Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin'

Budget limitations and continued improvement in software and associated services are making open-source software alternatives such as MySQL, SUSE Linux, OpenOffice.org and plenty of others look mighty good to IT managers and CFOs.