Juan del Real

I stopped by MicroCenter to buy a secure digital (SD) memory card for a new digital camera I bought. I’ll blog about the new camera later. I had in mind of buying a SanDisk Ultra II 1GB card which are designed for digital cameras. As an employee was helping me to look for one, he pointed to an advertisement and told me how they also sell a brandless 1GB SD memory card with 60x speed for $15.99. A brandless 1GB USB flash drive was also available for $15.99. At these prices, I bought one of each. It turns out both are manufactured by IPSG Products, a company that makes the PowerSpec and WinBook brands of computers sold at MicroCenters. However, I still bought the SanDisk memory card for $52.99 to use in my camera. There’s a sense of trust knowing my photos are on a brand name card.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook which was affected by Dell’s recall of Sony-made batteries. I was impressed at how fast I received the replacement battery. I checked to see if my battery was afftected, which it was, and registered for a new battery on a Tuesday afternoon. I received the new battery the next day via DHL.

• Dell’s Battery Recall website

Yelp is a website where users rate and write reviews about local businesses and services. It also serves as a local guide. I’ve come across it every now and then over the last year and a half, but never really got into it until about two months ago. I was looking online for a local and reliable auto shop to take my wife’s car to. Somehow I ended up on Yelp. I looked up a few shops, read the reviews, and decided on one. We took the car to the shop we had read about. The service we received was just as we had read on Yelp - all positive.

I’ve since started using Yelp to review restaurants and other services. I also started to write reviews about restaurant I’ve been to. You can read my reviews at http://juandelreal.yelp.com