Tag Archives: laptop

I found a great deal on a laptop.

The other day one of my friends who also own a computer store emailed me that he purchased a large number of great laptops for a special price. He does this about once a week so I thought little of it. Well on Friday a customer came by and was interested in getting a laptop so I told her about the one my friend had. She said it sounded good and she ordered one. MSI LaptopI left an hour later and picked up one unit from my friend.

On Saturday morning my customer came back and I opened the laptop for the first time, and I was instantly blown away. For the price that I paid this laptop was the best one that I had ever seen. First off it was made by MSI, my last laptop was also MSI, and their quality is very high, they are one of the main OEM makers of laptops, and they make laptops for many other companies. Next it was a Pearl White color, this is the favorite laptop color of most women, and this customer also really loved it. For specs it had a Dual Core T3400 Pentium CPU on the Centrino Platform, this means it is fast and saves on power. It had 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 250GB Hard Drive, Gigabit Ethernet, Modem, Wireless Lan, DVD burner, memory card reader, and a 14.1 inch wide screen all running Vista Home Premium. This is all fairly standard, but what made it stand out was the extra features, a built in 1.3MP webcam, the fingerprint reader (So you can log in to things with just your fingerprint), and support for Bluetooth and simcards. But the best part of the whole thing was the price, only $545. I looked online for another one like this and I could not find one with all these features and such a good price.

If you are interested in getting one send me an email at dragon@emeraldcomputers.com there are a few left. If they are gone there may be a different one that is also a good deal.

The biggest problem now is that my wife asked me twice today to buy her one of these.

Let me shatter your false sense of security.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

~ George Orwell

Everywhere you go today there is massive security. They say it is there to keep us safe, to free us from terror. I say that every time they impose their false security on us they are reminding us of the terror causing more fear and terror and therefore the terror is winning. I say false security because there is very little that any of these security measures can do to really stop someone who is determined to cause harm.

Let me talk about the highest level of security most people face, the airport. Flying is a business, and it is needed for many people to feel safe flying. When terror struck our nation many people stopped flying because they were afraid, so the government decided it would be good to increase the pre flight checking, because the more checking they do the more secure the people will feel and the more they will fly. Remember, most people are like sheep, they think small, and they are easy to control, I call them sheeple. Then some moron decided to put a bomb in his shoe, it was big news so the government decided to make people remove their shoes. They did NOT do this because people could put bombs there, they did this because people who fly now knew people could put bombs there and if they did not check for it many sheeple would not fly.  A few years later some other total idiots made a plan to use a binary liquid to make a bomb, and overnight all over the world you could not bring liquids on a plane.

Every time a new item pops up that the people think is a threat they ban it so that the sheeple will feel secure and keep flying.  But here is the truth, the real problem is that with the number of people traveling and the number of things they bring with them there is NO WAY to truly make your flight save and secure.  Everything in life has a small amount of risk, but the time, money and effort they are putting into creating this false does very little to make us more secure, it only wastes my time and my money when I travel.  I say this because the truth is that almost anything can be made into a weapon that is more damaging than the binary liquid or the shoe bomb yet these many other things are not in the mind of the public so they are not checked for.  The people in charge KNOW this fact, they know that what they are doing is a huge sham, but it pays them well so who wants to rock the boat.

checking you out

To give some examples, a laptop is a very common item people fly with, it is important so that people can get their work done, but the battery of the common laptop can be turned into a bomb with ease.  The bottom of most laptops is a sheet of aluminum, you could easily precut a knife blade out of this and it will pass security.  So lets ban all laptops.  Well the typical PDA/Cell Phone/IPod also has a battery, with a few changes it can be used to build a charge and be turned into a taser.  It also could be used to disrupt flight communications.  So lets ban these also.  Next metal detectors can’t see objects that are not metal but are under your clothes.  It is easy to buy/make a knife made of plastic that is almost as strong, and easy to hide.  So it looks like we need to pat everyone down.  But wait the clothes people wear can be made of highly flamable things that could be used to make large fires.  It looks like we need to ban clothes, the airline would need to provide offical passanger clothes.  What about shoes, just beause we x-ray them does not mean they are safe, in fact I doubt an x-ray would have cause the bomb the shoe bomber was using.  Shoes are made of rubber, and many explosives look and act like rubber, so why could you not create a shoe sole made entirelly of an explosive material.  Looks like we need to provide offical passanger shoes also. People can hide things inside their body, we all have seen the shows of the crazy people doing things you never would expect.  I guess we need to ban people all together.  How about we just give up. (Look at the solution Ryan Air came up with as a joke.)

