Microsoft Surface, Lindsay Lohan, and Broken Laptops

Here are my financial and non-financial thoughts of the week:

• Have you seen the coffee table by Microsoft? It’s called the Microsoft Surface (Flash heavy official site, text heavy news story) and it knocked my socks off in a demo the other day on CNBC. It’s a touch-sensitive flat-screen TV that’s also a table. It displays pictures that can be manipulated with hand gestures (like Minority Report). For instance, it can show a pond and a touch of the glass/water, makes it appear to ripple. You can draw on it grab photos and resize them and more. I still want two features though: 1) lift-top to turn into a quick dinner table, and 2) I want to pull a part of it towards me to use as a computer like the laptop that I keep on my coach today. At $10,000, I won’t be buying one for probably 8-10 years as prices come down. I think I’ll rename my savings account for the Sony Aibo I wanted – since Sony discontinued the Aibo.
• I think Lindsay Lohan’s DUI/DWI has been covered pretty much everywhere at this point. Someone tried to cash in by selling parts of Lindsay’s car on Ebay. It reminds me of the “do something crazy” step in my 5 Paths to a Million Dollars. A local radio station noted that an auction for concert tickets – with a meet and greet of the artist – all for charity – had only reached $600. They were less than happy that the public was willing to pay more for pieces of plastic from Lindsay’s car accident. I didn’t catch who the artist was, but they definitely had a point.
• My wife-to-be had a problem with her laptop earlier this week. The motherboard was fried. She went to Best Buy to cash in on the warranty to get it repaired/replaced. Since she’s traveling for the rest of this week, they recommended that she wait until she gets back home. They offered to transfer the data from the hard drive to DVDs for $150. In a panic, she opted for it, but called me in time that I could remind her that we have back-up of what we needed thanks to FolderShare. It’s a great piece of technology, I highly recommend it. This is the second time she’ll have cashed in on the warranty in a year. It may be been covered by the manufacturer’s warranty, but I tend to doubt it since they are generally restrictive. For some products that are prone to damage, I believe extended warranties can be a good deal.