5 budget laptops for college students: We name the best

If you are serious about buying a new laptop, this is an excellent article. This is from PCWorld.com.

"So you’re heading back to school and you need a new laptop—but you didn’t manage your finances over the summer. Your bank account is nearly tapped out, and you still need to buy text books and lay in enough ramen noodles to last through the winter.

Yeah, we’ve all been there. Fortunately, Moore’s Law is still in play, so today’s budget notebook is yesterday’s workhorse. Pretty much any modern laptop can handle the gamut of productivity chores—word processing, number crunching, email, and the like—but all of the machines in this roundup can also tackle media editing and encoding sessions, and deliver respectable entertainment experiences.

To strike the best balance between performance and affordability, I gathered the top five notebooks I could find for $650 or less. Benchmark busters they’re not, but they aren’t budget busters, either."

Check out the whole detailed article here

Google Maps adding real-time traffic updates

One more reason I need a smartphone!

From USA Today:

"The first benefits of Google's $1 billion acquisition of map software service Waze will appear today.
Real-time traffic reports from Waze app users will now appear on the Google Maps app for Apple iOS and Android, says a blog post from Google.

The reports include accidents, road closures, construction and other incidents.

Meanwhile, Waze users will gain access to Google search and Street View. The updates to both services will be available today.

In June, Google scooped up the Israeli startup for $1 billion in an effort to bolster its already powerful Google Maps service. Social network Facebook had been rumored to consider an acquisition of Waze prior to the deal.

Waze is a social mapping app that provides turn-by-turn directions and real-time incident reports filed by its community. The app boasts about 30 million users."