Eva Air, My favorite discount airline.  I use them the most.
Eva Air, My favorite discount airline. I try to use them every time I fly to Asia.

This list can go on and on.  So as you can clearly see that all of this checking at the airport does almost nothing to stop someone that really wants to cause harm, all it does is waste all of our time, and all of our money. It may do a little to make people not bring dumb things on the airplane, but it does nothing to stop a planned attack done by professionals.

So now that we know that physical security is NOT the solution, what is then.  Look HERE, HERE or HERE for more proof.  One solution is information security, you can know your customers, and know which ones are very likely to be safe.  But in our nation of political correctness people are afraid to stand up to the types of people who are most likely to be evil doers. The idea of having an armed Air Marshal is a VERY GOOD idea, and I am glad they are using it, the thought of a random Air Marshal puts every evildoer in their place.

But in reality the BEST solution is no solution at all, have an alert public and simply accept the small risk.  Before 9/11 no airplane in the US was attacked other than one thing in the 1970 that was targeted only after money that a bank was transporting.  No attacks have been made after this time.  And I think that no attack will be made, simply because the other people on the plane will stand up and fight.  During WWII one of the strongest forces was that every American was working together with our government to protect our nation.  Some where along the line the government started seeing the people as the enemy, the insecure hordes, and no longer as the strongest tool to combat terror.

So my plea is this.  Lets have an informed and alert public.  Lets stop all of the wasted time and money checking for things that will probably never happen.  Let me keep my shoes on, let me keep my laptop in the bag, let me bring my drinks on the plane.  All of this security is just for show and I think more and more people have figured it out, so lets just stop it already.

July, A record month for this blog and why

This month has really been a great month for this blog, it looks like Jason Dragon is getting some critical mass. July of 08 had over 2.3 times the unique visitors as the second best month, May of 08. Blogs are suppose to go up but this is a lot faster than normal. July 30 was the best day ever passing July 24 by 6 hits.

The stats say that this is due to a few things. First I started a Computer Entry section which is simply a page that has a list of all the blogs that I wrote on the subject of computer, but this page is very popular, it is on the top 5 of my pages every month. In that section I wrote an article about Laptop computers, and from the day I wrote it it has always been in the top 2 of all the pages. It now is by far the most popular article that I have ever written. But there is an article I just wrote yesterday, about StoresOnline, that had the LARGEST first day viewing of anything I ever wrote, it had more views than my entire blog was getting last month. The subject is something that many people are asking about online.

I also did a few things differently, I blogged a bit more with 14 entries, my previous record was 12. I also added my blog to StumbleUpon, I did not put the links from my blog so I really only got a few hits from that. But the MAIN area where I got more hits was by finding great blogs that had content that was much like mine and if I found a place where I could push the conversation forward, almost half of my new visitors came from that. I also was added to the Planet section of PF Buzz along with many of the top Finance blogs. I also was able to get more hits by adding more tags to my articles, I have about 20% of the hits coming from this. I also added myself to twitter finally, I have been trying it out before I publicize it but you can check it out if you like. I also rewrote my personal webpage at JasonDragon.com.

My best blogging moment of the month was due to a fairly unpopular buy very important blog I wrote, about why our country is in trouble economically. I linked to the Perot Charts site and the right hand guy, Mike Poss, of Ross Perot noticed the link and came to my blog, read it and took the time to email me about it. I always liked Ross Perot so it made me feel good to get this note.

In other blogging news I am still in the race for the 7m7y contest. This is a contest that could be described as mentorship by a really great and successful guy. He is going to mentor only 7 people and he is willing to do it for 7 years. He will help them all become multimillionaires. He will document the process and write a book on it. In two weeks or so the final 7 will be selected, I really hope I am one.

Thank you to all my readers, and all the people that subscribe to this blog, if it was not for you I would not be doing this, and this process has really taught me a lot.

Thanks, Jason Dragon

Computer Entry: How to select a laptop.

This article is part of my Computer series, click here for the list of other entries.

