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Finding a great car lease

James — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:49:13 +0000

There are a lot of car buying tips about leasing, and a lot of people praise the idea of leasing cars vs financing. The jury, however, is still out on leasing: with the industry long on hype and short on detail, it is difficult to distinguish between a genuinely good deal and a downright up-selling exercise.

So how do you spot a good deal?

First, you need to find out if there are any down payments on the auto lease. A down payment refers to the lump sum amount that you pay upfront, either in cash, non-cash credit or trading allowance, to reduce your monthly payment. You should think twice before putting money down on a lease: not only are you getting a rough deal, as you’re essentially forfeiting the general rule of leasing: not putting any cash upfront, but the money is not recoupable at the end of your lease. There is another big disadvantage: in the event of your car getting damaged or stolen, your insurance won’t cover the loss because of the gap cost.

Mileage Limit

Most leasing companies allow you a limit of 45,000 free miles over the length of a 3-year lease. This may seem like a good deal at first sight, but when you consider it only comes to 15,000 miles over a 12 month period you can see how it would be easy to go over the limit of mileage.

Even people working from home have little trouble putting 15,000 miles on their cars. If you exceed the mileage limit, the penalty for each excess mile can be as high as 20 cents. This can add up quickly over the length of your lease: an additional 4,000 miles a year over the length of a 3-years lease contract, will end up costing you an extra $2,400 in excess mileage charges! Think about how much mileage you will use, especially if you have to regularly commute over long-distances, before you sign the contract. Consider padding the miles that you expect to use since it is less expensive to contract for the extra before you sign than it is to pay the extra charges at end of your lease.

Sales Tax

This is one of the best car tips we can give you about car leasing: always read the fine print! Sales tax is usually capitalized and added to the monthly payments. However, some dealers choose not to include it in their calculations to drive the advertised lease payments even lower. What they do instead is state in the small print that the monthly payment excludes “sales tax”. Make sure you carefully read the fine print for any extra, hidden costs not included in the advertised monthly payment. Unscrupulous fees that typically slip through the cracks include sales tax, registration and title fees.

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Finding a great car lease

James — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:21:12 +0000

So how do you spot a good deal?

Mileage Limit

Sales Tax

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Cash advance loansâ€“ Banks Could Assist Consumers

James — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:08:50 +0000

Payday loans are becoming a problem in more and more towns, and legislators are trying to find solutions. These businesses specialize in small, short-term loans, generally less than $500. The fees they charge vary, but are ordinarily in the range of $15 for each$100 borrowed, payable in two weeks’ time. If someone wants to borrow $100, they write a check for $115, and fourteen days later, they either pay it back or the loan company cashes the check. That may seem like a pretty small amount to charge, but many customers of these businesses find themselves using them as a last resort and are regularly unable to repay them. Once that happens, the interest acumulates. And 15%, every two weeks, amounts to 390% for each year, a far higher rate than can be had through most other types of loans. In fact, the rates of interest charged by a lot of credit card corporations, which can run in the 25% range, appears quite affordable in comparison.

Quick cash loans are looked upon with disapproval by lawmakers because the lenders are seen to prey upon the poor in society, who typically don’t have access to other lending choices, such as home equity loans or bank cards. With no credit score on such individuals, other loans just aren’t possible. Many states have enacted strict lending laws created to regulate these businesses, but they often circumvent these laws by working with banks in other states which have more lenient lending laws.

A recent study suggests that banks could offer affordable alternatives in the form of short term loans at more reasonable rates. In fact, Citibank is offering a combined line of credit and checking account, with rates in the 17% neighborhood. This could seem to be a nice alternative to lending at 390%, but a lot of banks are reluctant to offer such loans because they clash with other existing bank products that are more successful. Most banks realize a sizable portion of their products through their overdraft protection. Overdraft protection is a method that allows customers to write checks for more money than they have in their accounts, without concern that the checks will be returned for insufficient funds. Instead, the bank pays the the check, and withdraws the overdrawn amount, plus a fee for the service, from the customer’s account at a later date. That fee, which ordinarily runs about $30, applies to any overdrawn amount. If a customer writes a check for $1 more than he or she has in their account, the $30 fee applies, making overdraft protection a quite successful product for the banks that offer it.

