Tretakoff Musings

On a recent trip, I was able to fully try the new service from Flightcar . If you are a regular reader of Tretakoff.com, you heard my excitement about the concept . For a refresher, Flightcar allows you to rent out your own car when traveling, in return for free airport parking, and a cut of the $ if your car is rented. Since I was traveling from San Francisco to Boston, I was able to test out the full range of Flightcar's operations, as those are the only two cities they currently operate in: in San Francisco, we made our car available, and in Boston we rented a car. So, how did it go? Some prelude first. When we made the reservation for the car rental in Boston, Flightcar's site allows you to choose your car and rate, a very appealing feature. You can see photos of the exact car, get a description, and more. As I mentioned in my previous post, we chose a 2009 Lexus GS sedan, at roughly half the price of a Nissan Versa economy car from the traditional rental agencies. V...

I recently picked up a Samsung Chromebook from Best Buy . A couple of interesting seeming contradictions from that statement: - Why Best Buy? I had not visited BB in a while, and was contemplating buying a new desktop or laptop. Instead of my constant loyalty to Amazon, I wanted to get a sense of size and weight of the computers, with the complete intent of making my actual purchase on Amazon. In other words, I was showrooming . In my examinations, I had not even considered the Chromebook, as previous cursory evaluations had left me underwhelmed. But this Samsung model was intriguing: incredibly light and thin, good price point, and intriguing. What really surprised me was the under-informed salesperson (more on that later) mentioning that Best Buy now offered a 15 day return policy with no restocking fee, encouraging me to try it out. This convinced me, and I pulled the trigger. - Why the Chromebook? The size, the full keyboard, and the long battery life addressed all I wanted f...