Filed under: Laptops

We’ve been fans of Samsung laptops ever since we laid hands (and personal cash) on the ultra-portable Q30 resold by Dell as the X1. As such, Sammy has our full attention after announcing proper plans to enter the US market with five different Samsung-branded laptop models. Slated for sale at US big box and the usual brick-and-mortarless on-line shops are the 10-inch NC10, the 13.3-inch Q310 and X360, 14-inch X460 and P460, 15.4-inch P560, and 16-inch R610 slab with 16:9 aspect — a silicon feast spread across thin and light, all purpose, business, desktop replacement, and netbook tastes. We’re talking premium rigs here folks, a bold move with very questionable timing given the sudden shortage of discretionary capital held by the average Dusty McSixpack. Hit the read link for full specs and prices.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

AT&T’s not messing around with spreading the good word on its U-verse services, as it has just nailed down an agreement to sell the aforementioned products in two of America’s largest retail outlets. Beginning this month, U-verse kiosks will emerge in over 600 Circuit City and Walmart locations, which will give unsuspecting consumers the chance to ditch their current cable / satellite / fiber provider and sign up for AT&T’s own programming / high-speed internet / digital phone suite. The move comes in the midst of its nationwide Total Home DVR rollout, which enables any connected TV in the crib to watch a recorded SD or HD show. Of course, U-verse still serves a comparatively small amount of the country at present time, but with an initiative like this, we feel pretty good about future expansion.

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Filed under: Laptops

We knew it would be going down, but the formal announcement has finally been made: MSI’s Wind will soon be gracing store shelves at Best Buy. As early as “right now” if you’re lucky enough, the 10-inch netbook can be procured at your local BB (no word on Future Shop), and we’re told that it’ll pack a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, Windows XP Home Edition, a 10-inch WSVGA (1,024 x 600) display, GMA950 graphics set, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 120GB hard drive, 3-cell battery (sigh…) and a black or white motif. You might expect to just snag one real quick like for $399, but don’t expect to leave without being hassled for one of those Product Replacement Plans. Fun, fun! Full release is after the break.

Continue reading MSI’s 10-inch Wind winds up in Best Buy

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Filed under: Laptops

Slowly but surely, MSI is following in the laughable footsteps of ASUS. At first, the Wind was simply the Wind. Now, we’ve a smattering of variants to keep up with, and according to a recent interview with director of US sales Andy Tung, that trend isn’t about to stop. Starting next week, the Wind U100 will be available at an undisclosed “large national retailer,” with the 3-cell / WinXP version going for $399. Additionally, Tung gave us all a reason to hold off on making that very purchase by revealing that the business-minded Wind U120 (or Wind 2, as he called it) will be landing on US soil in late November or early December. Said machine will boast “a whole new look,” new HDD / SSD options and inbuilt 3.5G WWAN connectivity for under $600. Also of note, MSI’s internal research has found that Linux-infused netbooks get returned four times as often as units with Windows XP; we can’t say we’re shocked that people don’t feel like learning a new OS, but we’re deeply, deeply saddened that reading comprehension levels (particularly on specification labels) in this nation are so obviously low.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

It’s been a long, tumultuous road for Napster, but the music service once loathed by James Alan Hetfield will soon be property of Best Buy. Announced this morning, the retail giant has agreed to buy Napster Inc. for a staggering $121 million, $67 million of which will be cold, hard cash. The deal is set to close in Q4 of this year, and it will include Napster’s “700,000 digital entertainment subscribers, web-based customer-service platform and mobile capabilities.” According to Best Buy president Brian Dunn, it intends to use “Napster’s capabilities and digital subscriber base to reach new customers with an enhanced experience for exploring and selecting music and other digital entertainment products over an increasing array of devices.” We’re still remaining calm for the moment, but if Best Buy starts buying up unprecedented amounts of dark fiber without explanation, we’ll go ahead and assume it really is trying to take over the world.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

You can order up Sony’s XEL-1 OLED TV from SonyStyle.com right now for $2,499.99 and hope that it ships by tomorrow. Or, you can waltz on down to your local Sam’s Club, plunk down for a membership and walk out with the previously mentioned set for just $1,748.51. We can’t say for sure if these units are available at Clubs nationwide just yet, but that’s a comparatively delicious price for those in the market for an ultra-small, ultrathin OLED TV. Anyone care to guess how cheap this thing will be on Black Friday?

