Don’t forget - this Wednesday June 18, 2008 is the last day for you to place a regular order with Dell for a computer to be pre-loaded with Windows XP Pro. After the 18th you’ll have to exercise your “downgrade rights” by purchasing a qualifying machine with a qualifying copy of Vista and specifying that you want to downgrade to XP (and in some instances pay a $20 - $50 fee). Confused? Keep reading for more information that explains the process.

If you remember, a week or so ago, I posted a huge rant on how Microsoft released buggy and problematic SP’s in both Vista SP1 and XP SP3.  In that post, I promisd to post an update when the Symantec Registry Cleaner was released.  Well, it has been released, and it does in fact, work.

I ran it on 2 of the 3 PC’s in my house that have been upgraded to SP3. It removed almost 5000 bad registry keys on my Gateway 700GR desktop, 0 on my daughter’s Dell Latitude C610; and I have yet to run it on my older Sony Digital Studio PC (don’t ever buy one of these… ICK!)

Anyway; the free registry cleaner can be found here.  The installation and execution instructions are pretty simple and easy to follow, so everyone should be ok in running it. If you have XP SP3 installed, I would download it, run it, and see if there are bad keys in your registry REGARDLESS if you’re experiencing problems or not.

If you own a Dell laptop and your warranty has expired you should take note of parts-people.com. I am working (and sometimes playing) on a Dell XPS M170. This beast has given me an outstanding performance so far until both system fans started to make a loud grinding noise. Over a few days, it got worse. Although you can give Dell a call and ask for parts, I decided to try parts-people. Their website is straight to the point with pictures of all the parts you might be looking for. It took me seconds to find what I needed for my specific model thanks to the well done categories. You click on the series and then the model for your laptop and you are taken to a parts list. You can then browse and look at the pictures of what you need. They provide very useful details to better identify what you need: a nice touch. In my case, I needed two system fans and they were clearly identified as the smaller and larger CPU fans with pictures.

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Photo Courtesy HP

I work for a college here in Ohio and I thought I should try and do some investigation and see if I can get a discount, if any, on the HP 2133 Mini-Note.

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…or is renewing a credit card now a 40+ minute phone sales pitch?

Maybe it’s just me.

Have any of you tried to activate a credit card sent to you in the mail recently?

I *just* got off the phone with American Express. They’re nice enough to provide automated activation via phone. Except the automated service never “works”. This system worked right up to the point it asked me for my Mom’s birthday. Once I punch it in — it’s off the to sales pitches.

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