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Today, I went to Staples to check out some stuff. Right at the entrance, they have put large ASUS banners. I was surprised and rushed into the store to see what ASUS products they are selling. I saw that they have the ASUS F8SN-X1, M51SN-X1, as well as the Eee PC 4G version available for display.

The F8SN-X1is a 14″ laptop with 3GB of RAM, 320GB of hard drive, running with Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 CPU. It is selling for $1079 at Staples. The M51SN-X1 has a very similar specification as F8SN-X1, it’s just that it is 15″ wide screen and selling for $1097. The Eee PC is selling at the stand price at $399.

Marketing Strategy

With Staples selling ASUS branded laptops, I can see that ASUS is really pushing its brand to fight for the market share against other big brands such as HP, Dell and Acer. The prices of the systems above are very competitive. When I was having my own computer retail business, ASUS has been always the most aggressive company to promote their products. Every month, we received their promotional materials such as catalogues, banners, stickers, display boxes,and so on. From time to time, their sales representative would come to our store to explain their newest products and help us in promoting ASUS products. No other companies have done such marketing strategy with us.

I still remember over a year ago that ASUS was talking with Gigabyte about the possibility of a merge. The outcome of that would be the lost of the ASUS brand. However, it now doesn’t seem that ASUS is thinking merging again.

Why ASUS?

Why do I like ASUS so much? You may want to check out my reasons here. Another reason I want to add is that ASUS is now providing one-year accidental damage warranty. So if you have spilled your coffee on your ASUS laptop, or dropped it on the ground, ASUS will replace a new one for you.

More ASUS

I can foresee that ASUS will be a major laptop brand in the next couple years. We maybe able to see more ASUS branded products selling in large electronic stores in Canada such as Staples and Futureshop. Another possibility is that we may have an ASUS store in the near future, just like the Sony store.

Do you have your own business? What do you do if your business partner is not putting in as much effort as you? What makes you to yell at your partner? The following are some reasons why I can no longer partner up with a person in a business.

1. Lazy - If you are a lazy person, then you should not start your own business. For a business, laziness means failure, loss, bankrupt, closing up, etc. You will never succeed in a business if you are lazy and not willing to work overtime.
2. Disorganize - To start your own business, you must be very organized because when starting up, there’s only you and your partners doing all the work. Most of the time there are not enough man power. If you are not organized, then very likely you will miss a lot of tasks and getting blamed.
3. Not Showing Up - Do not think that since your are one of the bosses, you can then not show up to work without notice. If you are really not able to show up at work because you need to meet with clients or have lunch with them, then you should inform your partners about these events.
4. Ideas Without Action - No matter how many ideas you have, if you are not putting them into action, then there’s no point to bring them up in meetings just to impress your partners. It will just make you look worse.
5. Over Exaggerate Your Words - Sometimes, it is necessary to exaggerate your words in order to overcome the customers. But if you over exaggerate or if you are doing it every time you talk, then it is going to hurt your business because the customers will soon realize the inaccuracy. Customers are not stupid. Stick to the truth!
6. Not Living Up to Your Words - If you said you would do something, then you better do it. If you don’t think you can complete it, then at least you should give it a try. You can always learn something from the experience.
7. Cheating On Customers - Don’t cheat! If you charged your customer more than what the amount should be, then you better refund it or give your customer a discount on his next purchase. It will hurt your company’s reputation if the customer found out that you cheated.

These are some of my reasons why I don’t like my business partner if he is such a person. To be honest, it is fine to me if you are my friend with these characteristics. However, for a business partner, these characteristics are not acceptable. If you have talked to your partner about the problems listed above and he just give you a bunch of excuses in response, then it is time to leave, either you or your partner.

What are your reasons? (or excuses?)

I am using Telus’ High Speed ADSL Internet at home but it has been down for 6 days now. Therefore, I am not able to write my blog and setup another website as I planned. This down time is unacceptable. My internet plan included 5 hours of dial up connection but this is absolutely not enough for 6 days (and maybe more) of down time. I am now only using my spare time at work to blog about this matter.

No Excuse

I called Telus’ technical support and they told me that there is an outage in my area. They said there is something broken and they had once sent a technician to fix it but not successful. They needed to send a technician down to fix it again but there is no estimated time of when it will be fixed. Why didn’t they test it throughly after the first attempt? As a computer technician myself, I always think testing is one of the most important stages because it allows you to find out what has really been changed and fixed. Testing allows you to find out what you didn’t plan for.

More Spare Time

So without internet at home, I now have more time to play games on my PC and XBox 360. I am currently playing The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion on my PC (yea, its getting old but I don’t think I can finish the game) and NHL 08 on my XBox 360. I was able to “fix” my NHL 08 disc so that the game does not freeze any more. If you want to know how I fixed it, please read here.

So how long is the longest internet outage for you? I am expecting for the worst case and may need to change ISP if necessary. Anyways, it’s time to get back to work.

I guess many of you have received a parking ticket sometime in you life penalizing you for exceeding the time limit. Have you wondered how they actually check which car has violated the rules? Do you really think they would actually write down your sign-in time, license plate number, and the spot number when you park your car?

What happened?

Two days ago, I parked my car in the parking lot at the shopping plaza where I go to work. During the day, I kept moving my car to different spots every 2 hours or so to avoid violating the 3 hours limit rule. At the end of the day, when I got back to my car, I realized a ticket was sticked on my windshield. It said I have violated the 3 hours limit. I was in shock.

The Evil Act

The next day, I saw a patrol in the parking lot holding a long stick and walking around the parking lot. I was curious about what he was doing so I observed him for a while. I finally found out how they check on the cars. On one end of the long stick, there was a chalk. The patrol was marking the tires of every car in the parking lot. Three hours later, the patrol came back and gave a violation ticket to those cars that had a chalk mark on their tire. It didn’t matter whether the car had left the parking lot during the 3 hours or moved to a different spot. The patrol would just think that your car stayed at the same spot for over 3 hours. This is outrageous! This is cheating!

So if someone wants to park in the same spot for more than 3 hours without getting penalized, he can simply erase the chalk mark on the tire before the patrol comes back. If I don’t like you, I can just mark on your tire and you will automatically get a ticket. The 3 hour limit is rubbish! For a shopping mall, this kind of patrolling will just force the shoppers away.

Thanks God

Fortunately, the mall management is willing to write off the ticket for me. But I still think the way the patrol uses to check on the cars is inappropriate and not following the procedures set out by his company. This patrol should be fired and money should be credited back to the innocents.

By the way, the evil patrol is patroller number 70 from the Imperial Parking Canada Corporation.

So are you having a hard time finding out which model of the peripheral being shown in the picture? Well, here is the answer - it is Logitech V500 notebook mouse! The red rectangle is the section I have shown in the trivia.

I have been using this mouse for my daily work for a couple years. This was my dream mouse when it first came out because of its stylish design. Its “scroll” is basically a flat panel design similar to a touch pad. You can scroll up, down, left and right with it. It’s on/off state is determined by expanding and contracting its base. The receiver can be stored inside the base of the mouse so you don’t need to carry them separately. This model also came with a bag to protect it from scratch when you carry it around. The only problem I have with this mouse is that because it was an older product, its optical is not sensitive enough on some smoother surfaces.

Since nobody answered the trivia correctly, I am saving the Thermaltake iXoft notebook cooling pad for the next contest.