When will the Oktoberfest 2011 in Munich take place?

Saturday, September 17th, until Sunday, October 3th, 2011.

What are the opening hours?

Beer Serving Hours
Weekdays: 10am – 10:30pm
Saturdays, Sundays and holidays: 9am – 10:30pm

Daily Tent Closing Time: 11:30pm
The “Käfer Wiesn-Schänke” and the “Weinzelt” are open until 1am. Last call for alcohol: 12:15am.

Below are a few Oktoberfest Events.

Oktoberfest	Date	State	City	Location/Google Map
Denver's 40th Annual Oktoberfest 2011		Colorado	Denver	Larimer St, bet 20th & 23rd Streets
Oktoberfest Huntington Beach 2011		California	Huntington Beach	Old World Village
Oktoberfest at Alpine Village 2011		California	Torrance	Alpine Village - Torrance Blvd.
Big Bear Lake Oktoberfest 2011		California	Big Bear Lake	Convention Center at Big Bear Lake
Oktoberfest By the Bay 2011		California	San Francisco	Pier 48, San Francisco, CA
Lake Worth Oktoberfest 2011		Florida	Palm Beach	Pavilion, German American Club
Oktoberfest Zinzinnati 2011		Ohio	Cincinnati	5th Street, Between Race & Broadway
Tulsa Oktoberfest 2011		Oklahoma	Tulsa	River West Festival Park
Fredericksburg Oktoberfest 2011		Texas	Fredericksburg	Martkplatz, Central Fredericksburg
Oktoberfest 2011Leavenworth		Washington	Leavenworth	Bavarian Village
La Crosse Oktoberfest 2011		Wisconsin	La Crosse	North & Southside Festgrounds
Saulard Oktoberfest		Missouri	Soulard/St Louis	Lafayette Ave & S 9th St St Louis, MO 63104
Sandy Oktoberfest		Oregon	Sandy
Vail Oktoberfest		Colorado	Vail
Oktoberfest		Wisconsin	Glendale
Denver Kickers Oktoberfest		Colorado	Denver
Oktoberfest Chicago		Illinois	Chicago	South Lakeview Neighborhood
Mount Angel Oktoberfest		Oregon	Mt. Angel	5 N. Garfield St. Mt Angel OR 97362
Native Sons of the Golden West of Argonaut Parlor No. 8		California	Oroville	Lake Oroville Golf & Country Club
Addison Oktoberfest		Texas	Addison	4970 Addison Circle Drive, Addison, TX

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Nike Mercurial Vapor Superfly II Elite

If you have watched the  FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa you will have noticed the orange soccer cleats of the soccer superstars.

Christiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alexandre Pato- they are all wear them and function as moving billboards for the Nike advertising machine (And it seems to work). You think the “Nike Mercurial Vapor Superfly II Elite is the hip shoe you need to have.

Nike Limited Edition Mercurial Vapor Superfly II Elite FG Men's Soccer Cleat

But before you get too excited check out the price tag at the nike store: $400. Considering the technology that went into this shoe, the price can be justified: It comes with SpeedShot RS, a LCD display that shows  the speed, direction and distance of a shot.

Another highlight  is the weight, or the lack thereof. 13.5g, a new achievement of the nano technology “fleeton”, originally developed in the AppleLabs in Cupertino. The sharkBight (r) design makes the shoe aerodynamic and increases the running speed by up to 0.0001353%, which gives the player a never seen advantage.

Also check out this article on Yahoo: How Nike turned the World Cup purple and orange

There is even an article on Wikipedia about this shoe

Here is how it works: Sign up for an account at AccuLinQ. com, add a $ limit (for example $50) to your account and your are ready to go. The $ limit is just there to prevent abuse; should somebody get a hold of your access code (like your teenage daughter) you only lose $50.

At the end of the month you get charged a $1 monthly fee plus the calls you made, plus access fees.

In order to call somebody, just dial a 1-800 number from your home phone or cell phone, wait for the prompt, add the German phone number and you can talk to your friends and family.

The quality of the call is pretty decent, only in rare cases you get a busy signal (like on mother’s day). The normal rate is 3.9 cents per minute to a landline, to a cell phone it is  25 cent per minute.

You can select up to 3 numbers from which you are planning to call -> “Select Access”, which gives you the cheap rate of 3.9 cents. If you call from a phone that is not on the list the rate doubles to 7.9 cents (->Non-select access).

Here is a summary of the charges:

• $1 activation fee (one time only)
• $ 1 monthly fee ($ 2 if statement mailed) *No fee will be charged if zero usage for billing cycle
• 60 ¢ per call from a payphone (FCC mandated)
• Other Taxes
• TX Residents: Add applicable State taxes

The HP DV5-1235dx is an amazing laptop with plenty of power under the hood. The  Intel Core™2 Duo Processor T6400 delivers everything you need to watch or edit DVDs, or even play 3D games. The laptop is equipped with 4Gig of RAM and is upgradable to 8G, which I haven’t seen in a laptop in this price range ($729 at Best Buy). Update: Best Buy dropped the price to $649 and raised it to $699…and dropped it again to $649.

The keyboard is excellent, and the 15.4″ screen is acceptable. What I don’t like about the screen is the somewhat low resolution of 1280 x 800 – but standard for a laptop in that class. HP calls the screen high dev, but don’t expect a picture like on your 1080p HDTV. A 1440 x 900 resolution would make this laptop a rockstar.

