2008 Camry Hybrid. Great mid size sedan. I test drove Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and Toyota Camry Hybrid and liked Camry the best and bought it. Did not want to try Nissan Altima as they sell it only in 8 states.

After having driven 2002 Honda Accord V6, I do miss the power of a powerful V6. But, you do have to give up some power to get great mileage that hybrids deliver. Camry hybrid does a decent job in terms of power. Great handling. Much smoother steering than old accord which was good but very taught.

I am yet to try out all the features but first impression after driving 60 miles is very positive. Very roomy car. Seats and leg space are really good. Controls are good. Basic sound system is good. Although miss the 6 CD player. You can upgrade to premium sound system, navigation etc. if you are willing to shell 3000 bucks or more.

Trunk space is small due to the space consumed by hybrid battery. Cloth seats are ok. You can buy leather package.

Certainly beats Prius and Civic in most categories except mileage. They may get 8-10 miles more per gallon. Prius is too small. Visibility is poor especially while backing up. Civic is ok but handling seemed too taught.

Hybrid system comes with 8 years or 100,000 miles warranty more than adequate. Even extended warranties do not cover more than that.

I was in the market for a hybrid cars only. I have hated paying anything more than $1.50 for a gallon of gas. Where are the times of 1998 when the lowest price I had paid was 89 cents a gallon. These days with my old car giving 18 miles a gallon in city, it used feel criminal to go for a drive. Hopefully, with promised 35 mpg of Camry, I hopefully won't feel that guilty.

Things I feel bad about is all the tax and other incentives for hybrid cars are gone. Tax benefits are gone. California benefits such as HOV lane access, free parking etc. are also gone. Too bad.

Price I paid was 22,900 after $500 rebate. No options at all. Basic options such power seats, cruise control are all standard. Would have like leather but it comes only when you upgrade to UT or UP packages which includes premium sound system, navigation, stability control etc.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 4:23 PM EST

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Car buying is one of the most stressful experiences. It does not have to be. But, for whatever reasons, it has become one. Why can't all dealers adopt a practice that Saturn adopted. No haggle price. If you sell the car at the sticker price to all customers, no body will haggle. Anyway, that is not the case. Hence,we have to haggle.

I recently bought a 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrid from Toyota Scion of Hollywood, California. It has been a good experience. They are still to install LoJack. I do not see anything going wrong there. Other than that open item, transaction was really smooth one.

I used 'get free quotes' feature from edmunds.com to invite quotes from a few dealers. This dealership was one of the dealerships which replied. No dealer replied with reasonable quotes. Most had no price quotes at all. All they did was to send one of their standard e-mails asking you to come and see the cars. One dealer cut and pasted MSRP. Why don't they understand that MSRP is available from many Internet sites and no customer is going to pay that price.

Randolph Villamil, the salesman at this dealership, was prompt and responsive. He sent first e-mail. Then called me. I set up the appointment. The salesman was there when I went to the dealership. He organized for the test drives of two cars I was interested in - Prius and Camry. It took a couple of e-mails from me to have him send me the proper quote. But, it was not too much of a time. May be he had to identify the car that he wanted to sell first, my color preferences etc.

I e-mailed him back with my offer which was a few hundred dollars less. Fair price calculated using valuable resources at www.carbuyingtips.com. He agreed to my offer and confirmed. I went to the dealership the same evening and finished the paperwork. The process took at most an hour.The finance person who did the paperwork was also quick and fast. He did offer usual stuff such as extended warranty, service plan etc. I had done my research and had found that most of such stuff is marked up quite a bit at dealerships. I declined all such extras and there was no pressure at all. Good thing.

Next day, I went and picked up my car. Randolph had readied the car promptly. He answered any questions I had. He told he would arrange for the LoJack guy to contact me to set up an appointment to install LoJack and that was it. One of the best car buying experiences. Best among the three experiences in last 10 years. Bargaining if any was a few e-mails.

So far positive experience with this dealership. Randolph, the salesman, seemed like a simple straight forward guy. No pressure tactics. Spends time to answer questions. Over all a nice guy.

I recommend this dealership and Randolph Villamil for buyers of Toyota in Los Angeles area.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:36 AM EST

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www.carbuyingtips.com is a very good resource if you are in the market to buy a new or used car.

