Raj Agrawal

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Tips To Consider Before Buying Used/ Second Hand Electronic Products

August 4, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

In the struggle to save money, many people choose to buy secondhand or used products. While certain items are fine to purchase used, such as cars or DVDs, there are others they may actually cause you to waste money in the future. Here is a buying guide that you should follow in order to fetch the best deals.

homer smart
It isn’t as hard as it may seem

So before you ever rush over to a secondhand electronics dealer selling items out of storage units, you should make yourself aware of the electronic items you should never buy used. Three of those items include:

  • Laptops

A refurbished laptop is different from a used laptop. A refurbished laptop has had new parts incorporated into it and they generally come with a warranty. A used laptop has all the old parts and systems and generally come without a warranty which is what makes them a poor purchase decision. While you may be able to turn on the laptop and skim around, you won’t be able to take it apart on the spot and see the condition of the laptop’s interior. Within a few days, the laptop could easily crash on you, leaving you out of a computer and a wasteful expense.

  • Plasma and High-Def TVs

Plasma and high-definition TVs have a much higher success rate than they did when they first entered the market, but that doesn’t mean that they are now great to buy used. You want the warranty and extended warranty that comes with your flatscreen TV as it protects you from any high repair costs. If the screen of your used TV was to go out, the cost of the repair would most likely be more than the TV is worth. However, if you buy your TV new and have the correct warranties, the cost of the TV repair would be free.

  • DVD Players

Purchasing used DVDs is a great idea; however, buying a used DVD player is generally a not wise move. The lasers tend to wear out and when you buy one used, you won’t have any idea how often it has been used. The cost to replace the lasers in DVD players is generally more expensive than the unit is worth, and anymore you can purchase a new one for a fairly reasonable price.

Purchasing new electronics is usually a high cost to anyone, and one that we often groan and grumble about. No one likes spending a grand or more on a TV or computer, but if you want an electronic that is both durable and long-lasting, then it is best to buy a new one.

Anymore, most electronic stores offer zero percent financing (available in many countries) on larger purchases allowing you to get the electronics you want at a price you can afford.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: laptop

Drippler Keeps You Updated With ‘Everything’ About Your Gadget

August 2, 2011 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

The final version of Drippler is out! It’s an all info-under-one-roof-portal for any gadget you wish to keep a track of. It’s a wonderful concept to have all updates at a single place and at the user’s convenience. In case you aren’t aware about Drippler, I recommend you to take your time and read through the following question-answer session we conducted, in a conversation with the co-founder and CEO of Drippler.

What is Drippler about?

Drippler is about providing consumers with the latest updates, news & rumors about their gadgets.

How is Drippler different from the existing array of well established Gadget information portals?

The main two differences are:

  • Personalization: Drippler provides updates that are relevant to your gadgets. Each and every users gets a personalized dashboard (My Drips) with the latest updates, news & rumors (Drips) relevant to his/her gadgets, and a weekly personalized email with a summary of the most important Drips. This saves the hassle of searching and browsing (on other sites you have to look for the news that interests you), and makes sure you are always up-to-date.
  • Curation: Drippler scans the web and brings the most relevant content on each model. That way, you get the full picture and don’t miss any critical news.

What features does it offer?

Drippler has a product page for each model with the latest Drips, as well as a page for all brands and categories. It allows registered users to choose the gadgets they have and ones they are interested in, and get a personalized dashboard (My Drips) with the latest Drips relevant to his/her gadgets, and a weekly personalized email with a summary of the most important Drips. (They can always update their gadget list).

Users can comment and discuss the Drips with the community of users of the gadgets they own, and also help the community by “Liking” Drips, flagging them as “Important”, “Duplicate” and so on, improving the sorting and screening of content on the site.

Users can add Drips to their “Favorites” and go back to those Drips whenever they want (useful for reading later, or saving useful manuals etc).

Drips can be sorted on “My Drips” or product pages chronologically (Latest) or according to popularity (Popular). 

Screenshot (Click on the image to view it’s full size)

What mobile platforms is the Drippler app available?

The site can be accessed from all smart phones. Drippler also has an Android app which keeps you updated on your Android – (support for many additional Android models coming soon)

Who is the team behind Drippler?

We are a team of gadget enthusiasts. After missing out on many important firmware updates, cool apps, tech issues and other important content about our gadgets, we decided to help others stay updated on their gadgets, and created Drippler.

When was the website originally founded?

Our limited Alpha site was launched on March 2010. Sign-up and the personalized features were officially launched in January 2011.

What are the future plans for Drippler? What can the users/ fans expect?

We plan to add more community features to leverage the user community around each gadget and allow people to share content (tips & tricks, videos and so on). We plan to support additional gadget categories (cameras, GPS, laptops, video games and more)

Filed Under: Consumer Technology Tagged With: web

Visual Studio 2012 To Feed A Lazy Programmer In You? (Spoof)

July 26, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 5 Comments

Visual Studio 2012 – Microsoft is all set to release the next increment of its popular development environment. Visual Studio 2010 has made and continues to make a huge impact on the IDE market. The new iteration seems more titled towards convenience, rather too much. But eh, it’s not bad all the way though!

(Spoof)

With so much for me to yet discover and learn about the Visual Studio 2012, i’m excited to discuss about its next version and all it’s  offering to the development community. Here are some of the few fascinating features that I have discovered so far.

  • Resize the code window:

This is a feature that you can use while writing your code. You can maximize the code window by selecting it, thus hiding your solution explorer and the output window.

  • Edit your code during execution:

This was possible before way back in the 1990’s in Visual Basic 6, but now you can do this in Visual Studio 2012. You can pause your code during execution, modify it and then the compiler handles the rest for you.

  • Google your errors:

A real handy feature for all developers, for all the obvious reasons.

  • Automated addition of semi-colons:

Will probably help reduce the number of silly mistakes while programming. Useful to compensate the programmer’s forgetfulness, when it comes to adding semi colons at the end of statements. There are potential rumours that the compiler may also add closing brackets and braces. Damn you Microsoft  for making the programmer’s work more convenient and lazy!

  • Copy-Pasting Codes:

A widely embraced feature by most lazy programmers and students. Copying and pasting code picked up from the internet will just become more convenient. Visual studio will now apply its own changes to the copied code and redevelop it for you so that it makes some sense.

  • Evil Code Monkey:
Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio 2012 IntelliSense

For all those who copy and paste code directly without even thinking for a second now have an evil monkey by their side. The hottest add-on to feature in the Visual Studio 2012, is the ‘IntelliSense’ feature. It is points out at the part of the code that has to be written the correct way and ask you to Google it on how to do it.

  • Have your code translated now:

Be it VB, C# or F#, while viewing your code, you can have it translated to any of these languages you wish to view your code in.

  • Add Reference Dialog:

A better “Add Reference” dialog that provides a blend of speed and flexibility as demanded by people earlier.

I hope you had a good laugh out of this brilliant skit for Visual Studio 2012, originally by and all credits to the creator – Ian Quigley.

Filed Under: Software Tagged With: Fun, microsoft

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