Monday, October 12, 2009

Cheap netbook sales bringing down laptop revenues, no brainers require no brains

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/11/cheap-netbook-sales-bringing-down-laptop-revenues-no-brainers-r/

Hey, this is probably surprising to no one, but here we go. A new market research report from DisplaySearch says that the overall mobile PC market is down about 5 percent over last year. The main reason cited for this decline? The increasing popularity of netbooks, which average around $300, and are much, much cheaper than traditional laptops. Netbook revenue is up 264 percent from last year, and have contributed to an overall lowering of the average PC cost by 19 percent. While this is certainly bad news for the PC industry itself, hooray for all of us, right?!

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Cheap netbook sales bringing down laptop revenues, no brainers require no brains originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 4:41 PM

Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/11/sidekick-failure-rumors-point-fingers-at-outsourcing-lack-of-ba/

Backing up your personal PC to external media might still be a novel concept for some, but any IT manager fresh out of school can tell you that regularly backing up mission-critical servers -- and storing those backups in multiple physical locations -- isn't merely important, it's practically non-negotiable, and it only becomes that much more critical before undertaking hardware maintenance. Alleged details on the events leading up to Danger's doomsday scenario are starting to come out of the woodwork, and it all paints a truly embarrassing picture: Microsoft, possibly trying to compensate for lost and / or laid-off Danger employees, outsources an upgrade of its Sidekick SAN to Hitachi, which -- for reasons unknown -- fails to make a backup before starting. Long story short, the upgrade runs into complications, data is lost, and without a backup to revert to, untold thousands of Sidekick users get shafted in an epic way rarely seen in an age of well-defined, well-understood IT strategies.

The coming weeks are going to be trying times for both Microsoft and T-Mobile, a sideline player in this carnage that ultimately still shoulders responsibility for taking users' cash month after month and keeping tabs on the robustness of its partners' workflows. We're betting that heads are going to roll at both of these companies, formal investigations are going to be waged, users are going to be compensated in big ways, lawsuits are going to be filed, and textbooks could very well be modified to make sure that lessons are learned for the next generation of college grads tasked with keeping clouds running. Why there weren't any backups -- even older ones -- that could've been used as a restore point is totally unclear, so we're hoping Microsoft has the stones to come clean for the benefit of an entire industry that wants to understand how to make sure this never happens again.

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Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 4:40 PM

Achtung, T-Mobile: if Project Dark is $50 unlimited, you're in trouble

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/12/achtung-t-mobile-if-project-dark-is-50-unlimited-youre-in-t/

Put yourself in T-Mobile USA's shoes for a moment: rumor has it that the guys who pay the bills aren't happy. History, happenstance, and the realities of electromagnetics have left you with an oddball 3G frequency that literally no other carrier in the world uses (at least, not for HSPA). Larger competitors don't take you as seriously as you'd like, and you don't have smaller ones -- they're all regionals who don't play in the same space you do. So what's your next move?

Continue reading Achtung, T-Mobile: if Project Dark is $50 unlimited, you're in trouble

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Achtung, T-Mobile: if Project Dark is $50 unlimited, you're in trouble originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 4:40 PM

Archos 5 has 99 problems and a glitch is one, 160GB version pulled by Amazon

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/12/archos-5-has-99-problems-and-a-glitch-is-one-160gb-version-pull/

It was only just allowed out to play, but Archos' five-inch, Android-sporting internet tablet has been called back in by its fastidious mother, a role played by Amazon in this case. Only the hard drive-based 160GB model is affected at present, with the 32GB version selling as normal and the half terabyte option out of stock already. Charbax of ArchosFans.com, a man in the know on this subject, has suggested this might have been caused by a firmware update wiping out some pre-installed Android apps, which is now being addressed. His site's forums and Amazon customer reviews, however, paint a different picture: there are consistent complaints about bugs and lock ups -- software issues that could well affect the other models in the line -- with some going so far as to suggest Archos has used its customers as Beta testers. There doesn't appear to be anything structurally wrong with the device, meaning a robust firmware update could remedy all ills, so now it's just a matter of waiting for Archos to do what it should have done before release.

[Via Pocketables]

Read - Amazon product page
Read - Archos Fans forums

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Archos 5 has 99 problems and a glitch is one, 160GB version pulled by Amazon originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 4:40 PM

LG's Solar Cell e-Book goes an extra day for every 5 hours of sunlight

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/12/lgs-solar-cell-e-book-goes-an-extra-day-for-every-5-hours-sunli/


Funny thing going on in the marketplace right now: reading for pleasure is on a rapid decline yet the choice of e-reader devices grows weekly. That's good news for those of us not spending our down-time in front of a television, mouth agape -- awkward for manufacturers testing the waters of this unproven niche. LG's showing off its Solar Cell e-Book reader anyway, in a bid to flex its thin-film solar muscle. The prototype features an energy conversion efficiency of about 9.6 percent giving it an extra day's worth of power for that 6-inch TFT-LCD after about four to five hours in the sun. LG is working towards boosting its thin-film solar cell energy conversion efficiency rate to 12% by 2010 on up to 14% by 2012. We say bring it LG, if you can.

[Via OLED-Display]

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LG's Solar Cell e-Book goes an extra day for every 5 hours of sunlight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Augustine at 4:40 PM

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