Despite all the hype about Internet having made it easy to buy the car, auto dealers do not seem to have learnt one lesson. That is they make it so difficult to buy the car. This web site arms with you all the necessary information and puts you in the commanding position. With this info, you are sure to be confident and negotiate a great deal. Specially work out the true price of the car you have in mind using the spreadsheet template given. Using that you can work out some sample scenarios and develop a bargaining range. You will know your upper and lower bounds and will not become victim of the pressure sales tactics. Most infamous among them is to force you sell the car and options you do not need.

Fantastic resource. If you can spend time, read everything at the site and try to absorb as much information as possible. If not, at the least, work the spreadsheet out and have the prices ready.

Don't feel obligated to show your spreadsheet and calculations to the dealer while negotiating. They try to intimidate you and challenge you to come up with data for your calculations. Rebut saying that you are there to buy a car and not explain your position. Good dealers do not insist and bad ones are not the ones from whom you would want to buy the car anyway.

Watch out for one thing. The price you offer may be accepted by the dealer without anything. If this happens, do not blame yourself that you may have quoted a very high prices and became sucker. Chances are low if you have worked out the spreadsheet and checked your numbers carefully. Dealers when the hear the right price do not argue much. They may be surprised that you are offering a fair deal and do not want to drag it too long because they can be selling more cars during that time.

With the help from this site, I bought a new car (2008 Camry Hybrid) for a just few hundred dollars above the invoice price. Dealer made a fair profit. I do not mind that. I was happy because I did not have to haggle over the price. I e-mailed the dealer after I came back from the test drive. He gave his price. I offered my price from the spreadsheet. He replied confirming the price. End of the story.

Edmunds.com, Kelly blue book etc. do a good job of providing invoice price, destination charge etc. what they do not tell you is about a hidden incentive called 'factory hold back' which is similar to mail-in rebate that the dealers get back from the car manufacturers. Hence, their price will be lower than the invoice price quoted on such site. Destination charge, dealer fees etc. are better left as such as you are not going to beat dealers in such as they have to have some basis remain standard for customers. Your data points are invoice price, factory hold back and discretionary profit (3% to 5%) you would like to offer.

Happy car buying!!!

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:19 AM EST

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Buy.com - I have bought stuff from this Internet retailer for some time. From time to time, I come across good deals here. They offer free shipping on most stuff. Despite the fact they charge tax (due to location I suppose), prices are attractive many times. Recently I bought a 750 GB external hard drive from here. They had advertised that it carried a $40 mail-in rebate. Recently I received the rebate. But, rebate amount was for $30. I was surprised. May be I was wrong I thought and referred back to the paperwork I retain. No doubt. Sure it was for $40. Then began the process to recover $10. First contacted the manufacturer of the drive Cavalry Storage. They got back saying that the rebate was indeed for $30 and buy.com had made a mistake and I should take it up with them. I forwarded the entire e-mail thread to buy.com customer support and asked them how they were going to reimburse for me $10. After few days came a boiler plate reply. "Rebates are administered by the manufacturer. Please take it up with them." Hello!!! I had already done that. Did you even read the e-mail thread I forwarded to you? Sheesh! I hate to think that customer rep did not even read and understand my complaint. OK. It took another e-mail or two to explain further. No response for a while. Then I sent one final e-mail in which I clearly told buy.com that if I did not receive the missing $10 in two weeks, I would take it up with Better Business Bureau or whatever I felt appropriate. Hmmm... no response for another 10 days. Then comes a reply that they were going to reimburse me for that $10. I admit that it was a clerical mistake they did in advertising $30 rebate as $40. But, as a business, you will make it up to your customers as soon as they complain regarding your mistake. Why make them wait and threaten you with all this? Can't you save all this aggravation for yourself and the customer? It really baffles me that businesses like to bet that customer forget or do not follow up. Not with me you bad fellows. Anyway, I do want to commend whoever finally saw the usefulness of reimbursing me and making me a reasonably satisfied customer. They deserve kudos for that. So, lesson here is never give up. Takes time. Every time we give up with these business, it only makes them continue do same with other customers. More such experience, they get bolder. There are two more dead beat businesses that still owe me $10 each. Not much hopeful about them though. Let's see for some more time. They are going to have my complaints against them at BBB soon. Customers pay and expect to get the complete deal. It would be good if businesses take note of this and conduct their businesses properly.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:33 PM EDT

