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The stylish yet affordable IdeaPad Z570 is packed with loads of cool features to make your day more fun. Bring your multimedia experience alive on your high-definition widescreen display; optimize audio-visual settings with OneKey Theater II; and get top quality audio with SRS Premium Surround SoundTM. The IdeaPad Z570 is built for convenience too. It supports WiDi technology; features a comfortable AccuType keyboard making typing easier; and Lenovo Energy Management provides longer battery life. This laptop is powered by the smart performance of a 2nd generation Intel CoreTM processor. Plus, with Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 for Windows 7 with RapidBoot technology, you can start your PC up to 20 seconds faster than a typical Windows 7 computer. And you can enjoy the best possible multimedia experience too.

I needed a new laptop. I always find it hard to balance the specs needed in a laptop against cost so I lapsed into my usual analysis paralysis. Enter the Z570. Many people are becoming familiar with the Lenovo brand, which is predominantly known for "work" laptops. This laptop can go toe-to-toe with the other major manufacturers in the consumer market. When asked for recommendations, I have always steered people to HP or Toshiba. The Lenovo Z570 has certainly entered the conversation for machines at this price point. The hardware in this laptop won't knock your socks off, but it has everything that I need and it should last me awhile if I treat it well.

2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3-2350M processor
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 for Windows® 7, with RapidBoot technology
15.6" HD widescreen (1366x768)
Integrated Intel® HD 3000 Graphics
6GB DDR3 memory, 500GB HD
Integrated high-speed 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
Integrated DVD reader/writer
USB 2.0, eSATA connectors & 5-in-1 card-reader
Integrated 0.3M webcam for clearer video chats
5.7 lbs
Up to 5 hours (with 6-cell battery)

The screen is great and watching videos is a rewarding experience. I am bummed that the resolution is capped at 1366 x 768, but the important thing is that the video is always crisp. The touchpad is super sensitive and I am still working to retrain myself, but I think I will just get an external mouse. The DVD drive opens maybe too easily, but learn to maneuver your laptop from the left and you can work around that.

Other than that, this is a great laptop at a great price. I am happy with mine and have recommended it to a few others already.

Amazon

"Can you see the power emotion has to distort our outlook? Makes you wonder, did you have a bad day, or did you make it a bad day?"

The Mists rule the night.

The Lord Ruler owns the world.

Once, a hero arose to save the world. A young man with a mysterious heritage courageously challenged the darkness that strangled the land.

He failed.

For a thousand years since, the world has been a wasteland of ash and mist ruled by the immortal emperor known as the Lord Ruler. Every revolt has failed miserably.

Yet somehow, hope survives. Hope that dares to dream of ending the empire and even the Lord Ruler himself. A new kind of uprising is being planned, one built around the ultimate caper, one that depends on the cunning of a brilliant criminal mastermind and the determination of an unlikely heroine, a street urchin who must learn to master Allomancy, the power of a Mistborn.

There are many things that Vin knows, thanks to her brother. She knows that she is no one, that she can trust no one, that no one cares about her and that everyone will betray her in the end. She also knows, however, that she is different from everyone else; she has this...ability. And it may be that ability that has kept her alive this long. And then she meets some people. Or more accurately, then some people come looking for Vin and they will challenge everything that her brother taught her and offer her a chance to be a part of something important. But can she learn to trust them?

Mistborn is book one in a trilogy of the same name. Brandon Sanderson takes us to his sci-fi/fantasy world where people are either the low-class skaa or of noble birth. And everyone fears the Lord Ruler, who saved the world and enslaved it in the same act of epic bravery over one thousand years ago.

The characters in Mistborn and its plot are refreshingly unique. I enjoyed seeing this genre differently as it was presented by Mr. Sanderson. Some parts were difficult to read, but...they needed to be. I cannot go into more detail without revealing information you should find out on your own when you read, but due to the nature of the story line, some action sequences may leave you dizzy from repetition.

This book is so complex I feel like it is a trilogy itself rolled into one book. I cannot imagine how much more ground can be covered in two more books, but I am more than curious enough to find out. Mistborn is well-written and engaging. I look forward to book 2.

Amazon

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need to, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

The Columbus Affair by Steve Barry

He was called by many names—Columb, Colom, Colón—but we know him as Christopher Columbus. Many questions about him exist: Where was he born, raised, and educated? Where did he die? How did he discover the New World?

