Hasta La Gadget!

It’s springtime, and flowers are starting to bloom just like deals in a Cheap Geek column. Please enjoy this garden of savings.

1. You may not believe this, but Staples, the place that gives you a great price on paper clips as long as you buy a crate of them, is delivering a super price on an HP Pavilion notebook. And you don’t have to buy more than one! With instant savings you’ll pay only $549.98. BOnus deal: If you also buy an HP Deskjet printer (certain models only), you’ll get a rebate that covers the cost of the printer.

2. You rarely see a deal on gift cards, so I’m presenting this special offer on iTunes cards because it’s such a curiosity. Shop at Best Buy, and you can get three $10 iTunes gift cards for $25.00. That’s $5 of music free, an especially good deal if you buy it for yourself.

3. What is it about iPod and iPhone earbuds that make them so, well, crappy? If yours kick the bucket, as mine recently did, replace them with a set of Shure SE110 Sound Isolating Stereo Earphones, which are going for a low $65.95 (with free shipping) from Buy.com.

Taking global climate change as seriously as anyone is these days, Samsung has trotted out a pair of new SyncMaster 70 series monitors, on the green tip. Coming in at your choice of either 20- or 23-inches, the displays sport a 50000:1 contrast ration, 2ms response time, and consume thirty-three percent less energy than previous Sammy outings. No word yet on screen resolution, release date, or price. Don’t tell us that you’re not a little bit excited. Just a little?

Filed under: Displays

Samsung’s new SyncMaster 70 displays consume 33% less energy, 0% less pizzazz originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Check out the sights from the CTIA show floor.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET)

As CTIA 2009 closes, so does the busy cell phone trade show season that began three months ago at CES. And now that the CNET crew has left Las Vegas for San Francisco and New York City, we’ve had a chance to reflect on what CTIA gave us. I’ll describe the highlights in detail below, but be sure to check out our CTIA videos and CTIA photo galleries. We also picked our favorite products for the Best of CTIA.

A snoozer of a show
Though there were plenty of new phones to handle, CTIA was rather quiet. Sure, the torpid economy is a likely culprit, but CTIA has a bigger strike against it. Since it follows the two much bigger blowouts of CES and the GSMA World Congress, CTIA just can’t offer the same level of news.

It’s not really CTIA’s fault–after all, a U.S.-focused show can’t be expected to compete with global events–but I’m not the first to suggest that CTIA should switch its schedule to later in the year. But as I said, there was plenty to report.

Samsung left a good impression.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET)

Getting the message
If there was one theme at CTIA 2009, it was the messaging phone. A total of five new models made their first appearance in Las Vegas, with Samsung and AT&T leading the way.

On the Monday before the show, Sammy and AT&T unveiled the Samsung Impression and the Samsung Magnet. Both offer full QWERTY keyboards on a different theme. While the Magnet offers minimal features and a simple design, the Impression has a comfortable slider design, a brilliant display, and mid-range multimedia. It made such an impression on us that we picked it as our top phone of the show.

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Originally posted at CTIA show

(Credit: CNET)

120Hz LCD gaming is now officially here! What? Oh, I’m late to the party? We’ve been able to do this for years now? Oh. OK. Let me rephrase that then. 120Hz gaming on a 22-inch LCD computer monitor is officially here! Does that satisfy your anal …

One of only a handful of specific upcoming laptop models that readers have regularly asked about, Hewlett-Packard’s 12-inch Pavilion dv2 has finally arrived.

Back at CES 2009, we noted that, “at first glance, another glossy HP laptop with an processor from Advanced Micro Devices may induce yawns, but when we learned this was the first system to use AMD’s new Netbook-like Athlon Neo platform, our ears perked up.”

The Neo is intended to be a kind of step-up from Netbook CPUs such as the Intel Atom and Via Nano, offering additional processing power for a little more money, and is targeted at slightly larger systems–12-inch laptops instead of 9-inch and 10-inch ones.

AMD sees room for systems with slightly bigger screens than Netbooks, which cost slightly more. AMD claims the 1.6GHz Neo handles multiple apps better than the Intel Atom, and it comes paired with ATI Radeon graphics (it’s also restricted to Windows Vista–sorry, no XP option).

We’ll be testing and reviewing the HP Pavilion dv2 this week. In the meantime, check out this hands-on video from CES 2009, plus specs and new photos after the break.

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