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Meritline.com - good e-retailer for electronic gadgets. Can find some good deals from time here. I recently found a free (after mail-in rebate) pen drive here. Found the deal from www.deals2buy.com. 1 GB Fugitsu pen drive for $13 (free after mail in rebate). They processed the order promptly. The drive worked fine. I filled mail-in rebate and received the promised rebate after around 10 weeks. I am glad about having received the rebate. E-mail customer service quality is questionable. I did not receive replies to 2-3 e-mail inquiries I sent regarding mail-in rebate. No toll free number. When I called to inquire about the mail-in rebate, got a person who promptly provided the status on the mail-in rebate. Mail-in rebate arrived within the time he said it would arrive. That was good. Meritline.com has my vote based on this experience. I hope they can be more prompt with e-mail inquiries.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:27 AM EDT

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This book is an interpretation of Bhagavad Gita, great Indian spiritual classic. This is the first volume of three volumes. This volume covers first 6 chapters of 18 chapters that are there in the Bhagavad Gita.

For many people, Bhagavad Gita may come across as a set of verses which do not make much sense. There is certainly a need for scholarly interpretation for common people like us to understand this classic. Many great scholars have attempted to interpret this classic with a sole view that the extraordinary wisdom hidden in Bhagavad Gita became available to common people. However, the need of the hour is to be able to interpret timeless wisdom in a way that is applicable to current life conditions. Bhagavad Gita which must have been first developed thousands of years ago if read in verbatim may not make much sense to people of today.

That's the void Sri Easwaran fills in this three volume commentary of Bhagavad Gita. Easwaran has very nicely developed these volumes. Having been trained in English and Sanskrit and more importantly having the benefit of spending his life time in the 20th century, he is the best position to help us understand and gain from the wisdom of Bhagavad Gita. It is one thing to be able to give a scholarly commentary. It is altogether a different thing to be able to describe the gist of Gita from self experience. Easwaran being one of the great spiritual master is able to drive home the point effectively because he is no mere a scholar full of intellectual hot air but someone who spent more than 50 plus years of his fruitful life practicing the spirituality.

If you have been wanting to know more about Bhagavad Gita, this is the set of books you want to try reading. The book is organized in short essays which take one verse at a time and Easwaran comments on each verse using day to day parables, anecdotes and how the particular verse applies to our lives today. What we can learn from it. What we can take out of that verse and apply to our lives today. No wonder this books has been considered one of the best books on Bhagavad Gita and has been translated to more than 20 languages.

The more information about Easwaran, his spiritual foundation and life can be found at www. easwaran.org.

This is a life changing book. Life changing for good. So, pick it up and immerse yourself in it and see your life change for good.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:33 PM EDT

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Recently I transited thru Kuala Lumpur airport enroute to Bangalore from Los Angeles. I liked the airport quite a lot for several reasons and thought write a few lines about Kuala Lumpur airport.

Singapore's Changi airport and Hon Kong airport were the best airports I had seen before I got to see Kuala Lumpur airport. I put KUL airport also in the same league. No doubt there. One of the finest airports I have seen anywhere. Beats lousy airports in LA and Boston (two airports in the US that I mostly use) hands down.

One of the best things I liked about KUL airport is that they have a nice hotel well within the airport premises. Since the hotel is right within the airport, you do not need to go thru customs etc. This way you do not have to worry about transit visas which are not available on arrival to Indian passport holders anyway. This hotel came as a real savior as I had close 10 hours of lay over for my flight to Bangalore from Kuala Lumpur.

You can make bookings at this hotel from KUL airport site. Search for KUL airport and under services you will find "Airside Hotel" and you can use web form to make a booking and they will confirm the booking within 24 hours. You can also book shower rooms if you do not need to rent a room if your lay over is not that long.

