Engadget’s back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags!

Engadget's back to school 2012 sweepstakes win one of 15 gadgetfilled bags!

Ready to pack away the swim trunks and sunscreen and head back to school? If you’re a lucky winner of our annual back to school sweepstakes, you’ll surely be itching to make the return to campus. With last year’s contest deemed an incredible success, we’re stepping up the offering for 2012, adding higher-end devices in almost every category. There’s an Ultrabook from HP, Sony’s new mirrorless camera and a Samsung Galaxy S III, just to name a few. If your name is drawn, we’ll be shipping you an overstuffed Engadget-branded Timbuk2 messenger bag, filled with prizes worth more than $3,000 in all. And to increase your chances of winning, we’ll be giving away a total of 15 identical bags! That means 15 laptops, 15 cameras, 15 smartphones and 15 very happy Engadget readers. So what are you waiting for? Jump past the break to see the prizes, and be sure to enter in the comments below, and another 14 times on each of our back to school category pages, launching throughout the month.

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Engadget’s back to school 2012 sweepstakes: win one of 15 gadget-filled bags! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Origin PC wants to put you ‘in the fast lane’ with back-to-school promo, hands you a free SSD

Origin PC wants you 'in the fast lane' with back-to-school promo, hands you a free SSD

You know how some philosophical folks say that great things always come in pairs? Well, as it turns out, sometimes that is indeed the case. Not content with handing its fans a free trip towards the promised Ivy Bridge land, Origin PC’s kicking off its 2012 back-to-school promotion with a couple of solid-state goodies to help you save some time during your every-day computer activities. The deal is quite simple: shell out some cash on one of the outfit’s qualifying machines and you’ve got yourself a gratis 128GB or 256GB SSD — this, naturally, includes the EON11-S, EON15-S, EON17-S and that beastly GENESIS, just to mention a few. As Origin PC points out, the worldwide deal’s limited to one per customer, can’t be combined with any other offer and it’ll run until there’s no more supplies to give. If all that sounds good, then head over to the company’s site to get in on it, as well as check out the full list of units involved in the BTS promo.

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Origin PC wants to put you ‘in the fast lane’ with back-to-school promo, hands you a free SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Packard Bell burrows affordable niche with EasyNote TE: 400 euros, 15.6 inches, AMD inside

Packard Bell burroughs affordable niche with EasyNote TE laptop 400 euros, 156 inches, AMD inside

While parent company Acer eyes deeper pockets and higher margins, Packard Bell is soldiering on with its EasyNote range of laptops for thrifty Europeans. Spotted by the friendly folk at Pocket-lint, the EasyNote TE has just reached stores and should scrape under the €400 (£300, $500) mark — thanks partly to its avoidance of the premium Intel processor found in the EasyNote TV. Instead, the TE relies on AMD’s updated E-Series processor (the slower 1.4GHz E1-1200 version, to be precise), which comes with capable Radeon HD 7310 onboard graphics and supports a USB 3.0 port (in addition to twin USB 2.0) and HDMI output. You’ll also find a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 display, 750GB of storage and a “multi-in-1” card slot — which means the only spec we’re missing is the RAM. Who’ll take a bet on 4GB?

Continue reading Packard Bell burrows affordable niche with EasyNote TE: 400 euros, 15.6 inches, AMD inside

Packard Bell burrows affordable niche with EasyNote TE: 400 euros, 15.6 inches, AMD inside originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Aspire V3 review: an affordable, Kepler-packing laptop for back-to-school season

DNP  Acer Aspire V3 review

Back in March at CeBIT, Acer unveiled a slew of new laptops, among which the Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 Ultrabook was easily the most celebrated. But while slim designs and instant-on technology are shoe-ins for media attention, slightly thicker machines with revved-up internals and discrete graphics are champions of the “don’t judge a book by its cover” philosophy. And besides, not everyone is willing to part with a DVD drive, much less spend $1,000-plus on their next PC.

Hence Acer’s Aspire V3, which is available in sizes ranging from 14 to 17.3 inches (for the purposes of this review, we took a look at the middleweight 15.6-inch version). While it weighs a hefty 5.8 pounds and looks positively bloated next to 0.8-inch-thick laptops such as the M3, the V3 packs serious power in the form of NVIDIA Kepler graphics and a Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPU. And unlike many Ultrabooks trickling their way into the market, this guy is priced to compete, making it a viable choice for the back-to-school season. But is it the best mainstream notebook $850 can buy? Let’s see.

Continue reading Acer Aspire V3 review: an affordable, Kepler-packing laptop for back-to-school season

Acer Aspire V3 review: an affordable, Kepler-packing laptop for back-to-school season originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony drops VAIO T from free PlayStation offer, hikes real cost of entry to $970

Sony drops VAIO T from free PlayStation offer, hikes real cost of entry to $970

Remember how it seemed too good to be true that Sony’s back to school promo would let you buy a VAIO T and get a free PlayStation 3 or Vita worth a third of the value of the Ultrabook you just bought? Well, it was. Sony has quietly dropped the $750 laptop from the PCs that qualify for the deal, raising the real qualifying price to $970 for a 15.5-inch VAIO S. Some will cry foul at being denied such a killer bargain without warning, but it’s easy to see why Sony backed out: that’s a lot of gear to give away for little in return. Dreams of heading to class with an ultraportable in hand and a PS3 at the dorm will have to be postponed, then, even if it’s still an ample discount.

[Thanks, Gabriel]

Sony drops VAIO T from free PlayStation offer, hikes real cost of entry to $970 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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