I feel like it has been confession time for me over the past several weeks.  I previously wrote about how I went to the dark side by buying an Apple iPod (i.e., not a Microsoft product), then I switched to the Firefox browser (also not a Microsoft product) and now I have another confession.

I pointed out a web site last year once in a negative manner.  The reason I was negative is because it was a major popup advertisement at several other sites I was visiting.  For several weeks I got to see that ad over-and-over again.

If you are a regular reader you know that I am of two minds about popup ads.

I don’t like them because they get in my way, I never click on them and in my opinion they are simply obnoxious.  However, I like them because as people do click on them they help keep the majority of websites in the world free of charge to us.

I want to now mention that website that bugged me in the past…in a positive light, Orbitz.com.

Every year or so I mention a site that helps us with vacation planning; Orbitz is it this time.  This year, thanks to Mr. Bush’s tax rebate (please don’t email me about politics; I abhor it and won’t respond), my wife and I decided to fly to our vacation spot.  I used to fly quite often many years ago (before the internet and 9/11 but that is another story) but this was somewhat new to me.

I will add here that the stinking popups must have worked.  Guess which website popped into my mind first when I thought about flying?  You got it, Orbitz.

I am new at the buying plane tickets online so many of you may know a lot more about this and other similar sites than I; however, I just want to give you what I found out.

We found round-trip tickets much less expensively than we thought were possible.  We easily found the airport we wanted to leave from (SHD) and arrive at (JAX).  We were offered a good rate on a rental car at the site.  Me, being the trusting guy that I am, called other rental car companies including the one we were offered at the site to check prices.  I could not get a rate anywhere near as good as I did in the original offer so we also went with that.

I could have also gotten hotel rooms and tickets for different attractions at discounted prices through Orbitz.  I didn’t take advantage of those as we didn’t need them for our plans.

If you have any experiences, good or bad, with sites similar to this let me know.  And if we decide to come back I may let you know how it worked for us.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 7:13 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.