Rooms in Airside hotel are comparable to what we see in budget hotels like Holiday Inn or Comfort Inn etc. Rates are pretty good. They rent in hours. First minimum duration is 6 hours. Then they rent in every 2 hour increments and up to 10 hours at the max (I think). Rent for first 6 hours comes to about $35. It's a great deal. Shower facilities are much cheaper.

The hotel directly over looks good portion of the airport. The view of planes landing and taking off is great from many rooms. One can really relax gazing across the airport. Rooms in the hotel have basics like TV, Coffee Maker etc.

KUL airport also has very nice restaurants. All sorts of food are available at pretty reasonable fares. Duty free shopping also looked pretty attractive although I did not check for prices or shop anything out there.

One drawback, like in many other airports, is total absence of electric power outlets. There are hardly any. I do not really understand what is the deal with all these international airport. In this area US airports are pretty good. Lot of power outlets can be found in LA and Boston airports etc.

Airport and the hotel also have free Wi-fi. Great deal. In US most of the airports really suck with one having to buy services from T-Mobile etc. which is a $6 minimum from carriers like T-Mobile. It really beats what is stopping airlines from offering such simple service. Probably Las Vegas, NV and Manchester, NH are probably some of the very few airports in the US which provide free wireless Internet service.

I certainly recommend KUL to anyone traveling from the US west coast. It's great place and offers great deals.

I certainly recommend prior reservations as rooms tend to fill fast as most of the people going to Bangalore, Chennai etc. tend to take rooms here.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:41 AM EDT

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This time I would like to review and write about my impressions about online travel portal www.makemytrip.com which seems to specialize in good deals for people traveling from US to India.

Pros:

1) Great web site. Very user friendly. Easy to find information. Fast searches.

2) Multiple ways to contact sales rep. Call them or chat with them online. Response times are pretty fast. I preferred chat to make the actual booking as it is easier to provide all the information correctly and also helps to record your chat transcript on your computer.

3) Prices are indeed competitive. Found the best deal among other Internet portals such as www.kayak.com or www.orbitz.com etc.

4) Prompt delivery of tickets where applicable. Most of the tickets are e-tickets so there is nothing to receive. In my case, they had to send paper tickets which they did by FedEx.

5) Tickets seemed fine. Checked out confirmed and did not have any problems.

Cons:

1) At least, I did not get any confirmation e-mail after the tickets were mailed. Since they had said it would take anywhere up to 10 days to send the tickets, I did not worry much. But, when tickets did not come after 7-8 days, I called them to find that tickets were already mailed and received by somebody in my apartment office. This was certainly worrying as it was risky to a leave a package unclaimed for 3-4 days after it was received. It would have been ideal if they were to e-mail me with tracking number. After being used to such practices by other e-tailers, this was a rude shock. The customer support rep was helpful and gave me the tracking number and the name of the person who had signed for receipt. I hope this was an isolated incident and also a rare one. It was rare because somehow the notice FedEx leaves when they deliver the package to the rental office was also missing or lost after it was stuck on the mailbox.

2) Meal preference was not correctly recorded. I had not remembered to mention "Asian Vegetarian" and had just asked for "vegetarian". I expect a travel portal specializing in travel to India to take some initiative to ask and educate customers on different vegetarian options and not all vegetarian meals are created equal and many vegetarian meals contain white meat and fish. They did not do anything and merely recorded my preference although I had meant pure vegetarian meal. Malaysia Airlines on which I was booked was able to provide me with vegetarian meal although it was a bit of a scramble and frustrating to them as well.

Other than these minor inconveniences, it was a very smooth transaction and price was a great deal. Cheapest fare I got in 10 years.

Unless something goes wrong on the return, I am glad to give this business a solid thumbs up.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:45 AM EDT

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Flew in Kingfisher Airlines for the first time yesterday for home trip from Bangalore to Hubli.

Great airlines. Lived up to the hype created when it was launched. Provides nice service for the cost of discount airlines.

Check in was very efficient. In addition to counters at the airport, normally you may bump into hand-held gadget carrying assistant who can issue boarding card even before you get to the counter. Great time saver if you do not have anything to check in. Baggage screening which is the responsibility of respective airlines in India is managed very efficiently with a large crew of people who efficiently get you bag in and out fast.

