The Envelope Please…
Earlier this afternoon I reviewed your entries for the Freshman 15 laptop giveaway contest. I separated out the entries that were: from students; showed a legitimate need for a laptop; and suggested a cool use for the machine if won. I then used Random.org to generate a truly random number (derived from atmospheric noise) to select a winner from this pool.
Without further ado, the winner is:
Dustin from Illinois
He’ll receive, courtesy of HP:
- A HP Pavilion dv7t entertainment laptop
- A 500 GB media drive
- A docking station
- A PhotoSmart printer
- A stylish HP Messenger Bag
- Lots of free software.
I couldn’t be more pleased to be giving this prize to Dustin. He has had some hard breaks recently. He currently does all of his college work either on public computers or on the slow machine back at his parent’s home. He can’t come close to affording a new computer and the ability for him to work on campus — and take advantage of the fast internet connection there — would be huge.
He also suggested a cool study hack involving the recording of lectures using the laptop’s built in microphone.
So Dustin, congratulations!
And thank you to everyone who took the time to enter and share your innovative hacks. Remember, if you didn’t win, you still have all of these upcoming chances to enter:
- 10/6 – College Being
- 10/8 – Paul Stamatiou
- 10/10 – DormDelicious
- 10/12 – Student Bloggers
- 10/14 – Jessica Mah Meets World
- 10/16 – UNEASYsilence
- 10/18 – Gomeler.com
- 10/20 – Campus Grotto
- 10/22 – Hack College
- 10/24 – The University Blog
Finally, my hat’s off to HP for sponsoring such a cool contest. It feels great to be able to help someone who really needs it.
Congrats to the winner…I bet he’ll be extatic once he receives it.
One question though: Are there going to be any runners up for this giveaway?
I think so! I need to clarify with HP, but I think they have some extra messenger bags to give away. So stay tuned…
Barbara’s right, I’m waaaay extatic.
Thanks HP and Cal. You guys are great.
So, should we be checking back to see if we were lucky enough to be one of the “runners up” soon?
-Barb
Hey, can’t the peanut gallery hear about the other cool hacks that people have offered? Aren’t we all hoping for great ideas…..
Congratulations, Dustin!
Cal, I’m curious: how many entries did you receive? Was it an overwhelming amount of reading? How many did you end up putting into the random draw? Inquiring minds want to know! 😉
I didn’t want to generate a brand new post for the runner-up giveaway. So I’ll just announce that I’ve informed the four winners via e-mail.
177 entries in total. Because I was doing a random drawing — thank god — I didn’t have the impossible task of trying to determine who most deserved the laptop. But it still took a while to sort ‘invalid’ entries (lots of non-students, for example, entered…)
Not a bad idea. I’m considering a post of my favorite suggested hacks…some were pretty cool.
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