[Thanks, Vishal]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We highly doubt Art Lebedev chose the opening day of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on purpose here, but nevertheless, the design studio made famous by its Optimus Maximus keyboard will be opening up shop in the Big Apple on August 8th, 2008. At first, the store will actually be held within RCS Computer Experience at 575 Madison Ave. and E. 56th Street (on the second floor, just opposite the escalator), but if sales start pouring in, we reckon it could land its own place in due time. It is noted that this location will devote almost all of its shelf space to Optimus Maximus keyboards, but a few other electronics gizmos should be available as well. So, who’s camping out for the opening?

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

DVD rental kiosks have been lighting up pharmacies and supermarkets across the US, but it seems that UKers and Irish lads / dames will soon have the great, great privilege of interfacing with Movie Booths in the near future. This particular unit doesn’t seem all too different from other variations we’ve seen, boasting a simple touchscreen display and a built-in android tasked with fetching your selected title and spitting it out for a nominal (read: undisclosed) fee. Apparently, trials have been deemed a success in outlets like Tesco, Centra and Applegreen, thus paving the way to see these pop up everywhere by the year’s end. Any chance we’ll see a Blu-ray Disc or two popped in there?

[Via Pocket-lint]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Given that $100 at Wal-mart is essentially as good as cash, we can only imagine how titillating this offer may seem for Blu-ray holdouts. Announced today, the mega-retailer will be offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of any Blu-ray player from June 8th through 14th — and yes, Sony’s PlayStation 3 is included. In case this wasn’t enough to maybe-possibly get the general public to actually pay attention to the format, Wally World will also sell “select” BD titles for $15 starting on the 8th. Since the format war ended earlier this year, we’ve seen report after report proclaiming that Blu-ray adoption just wasn’t taking off here in America, but with a theoretical net price now close to $200 (albeit for a few days only), we can certainly see the masses taking notice at long last.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Gaming

Oddly enough, the far-fetched proposal is apt to be accepted. Circuit City has reportedly solicited the services of Goldman Sachs to help “negotiate a deal,” which will essentially put the troubled electronics retailer in the hands of someone else. As it stands, Blockbuster looks to be the most interested in picking up the pieces, with billionaire Carl Icahn (Blockbuster’s largest shareholder) agreeing to finance the get-together. Of course, it looks as if Blockbuster may be the only outfit interested. Not like that’s any surprise, however, as Best Buy itself is having to look to Europe to boost revenues with US consumer spending off from where it once was. The real question here is whether a Circuit City-Blockbuster combo would be the perfect concoction to turn things around for both flagging firms, or will we find that two sinking ships actually do go down faster when anchored to one another?

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Be still, our hearts! Judging by a post (penned in Russian) over at the studio’s Livejournal, we could be seeing a number of Art Lebedev retail outlets popping up over the next year and change. From what we can glean, (more) B&M locations could surface in a plethora of Russian cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, etc.) along with one in New York (!). Granted, we get the impression that the “stores” may resemble holes-in-the-wall within other establishments (rather than dedicated structures), but we ’spose only time will tell. Camp out for the next edition of the Optimus Maximus right here in the Big Apple? Why, of course.

[Thanks, Dmitriy]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

No, Microsoft hasn’t suddenly transformed its 30-inch, multi-touch Surface into a big-ass cellphone. It has, however, chosen AT&T to launch the world’s first Surface into retail. Shoppers in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Francisco will be treated to what amounts to the novelty (at least initially) of learning about a device (Samsung BlackJack II, pictured) by simply placing it atop the Surface. They’ll also have the ability to explore interactive coverage maps. Later, users will be able to drag ringtones, graphics and video and drop it into “the phones.” Note their use of “the” and not “your” phone in the press release. Nevertheless, we’re happy to see Microsoft get the technology out the door on its long march towards consumerdom.