Service and aircraft are really good. More or less on time although my flight was delayed by 15 mains. Baggage was delivered promptly at the destination. An assistant at Hubli even stopped by to make sure I got my baggage. May be because I was there longer than anyone as my bag was probably the first one to be checked in and it took long time to come up. That's impressive that they notice such small things and ask customers if they can help.

Food was good. Very nicely delivered. Some small stuff like pens etc. are given in a nice Kingfisher pouch. Personnel are dressed in very smart and attractive red and white outfit. That's is surely an eye catcher.

Overall a great experience for my first domestic flight using Kingfisher. Online booking was also very smooth from their web site.

Slightly pricier than Deccan Airlines which is truly a budget carrier. But, Deccan does not provide any food and probably allows only 15 kgs of check in. So, what you save probably goes away in buying the food or paying excess baggage if you are traveling from abroad with at least 44 kgs allowed by international carriers.

Fly the good times is their slogan. Lives up to that.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 7:52 PM EDT

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If you like to write in Indian languages, you may want to check out Quillpad.

You can write in your own language using English and the online software transliterates into your language in its original script. For every word you type using English, the software is smart enough to identify most of the variations. This way you do not waste much time in coming up with exact word by trial and error. This feature was missing from other software such as Baraha.

Once you are satisfied with what you see on their web site, cut and paste into any editor and you have the text in your own language. Use it in e-mails, blogs, documents etc.

The service is free.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:04 PM EDT

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Picsquare is a cool online photo printing service. Especially useful for overseas Indians.

It has nice integration with Flickr and other online photo sharing services. Of course, they also allow you to upload your photographs directly.

If you have pictures to sent to your relatives in India, you can do that from anywhere in the world. They will print your pictures and send them to the address you provide in India. They accept in both rupees and USD. Some days back they were having 5 cents per 4x6 pictures. Reduced from 9 cents. Great deal. Also search on the Google for Picsquare coupons and you will find a few and you can use the one which gives the most discount. Best I found was 'INDICAST' (see here) which allowed 10% whopping discount on the final price.

So, great service. Unless there is any problem with their shipping and delivery, I recommend this service very highly.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:24 PM EDT

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Picsquare is a cool online photo printing service. Especially useful for overseas Indians.

It has nice integration with Flickr and other online photo sharing services. Of course, they also allow you to upload your photographs directly.

If you have pictures to sent to your relatives in India, you can do that from anywhere in the world. They will print your pictures and send them to the address you provide in India. They accept in both rupees and USD. Some days back they were having 5 cents per 4x6 pictures. Reduced from 9 cents. Great deal. Also search on the Google for Picsquare coupons and you will find a few and you can use the one which gives the most discount. Best I found was 'INDICAST' (see here) which allowed 10% whopping discount on the final price.

So, great service. Unless there is any problem with their shipping and delivery, I recommend this service very highly.

[Update]

Delivery was so so. Processing got delayed almost by 2 weeks. I guess they got a huge response for their 15th August price cuts and could not process the overload. Anyway, they kept e-mailing about the delay and promptly informed when the order was shipped. Order was shipped using local courier agency which was delivered to my relative in a small town near Shimogga. That's good. I was told that they sent some free albums as well. That's nice. I think they send albums for every so many prints ordered.

Hopefully, they improve their order processing and delivery to provide more predictable time they can live up to.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:24 PM EDT

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"The Office" is a TV serial based on the serial of same name which was originally made in UK.

This is one of the best serials I have seen in a long time. Excellent comedy. It's in season 4 now and since season 1 it has only gotten better. It is really "funtastic".

Season 1 and 2 are available on DVD at Netflix among other places. Season 3 is available for download as torrents on may P2P sites. Keep in mind it's a huge download (~4 GB). Based on where you down load from , it may take from a few days to few weeks. But, it's worth it. Season 3 has some new twists, new characters and ends with an explosive episode.

5 stars for this pure fun TV serial.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:34 PM EDT

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When people were struggling to keep up with innovative late fee schemes of other video renting stores, Netflix came up with a refreshingly cool idea. Become a subscriber, we will send you the movie by mail, keep it as long as you want, send it back in reply paid envelope when done. What can be more simpler. Especially for organized people this even saves from impulsive decisions which normally result in regret from having watched stupid movies. Take your time, research movies, read reviews and then keep you queue of movies to be watched well stocked and Netflix keeps sending you the movies as you return the old ones.