Today there are so many features on laptops. For most businesses they simple need a good laptop that works for a long period of time and at a great low price. So when they look at laptops they see units that are almost exactly the same with huge price differences. Many upgrades and things in the laptop world simply are not logical and not needed. I will talk about many of them and tell you the secret to finding the best prices.

For example 250 GB hard drives are fairly new, and 320GB laptop hard drives are still very rare. The standard is a 160GB hard drive. The larger hard drive, can ad 100-200 dollars to the price of the laptop, for just a bit more space. The average business customer uses less than 40GB of space so it is crazy to pay extra for this space.

One thing that you should know about laptops is that all laptops sold are really only made by 7 companies, and all of these companies are Chinese. Every brand you see is really a laptop from one of these companies branded with the company logo. Dell uses 5 of these 7 companies. Because of this you will notice laptops from different brands that look exactly the same, you will also notice laptops from the same brands that look totally different. The only one of these makers that sells laptops direct is Acer, but their laptops are usually very low quality and it is usually better to pay a bit more for better quality.

In the world of computers the price of something is more about how many of them are being sold and NOT about how good or complex the item is. The main cost in any item is the designing of the item and the equipment to make the item. For a CPU for example it costs up to a billion dollars to design a new chip and may cost less than $10 to actually make the chip. So if you make 20 million of these chips the cost is $60 per chip, but if you make 500 million of them your cost is $11 per chip. You even get more savings that that when you build a lot of the same item. Because of this many newer, better and faster things are much cheaper. Many CPUs are much higher in level than what you are buying but the maker just takes the higher ones and disables some higher features and sells them as a lower unit because it is cheaper to do this than make the lower unit any longer. RAM is also the same way, DDR2 is much better and faster than DDR but because it is made in much larger amounts it is cheaper. This is called “Economy of Scale” and it hold true from everything from your TV to you Car.

In the world of laptops this idea works all over the place. In my opinion HP and Toshiba make great laptops and because they sell so many they are actually better and more updated than laptops made for the same price by other companies. Because Sony is so much more money they sell less, and have a higher cost, a bad situation to be in. By far most laptops that are sold have a 15.4 inch screen, so laptops with this size are also the lowest priced of all laptops. Touchpads are by far the most popular and their price has plummeted so they now have the lowest price and are now the only choice most companies offer. DVD burners do everything you would want an optical drive to do, and because they are built in such number now they are cheaper than all of the lower types to put in, thus every laptop you will see has a DVD burner, because it is cheaper and has a larger perceived value to the customer.

The choice of CPU, Hard Drive, Optical Drive and many of the other parts of a laptop, and computers in general are based on this idea. Now to get the best deal you need to look at many different laptops and notice the trends. A laptop that floods the market may be $100 less than the others and yet be much better. This is why people hire my company to find their next laptop, we know the trends and we have a very small markup. They can pay us and still end up with a faster and better laptop and pay LESS money than if they went to wherever they normally go for laptops.

What Exactly to look for in a business laptop.

When you look for your laptop simply compare the specs from one laptop to another, but it pays to have a huge source and look at large lists of laptops because you will often find a better deal on that list.

Balance: When you look for any computer look for balance, too much CPU power at the cost of everything else will result in a slower computer. Also think about what you want to use the laptop for. If you want to play high end games then insist on a laptop with a higher end video card, it may cost $100 or more extra but will do what you want. With computers running vista you really need at least 2GB of RAM to do things efficiently. If you find a great deal on a laptop with only 1GB, buy it then upgrade the RAM later, it may be much cheaper. Don’t spend the extra money getting a much larger hard drive, first 90% of all users never use the space, second if you need more space you can get an external hard drive later, but mostly that extra bit of space really costs a lot of money in most cases. Almost every laptop comes with Vista Home Premium. This is ok for about 90% of the people out there, but if you expect to join a domain be sure to get the business version. Also if you really need XP you are looking for a older out of production laptop, these would have been sold at a much higher price to the seller and they will be asking more for them, and you get less new features than a Vista laptop.

Battery Life: Also think about battery life, for the road warrior out there it is important to have that computer last a long time. So this is what you should look for, first you need to have a processor that can scale back and use less power when you don’t need full power, but can scale up as when you do need the power. The AMD Turion is the best AMD chip at this job, but Intel really dominates this concept with their Core 2 Duo and their entire Centrino line.  Companies have spent a lot of time and money focusing on power saving, so newer technology chips are much better at this than older ones.  For any laptop the MAIN use of power is for the screen, usually it is hard to find the power consumption of the screen, but again newer technology is better.  To get all this best technology be willing to pay for it.