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Filed under: Gaming

Last we checked we actually weren’t in the Twilight Zone, but quite frankly, the bigwigs at Gibson just might be. Seemingly out of nowhere, the famed guitar manufacturer sparked up a lawsuit against Activision claiming that Guitar Hero titles violate one of its patents. Now the company appears to be on the warpath, suing Wal-Mart, Target, GameStop, Amazon, Toys ‘R’ Us and Kmart in an attempt to get the game off of store shelves. Reportedly, Gibson took “this action reluctantly, but is required to protect its intellectual property.” For the retailers that did comment, they chimed in only to say “we aren’t commenting,” and judging by the looks of things, the games are still widely available — for now.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Late last month, we actually posed the question of buying a Blu-ray player now (being that the format war is over and all), or waiting things out until prices sink and Profile 2.0 players flood the market. Aside from the PlayStation 3 — which is actually priced fairly reasonably if you were in the hunt for a new console anyway — it seems as though HD DVD’s exit has actually caused Blu-ray player prices to creep back upwards. Granted, this is about as far from surprising as it gets — after all, it’s nothing short of supply and demand working its magic. Still, it wasn’t too long ago that we saw Toshiba actively putting pressure on the Blu camp to reduce prices in order to stay competitive, and now that said pressure has vanished, stickers on the whole have headed north. Ah well, it’s not like the consumer didn’t ask for this, um, right?

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Filed under: Storage

No, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of innocent consumers snagging some new kit only to find random bits of unwanted garbage in place of the actual product, and unfortunately, we’ve all ideas it’s not the last. This go ’round, a couple waltzed into Best Buy, snagged a “brand new” $300 hard drive and zoomed home to start packin’ those platters. Much to their dismay, no HDD was found inside the box — rather, three bags of dried beans weighed it down enough to not seem suspicious. As expected, Best Buy wasn’t about to refund any money for fear that the actual purchasers could be the culprits, and while that’s certainly understandable, we’re quite relieved to know that a little outside intervention netted the two a $300 gift card to the retailer. We bet they’ll inspect that package a bit more closely before taking it home next time (sad though that may be).

[Image courtesy of DKImages, thanks Craig]

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Filed under: Laptops

It’s hard to tell whether the MacBook Air is selling way beyond Apple’s regular expectations or whether they just didn’t make that many units (there’s a difference, after all), but as Ars Technica points out, a cursory glance to Apple’s MBA stock-checker shows the majority of Apple stores are plum out. Of course, the Cube sold pretty well in the early days too, only time will tell whether the machine actually has staying power. Something tells us Steve will have a thing or two to say about the Air’s sales later this week, though.

Read - Ars points out the MBAs are oft sold out
Read - MacBook Air retail stock-checke

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In a memo sent out today by Dell, the company has reassured us that even though AMD is disappearing rapidly from its online store, the company remains “committed” to AMD, and is just “in the process of redistributing its product mix” — whatever that means. But despite those euphemisms, consumers can only buy most Dell AMD systems through a retail store or over the phone. Dell pointed out that it has kept its Energy Star 4.0 Inspiron 531 consumer desktop available online, but most other AMD machines are now just for business customers or those strange creatures that use “phones” and “buildings” to buy things.

Read - Reg Hardware
Read - The Wall Street Journal

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Filed under: Cellphones

If our solemn word wasn’t enough to convince you of trouble in retail-ville for Palm, take this news as empirical. According to the smartphone-maker, it is officially shuttering all of its retail locations but one over the next five weeks. Originally, we thought that the airport locations would steer clear of the axe, but news today is that 34 stores total — 26 airport-based and eight branded stores — will be saying adios before long. Sure, this news doesn’t sound real hot, but Palm claims they want to cut costs and focus on its next-gen phones, which is what we’ve been asking them to do all along… so maybe this is a blessing in disguise?

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Oh Palm, things just seem to be going from bad to worse. After your recent (and repeated) Palm OS II delays and employee layoffs, you really should be due for some good news — but that’s not the case today. According to a member of the TreoCentral forums who cites “sources,” Palm will be folding all but its airport-based retail locations by the end of January. Apparently, other forum members have checked in with their local stores and gotten word from reps there that the doors are indeed shutting, so it seems like this is a go. Palm, we’re not going to say you’re in your darkest hour just yet, but we’re pretty sure you can see it from where you’re standing. C’mon guys — get it together!

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’re not sure how many people will be relieved by this news, but the few die-hard CompUSA fans out there can rest easy tonight, as the big box retailer will continue to live on as a ward of Ohio-based Systemax. According to Reuters, the TigerDirect owner will shell out around $30 million for the CompUSA brand, trademarks, e-tail business, and as many as 16 brick-and-mortar retail locations, although the particular sites have not yet been chosen. The acquisition — which comes just a month after the company was sold to liquidation firm Gordon Brothers Group — was justified by Systemax CEO Richard Leeds as being a good match for its Tiger Direct operation because he believes “the value of the CompUSA brand remains very high.”

[Thanks, Quentin]

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