Chris Dodge’s Prague to Budapest Travelogue

Son Chris just returned from the weekend in Budapest and managed to crank out 5,000 words in two and half hours about the his experiences there and in Prague where he is studying for the winter/spring term. That’s four hours if you include linking to three facebook photo albums (I included two of the things but not all….). The link to the page is  above: it was simply too long to include as regular post. Here’s the full link:

http://johndodge.wordpress.com/chris-dodges-prague-and-budapest-adventure/

His is a fascinating read and will convey Chris’ deep interest in Eastern European history and culture. As my wife said, reading this is like being there.

Am I bragging? Of course! I’m a proud parent. For those of you who don’t know Chris, he is a junior at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He is a wonderfully observant traveler with great range when he writes…his last long email chronicled trip Prague, his arrival and his 21st birthday on Jan. 27 (he celebrated his 18th in Germany). I guess it’s a college ritual that you consume 21 drinks of such a significant birthday. Chris only made it to 17….enjoy!

Dell (sorta limited) Netbook for $199

Two days ago, I said netbook prices were falling. Now, they’re plummeting. Dell put out a promotion today – I get one just about every day – that it Mini 9n is $199. That’s not quite half of where it started. But Dell may be trying to unload the 9n because it only has 512M of memory and a mere 4G of storage – not enough to even to host XP. It comes with Linux which severely restricts the market for it.

Dell has also dropped prices on its notebooks and floortops (who puts them on desks anymore?). An Inspiron 530 with Cor 2 Duo Processor, 2G or 3G of RAM and a 320G or 500G hard drive goes for $299. I gave the two drive and memory capacities because Dell at the top of the ad seems to say the higher capacities for $299. Below that, it looks like the lower specs.