I however have been the luck recipient of the ideal chair for an affiliate courtesy of Sumo.

The Sumo Omni is the perfect chair for spending many hours on while thinking about new affiliate website ideas

and then when Google kicks out your website, slaps your Adwords and it all gets too much this chair provides the perfect refuge…

The Qosmio G40 is a really high spec machine with all the bells and whistles you might like from a media centre laptop. My review model has all the technical details listed on the official Toshiba site so I won’t repeat them here except to say that this laptop just flies along. It’s the first time I’ve used Vista on a PC and been happy with the performance.

The most impressive part of this laptop is the 17″ HD widescreen display which is really eye catching and has a very crisp picture. The speakers are also of excellent quality and overall this would be a great device to replace your HDTV. I haven’t used Windows Media Centre before but I’m impressed with how it worked and hooked up to my cable box to allow recording of TV and also to provide that important option of pausing live TV.

The other feature I liked was the built in finger print scanner which can be used for logging in to windows but also used whenever you need to login to a website so I could just enter my details once for each affiliate network and then run my finger over the scanner when I visit their site to login.

I thought this one was worth showing to the outside world so I took it along to the Edinburgh Coffee Morning to see what others thought. This was where the main use of this laptop started to become clear. And it was clear to me it’s not supposed to be carried around! Firstly it barely fitted in my normal laptop bag and secondly it weighs a ton. Well not quite a ton but it’s heavy

Anyway once I got to Centotre the quality of the screen impressed both Mike(pictured) & Joanna(not pictured!) but the sheer size of the laptop was discussed as being it’s downfall.

Mike was talking about how his iPod Touch has started to replace carrying his laptop everywhere so we took a quick photo for comparison

I certainly know which I would like to carry around all day. But then perhaps that is not a fair comparison because I also know which I would rather watch a DVD on!

I liked the built in webcam feature too so I put this to the test although the integrated mic didn’t seem to pick things up too well.

So in summary it’s a very impressive laptop and would be ideal for replacing your TV, video and hi-fi to run a very impressive media centre without taking up much space. However it’s not one to buy if you are a road warrior!

Thanks again to talktoshiba for the chance to test the laptop – can I keep the next one?

Since I’ve enjoyed the blog I thought it would be good to give something back so I donated one of the prizes of some podcasting kit. It actually looks like more advanced technology than I’m using to produce my podcast so hopefully someone will find it useful

Another Edinburgh friend, Jamie at Terinea has also donated some USB storage.

The main prize is a business blog package including

• Logo design from David
• a new blog design from Nate Whitehill (not sure how this guy has enough hours in the day – I keep seeing his name everywhere at the moment )
• Marketing Plan from DoshDosh
• One year of hosting from I Love Typography
• Signed copy of Blogging Tips from Lorelle VanFossen

There are heaps of other prizes too so it’s worth a look. Overall the thing that I think fascinates me most is how an online community can be pulled together through an event like this. Just having a look at the list of prizes and you see many recognizable bloggers and can be reminded how the world is in fact a very small place.

Let me know if you need any new words added to compose some affiliate poetry