Monday, March 22, 2004

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Some Good Rebate Experiences--At Best Buy, not CompUSA A like-minded, except more so, comment on my recent post accusing CompUSA of rebate thievery. I am sympathetic to this point of view, and held it myself for years. I never fooled around with $1, $2 or $3 rebates on consumer products ("soak the label in warm water..."). I transferred this attitude to consumer electronics. But eventually I determined the savings are just too big to ignore. I've been on a huge (for me) consumer electronics buying binge, and virtually everything I have purchased from a bricks and mortar store has included at least one, often two, rebates. I've had pretty good experiences with rebates, mostly on electronics. The majority of those have been from Best Buy, where I have never had a problem. I did have to hold my breath this Thanksgiving, when I bought a new PC for an astounding $200, after the $250 in rebates, and a 14" flat panel for $100, after $150 in rebates, but I got them just fine. (The really great thing about Best Buy is that they give you Reward Zone points on the full price, not just the post-rebate amount; so the effective Reward Zone discount is increased even beyond the standard four percent.) I have often wondered what the detailed cost accounting for rebates looks like. Of course X% of people will never bother applying. Then of those who do apply, they will reject Y% of their rebates. Its that latter number I am particularly interested in. I also have to give credit to Intuit. My TurboTax rebates arrived in under two weeks! Far and away an all-time rebate record. 9:45:00 PM    comment []

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I would think the Photoshop would be a great match with the Tablet PC. Or at least with a tablet attached to a regular PC. It would be SO much easier to select free-form with a pen, instead of the mouse. 3:24:40 PM    comment []

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My kids, in birth order, are developing a taste for hot food. Stuff I wouldn't have touched at their age. (I would scream bloody murder at a heavily peppered steak!). 11:32:50 AM    comment []

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PDF Creation on the Cheap Occasionally I find it convenient to produce a PDF file. I did it twice this weekend, to combine multiple scanned images into a single file (I'm sure there are other ways to do this for image-only files, but this was convenient enought). Despite Adobe's marketing effort--"There's more to Acrobat than Reader"--I think few people even stop to consider that they could make their own PDF files. And if they did consider it, they would abandon it when they found out they had to pay $300 for the client software (or even the $10/month web-based subscription alternative). Fortunately, there is a GREAT alternative. PDF995 does the Acrobat basics, for the low, low cost of, well, $9.95. Better yet, it is nagware, so you can download a fully functional, non-time-limited copy for free, you just have to put up with all the pop-ups it generates (it's fat-client software, so your pop-up stopper won't stop these pop-ups). Either way--free or $9.95--it is a great deal, and a great addition to your utility toolkit. 9:11:31 AM    comment []

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Now that I finally have a scanner, I had three distinct occasions to use it in two days. First, I scanned a three-page story my daughter, Ainslee, had written and illustrated; for emailing to the grandparents. Then, I needed to make copies of our passports. Finally, at church, Ainslee's friend's mother mentioned that she had missed the book report handout, and they were about to leave for spring break, so could she stop by and borrow it to photocopy it. Instead, I scanned it and emailed it to her. 8:23:50 AM    comment []