So, as you might've guessed, I got "lucky" on Swoopo.com and won a kickass HP dv7-3080us laptop (which is being used in the making of this post). Here is the Windows experience index (WEI) score of this bad girl out-of-the-bot (OOB):wei-score.PNG

Look at that thing! The slowest feature on the laptop is the 7200rpm hard disk drive which is an upgrade from my previous laptop's 5400rpm hard disk drive.

Hearing stories of wins like this is almost guaranteed to make you want to start placing bids on Swoopo. Well, don't try this at home. Winning a bounty like this is atypical and I cannot explain how I managed to outbid the hordes to win this sucker. Bidding on Swoopo is terribly addictive so unless you have beginner's luck on yourside, you're *almost* guaranteed to bid fruitlessly.

Call me superstitious, but my first bid on Swoopo was for this laptop and was completely on a lark because I didn't think anything would come of it! I was in shock when I won and am still in shock. Being human, I shared the good news with all and sundry (twitter, facebook and in person). My father-in-law and husband were as gobsmacked as I am and despite my reluctance to get sucked into the hype, I got carried away so guess what I did?

Instead of carrying my money (and win) & running as far from Swoopo as I could, I decided I would let lightning strike me twice. Guess who lost money (~ $100 worth of bids), yours truly. I was rather hard on myself, but I've decided to make things easier to swallow by saying I purchased this laptop for ~ $220. And anyway you slice it, that is a heck of a deal. No, really. Google (or Bing!) it. So, overall, I'm still in the *green* but given the way Swoopo works, a fool and her/his money are soon parted.

Much love and a hefty dose of luck to you should you choose to ignore my advice and bid on Swoopo. They're definitely a legitimate service and showed me good faith in sending my laptop to me in less than a week after winning it! They could do a much better job of communicating with users on the status of wins, but I generally like companies who shut up and sing (i.e. proof of the pudding is in the eating which in this case, they got my laptop to me in record time!).

So thanks to Swoopo for sending the laptop to me. It's a brand new HP dv7-3080us that I've promptly registered on HP's website. I was a little concerned earlier because the listing just had the laptop, but thankfully the laptop shipped with its peripherals like charger and mobile remote. The laptop is a considerable upgrade from my former dv9700t CTO notebook. I'll post a semi-detailed review as time goes on.