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travel

Yapta now tracks discounts by frequent-flier miles

Travel planning service Yapta has a cool new feature for registered users that lets you track price drops or award seats based on your frequent-flier mileage. It'll keep an eye out for deals that match how many miles you have saved up, and give you an alert when they're up for grabs. When used properly this system could net you free or heavily discounted tickets alongside letting you know about potential price drops.

In addition to tracking single seats, you can have it track deals on several seats on the same flight. This works for any number of … Read more

Hitachi announces self-encrypting hard drive

If you are a fan of notebook hard drives with hardware-level encryption, apart from Seagate, you now can turn to Hitachi.

The company announced on Tuesday the third generation of its 2.5-inch Travelstar hard drive with built-in encryption, the Travelstar 5K500.B. This is a 5400rpm, SATA II hard drive that comes in capacities ranging from 120GB to 500GB, and is designed for notebook PCs, external storage, gaming consoles, as well as other mobile and enterprise applications.

Considering the wide range of implementation, the new hard drive comes in a few versions. The one for notebooks focuses on low … Read more

Get a Linux-powered HP Netbook for $299 shipped

In the market for a Netbook? Amazon has the baseline HP 2133 on sale for $299, down from $499. Right away that solves one of the HP's main problems: its high price. Best of all, this is a new unit--not a refurb--and you don't have to deal with any rebates.

The HP 2133 is the one Netbook I've actually reviewed, and I liked it well enough, except for two issues: price and performance. But my eval unit came with Windows Vista and a $799 price tag; the model Amazon is selling has SUSE Linux and costs $299. … Read more

Best laptops for writers

Last weekend I had a chance to speak at the annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers in Palo Alto, Calif., on the subject of laptops. And what many of the attendees wanted to know was whether a low-cost Netbook would be a reasonable purchase for someone whose occupation requires not only frequent travel and note-taking at meetings but also countless hours composing at the keyboard.

The short answer: not unless you have a desktop waiting for you at your home office. You'll find the longer answer, along with my recommended writer-friendly laptops, after the page break.… Read more

The madness of offering depressed astronauts a computerized shrink

Is being an astronaut really all that much fun?

You get otherworldly for a while, but, as some children on vacation will tell you, floating can get old very quickly.

While a few astronauts become heroes, some seem to come back to earth and never come back to earth. Their behavior becomes eccentric. Their utterances become bizarre. Some even claim they have seen aliens.

A question worth asking is whether many of these astronauts were already a bit weird before they floated off into space. And I'm not even including the ones who wear diapers whenever they slip into … Read more

Get an Acer Aspire One Netbook for $309, shipped

Though not quite as cheap as the Asus Eee PC from a couple weeks ago, the Acer Aspire One is one of the top-rated Netbooks (there's a contradiction in terms), and you can get it for just $309 shipped--no rebates required. Hey, they gotta do something to unload these lemons, right?

I kid, I kid. While I still don't see the appeal of a PC with a tiny screen, tiny keyboard, tiny amount of storage, mediocre battery life, and limited video-playback capabilities, at least the prices are starting to get more attractive.

This particular model comes with … Read more

Bluetooth mouse may have caused plane to fall out of the sky

If this doesn't scare you, your nerves are granite.

The other day over the Indian Ocean, the pilots of a Qantas Airbus totally lost control of the plane. It made a rapid ascent and then plunged 8,000 feet.

Now, investigators are saying that among the possible causes are a laptop with its wireless switched on, a Bluetooth mouse, or a video game.

Frankly, I wish someone would explain in very simple terms whether it really is possible to affect a plane's controls with your laptop, video game, or cell phone.

I know people who, during a flight, … Read more

Virgin turns down $1 million for galactic porn movie

These days it's hard for a porn producer to find new ways to go where no man (or woman or beast) has gone before.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that Virgin Galactic, the company that plans to fly passengers into orbit from late 2009, announced that it has received a $1 million offer to allow a porn movie to be shot on one of its spacecraft, an offer the company has declined.

As I understand it, the producers thought they would be able to find a completely different kind of action if the participants were under the influence of … Read more

Get a loaded Acer Aspire notebook for $399.99

In the market for a new notebook (by which I mean one that's actually new, not a refurb)? Best Buy has a pretty nicely equipped Acer Aspire for just $399.99 (plus sales tax in most states). Shipping will run you about $20, unless you live near a Best Buy store and can just pick it up.

The Aspire features a 2GHz dual-core Pentium processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a 15.6-inch wide-screen LCD. It also has a multiformat DVD burner, but I think its most impressive asset is 802.11n Wi-Fi (which also supports … Read more