Notes on tech

I went to the Zhongguancun marketplace yesterday. For people from the US, you can think of it as a place like Frys but 10 times bigger. I am not kidding. It is so big, it makes Frys looks like a mom-n-pop store. There are 4 buildings, each having multiple floors housing many smaller shops. Each shop has its own speciality. Some sell printers, some sell laptops, some sell motherboards etc.

So yesterday, I went there with a colleague. I bought two USB flash drives, two transflash SD cards. They did have the Sandisk logos and packaging, but I couldnt make out whether they were original or not. It even had a 3-D hologram and a warranty mention on the cover. But who knows, if its a fake. This is China afterall.

I also bought a Dell laptop from there. Now as you know Dell doesnt sell stuff via shops. They only sell online. So the modus operandi for the Zhongguancun guys is to order various configurations from Dell at bulk rates and then sell them out via retail to people like me. The prices were pretty cheap. Cheap compared to Dell's China website.

We had to bargain for the price and ended up getting a good deal in the end. The quoted rate was around RMB 13000, I ended up paying RMB 10600. Here are the laptop specs:

1.73 Centrino
1 GB RAM
60 GB Hard disk
14.1 XGA
64 MB ATI Graphics card
Bluetooth (USB dongle)


(oh btw, they were playing hindi songs in the shop. my colleague told me that hindi songs are very popular here.)