A couple weeks ago, I purchased a brand new Sony VAIO Laptop from Best Buy.  I couldn’t pass over such a great deal, since the laptop was a door crasher with a heavy markdown in price. 

So far, my Sony OOBE (out-of-the-box) experience has been a total pain in the @ss.  Upon my first boot-up, I was inundated with a massive amount of bloatware that not only came pre-installed but slowed my laptop to a crawl.  From AOL to Symantec products, my entire computer was infected with all kinds of unnecessary programs.  At last count, there were over thirty programs I didn’t need or want to buy.  What a total waste of computer resources (snort, snort, snort).

I know profit margins with computer hardware can be razor thin.  All this Bloatware is probably where a sizeable portion of the profit is made.  Unfortunately, it’s also a great way to piss off customers, like me, and preventing others from purchasing a Sony laptop in the future.

In short, unless you have an entire day to uninstall these programs, I would highly advise a complete reformat with every new Sony VAIO Laptop.  You’re better off installing a fresh copy of Windows Vista rather than suffering the constant pain provided by all the Sony Bloatware.  Like the old saying goes, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”.  And with every Sony laptop, this saying is all too true.

I recently invested a hefty sum into my new theatre system.  Yes, watching my favorite football team on high definition has taken my love of the sport to the next level.  But when it comes to watching movies on Blu-ray or HD DVD, I’d rather sit on the sidelines until a victor is finally declared between these two opposing formats.

This so-called format war isn’t new to me.  As a child of the 80’s, I fondly remembered the video wars between Betamax and VHS.  Most techno-geeks from that era would argue that Betamax was the superior format.  But in the end, VHS was declared the winner due to widespread market acceptance and, most importantly, VHS players were a lot more affordable.

Once again, this is how I feel the current battle will play out.  Consumers will always purchase an equivalent product for a much cheaper price.  At the moment, HD-DVD players can be found under $200, while equivalent Blu-ray players remain somewhat more expensive.

Overall, both technologies will probably serve as a mere rest stop until instant downloads become a possibility.  The only limitation stopping us is bandwidth as current internet speeds are way too slow to download such high quality content.  In the meantime, I’ll stick to buying Pay Per View movies from my local provider.

Facebook is a great social networking tool if used correctly.  Sure, catching up with workmates, friends, enemies, mistresses, etc, can prove to be beneficial.  But sometimes I think people can go overboard when posting original content, along with other sensitive information.

My FaceBook account is pretty plain.  You won’t find an overabundance of third party applications that seems to run amok with various user pages.  And you will never find me posting any personal information (or pictures) that could otherwise be used by malicious phishers or potential thieves.  Moreover, Facebook has a great amount of leverage over user content.  They basically own everything you post.

Like it or not.  We have little privacy left in our electronic world.  Unless the content benefits me in a financial way, the less I post on Facebook, the better.