I have been a subscriber of Netflix over 5 years now and can say only good things about it. Very prompt delivery. On 2-3 occasions, when movies got lost in the mail, they simply accommodated as part of doing businesses. Of course, they will take a note if too many movies start missing which should not be a concern to most.

Best thing about Netflix is their distribution logistics. They assign you the nearest distribution center so that you get the movies the day after in most of the cases if you mail in them today. This was missing from some other similar services I had tried. They would have one distribution center somewhere and all orders are fulfilled only from there.

Recently, Netflix has started 'Movies On Demand' service as well. They have started making some movies available online which you can watch right in your browser. It's very cool.18 hours per month of viewing time is included in the membership. That's a cool deal if you are ever without a movie.

Their web site is one of the most user friendly web sites I have come across. Simple but the best. For example,when you try to watch movies on line, they can tell you right away which movies from your queue are available for online viewing. Next example is their recommendations feature. If you diligently rate the movies you watch, the recommendation they come up with are amazing. Their intelligent systems start to know your tastes better and recommend good movies. It was due to this feature, I (many others too) got to see some excellent movies. I had not even heard of some such great movies.

For Indian movie buffs, over last 2-3 years, they have added an excellent collection movies in Hindi and other languages. New movies are added in 1-2 moths after release in most of the cases.

All in all a great service for movie lovers.

There was only one instance when I felt they had a shortcoming. I had accidentally mailed back one of the DVDs from my personal collection and they really could not help. When I contacted their customer service, right up front they apologized and said they just could not help in tracing and returning my personal DVD. I can understand that but it should have been one of the easiest services to implement. Just hold onto such DVDs and send it back. It's not that thousands and thousands of personal movies are returned to Netflix accidentally. It may a few per week. Is it that hard? Other than that, perfect service.

Funny trivia - if you think Internet has the highest bits/second of any transport medium. Think again, they ran a calculation and guess what USPS turned out have carried more bits in given time than Internet. Imagine how many movies (each at least a 1 gig) USPS delivers to millions of customers. With that, is it any wonder USPS is mightier than Internet. At least in that sense.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 9:12 PM EDT

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If you want to donate your old computer, you may want to consider - http://www.computerswithcauses.org/.

They seem to be quite good - at least they were very prompt with communication. You can claim tax deduction against the donation.

They will also reimburse you for shipping costs if you like. Heck, if you are donating, you probably want to cover anyway.

Do exercise usual due diligence to minimize your personal data remaining on the hard disk. As anyone with some computer knowledge know, mere deleting does not really delete the data. Same with uninstalling and re-installing the OS.

You can take following steps to minimize residual personal data before you get rid of your old computer.

1) Back up all that you want from your computer and transfer the data into some media (cd, external hd etc.)

2) Re-install the OS using original CD that came along with your PC. That will nuke your existing partition.

3) Download Eraser utility which really erases data by overwriting some other data over it. It's a cool free utility.

4) Run an eraser job to erase all unused data. That should ensure that only OS and related data remains.

5) At this time you can reasonably certain that most or all of your personal data is overwritten.

After this pack and ship the computer.

Your old computer may be used to teach computers to some third world kid, you get tax deduction and what more you want!

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:52 PM EDT

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http://www.ishopindian.com - great place to buy Indian groceries, food stuff and other Indian items online.

Great quality. Most of the food items are quite fresh (i.e. expiration is quite far into the future as opposed old stuff you find in some Desi stores). May be because they are a big establishment, fresh stuff seems to be there.

Prices - competitive. Orders more than $65 get free shipping. Great deal.

Dry fruits such as cashews, almonds, pista, raisins are excellent. MTR and other ready-to-eat stuff are good. Stuff is packed professionally which is evident when you receive the package. Orders are processed almost immediately.

If you hate to shop in stinking, crowded Desi groceries and are shopping from imperishable, this is a great site. If you have a great local Desi grocer, good for you.

Another thing is variety. Many local Desi shops do not stock all stuff. They only stock what moves and what does not move is normally past expiration.