When you can charge $30 for a $1 loan, with an effective 3000% rate of interest, you’re suddenly less interested in offering cash at 17%.

As more and more legislatures become successful at regulating these businesses, several banks will enter the short term, small loan business. It will just take time.

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Finding a great car lease

James — Tue, 11 May 2010 04:48:01 +0000

So how do you spot a good deal?

Mileage Limit

Sales Tax

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A Dream Cloud Computes The Future

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:42:48 +0000

Cloud computing is the future of digital storage and computing resources served up remotely from data centers, also known as the cloud. Consumers can access multiple applications from any portable device that supports little processing power. these devices save energy and can access the information from anywhere for as short or as long as required because they take less electricity to power.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have made a big push in this space to capture market share. For Microsoft, the challenge becomes building on its Azure cloud as businesses in the United States begin to ramp up as the economy improves. For example, the latest version of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 desktop suite features social networking tools, co-authoring tools and a connection to Microsoft Office Web apps. it also connects through cloud computing.

For Amazon, cloud computing could provide the server capacity that allows it to launch a movie channel on the Kindle, where server capacity would support streaming videos on demand. Apple could also provide this feature on the iPad. in theory, consumers and companies can house data in a secure area on a server cloud. an application suite could allow people to use and transmit data using the programs.

in a perfect cloud world, people would wander around with a light display device with minimal processing power that lets them access applications from anywhere. The devices don’t require huge amounts of processing power. They will only need to pick up and transmit signal and data.

And while these are hypothetical scenarios Joseph Rosenbaum and I discussed recently, the technology isn’t that far off from making it a reality, claims the Reed Smith partner, who chairs the firm’s global Advertising Technology & Media Law practice.

Microsoft has been working on offering applications that support functions that process payroll, create Word documents and edit photos. these applications not only populate a database, but have the ability to send and receive data changes without having the program on your computer.

The idea harkens back to dumb computer terminals, (a concept that I hope shows my knowledge about computing, rather than my age). it allows users to do more with less computing power on the desktop or phone because the server-side software does the processing and they just interact with it. Cloud computing takes that concept a little further.

Rosenbaum tells me his vision of cloud computing connects devices to applications that sit servers. Think utilities, he says. The model would let companies implement a flexible pay-as-you-go system. Pay by the hour, kilowatt or some other type of benchmark. Also think about the way companies began outsourcing IT services or human resources. Sophisticated Adobe rendering software may cost more than Microsoft Word, but people would have access to all on a variety of different devices that could access the Web.

Rosenbaum also points to gas or electronic companies. They don’t care whether you plug a battery charger, PC or toaster into a wall outlet, they charge for the electricity that drives the devices. Imagine you have a screen and a keyboard and could just plug it in as you wandered around the world. all you’d need is an account number and an access point to the Internet, whether wireless or wired. it wouldn’t matter what wireless carrier provides you cellular service, or if your carrier doesn’t offer cellular service. you roam, and more often than not, the phone still works. Why wouldn’t the cloud function be similar?

I nod my head when Rosenbaum suggests Google, Microsoft and Amazon could offer cloud services, but they would need to reach an interoperability agreement, so consumers could quickly move from one application to another worldwide. he explains the theory that “cloud computing is fundamentally built on a capacity model — which is to say that if I have a generator with a specific amount of capacity, I need to make sure I can service my customers at peak times.” thus, “I would try and optimize the use during lower times to make sure the servers don’t work overtime and burn out during some hours of the day, and sit idle at other hours of the day.”

A Dream Cloud Computes The Future

Tags: amazon, application suite, authoring tools, desktop suite, market share

EzineArticles Submission – Submit Your Best Quality Original …

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:54:11 +0000

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Tags: period of time, scrape, short period, submission

Snowboarding » Shaun White flips out in gold-medal runs.

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:37:12 +0000

West Vancouver, British Columbia » put a double cork in it.

