about throttling the CPU and the LCD to their minimal settings, or switching WiFi off to get the maximum mileage out of it. I was actually pushing it like there was no tomorrow! Best of all, it did so with no speed hiccups like my old Atom-based Acer Aspire One 751 usually does. Webpages fully loaded with flash animation literally flew off the screen as quickly as they could be received. Microsoft Office too loaded up and ran like a rabbit on heat! Quite amazing when you think about how little actual power was being used.

It costs more than a typical Atom netbook, but you'd forgive yourself when you think of it as a cheap notebook rather than an expensive netbook.

A definite good buy!

Here's a quick rundown of the specs: 

Pentium SU4100 1.3GHz, 800MHz FSB

11.6" HD LED LCD (1366x768)

2GB DDR2 800

250GB 5400rpm HDD

6-cell Battery

802.11 b/g/Draft-N WiFi, Bluetooth

Multi-touch Touchpad

4-in-1 Multi-card reader

USBx3, VGA, HDMI, SPDIF, Mic, Earphone ports

Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition

Price: HK$4,998

With the trillions the U.S. government is borrowing and printing to finance their stimulus packages, the value of the U.S. dollar is expected to fall substantially over the next few years. To hedge against this trend, U.S. investors are buying up gold, silver, and non-U.S. stocks and currencies to maintain the value of their savings.

What does it mean to the rest of the world? Since global trade is conducted in U.S. dollars and commodities like oil and gold are priced in U.S. dollar terms, we expect to see a rapid inflation of prices across the board. Gold would probably reach in excess of US$2000 per ounce. Oil may reach as high as US$200 a barrel. Food prices and other essentials would shoot up the roof.

If and when the U.S. defaults on it's debt payment obligations, the
U.S. dollar would tank like a dead fish. Global trade would grind to a
halt, and the world as we know it today would be dead and gone.

Hopefully there's still time. We expect more and more businesses willing to trade in Euros and Yens in the coming years.  China is already using the Chinese Renminbi with selected countries in Asia. It's a matter of time before it too becomes fully convertible throughout the world. The world needs a stable currency or currencies to do business in. The U.S. dollar as it exists today is NOT that currency.

Be prepared.

Who is Peter Schiff? He predicted the credit crises years ago while everyone was ridiculing him on U.S. television for years. He's been nicknamed "Dr. Doom" and everyone was laughing at him on national television when the U.S. economy was still booming at the time. Now the joke is on them!

Check out some of his clips on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mH2DZOHJLA

Bought a Blackberry Storm last week. It's the biggest mistake I've ever made. After a couple of days of normal usage, it became quite obvious Blackberry is not exactly a well-rounded hardware and software company like Apple is. With the iPhone, everything just works as it should. Blackberry Storm on the other hand, is built like a tank but works like a VW Beetle.  The software side is downright nasty. Syncing with Windows is a hit and miss affair, and Chinese language support is just downright mediocre. Only time will tell if this Canadian company is serious about Asia.

Oh I eventually gave up and traded in the Storm for a Nokia E75. So far it's been great!

Congrats to Tammy and Victor for coming first in the Amazing Race season 14 !! They're the first Asians, Chinese to be specific, to have ever won the title. Now they're millionaires !