None have ever been properly answered.

And then there is the greatest secret of all.

From Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author, comes an exciting new adventure—one that challenges everything we thought we knew about the discovery of America.

Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan has written hard-hitting articles from hot spots around the world. But when a controversial report from a war-torn region is exposed as a fraud, his professional reputation crashes and burns. Now he lives in virtual exile—haunted by bad decisions and the shocking truth he can never prove: that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. But before Sagan can end his torment with the squeeze of a trigger, fate intervenes in the form of an enigmatic stranger with a request that cannot be ignored.

Zachariah Simon has the look of a scholar, the soul of a scoundrel, and the zeal of a fanatic. He also has Tom Sagan’s estranged daughter at his mercy. Simon desperately wants something only Sagan can supply: the key to a 500-year-old mystery, a treasure with explosive political significance in the modern world. For both Simon and Sagan the stakes are high, the goal intensely personal, the consequences of opposing either man potentially catastrophic. On a perilous quest from Florida to Vienna to Prague and finally to the mountains of Jamaica, the two men square off in a dangerous game. Along the way, both of their lives will be altered—and everything we know about Christopher Columbus will change.

This book will be available on May 15, 2012.

Pre-order your copy.

Tabby never voiced a single doubt, however. Her support was a constant, one of the few good tings I could take as a given. And whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There's someone who knows. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

Someone asked me the other day, what I do for a living. I found myself hard pressed for an answer. If he wanted to know my job title, or what industry I work in, then all I had to do was to recite what's on my business card. But he seemed sincere. He honestly wanted to know what I do most of the day, so I was honest too: What I do for a living is attend meetings. Bad meetings.

One mediocre meeting after another quietly corrodes our organization, and every day we allow it to happen.

If an operating room were as sloppily run as our meetings, patients would die. If a restaurant kitchen put as little planning into the meal as we put into our meetings, dinner would never be served. Worst of all, our meeting culture is changing how we focus, what we focus on, and what decisions we make. But there is an answer. A new kind of meeting -- the Modern Meeting. Starting today, that's how we're going to do business.

Culture change occurs when a transformational idea spreads to enough people. Like a virus that makes its way from person to person, spreading exponentially faster, so can the Modern Meeting.

The status quo must go. Now. Before it's too late.

Like so many others, I have first-hand experience with inefficient meetings. A meeting is called and little to no information is given for what it is about. The wrong people are invited and then sit silently in the meeting as their time is wasted. The key people show up to the meeting without having prepared anything to offer and simply expect to bring value. In no time at all the conversation is derailed and the scheduled time elapses with no results. The meeting ends and nothing has been accomplished.

I think that more businesses are plagued by meetings-for-the-sake-of-meetings than would care to admit. I believe the topic is on the forefront of every initiative to gain efficiency in modern business. The "correct" structure of meetings was certainly an issue for many of the businesses that Al Pittampalli visited in his years as an IT Advisor, which prompted him to lead the charge for better meetings. He has studied various aspects of what could make an effective, efficient and successful meeting and his findings are laid out in this book.

This book serves to reinforce my frustrations with so many of the meetings that I am invited to attend. I would wager that the people who will be most drawn to this book are those of us who would like to see a change in their meetings. The irony is that we are the ones who are trying to make the change we wish to see. Perhaps I just need to make some anonymous gifts...

There are a lot of "business books" that have a good message and I will say that most are not very well-written. I found the message of Read This Before Our Next Meeting to be poignant and I thought the writing was clear, concise and engaging. The book is short, but consider that a strength instead of an issue of value; I am sure he could have written more, but is it worth it to dilute his message? I enjoyed this book and recommend that you pick up a couple copies make a few anonymous gifts of your own.

Amazon

Breeze raised an eyebrow, then laid a hand on Yeden's shoulder. "You should try not to talk so much, friend," he suggested. "You'll sound far less stupid that way."

The Innocent by David Baldacci

America has enemies--ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can't stop. That's when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target.

But Will Robie may have just made the first--and last--mistake of his career . . .

THE INNOCENT It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway-her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can't walk away. He needs to help her.

Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he's convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents' deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.

Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl's life . . . and perhaps his own.

This book will be available on April 17, 2012.

Pre-order your copy.