Hasta La Gadget!

The 10.1-inch Acer Aspire One D150 has found its way onto Amazon and J&R’s websites and is now available for pre-order in blue and black color options, respectively. This version’s got the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and 6-cell battery, with no word on the 3-cell or 1.66GHz N280 variants. Asking price is three Benjamins and an Ulysses S. Grant, or $350 if you’re not into presidential pricing nomenclature. Additionally, the fine folks at netbooknews.de that gave us unboxing photos this week have a video hands-on of the laptop. High expectations from the market leader apparently turned into low marks for the glossy display, small trackpad, and a keyboard that’s “separated by universes” — and not in a good way — when compared to the Samsung NC10. Further testing is expected later this week, check out the video after the break.

[Via iTech News]

Read – Amazon product page
Read – J&R product page
Read – Netbooknews.de video hands-on

Continue reading Acer Aspire One D150 with N270 previewed, now available for US pre-order

Filed under: Laptops

Acer Aspire One D150 with N270 previewed, now available for US pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Feb 2009 08:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobileread just got a bunch of official-looking Kindle 2 photos, which show it in various states being held and read, plus info that it’s being released for $359 on February 24.

From the photos, it looks definitely a LOT thinner than the first, and maybe even a bit smaller too. Unless that man has gigantic hands, the Kindle goes from the tip of his middle finger to slightly below his wrist—not too shabby.

The photos may look fantastic and the news, by association, may seem official, but we don’t know with 100% certainty that this is the actual price and actual release date until we hear from Amazon.

[Mobile Read via Engadget]

Sure, we pretty much figured that the V-Book (which is actually not a book at all) would be the final nail in the coffin of what was once known as “literature,” but it looks like both Google and Amazon have other plans. Not only have their been rumblings of a new Kindle, but Amazon has announced that it’ll soon be making the popular e-reader’s some 230,000 titles available for your cellphone. The company hasn’t said when the titles will be available or exactly what phones would be supported — but we’re guessing that we’ll be seeing handsets with nice, big screens like the G1 and the iPhone on the list. If that weren’t enough, Google’s Book Search holdings — about 1.5 million public domain works — will soon be available for cellphone-based e-readers like Stanza. This is good news for people who need access to data on the go — and really good news for anyone who would like to curl up next to the fire with a nice glass of wine and their Curve 8900.

[Image courtesy of Spacesick, Via Unwired View]

Filed under: Cellphones

Google and Amazon debut cellphone e-books, eye strain originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon has been famously coy about how many Kindle e-book readers the company has sold. But Mark Mahaney, an analyst at Citigroup, is estimating that Amazon sold 500,000 of the things in 2008, and that the Kindle is on track to become a $1.2 billion business for Amazon by 2010, according to AllThingsD.

The report said that Mahaney came up with his figure by examining a recent filing by Sprint, the company that handles the Kindle’s wireless data connection for over-the-air e-book purchases from Amazon. The $1.2 billion figure is a little more suspect, though; essentially he assumed that the Kindle equals the iPod, will do similar business to the iPod at a comparable point in its life cycle, and that customers will buy one e-book per month from Amazon on average.

Meanwhile, everyone—including, presumably, Dick Cheney—is waiting for the other shoe to drop next week, when Amazon has its press conference and unveils Kindle 2.0. Mahaney thinks the new Kindle will be thinner, lighter, have a nicer keyboard arrangement, and cost $299 instead of $359 like the current model. Me, I’m just hoping for page turning technology that doesn’t flash the entire screen each time.

While it could possibly have something to say on the matter at its big event next week, Amazon has so far been mum on the total number of Kindles sold, which has prompted folks like Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney to do their own digging / speculating to arrive at some hard numbers. Apparently, Mahaney was able to determine that Amazon sold about 500,000 Kindles in 2008 by examining the company’s agreement with Sprint, which seems to be a reasonable enough conclusion, although things get decidedly more speculative from there. According to Mahaney, the Kindle will be a $1.2 billion business for Amazon by 2010, assuming that the rate of adoption is similar to that of the iPod at the time of its introduction, and assuming that each Kindle user buys at least one book a month — two pretty big assumptions, to say the least. As you might have guessed, Mahaney also has a bit to say about the seemingly imminent Kindle 2.0, which he speculates will be thinner and longer than the current model, won’t boast a color screen or a touch screen, and possibly cost as low as $300. As they say, stay tuned.

Filed under: Handhelds

Citigroup analyst says 500,000 Kindles were sold in 2008 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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