Did you see the New York Times review of the One Laptop per Child laptop. It's an underpowered little device, but it uses a version of Linux which means, according to the review, that it doesn't need as much horsepower to run applications. As I sit here on my two-year-old Windows XP machine and reflect that it's faster than my new dual-core Windows Vista laptop, I wonder exactly why I'm paying so much for the lastest and greatest. Did you see that Microsoft has decided to keep selling Windows XP to its business customers.

My local MicroCenter is selling a 1Ghz, 512Meg Ram laptop for $379. The problem--it comes with Vista and it's too slow. But this machine would have screamed a couple of years ago, running Windows 2000. I'm tempted to buy one and load Linux. Twenty years ago, the PC I have on my desk would have been classified a supercomputer and would have supported a hundred programmers. So, how come it takes forever to load up a new document? Am I the only one who thinks that faster processors should mean I should be able to get my work done more quickly?

Sophia has managed to escape from Watson in Remove from Circulation, and she's about to re-connect with Ryan. If you write romance, one of the things you really have to work on is keeping your characters together. Not surprisingly when you think about it, the romance moves forward when the two main characters (in romance, we call them the hero and heroine) are on the page together. Of course, if you write suspense, sometimes this is difficult. Romance authors have a slew of tricks (which, when overused become cliches) like the cabin in the woods, the blizzard, the injury, the 'if I leave he'll win' syndrome to keep them together. In my case, Sophia needed to escape first from Ryan's boss and then from Watson who managed the first rescue. They'll be happy to see each other. Maybe we can even get a first real kiss out of it--kind of late but better late than never.

After writing, I got back to work on editing and wrote the BooksForABuck.com newsletter. The new newsletter is here: http://www.booksforabuck.com/general/october07_newsletter.html. I didn't get to the video review. So, my goals for tomorrow are writing, editing, video review, and finalizing the paper version of CARPATHIAN SHADOWS.

I'm still reading THE REINCARNATIONIST by M. J. Rose.

I'm going to make HOT PROPERTY by Karen Leabo the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. Wendy Thayer loves to shop--so much she's made a business out of it, doing it for other people as a professional shopper. Police Detective Michael Taggert's ex-wife spent him almost out of his job so it's easy for him to see Wendy as a possible jewel thief. But if she isn't the thief, then there's something very much wrong going on--and while his brain thinks she's guilty, his heart has other plans. Sexy romantic suspense--and it's only $1. You can learn more, read the excerpt, or buy the entire eNovel here: www.booksforabuck.com/rompages/rom_2004/hot_property.html. (Available in HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF, Palm Reader, and Microsoft Reader formats). Here's the cover (cover design by Karen Leabo):

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