Hasta La Gadget!

Here’s a tip folks: don’t get in car wrecks. If you someday find such a situation unavoidable, however, here’s another: keep that laptop of yours in the trunk, or at least in a case tucked down behind the driver’s seat. Mounties in British Columbia are reporting that a Canadian woman who perished in a car accident last month was actually killed by the laptop within her vehicle. As the story goes, the 25 year old’s vehicle was struck by a tow truck, flinging her laptop into the rear of her head. A coroner pegged the cause of death as a “blunt force trauma,” and investigators believe that the whole thing was survivable had the machine not been in the back seat. Not surprisingly, officials are using the incident to encourage others to secure their belongings whilst traveling.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Laptops

Canadian killed by unsecured laptop during car wreck originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that HP’s Pavilion dv2 has had time to shine, it’s dv3‘s turn to take the spotlight. The gang at NotebookReview have put their hands all over the 13.3-inch, Intel Core 2 Duo-equipped laptop, and despite good performance, negative points go to the build quality, which was said to be worse than other Pavilion models. Specifically, it suffered from a weak / squeaky chassis, a bowed keyboard, and a narrow window of clarity for the display — not gripes you want to have if you’re looking to pay a cool grand for machine this size. While not recommending you avoid the computer, they suggest looking into the dv2 and dv4 to fill your HP-owning needs. Hit up the read link for the full review.

Filed under: Laptops

HP Pavilion dv3 taken for a spin, comes back unfit but well-performing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Still can’t decide which of Acer’s ample number of shiny new netbooks / laptops has caught your eye specifically? Here’s some more details on two of those models, including availability, to help you out. First up, the 13.3-inch Aspire 3935 is available as now for just a smidgen under nine Benjamins. With that you’ll get a golden brown metal chassis, one inch thick and and weighing in at 4.18 pounds with a frameless, 16:9 CineCrystal LED backlit display showing a 1366 x 768 resolution. Other amenities include a full-size keyboard with touch-sensitive hotkeys, multi-gesture touchpad, webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, a bio-protection fingerprint reader, 802.11 a / g / draft-N, and a 4-cell Li-ion battery. Spec-wise, we’ve got a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7350 with 4500MHD graphics, 8x DVD writer, 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD, and Vista Home Premium SP1. If you’re looking for something with a little more horsepower, the 18.4-inch Aspire 8935G Gemstone PC’s rocking an Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670, 1080p resolution, 4x Blu-ray writer, a 500GB HDD upgradeable to 1TB, and most of the niceties from 3935’s spec sheet. Mum’s the word on price, but it’s due out in June. Full press release after the break.

Continue reading Acer’s 13.3-inch Aspire 3935 now available for $899, 18.4-inch 8935G coming in June

Filed under: Laptops

Acer’s 13.3-inch Aspire 3935 now available for $899, 18.4-inch 8935G coming in June originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey readers, Cheap Geek is late today because this cheap geek was getting numbers to his accountant. Yay! Pushing my taxes to the last minute makes me feel extra-cheap!

1. Buy.com has a great deal on a Dell Latitude D531 laptop. It runs off an AMD Mobile Sempron 3600+ 1.8-GHz processor and has 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive. It also has a 14.1-inch screen and runs Windows XP Home. It doesn’t have a CD-RW or DVD drive, but whatever. The D531 costs only $299 with free shipping and looks like an excellent second machine or student machine.

2. A couple years ago, shooting home video meant shelling out some real money. Now, with this deal from Tiger Direct, you can grab a Canon ZR900 miniDV for only $129.99. Sweet price. It’s refurbished, but you get a one-month warranty so that’s enough time to check it out.

3. It’s a recurring theme in this column: Memory is getting so darn cheap! Costco is selling a Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive with 1.5TB of storage (!) for only $109.99. Wow, that’s cheap. That’s the best storage deal I’ve ever come across.

Our Dell Adamo unit arrived this morning, and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. As you can see, the packaging is pretty unique–and getting it out of the box and into our hands took less than 30 seconds. Nice job, Dell!

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