With the 8088 and 8086 processor, Intel brought the world into a
new era, the era of the home computer.  Ever since then, the
computer has grown into the main staple of every day life.  For
the first time in history it seems, that Intel isn’t the only major
supplier of computer processors.  AMD has come out with the
Athlon processor about a year ago, and recently has come out with the
Duron processor, which will be the direct competitor to the Celeron
processor (notice the rhyming of the name.)  AMD is also in the planning
stages of a higher powered Athlon processor, currently code-named the
Thunderbird.

It’s nice to finally see that Intel
is no longer the reigning king of the personal computer market. 
Don’t think Intel is going down hill.  It will be almost
impossible to knock Intel out of business because of the company’s
strong holds in the Chipset and Networking market, where they are
still major competitors.  But, after the turbulent year we’ve had
in the home computing market, I can’t wait to see what’s in store for
the next year.

Total online money management
If you all don’t know, I do a lot of business on the well-known
Internet auction site called eBay.  Just recently, I purchased a
PCMCIA Network card, along with a Memory Card for a laptop I recently acquired. 
If any of you don’t know how payments are usually handled on eBay,
I’ll fill you in.

First, after you win an auction, the
seller of the item usually sends you an e-mail, telling you where to
send a money order of a certain amount, which covers the item you won,
and the shipping of that item.  You then must get a money order,
which costs as much as $1 in some places, for the correct amount, and
send it via USPS mail to the seller.  The seller then, upon receiving
the money order, ships the item to the buyer.  The whole process
takes about a week to a week and a half, depending on the time of
year.

X.com has come up with a
revolutionary way of changing all of that.  With a valid credit
card, preferably one that legally is yours, you can make online
payments to anyone else that is signed up for their free
service.  The service is called Paypal.  If the buyer and
the seller of an eBay auction are BOTH signed up with Paypal, the
auction transaction time is cut by a drastic margin.  Let me give
you a run down.

After you win an auction, the seller
sends you an e-mail, telling you where to send a money order, just as
above.  He/she will also tell you that he/she is signed up with
PayPal.  With that information (seller’s e-mail) you simply go to
paypal, and fill out a simple forum, including the seller’s e-mail,
amount of bid, shipping cost, item URL (internet address), item’s
name, and Item’s auction #.  The cost of the item and shipping is
then charged to your credit card, and given to the seller.  The
seller can then either have paypal send them a check for that money,
or have it directly deposited in his bank account.  The time
between the wining bid and the time you receive the item is about 3-5
days, depending on the shipping method.

With this service, online auctions
are made MUCH easier.  And to top it all off, when you sign up,
you get US$5 CASH!  It’s not $5 off your next transaction,
because there are no transaction fees!  This is $5 in cold, hard,
cash.  When I signed up, I had my $5 directly deposited in my
bank account.  If you use any online auction site, I suggest
signing up for PayPal.  It will make your auction life much
easier, whether your a bidder, or a seller.  Just follow this
link: