O RLY?!

My laptop died a few months back and I have been looking for an inexpensive replacement.  There has been a lot of hype lately around ultra portable laptops and Dell recently released one of their own.  The Inspiron Mini was exactly what I wanted.  It is extremely small, lightweight, and inexpensive.  Compared to other high-end “compact” laptops (Thinkpad, Macbook Air, Vaio), the Dell Mini is a fraction of the cost.

Obviously this won’t replace your home desktop computer, but its perfect for carrying around and browsing the web or checking email.

Here are a couple of pics to give you an idea of how small this thing really is.

www.swoopo.com

Upon first glance I thought “oh wow, another auction site trying to compete with Ebay,” but after digging a little deeper, I realized this site is so much more.

Bidding always starts at just $0.15, and you can only bid $0.15 at a time.  Each bid will increase the countdown timer by 5-15 seconds.

Here’s the catch, each bid costs you $1.  A smart and patient bidder will almost always get a good deal, and even an aggressive bidder will still get somewhat of deal.  The real winner here is Swoopo.

A Nintendo Wii sold for $84.75 at closing.  That means Swoopo not only made $84.75, but an additional $565 (84.75 / .15) in bidding costs.

That is just the beginning.  There is an auction now for a “free $1000 cash, ” meaning that the winning bidder does not actually have to pay the closing price to receive the item ($1000 cash).  The auction is currently at $540.  Yep, they’ve already made $3600 in bids and there is still 6+ minutes left.

They might as well be printing money.