Hasta La Gadget!

You may remember that we had an oh-so-brief hands-on with the Clamcase back at CES, and at that time we were promised a review unit the following week. Well, here we are a month later and we still don’t have our unit, and according to some unhappy tipsters neither do those who preordered all the way back in December. We spoke with a rep to get to the bottom of the matter and got some updates on the situation to share with all you eager pre-orderers.

Things got off to a bit of a rough start when the initial January ship date slipped to February, and although an email was sent to preorder customers indicating a few week delay, credit cards were still charged. Apparently, a manufacturing issue early on rendered a small batch of the earliest units un-chargeable, though some of these units made their ways into customers’ hands. We’re told that these problems have since been solved and that units are rolling off the Texas factory lines daily, but we’ve also gotten reports of bunk tracking numbers and ‘shipments’ that never arrive. The last piece of the puzzle is the suspicious disappearance of a discussion thread on the company’s official Facebook page, which apparently got so heated that lawsuits were threatened. We’re told that it was “accidentally taken down while the page was being reorganized”, but we still cannot locate it ourselves. Not all is wrong in the world though, as some Twitter spelunking has revealed that real life people have received real life units in at least some cases, so our best bit of advice would be to either hit the company up for a status report or simply move along to one of the many other iPad keyboard case options available to lighten your wallets. We’ve been assured that our unit should arrive sometime shortly, so stay tuned for the next installment of the Clamcase Chronicles coming in the near future!

Debunk: Clamcase now shipping, manufacturing problems remedied originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bad news for Leaf lovers. Back in December Nissan representative Tim Gallagher said “By the end of summer, our goal is to have everyone in their car.” That would have meant 20,000-odd Leafs shipped before leaves start falling from trees, but now Nissan North America’s Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing Brian Carolin thinks we won’t even see that many until next year. “I think 20,000 will be too high,” he said, referring to total deliveries for 2011. “You just have to make this launch absolutely perfect. It’s not a numbers game.” Indeed it isn’t, it’s an expectations game, and how much lower can they go?

Nissan backs off 2011 Leaf delivery promises, expects ‘a few hundred’ sold in February originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 11:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We hoped Boxee would surprise us at the eleventh hour and announce it had finally added Netflix to the service — technically making good on its end of January deadline. Instead, the company’s blog is now reporting that the service is “anticipated soon.” Apparently, the service is running fine on the device in the company’s offices — which, mind you they said back in December too, — but it still failed to satisfy Netflix’s security requirements. While that sounds like a big thing to miss in our books, a comment by Boxee’s VP of Marketing, Andrew Kippen, suggests the company just discovered the issue only an hour before midnight. This marks the second time users have been asked to re-adjust their expectations for when the big red box might pop up on their favorite media manager, but to Boxee’s credit, we were glad to see the company come right out with the situation instead of leaving us all on pins and needles. Now, let’s just hope this whole incident gets sorted out pronto, so we don’t have to break bad news to our Watch Instantly lovin’ hearts ever again.

Boxee delays Netflix integration again, cites security requirements as the culprit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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College students eagerly awaiting India’s ambitious $35 tablet are going to have to put their dreams on hold — there’s been a delay. Earlier this week, the Times of India reported that the Indian government dropped HCL Technologies, the company responsible for manufacturing the great democratic tablet, for failing to follow through on the 600 million rupee (or $13,198,416) guarantee — apparently a disagreement over production costs is to blame. Last summer, the country’s Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, made a number of appearances toting a mockup of the Android-based tablet, and promising a launch date of January 15th. Officials say the project is still on track and should be ready this summer. However, while the government seeks a replacement for HCL, skeptics continue to sound warnings that parts alone will cost more than $35. We’d like to chalk this up to haters hating, but we can’t seem to forget what became of the $10 laptop.

India’s $35 tablet delay dashes hopes, destroys dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Still hanging on to your Fisker Karma pre-order slip despite the decidedly sizeable boost in MSRP, up to $95,900? Well, we now have an idea of when you might actually have a chance of getting a car. The most recent estimates we heard indicated deliveries starting in late 2010, but that obviously didn’t happen. Now Fisker is indicating that full production is set to begin in March, about two months from now, with people getting their rides “soon after.” Initial examples of the car are to be produced in Europe, Finland to be exact, and they’ll need the services of a fairly substantial boat to get across the Atlantic before they become available here. But, still, a potential release date just a few months away is a reasonably encouraging thing — and you can’t deny the car is still quite a looker.

Fisker Karma now set for production in March, deliveries this spring — maybe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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