Size: For many people, the size of the laptop is very important, they want a smaller, thinner and more portable laptop. Because of economy of scale there is a common size that most makers make, small enough to sell in huge number and large enough to not be too much money to make. When you want to go smaller you fight economy of scale and also the fact that smaller parts cost more. Because of this smaller, thinner laptops cost much more. Every now and then a company will make a really small laptop in a large quantity and if you find that you can get a great deal on a laptop just the way you want. Don’t get the smaller laptop unless you really have figured out how much you are really paying for that option.

Laptops also change really fast. Think about how they are made. The design of the laptop, and making the first one is over half the cost of the entire run. So companies will make the really hard analysis to decide how many of a laptop design to order from the places that make them. Once the production run is over that laptop is usually never made again. Because it takes so long to build a container of laptops, maybe 2 weeks, then 2 more weeks to ship them it these companies have to predict upfront how many may sell. Usually the production run is less than a few full shipping containers. So the company, lets use HP, designs a laptop, orders 10,000 of them. They are made and shipped, they arrive in the US and are quickly sent to wholesale warehouses and retail stores all over the US. Amazon buys some, Wal-Mart buys some. Before the container even lands in the US HP will try to have it all sold. If it is all sold they may order another production run of 10,000. Almost every week a new, better chipset or CPU or something comes out, and often for a better price. So the designers are always looking to go to the next thing. And that brand new, popular design is now put out of production, never to be made again. Most designs are already put out of production before the first customer even gets one. It is a harsh business with huge risks and huge investments. This is also why only a few companies are really players in this business.

Every now and then a design is produced in a larger amount than that which can be quickly sold off. When this happens they slash the price and dump it on the wholesale market. Sometimes they just sold this computer for $700 to Wal-Mart and have only 500 units left and the design is no longer made so they dump it for $500 or less. Most wholesale companies only mark up parts 10% or less because there is huge competition. Only computer companies can usually buy from these wholesale places, this is exactly what we do here at Emerald Computers. We look for the best of these wholesale deals, select them and we post an online flyer and send email updates to our customers. If you are not getting our email you really are missing some great deals.

So what would I do it I was going to buy a laptop today? You choice for a laptop or any computer is based on what you plan to use the computer for and your personal habits.  Here is the logic that I use, if you need help choosing a laptop then email me your phone number and I will call you and help you with the process.  Lets make it fair and give me a budget of under $1000.  First I would budget in a Microsoft Wireless Laser Optical Laptop Mouse.  They are really a must have for me for long usage, and at under $25 they are a bargain.  Next I would look for a Turion based laptop unless I could find a special on a Intel based one.  The Turion ones are usually at least $100 less for the same speed.  I almost never go a long time on battery power so for me personally batter life is not much of a concern.  What is a concern is a high resolution screen.  I would stick to a 15.4″ size simply because it is just the right size for me, 17″ it is a bit to big, but I try to get at least the 1440×900 resolution, maybe the 1680×1050 (WSXGA+).  I would not get the very common 1280×800 because for me and my eyes I can see much better than that and I need the space.  I don’t game on my laptop so an average video card is good for me.  And I have a few external hard drives, and most of my data will stay on my main computer so a 160GB drive is ok for me.  I like to multitask so I would need 2GB of RAM, I would not get more than 2GB because it takes extra power to run that extra ram, and I almost never go over 2GB, also I like to hibernate my computer and more RAM makes that much slower. When a new OS comes out I may upgrade the RAM.  I would still look at computers with 1GB because I know can upgrade the RAM very cheap on my own.  I do watch DVD movies and I like to have good sound so I would look for a computer with a nice DVD drive and good speakers.  I would also look at a picture of the laptop first, different makers have much different styles and I only like some of them.  I also like black better than silver, but that will not kill the deal.  I found a laptop just like this for only a bit over the budget.  You need to look for one based on your needs.

So when you are ready for your next laptop you now have much more information, you will probably have more than the employee selling the products. I wish you good luck, and if you ever need help feel free to email or call my company, we will be happy to help you.

CLICK HERE FOR THE UPDATE I WROTE ABOUT MONITORS

Awesome laptop deals, make your business more productive.

