Au Revoir HD DVD

Toshiba has finally waved the white flag officially announcing it will cease production of HD DVD players and recorders. The decision comes amidst weeks of speculation that the HD DVD format was doomed as major players including the movie studios, retailers and rental outfits chose to go strictly Blu-ray. So there you have it, go buy yourself a Blu-ray disc player, the format war is officially over. Or is it?

DVD is and will continue to be the market leader in video disc storage mainly because everyone has a DVD player. It's also less expensive than Blu-ray. Entry level Blu-ray players are still in the $250 range and even the cheapest Blue-ray movies will run you $15 a pop. For a mere $12 more you can buy an inexpensive DVD player with progressive scan and 5.1 digital audio decoding. So yeah DVD may not have the discreet 7.1 audio or 1080p resolution of Blu-ray, but how many people really know what that means much less use it?

Conceivably it could take Blu-ray a few years to turn the corner and surpass DVD's penetration levels (remember how long it took retailers to stop carrying VHS?) and by that time we'll be buying movies the same way we buy our music, through digital distributors. In the end, the true winner of the format war will be the one medium that has withstood the test of time; the hard drive.

Dude, I'm Not Getting A Dell?

I purchased my current desktop computer from Dell. I thought I got a pretty good deal with the $150 mail in rebate, DVD Burner upgrade and upgrades to the RAM and hard drive. This time around I tried a different approach. Instead of ordering online I decided to make some phone calls and, to my surprise, I won't be getting a Dell after all. Not considering the dinosaurs the likes of the TRS-80 and Apple IIC, I'll be going back to my PC roots and getting a Gateway. So how much did I save?

Running some numbers by ordering over the phone, I saved about $700 from Gateway. By comparison if I ordered the same Duo-Core laptop models from Dell or Apple it would have cost me $800 and $1000 more, respectively. So how much did I pay? I got a top of the line Duo-Core for a bottom line of $1600. This includes all tax and delivery charges as well as upgrades to the hard drive, video card, optical drive, RAM, processor and screen. So what did I do that go me such a deal? I told them I was going to buy a laptop in the next 24 hours and if they gave me the best deal I would do business with them. I made a few calls and played their sales game telling them I'd call them back and I'd have to crunch some numbers. In the end I'd like to think I beat the salesman at his own game. Either way, I'm getting a Gateway; moo!