Give it a try if you like.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:44 AM EDT

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Want to remove junk that accumulates in your PC over time? Want to optimize your PC? Then download CCleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com/ for free and see it for yourself.

This a registry cleaner, temp file cleaner, start-up manager etc. in one tool.

Run it from time to time and you will feel the difference how well your computer operates. Removing crud from your computer makes a big difference. Especially registry.

Big thanks to the writer of this software who has spent his resources in developing such a great utility and making it available free.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:29 PM EDT

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Looking for car tires? May be you want to checkout - Discount Tires

Has a great variety of tires - large number of brands, different price ranges, performance tires etc.

Great shopping experience - excellent web site with full online catalog. You can research tires from the comfort of your home, do price comparisons, read reviews, buy tires online, schedule an appointment at a store near you - all from the web site.

Nice credit facility - you may want to consider this as there is normally an attractive mail-in rebate if you use their credit card which is easy to apply and get approved either before hand or while at the store.

Quick turnaround - I was in and out within 45 minutes. Old tires removed, new tires mounted, balanced, paperwork complete. That is awesome.

Several locations - you should be able to find one within 25 miles from your home in the states they serve.

Excellent service - The sales guy was very helpful and professional. Helped to get the credit card number as mine was still being processed. He had forgotten to apply a discount. Realized only after returning. Sales guy Eric at Fullerton center was very courteous, fixed the error and mailed me the receipt in 2 days. Great service.

Comes with free tire rotation.

Place to check out for tires. There may be some shops who may be able to beat their deals on certain tires but variety is hard to find. The warranty you get on tires is good on any of their stores. That is a great advantage.

Highly recommended.

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:35 PM EDT

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I have found great deal on hotels and car rentals at hotwire.com enough number of times that I have no hesitation in recommending it as one of the best sites to hunt for great deals.

Only draw back, if you want to call it that way, is that you are not able to claim benefits such as frequent flier miles etc. for the bookings you make thru hotwire. This is because companies sell their seats / deals to hotwire.com at discounted rates and do not want to offer additional incentives to customers in the form of frequent flier miles for car rentals and hotel accommodations. Many times price difference is great enough to ignore a few reward miles and other forms of reward.

Web site is well designed. Reservations are a breeze. Check it out for yourself.

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:06 AM EDT

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If you have bought a new computer, following tips may be useful.

1) One of things we want to do is to transfer contents as easily as possible. Most effective way may be take the replica from your old computer and image your new computer exactly. You can use Norton Ghost or similar tool to do that. But, if you want to transfer contents on top of what already exists on your computer then one way to do is to transfer using something like PCLinq or even better use Easy transfer feature built into Vista. This is probably one of the bang-for-the-buck feature in Vista. But, keep in mind, regular cables which connect using USB does not work with easy transfer feature. There is a specialize cable from Belkin etc. which are meant for Vista's easy transfer. If you try to connect regular USB cable, Vista does not recognize it. That's not the point. You really do not need a special cable. Easy Transfer feature prefers that you buy the specialized cable from Belkin or similar company but not necessary. Just plug your old computer and new computer to any hub and you are ready to go. If you are transferring from XP to Vista, install Easy-Transfer available free from Microsoft on XP and you are good to go. If you are transferring from XP to XP, then you need to install easy-transfer on both machines. Easy-transfer is pretty smart. It asks you if it can override firewall settings and proceeds smoothly. Pretty fast too. It is not just transferring the contents. It also transfers all settings. Imagine installing all new programs and having to manually re-set all your preferences in Word, Excel etc. etc. In this case as long as you have installed programs on the target computer, settings are transferred nicely.

2) If you use Firefox browser then you want to use MozBackup utility. It's a freeware. Excellent utility. It transfers not only your bookmarks but also all passwords that you may have set up to log in to web site. One of the nicest features in Firefox is to store passwords and provide additional security using master password. It would be pain to reenter all those passwords. This tool does all that for you. Run it on old computer. It dumps all the info into a file. Transfer that file to the new computer. Run the same utility to import and you are back in business.Fantastic tool. Thanks to the developer who took pains to develop it and made it available free of cost.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:04 PM EDT

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