A computer is one of the most important tool that any small business has.  Many business are stuck with old computers, they simply don’t realize how much better new computers are.  For many people a laptop is the computer that best fits what they do.  I have found a few good deals on laptops and we are selling them.  If you need a laptop download this PDF file to read all about them and order.

Even if you don’t get one from me, if your computer is more than 3 years old please upgrade, you will be surprised how much better they are, how low priced they are and how much more efficient you will be.

What you need to get set up for a successful MLM business

This is the second article in my series on the MLM concept. Here is the first one with links to the rest.

I am going to define success as a business that is large enough to replace your entire normal income and also make a large positive change on your lifestyle. To be successful you first need to have a success mindset. You need to know how to make sales, how to make presentations and you need a team

For this blog I am going to assume that you have all of this in place and it is time to get started. Here is what else you need to get started quickly. These are the tools that I use.

Computer: You MLM is probably online, and you need to keep track of your customers and use your computer for marketing. (If you need a good deal on a computer go to Emerald Computers)
An office: You need a place where you go to work. This can be in your house or outside. It should be easy to bring potential customers there to talk with. I like to have a desktop as my main computer because you can use it longer with less fatigue. A laptop is also very useful.

Ok those are obvious, as should be having a good vehicle and an email account.

Now let me get a bit deeper, on what you need. I will assume that you are building an online business because most MLMs now are mostly online.

First you need your own domain name. You company has a web page and a domain name, but they control that. You need your own, something that is good for what you do, easy to spell, easy to remember. You then will get an email address on your domain. Never run a business using the email address from your ISP or one of those free sites like yahoo, msn or gmail, it really looks bad to many people. I use GoDaddy for my domains, it is cheap, had good support and works well.

Next you will want software to track your contacts. We use a program called ACT. With this program you enter in all the information about the people you are contacting. It them allows you to keep notes about them, update the info when you are on the phone, and most importantly it reminds you of the times you need to follow-up with these people. I also use a Palm Pilot to take all of this info and make it mobile, so that I can access and update it on the road.

Next you will want an auto-responder to manage your emails. What this does is track all of your contacts that wanted to be added to your various mailing lists. You also can preset automatic mailings, and send mass broadcasts to your prospects. There is much more you can do with it. I use a company called GetResponse and for the $150 a year I pay I get unlimited usage and it is well worth it.

Next you need your own website, you can make a simple site that you control. You should have a site for your prospects to visit. Another for your customers to visit and yet another for your team to visit. You need to learn about making a squeeze page, a way to extract data from your customer to feed to your auto-responder. I use a company called PrecisionWeb for my hosting. They offer much more than others for a great price. Check out the main Capital Active site for a great example of a basic page.

Next you should join networking websites like linkedin, Myspace, YouTube and make sites here for your business. You also can find many people who may be interested in your products.

Next it helps to have a blog, it is great way to establish yourself as an expert, as well as get a following of people finding out about you. It also really helps get you on top of the search engine results. I use wordpress because they are free, easy to use, fast and give you a ton links.

I found a lady who seems to have done everything PERFECT. I don’t know her, I just found her site from her blog today. She has her own great domain wealthcreatorsinc.com, and a nice blog. But you may not notice the two most important things she did, she made her page a squeeze page, where you must give her your information to go on. And second she DID NOT mention the name of her MLM this keeps you courious and willing to go on, and it lets her advertise without worrying about the rules of her company.

Next you need to create business cards with YOUR business name on it. I would suggest NOT to use business cards with the name of your MLM on it, they limit your advertising, and they are less flexible when you are marketing. Now carry many of these cards with you wherever you go. I hand out over 80 cards per week on average. More important than getting your card out is getting the cards of other people. I usually flip them over and write on the back details of what we talked about so I can remember.

I also often print up fliers with an upcoming event on it, as well as info about my website. Using this you can get a few more people a month to join your team.

You now need professional clothes. Depending on where you live you will have a different dress code. For Arizona pants and a nice button up shirt is good for most meetings. For the east coast you should wear a suit most of the time. No matter what, you need to have a suit for special events.

When I leave my house, I always have my Palm Pilot, my wallet with at least 20 business cards, my keys, my cell phone, an ink pen, a comb for my hair and usually I have my green laser pointer because it comes in handy all the time.

Well I hope this helps you be more successful.