Action-sports icon Shaun White parlayed one of snowboarding’s most difficult tricks — the double cork — to win his second Olympic gold medal Wednesday night in the men’s halfpipe at Cypress Mountain. And on his final run he gave fans a show with a double McTwist 12, a move with 3½ rotations and two flips that led to gasps.

“I just felt like I didn’t come all the way to Vancouver not to pull out the big guns,” he said. “It was the savvy thing to do. Saucy. Keep it weird.”

Wearing a Navy bandana with white stars around his face like a bandit, White tore through his first run with impressive back-to-back

double corks, a frontside 540 and backside 9 — a string of tricks so strong no one could catch him in the second go around.

Just before starting his final run and already assured the gold medal, a U.S. coach said to White, “A double, double Mack at the end.”

White, 23, was game. he laid down a spectacular, circus-like run that culminated with the double McTwist on a night the United States picked up two more medals. Scotty Lago of New Hampshire hung on for the bronze medal after Finland’s Peetu Piroinen snagged the silver in his second run. Louie Vito, a Utahn, had two solid runs but finished fifth and Greg Bretz of Mammoth Lakes was 12th as all four U.S. riders reached the final.

despite the surfer-casual aura surrounding snowboarding, White prepared for the Olympics seriously. in 2009, Red Bull built a private $1 million halfpipe high in the Rocky Mountains where White honed some of the sport’s most difficult and dangerous tricks. The Silverton, Colo., facility is 500 feet long, 22-feet deep.

The trick that has received the most attention is the double cork, which consists of two back flips. That’s the maneuver Olympic contender Kevin Pearce tried when he hit his head in December and suffered

serious brain trauma. Although boarders fly through the air like trapeze artists without safety nets, few suffer life-threatening injuries.

White was nervous about his first run despite the meticulous preparations. “I know I had it down but the Olympics are pretty heavy,” he told a television interviewer. “I was sweating it a little.”

White might have surfaced out of the renegade skateboard and snowboard culture of Southern California, but he has made the transition from X-Games legend to the Olympics mainstream as easily as a 180-degree turn. with magnetism befitting his celebrity, White charmed the Olympic community four years ago in winning the gold medal with straggly red hair flowing in the Alpine breeze.

“The Flying Tomato,” as he is called, has used his allure to earn about $8 million annually. Forbes Magazine named the skateboard/snowboard star the highest paid athlete competing in the Vancouver Games. His major sponsors include Burton snowboards, Red Bull, AT&T and HP. White also has a line of clothing with Target, underscoring the deft balance between remaining ultra cool and dancing with Corporate America. White wasn’t worried about those things Wednesday, saying his next move is to sleep.

“And then take on the world,” he added.

» Shaun White did a trick on his last run called a double McTwist 12. The move features three and a half rotations and two flips.

» he also did a trick called the double cork, which consists of two back flips, that has received much attention.

Snowboarding » Shaun White flips out in gold-medal runs.

Tags: bandit, mack

How can we wish “Happy Teachers’ Day” to 老师 Craftylass?

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:18:13 +0000

Long time since she answered any of my questions, she must be cross with me. I must be a bad student but she is really an excellent teacher by all means.

How can I wish her “Happy Teachers’ Day”?

How can we wish “Happy Teachers’ Day” to 老师 Craftylass?

Tags: Long Time, teachers day

Chris Elliott Gives Ewan McGregor the Brush-Off (VIDEO)

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:50:13 +0000

Chris Elliott is all grown up, and has a daughter who’s all grown up, too! Abby Elliott (she’s a regular on ‘Saturday Night Live’) appeared on ‘Late show with David Letterman’ (weeknights, 11:35PM ET on CBS), while her dad watched nervously backstage in the green room. If only that annoying guy sitting next to him would just leave him alone! This may be the only time in history when someone told Ewan McGregor, “I don’t know who you are, but can you shut up?!”

Chris Elliott Gives Ewan McGregor the Brush-Off (VIDEO)

Tags: abby, annoying guy, david letterman, ewan mcgregor