Hasta La Gadget!

HP TouchPad 4G surfaces for pre-order on Amazon, wearing $700 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Aug 2011 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we’ve got our optical viewfinders set firmly on digital cameras — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of the month we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — and hit up the hub page right here!

Most of us are still walking around hunchbacked from years of carrying heavy textbooks in our overstuffed backpacks. Thankfully, an e-reader can significantly lighten the loads for students everywhere. Sure, we’ve still got a ways to go before electronic devices can replace textbooks altogether, but in the long run, it’s a purpose that could significantly impact the postures of backpack wearers all over. Jump past the break for our recommendations, and another opportunity to enter our back to school giveaway. Simply leave a comment below to be entered to win, and head over to our giveaway page for more details.

Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: E-readers

Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: E-readers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on August 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Amazon’s DRM-free music service is really appealing these days. When it launched last September it got rave reviews because of the ease of use and the attractive prices, not to mention that whole DRM-free aspect. It was appealing when it launched and it’s getting even more appealing these days because of the situation we’re seeing with Yahoo right now.

Some of you have probably heard about what’s going on over at Yahoo right now – they have decided to stop issuing DRM authorization keys which essentially makes songs that people purchased and downloaded from the company worthless. Come September 30th, music owners will not be able to put the songs they purchased on multiple devices, or burn them to CD. Sound familiar? If it does, it’s because MSN’s music service did the same thing about a year ago.

This is turning into a real problem now that two major companies, both Microsoft and Yahoo, have decided to take down their servers that manage DRM and abandon their music services. Yahoo is hoping to keep customers who bought music happy by offering to compensate them for whatever they paid for their music. According to their FAQ, they are encouraging those who purchased music from the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store to burn all of their music to CDs because those files can be copied back to a computer without problem. For those who have problems, they say:

For any consumers that have problems with their DRM licenses after the store closes, our customer care group will provide coupons to the Rhapsody MP3 store so they can purchase an equivalent collection of MP3s. If any users have serious problems with this arrangement, we will provide refunds to them through our customer care service. This offer will remain open until December 31st, 2008.

We believe this plan will provide a fair deal to consumers who have purchased songs through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service, and will assist users in making the transition beyond DRM to more flexible, reliable and consumer-friendly digital media.

News.com recently proposed an interesting question – what if Apple stopped issuing DRM keys like MSN and Yahoo? At this point Apple is king of the digital media market so it’s not like it would happen anytime soon, but what if at some point it happened?

One thing we know of for sure right now is that DRM-free is the way to go these days because you just never know…

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

After three years in the making, Amazon has launched a wireless portable reading device called Kindle which they hope can improve “the book.” When I saw the price tag that read $399, I couldn’t help but initially think “who’s going to buy this at that price.” After reading about all that Kindle has to offer, I could easily see this turning into a “must-have” for book enthusiasts and something people would be willing to spend the money on.

One of the best features about Kindle is that it’s wireless.  You have instant access to over 90,000 blogs, books, magazines, and newspapers.  Say you’re on the train on your way to work and you wanted a new book to read to pass the time. All you’d have to do is power-up your Kindle and you could select what you wanted to read. The best part – no service or data plan is required! It uses Sprint’s high-speed data network so that you have instant access to the reading material that you want to read. Once you selected the material you wanted, it would be sent to your device.

Other features:

• Search Wikipedia for free
• Everything is backed-up at Kindle.com (if you lose the device or it breaks, you can get it all back)
• Sharp and natural display with no glare (looks nothing like reading on a computer screen)
• Light weight! Weighs only 10.3 ounces and can carry 200 books at a time

Obviously the content that you want is going to cost because as we all know, books aren’t free.  Here’s a look at some of their prices: a monthly subscription to a newspaper will be $13.99 while a monthly subscription to a magazine will be $1.49 per month. Prices for books will vary, and if you wanted to read a blog, the monthly subscription fee is $1.99.  Personally, I think it would be better if they offered plans for blogs like for $5 or $6 so that you could read as many blogs as you wanted. $1.99 per month could really ad up if there are multiple blogs you like to keep track of.

It’ll be interesting to see if many people will buy it, but also if this will help out the e-book business which has been a flop. Given the price, I don’t think it’ll be something that people will instantly run out to buy, so Amazon better have some marketing tricks up their sleeves if they want this to turn into something more than Sony’s Portable Reader System.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Here’s a weird one. Earlier today, we heard (and confirmed) reports that the Cosmo Black Nintendo 3DS was unavailable for purchase directly through Amazon. We followed up with the company to get to the bottom of things, and were fed this explanation from a company spokesperson:

“We received customer feedback that there may be an inventory issue with the Cosmo Black Nintendo 3DS. The integrity of the product is not under review. Customers are still able to purchase the Amazon.com offer of the Aqua Blue Nintendo 3DS, however the Amazon.com offer of [the] black Nintendo 3DS has been removed until the inventory issue is resolved. There is no problem with the Cosmo Black Nintendo 3DS units themselves. This is an internal inventory problem that was brought to our attention from customer feedback and we are looking into it and will resolve as soon as possible.”

Turns out, “as soon as possible” meant “three minutes later.” As of this very moment in time, the handheld is available and in stock over at the world’s most recognized e-tailer, with the outfit confirming to us that sales “have been reinstated.” At any rate, we suppose this serves to clarify one thing while bringing about a totally separate question — there’s nothing physically wrong with the 3DS so far as Amazon’s concerned, but how on Earth is its inventory team reacting that quickly?

Amazon briefly pulls Cosmo Black Nintendo 3DS due to ‘inventory issues,’ reinstates it moments later originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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