Finally, we have the small players. Bought my set of 3rd-party inks for my still-incredibly reliable Brother DCP-115C printer (which I got for free with my laptop purchase). A full set of Brother ink (2 blacks + the 3 colors) will set you back close to $60 outside, but I got my 3rd party set for just $30 (1 black + 3 colors).

& that, which I didn’t get at the IT Show, but at my campus DURING the show period. It’s a portable emergency backup power source! Quite a mouthful, got this highest capacity one for $60, & well, compare its design to other, I say it’s well worth it. The actual thing is smaller than it looks. Blue indicator + iPod white casing, wat can I say?

Downside is 7hrs of input to give 2hrs of output, well, at least I dun have to bring all my individual charger for my iPod & mobile phone anywhere

Well, that’s the end of my IT Show ‘08 segment. Too bad the camera I wanted wasn’t there…

Next major item, finally a new battery for my 1-hour laptop, & an extended one at that! My laptop has a very special feature: it can only last 52min(excluding boot-up consumption) on a single charge. Pretty cool eh, that’s why you always see me typing very fast in school.

I understand battery are normally not covered under warranty for most electronic devices, so I actually called Samsung up & hope that I’m able to buy, NOT claim one. But apparently they did not stock this model as it’s probably too old(my laptop’s a Core Duo, not the newer Core 2 Duo, nor Penryn). So when I saw this extended battery for $148 (yup no discount ) I pounced on the chance to order it.

Expect my feedback in a week’s time when I collect it. It’s capacity is twice that of the standard battery, & 4 times as much as MY current standard battery, which has a 50% wear level already…

The 1st IT Show of year 2008 is finally over. Previously, I tot I wouldn’t be getting anything there, due to the “GST” effect. But having my existing portable HDD keep running outta space validates the purchase of a new, bigger, better, faster, meaner mobile storage. Anyway my current one is a miserable 60GB(usable: 55.8GB).

I was deciding between the Western Digital Passport (above) or the Buffalo MiniSation. As you can see, the Passport is very sleek, very black, very thin, in other words, very “me”. But I got the B.MiniStation in the end, why?

Well, 1st of all, I like underdogs: Buffalo was only famous in Singapore until like recently, & that was for its networking products. 2ndly, shock-resistant bumper casing surrounding the internal SATA HDD with minimal contact points; English: the real fragile HDD inside is “floating” in the midst of 4 struts on the inner side. 3rdly, I checked the very recent price lists for this series & even physically checked out the Challenger @ IMM; well, the 250GB version was selling for ~$279, & the IT Show have the 320GB like for, $249!!! Oh yah, did I mention: TurboUSB & the wrap-around cable?

Funny thing though: there were “used space” inside my unit already, & I couldn’t detect anything even though I have “show hidden files” activated…hmm…if you fellows know something I don’t, pls drop a comment. Hope it’s not bad sector. & oh yah, I need to format it into NTFS to support huge >4GB files.