Other great features are:

• HDMI port: To connect a HighDev Monitor or TV
• eSata port: This is a new standard that HP wants to push. eSATA can transfer data (i.e. from an external hard drive) up to 3 times faster than a USB2.0 port. eSATA competes with the Firewire. Read more about eSATA here.
• 3 USB ports (actually 4 ports, but the 4th is shared with the eSata port)
• Webcam: Video Size: 640 x 480. Not suitable for shooting Hollywood pictures, but better than nothing. By the way, to start the webcam, go to START>All Programs>HP>HP MediaSmart>HP MediaSmart Webcam.
• 320GB harddrive. Nice size, about 13GB are already gone for the recovery feature, and after MS Office you have abut 210GB left.
• The laptop comes with a tiny remote control (stored in the PCMCIA slot) that makes the laptop an Entertainment Notebook PC; nice to have but I am not sure if I will ever use it.

MISSING Features

• Firewire
• Wireless N
• Bluetooth. However, you can upgrade your computer to Bluetooth for about $19 with a USB Bluetooth adapter from Newegg.com or from Walmart.

Battery surprise

Before you buy this laptop, make sure to let the sales person at Best Buy show you the laptop with the battery inserted (Best Buy removes all batteries from the display). This monster of a battery might be the deal breaker: It lifts the computer about 1 inch in the back, and you really need to get used to it. I personally love it since it makes it easier to type, keeps the processor cool and lasts for abut 4.5 hours.  But there are plenty of reviewers at the Best Buy website that absolutely hate the battery!!!

Altec Lansing Speakers

The laptop features Altec Lansing stereo speakers with excellent sound quality; but in order to use the full potential of the speakers you first need to download the  IDT HD sound driver from the HP support site, (unfortunately  not preinstalled). Before I installed the driver the volume was so low that I thought my speakers a defective.

Here is the driver you need: IDT High-Definition Audio Codec driver

Microsoft Office 2007

I  noticed that Excel is pretty slow with extreme calculations like “goal seek”. I am not sure if this is due to the processor or Windows Vista, which generally is pretty slow compared to XP.

Windows Vista  64Bit Compatibility

The DV5-1235dx has Vista 64bit installed, which concerned me a bit because of possible compatibility issues with software I used on my XP desktop. So far I haven’t had any issues, everything runs smoothly: Office 2003 (version 11), Gimp 2.6, Inkscape 0.46, etc.

Conclusion:

Great looking budget laptop with a powerful processor and lots of features.  If you can get used to the huge battery, you will absolutely love it.

Links:

• CNET Review of the HP Pavilion DV5-1235dx
• HP Support: Downloads and Drivers
• Best Buy: Price and customer reviews

Windows Experience Index for the HP DV5-1235dx:

HP DV5 1235dx Specs

Features

The Gateway-Laptop (MD2614u) with AMD Turion X2 Dual Core is a  Laptop for people with a small budget: $549 at Best Buy. It has some features that not every Entry-Level laptop can offer: 15.6 “True 16:9″ (1366×768) format, which lets you watch movies without the black bars on the top/bottom of the screen. If you are planning on using this laptop as an entertainment device you will love this format, however since your screen is now wider but shorter, web-browsing will consist of more scrolling. But Gateway has a solution for this: Vertical Scroll, which is on the right side of your Touchpad. Just move your finger up to scroll up, and down to scroll down.

Other features are the HDMI port, which lets you connect your laptop to your HDTV or newer monitors, the built in Webcam (1.3 megapixel), or the ATI graphics card which has 256MB of dedicated RAM.

Windows Vista 64bit

The AMD Turion X2 Dual Core 64 processor (compare to the Intel Core 2 Duo) is fast but doesn’t drain your battery too fast. An interesting fact is that the MD2614u runs Vista 64 but only has 3G of RAM  (upgradable to 4G). Windows Vista 32bit only supports up to 3G of RAM, but the 64bit version supports 3G and more.

Also, the sales guy told me that MS Office 2003 does not work on Vista 64, which is incorrect. Office 2003 (x11) is supported. Please Best Buy, train your sales people – or go back to the commissions- based sales system. Check the Microsoft Vista Compatibility Website to check if your applications are supported.

Drawbacks

Here are some things that are not that great: It’s the keyboard, stupid. I just can’t get used to the keyboard; in order to give  the laptop a modern and hip look, Gateway organized the keyboard, so that it fits exacltly into a rectangle shape. But the designers forgot to think about ergonomics. I have a hard time hitting  the correct letter in the row  where the letters QWERTY are located. Misspelled words are the norm. And the clicking sound of the keys is annoying.

The finish around the keyboard is glossy and you will see every finger print. The illuminated media buttons are confusing, I haven’t figured out how to use the volume button. With 7.1lbs this laptop is not really a laptop anymore, rather a desktop replacement.

Conclusion

Just by looking at the price and the specs (see below), the MD2614u seems to be a winner. But the unusual keyboard is a factor that should not be overlooked. It’s like buying a nice looking car with a powerful engine that constantly steers to the right.

After owning this laptop for about two  weeks, I  returned it to Best Buy, spend $200 more and own now an amazing laptop with a great keyboard. See my review for the HP DV5-1235dx

Related Links:

CNET Laptop Buying Guide

Gateway MD2614u

Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion: multiply Fahrenheit by 9/5 and add 32 degrees