Hasta La Gadget!

Europe’s already extensive broadband coverage may be expanding even further, now that Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite has officially gone into service. The new craft, which launched from Kazakhstan in late December, uses spotbeam technology to generate areas of connectivity that are about 250 kilometers wide, with each beam carrying a total capacity of 900Mbps. Unlike the Hylas 1, its reach will extend far across the continent, providing Tooway’s high-bandwidth services to 13 million households in remote locations. Subscribers will have download speeds of up to 10Mbps and upload rates of 4Mbps, though they’ll still have to put up with latency on the order of 250ms, making life even more difficult for Eastern European OnLive gamers. Of course, this access won’t come for free, but Ka-Sat’s 82-beam network structure significantly lowers its operating costs, allowing Eutelsat to offer prices that are on par with market rates. According to company CEO Michel de Rosen, customers should expect to pay around €30 for basic service, in addition to €250 they’d have to spend on a 77cm satellite dish. That’s not necessarily a small amount of cash for low-income families to fork over, but at least they’ll have an option that didn’t exist before. Head past the break for a video about Tooway’s Ka-Sat services, along with a full PR.

Continue reading Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite goes into service, provides broadband to 13 million homes across Europe

Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat satellite goes into service, provides broadband to 13 million homes across Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like the G2x saga isn’t over quite yet; after first disappearing from store shelves due to quality concerns “high demand,” the dual-core Android smartphone is getting a slight price hike from T-Mobile. As of May 27th, the out-of-stock Froyo handset decided it was worth an extra Grant (quite the presumptuous fellow, no?), dialing in with a new price of $249 after rebate. An internal screenshot describes the price hop as a reaction to inventory constraints. The supposed effects of supply and demand aside, this price adjustment feels a little shaky amid reports of botched WiFi handoffs, overheating, light leakage and reboot issues. With any luck, the G2x will return to store shelves sporting a worry-free update to Gingerbread; but if you aren’t counting on it, you can still snag one at Amazon to the tune of $99. Oh, and look: plenty in stock, too!

T-Mobile G2x gets a $50 price bump, still no stock in sight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 May 2011 01:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Buffalo’s 256GB SSD comes with 6GBps SATA interface, silly price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 May 2011 11:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t mistake the relative quietness from AMD on the APU front for inactivity. Ever since announcing the first shipment of its Llano Accelerated Processing Unit in April, the company’s been working behind the scenes to ramp up availability to OEMs, and somewhere along the supply chain a gracious soul has been found who’s leaked the bulk pricing for those chips. The new quad-core A Series processors start off at $110 for an A6-3450 and max out at $170 for an A8-3550P, but there’s also mention of octa-core FX processors, which will weigh in at $320 a piece and reputedly compete with Intel’s 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K. The latter are built around AMD’s Bulldozer modules (wherein one module counts for two cores) and look to be the manifestation of the company’s Zambezi CPUs, which could come without an integrated graphics processor as is available on the Llano and the rest of AMD’s Fusion line.

Just to whet appetites further, we’ve also come across an HP dv6 on an obscure German retail site, offering a 1.6GHz A6-3410MX APU, 6GB of RAM, and a most reasonable €590 price. There’s obviously no promised delivery date, but this should be the first of many such appearances in the coming days as we build up towards Computex 2011. Something tells us AMD won’t be holding back when the Taipei electronics show gets started.

[Thanks, Shashwat and Vygantas]

AMD Llano quad-core APUs and Zambezi octa-core CPUs get priced, the former listed inside an HP dv6 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What do you do just before you decide to upgrade your old device with some new hotness? You sell the old stuff on eBay, right? Well, B&N doesn’t seem to have any better ideas than you as it’s started offering its classic Nook e-reader for $99 on the online auction site, undercutting its own price by $50. This is the WiFi-only dual-screen unit, as you might surmise, not the Color tablet that’s been treading dangerously close to being a fully fledged Android slate. If you’re an E Ink loyalist on a budget, this might just be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for, though don’t blame us if Barnes & Noble comes up with a fancier, more lustworthy model in the time it takes for that free delivery to reach your door.

[Thanks, Sheldon]

Barnes & Noble selling Nooks for $99 on eBay originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 02:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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