Microsoft officially launches Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009 but starting today on Amazon.com you can pre-order it and have it arrive at your door on launch day. (Both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions are available)

This means no waiting in line at Best Buy or Future Shop for a program that will most likely be sold out on the 22nd anyway. (I’ve had it happen to me before and it sucks).

Amazon’s Release date delivery is not free (the cost is very minimal) unless you are an Amazon prime member. If you can wait a few days and don’t have a major retailer near by I’d suggest using the free super saver shipping option.

As far as the program itself goes, there is way too much info for me to go into detail here. These are just 3 of the new features included with Windows 7:

Windows 7 lets you peek behind open windows to get a quick look at your desktop. Click to enlarge.

Instantly locate and open virtually any file on your PC right from the Start menu with Windows Search. Click to enlarge.

Jump Lists
Open files you use regularly in just two clicks with Jump Lists on the improved taskbar.

Snap
Windows 7 has simple new ways to manage open windows. For example, with Snap you can arrange two windows side-by-side just by dragging them to opposite sides of your screen.

Aero® Peek
Windows 7 lets you peek behind open windows to get a quick look at your desktop.

You can read about all the new features of Windows 7 including screen shots at Windows 7 Home Edition

Let’s face it the SD cards that come with digital cameras these days are laughable at best. Most are 16 or 32mb and can hold 10 or 15 pictures at most. Video? forget about it. You’ll get a few seconds, maybe a couple minutes using the right settings.

It’s obviously a marketing tactic designed to make you go out and purchase a new SD card. One that can hold a ton of pictures and video. Until recently these SD cards were very expensive. A typical 1GB card would cost you $50 or more in some cases. I know as I bought a 2GB card for $60 when they first came out.

Now you can get an 8Gb card for under $20 on sale at Amazon
. You save 50% off the regular price.

This is no piece of crap SD carp either. Transcend is a reputable manufacture in the memory market and their quality speaks for it’s self. I’m no the only one that thinks so either. Check out just one of more than 900 reviews for this exact 8gb SD card.

“I recently bought this 8GB SDHC card for my Canon SD1000 camera. The card works very well and I’ve had no problems with it so far. If you’re in the market for an affordable high quality SDHC card, this may be the one for you” - D. Truong

This gets a 4.5 star rating, they don’t get much more reliable than that. Check out the rest of the reviews here

8gb-sd-card

This is an interesting topic, here in Canada a group on 13 office workers have just won the second largest jackpot in Canadian history. That was enough to start up our own lottery pool again and with that came the discussion of lump sum lottery winnings. What are the options and is it really worth it to take the lump sum over the structured yearly payout.

I was surprised to learn that in the US some states don’t offer lump sum payouts on lottery winnings rather opting to go with a large one time payout. I guess it comes as no surprise that this opened the door for investment companies to come up with their own programs for capitalizing on lump sum lottery winnings and taking a chunk of the cash as profit.

With in our groups discussion we had a few questions about how the lump sum payouts actually work. I thought that I’d do a little research and find the answers myself. Below are the answers to our 5 questions about lump sum lottery winnings.

1. How much of the money do we get to keep, assuming a $1,000,000 winning?

Answer: I went online to get a quote from one of these investment companies and got a response back in 5 minutes, they really wanted my money. After a few questions they came back with the quote of roughly a 20% fee. That seems a bit high but I guess it is reasonable if they are forking out $800,000 cash. This is negotiable though as the lottery winners we are in control, there are many companies that what this kind of business.

2. Do we have to sell the whole amount all at once?

Answer: No, we can split up the lottery winnings payouts however we like. So we could sell 50% of the annual payments and still receive a large sum of the lottery winnings plus get monthly payments. The payment splits are really up to you and the investment people they seem to be pretty flexible.

3. What kind of fees hidden or otherwise are we going to have to pay?

Answer: Apparently none. The lender is responsible for dealing with the court fees and paperwork nothing else out of pocket for us. Sweet.

4. Can’t we just go to the bank and sell it to them?

Answer: Nope. They don’t do structured settlement payments. At least not at my bank, and my bank rep said most other banks won’t either as it is not a simple transaction. She also recommended that we get our own lawyer to go over the paperwork before signing anything. Smart lady, that’s why my money is with you

5. What lottery#’s are we going to play to win all this money?

Answer: Quick picks, keeping track of everyones personal picks is a pain and so many people use the same low numbers (birthdays, anniversaries etc…) that you end up with a ton of duplicate numbers. Save your birthdays for your own personal tickets and keep them out of the group numbers.

There you have if folks, the low down on lump sum lottery winnings. I seriously hope you have to reference this info once you win the lottery, just not on the same draw as me