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I am a Fred fan.  Or I guess I was a Fred fan.  Fred was an alternative rock station on XM that played some deep tracks that exposed where bands like U2, REM, Cure and others got their sounds influenced from.  XM radio has euthanized Fred and other themed genre stations, in efforts to merge their networks.  I am not the only one sad.

The replacement for Fred is First Wave, a Sirius station, which in my opinion and the opinion of these groupies, blows chow.  Bad.  Shallow.  Bad.

Can I make a fiscal justification to keep both stations going along?  No.  Can I say that satellite radio has finally lost the race with Internet radio?  Yes.  My cohorts and I are leaving as we can’t stand your far too repetitious music designed for those behind the wheel for 30 minutes.

It isn’t all tears for satellite radio owners though, according to craveonline, 

“Each sides’ premium channels and talent remains mostly intact, with stations like Howard Stern, the Grateful Dead Channel and Eminem’s Shade 45 all now available to XM users, while Sirius listeners now get Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure and B.B. King’s blues station.“

Those of us that got attached to these themed genre stations will miss them and the talent at XM studios in DC.

Farewell Fred.  Thanks for the tip, Jeff.

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Asus has introduced the U2 laptop, not U2 like the band just a sweet little laptop. Asus seems to be pushing this as a “luxury” item, which is because of the overall design. The laptop has a
polished plated hinge, a hand polished stainless steel frame and copper etching along with a premium leather covering.

“The U2 is designed and crafted to the highest levels of luxury, a bona fide lifestyle accessory that is yet infinitely useful and versatile.“

While the luxury features are nice looking the overall specs are pretty solid also, featuring a 11.1-inch WXGA LED backlight, your choice or either a 80GB, 100GB or 120GB hard drive or a 32GB SSD, support for up to 4GB RAM with 3 USB ports, VGA, micro-DVI and a built-in webcam. The U2 is powered by an Intel Core Duo Processor ULV U7500, runs Windows Vista and weights in at around just 3-pounds.

Read [Asus]

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