Hasta La Gadget!

Looking to save some coin on your tech purchases? Of course you are! In this roundup, we’ll run down a list of the freshest frugal buys, hand-picked with the help of the folks at Slickdeals. You’ll want to act fast, though, as many of these offerings won’t stick around long.

Today’s collection of discounted tech links runs the gamut from home entertainment wares to Ultrabooks and ends up at Barnes & Noble’s tablet. A 55-inch 3D HDTV from LG and that Nook HD+ are tempting options on their own, but there’s a whole lot more to peruse on the other side of the jump.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops, Tablets

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Source: Slickdeals

Well, this process seems a bit counterintuitive, eh? This morning, Barnes & Noble introduced a new scheme for getting Nook customers to visit the company’s retail stores. The promotion nets you one free e-book when you purchase another, but — and this is where the offer tripped us up a bit — you can only make your electronic purchase with a cashier in a physical store. The deal will be up for grabs every weekend, and titles are set to change. There are currently 20 books on offer (available this Saturday and Sunday only), including hits like Along Came a Spider by James Patterson and Bossypants by Tina Fey. Once you make your selections, you’ll receive an email with access codes (assuming the rep managed to input your data correctly), at which point you’ll need to visit a dedicated Barnes & Noble site to receive your books. Easy peasy.

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Via: ZDNet

Source: Barnes & Noble

If you’re still balking at the cost of download-to-own e-books, and would rather stick to the tried-and-true library lending system, then this Hachette news is for you. Come next Wednesday, the entirety of Hachette’s ebook catalog — over 5,000 titles — will be made available to nonprofit libraries throughout the US. The announcement and finalized pricing model follows two years worth of pilot testing, during which the publisher examined ebook consumption and lending habits at select libraries. Under the currently set terms of sale, e-books that bow in tandem with print editions will run three times the price of their physical counterparts for “single-user-at-a-time circulations, ” with prices falling to just one and a half that of the hard copy one year later. By Hachette’s own admission, this pricing scheme is not entirely set in stone — the company plans to continually reevaluate the model on a per-year basis. So, there’s hope yet the publisher will gouge libraries a bit less for the perks of e-borrowing.

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What do you get when you ask 10,000 rabid bookworms to help build a better Kobo? The Cadillac of e-readers, naturally: a bigger, beefier and generally higher-end device than we’re used to. The Aura HD is a rare thing in this space, built specifically with power users in mind. And for those very reasons, this 6.8-inch, $169 slate isn’t long for this world. Announced roughly half a year after the company’s flagship Glo (and, it turns out, just in time for Mother’s Day), the Aura HD isn’t slated to make it beyond the end of the year. “This is something that is designed for this most passionate, voracious reader,” the company’s CEO Mike Serbinis told us in an interview conducted around the announcement, “and as much as I wish everyone was like that — it would make us a lot bigger business right away — that is not the case.”

It’s a strange move for a relatively small company that’s currently offering up two 6-inch readers, a 5-inch model and 7-inch tablet. That, and company is convinced such a product isn’t destined to ever become anything but a niche device, particularly in a race dominated by two main players. But is there a chance devoted fans might pay the premium? Let’s find out.

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Kobo has just revealed its new, limited-edition E Ink Reader that will be available for pre-order beginning tomorrow for the price of $169.99. The eReader is dubbed the Kobo Aura HD, and it will be available in 3 colors: Ivory, Espresso, and Onyx (White, Brown, and Black). This new eReader is what Wayne White, the EVP and GM of Devices for Kobo, calls, “The Porsche of eReaders”. He says that it pushes the boundaries of eReading, and is designed for those who are in the “driver’s seat of their eReading adventures.”

The Kobo Aura HD features a 6.8-inch Pearl E Ink 265dpi touchscreen display, a 1GHz processor, which Kobo says “makes it the fastest eReader on the market,” 4GB of storage (with a microSD card slot for expandable storage of up to 32GB), two months of usage on a single charge, and many software features. There are 10 fonts included in the Aura HD with 24 adjustable font sizes, “displaying each letter with perfection”.

Just last September, Kobo launched a new line-up of eReader devices, which included the Kobo Glo, Kobo Mini, and Kobo Arc. The Kobo Glo went on sale for $129.99 and featured a 6-inch E Ink screen with a backlight to improve reading in the dark. The Kobo Mini was a small, 5-inch E Ink display that retailed for $79.99, and was dubbed the world’s smallest and lightest eReader, and finally, the Kobo Arc was not exactly a eReader, but a $199.99 – $249.99 Android device, which operates on a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

If you want to pre-order the Kobo Aura HD, you can do it through Kobo itself, or through its various resellers. Kobo designed the Aura HD to thank its 13-million user base. Back in January, Kobo announced that its eReader sales had doubled, and that it gained over 4 million customers since last summer. Michael Serbinins, CEO of Kobo, stated,

“Kobo Aura HD is designed for the most passionate booklovers – those who devour hundreds of stories each year – who asked us to create the ultimate ereading experience. Kobo Aura HD is our way of celebrating these customers.”

Kobo unveils the limited edition Aura HD eReader is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
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