The Shopping Nazi

Summer be will soon here. It will be time to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. Spring and summer are great times for family fun along with taking pictures of those events. The quality pictures you take from those events will determine how you remember them. This will be determined the camera used in taking those pictures.

Before you look to get a new camera or maybe up grade to video camera there are few important facts that can save you a lot of money and frustration down the road.

Almost everyone with a cell phone has a camera built into their phone. These cameras are good for 3 to 10 feet, usually with the subject posed.   Taking pictures of kids on a stage in a school play,  or playing soccer does not produce good results.

I have a 5 mega pixel camera on my phone. Every time I have taken a picture where the subjects were at a distance, I deleted it in disappointment.  The camera has what is know as digital zoom.

Some point and shoot digital cameras have optical zoom. However, most digital cameras have what is known as digital zoom. They both claim to make your target image 10x or 30x larger. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday night I left the house and went down to the local fairgrounds to walk through the annual Idaho Sportsman Show. This is one of over a forty I attend in the course of a year. Why? You may be asking, “What possible benefit could I gain from going to all these trade shows?”

Can you think of a better place to find out about products and services in a non-committal environment. Here I can quiz sales representatives. I can sample gourmet foods. Watch demonstrations on the latests and greatest gadget. My wife can get estimates on putting a hot tub in the backyard. Then if I am really lucky, I get to win a prize from one of the vendors. Read the rest of this entry »

Take me a picture. Tell me a story with that picture. But before you take that picture tell what kind camera you like to you. Are you a professional photographer that likes to use a single lens reflex camera with exchangeable lenses. Or are you the type of person who just uses the camera on their phone.

I am more into the message of the picture as to how to take it. The camera I use the camera that is attached to my phone. It is 5 mega pixel. However, I would like to some day get a small handheld video camera to take videos and  still pictures.

Before I recommend what type of camera you should get along with the best price, you are going to have to tell me a few things.

• Do you like taking still pictures or video? Since dawn of modern computers it is easy for almost anyone to edit video as easy as still picture. Putting video on YouTube or putting a still picture on Flicker can be done with a good computer and high speed internet connection. Read the rest of this entry »

As much as everyone of us does not like to think about death, it will happen. We are going to leave behind family members, friends, and stuff. What we want our family to do with that stuff after we are gone is a very important issue.

I am not big on stuff. I realize that I am only going to be on this planet for a very short time. So I am not into collecting a lot of stuff. What concerns me when I am gone is my family and how they will live when I am gone. Read the rest of this entry »

Buying the right laptop can a difficult chore. When technology doubles every 18 months to 2 years it is hard to keep up with all the changes. A laptop 10 years ago could only perform basic of computer function. The laptop of five years ago was much slower and more expensive than those of today. The average person in search of a new laptop can get overwhelmed with the different makes, models and features that are available.

A young lady had approached me with a sales paper from Office Depot. She proceeded to show me two different laptops. She asked me which laptop would be the best deal. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are in  the Computer IT industry you should be reading one of the following magazines.

There has been a movement for years to get us away from using paper and going all digital. Regardless of there efforts we are still using paper. The high cost of printer ink cartridges has driven many to look for new ways to reduce cost.

Quality Logic takes the time to figure the cost of printing from you printer. In their latest report, (December 2009) shows that average printed color page will cost you from 7 to 27 cents per page. Then you ad the cost of the paper, the cost per page could reach 30 cents per page. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I was driving by my local T-Mobile store, when I remember that I was coming due for a phone upgrade in a couple of months. I turned into a open parking space in front of my local T-Mobile store.

When I walked into the T-Mobile store, I was greeted by a pleasant speaking dark haired lady in the traditional T-Mobile purple dress shirt.

I explained to her I was getting close to my time for an upgrade. I wanted to replace my old Blackberry 8700. It has been a great phone, but little things like lack of camera was starting to bug me.

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Right before Christmas I got an email from an old friend.

Hi,
I was looking for DVD-R recording media in Boise. The DVD-R must be more than 180 minutes recording time to work in my DVD. I looked at Best Buy and Office Max, and most department/variety stores here. No one in the valley seems to have the Double Layer recording media I need. I did find some of the disks on Tiger Direct. I prefer to by local though.
Thanks, Donna

I did some looking around for Donna. Here is what I found.

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The other day, I was talking to a lady from the state of Georgia. She was telling me that she could not afford to buy a computer. She thought is was a luxury besides being a waste of time and money.

A couple of years ago, I doing cold sales calls on businesses in a rather large strip mall. I walked into this shoe store, and asked to speak with the manager or owner. A very well mannered elderly lady came out from the back room and introduced herself as the owner.

I asked what kind of software she was using to manage her inventory. At that point she harshly stated that they did not use any computer software for inventory management.  The only computer they had was the card reader for processing credit cards.

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