If you've been cursing the Google for its spotty e-mail service today, relief is on the way.

A Gmail help posting a few minutes ago said engineers "have pinpointed the issue causing the 502 errors and it looks as if users should start to regain normal functioning of their account."

Some in the Silicon Valley echo chamber are sugggesting it's Twitter time but that's not a replacement for Web mail.

I wonder what the Gmail hiccups have done to Yahoo and Windows Live mail usage.

The New York Times "Deal Professor" feature turned its focus to the management buyout proposed at Renton-based Zones.

An excerpt:

At first glance, the price he is offering appears to be a big premium, as it is approximately 59 percent over Zones' closing share price the day before the transaction was announced. But this price is well off Zones' 52-week high back in October of $11.60, and the share price was trading above $7.50 only a week before the announcement.

It's not the first management buyout attempt at Zones. Here's a 2005 profile of Firoz Lalji, the company's deal-pursuing chief executive.

After hearing from people wanting help shopping for laptops, I put together a list of 10 tips, tricks and deals.

Do you have any other tips you'd like to share?

Here are the first three from today's column, plus explanatory links and a few more tidbits based on today's news from Intel: