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Laptops, Netbooks, Smart phones and...Smartbooks? |
Continue reading "Smartbooks vs. Netbooks: First Lenovo Smartbook Unveiled." »
CES
Top Retailers take part in SquareTrade's Warranty Revolution
A customer recently noticed that SquareTrade warranties are now available at Amazon and Buy.com. They were excited to see other retailers joining us in revolutionizing the warranty industry. We're excited too!
Offering consumers fair pricing and the best warranty available
So, who else is included in this list? Check out some of our current partners:
(Here's 10 of them. We're turning 10 so we've got the number 10 on our mind!)
- Amazon
- Buy.com
- eCost
- Abt Electronics
- Vanns Electronics
- Woot!
- Geeks.com
- Sonic Electronics
- PC Rush
- TheNerds.net
It's true, we're not even in our teens but we've started a revolution!
With over a million warranties sold, we couldn't have done it without you. Seriously. (Want an example of how powerful your voice is? See how Woot CEO asked and listened to what consumers had to say about extended warranties.)
And since you've helped us start this revolution - we hope you'll join us in celebrating SquareTrade's 10th Birthday!
Love is in the air.
Looking for some good Valentine's Day gift ideas for the gadget geek in your life? Here are three quick picks:
1. Engraved iPod Put any message on the back, for free. Get creative! And don't forget to load it up with romantic tunes... an updated (and slightly more expensive) version of the mix tape.
2. Dopamine Earrings Earrings in the shape of a dopamine molecule. Cool.
3. Rumbleseat Boomchair for Two A gamer's loveseat -- the perfect way to transform one of the least romantic activities available and make it perfect for two!
Think Valentine's Day would be the perfect time to pop the question? Check out iPropose -- an iPhone app that takes the stress out of getting engaged. Why drop to one knee when your iPhone can do all the work for you?
Oh, and now through 2/14, take 25% OFF SquareTrade warranties with coupon code MYVALENTINE. See site for details.
Kicking off a great TV warranty sale.
Super Bowl season is the best time to find great deals on TVs, just in time for party hosting. So if you haven't already made the big purchase, check out CNN Money's tips on finding the best deal for your dollars on flat panels.
Once you've taken the plunge, if you say no to the store warranty and come to SquareTrade instead, you'll get 35% OFF! Just use coupon code SUPERBOWL.
Hurry though, it's only good until February 1, 2009. Oh, and it's for a TV warranty only and won't work for eBay purchases. Enjoy!
The Everex VA1500V laptop bargains up your lap.
Man, don't you miss the days when you had to pony up $1500 just to get a laptop that powered up when you hit the On switch? Now $400 will net you something decent, like the just-announced 15.4" Everex VA1500V laptop.
It's lacking frills like a PC card slot and a really good video card, but hey, it's four hundred bucks... you were expecting Alienware? What you do get is a Linux-based OS on a 60GB hard drive running at 1.5 GHz, with 512MB of DDR2 memory and DVD/CD-RW combo optical drive. Graphics card aside, the screen resolution is 1440 x 900, which is perfectly fine for a daily driver. Everex even threw in an Ethernet LAN, three USB ports, and a VGA output for free.
It's available right this instant over at NewEgg for $400, and our highly scientific calculations (i.e. we used the widget in the sidebar) have determined that your SquareTrade laptop warranty for it will run $48 for three years of protection... a bit more if you want Accidental Damage coverage as well.
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Samsung M800 and F490 touchscreen cell phones show up.
Geez, you release one little iPhone, and suddenly everybody's got to have a touchscreen function. Samsung hasn't made it official yet, but our friends at Mobiledia have broken the impending arrival of the Samsung M800 for Sprint, and we have to say it looks a lot cooler than most of the other iPhone wannabes that have popped up lately with that slick full-color display going on. But while details on it are sketchy at best, it's following right on the heels of a last-second CES reveal of the M800's big brother, the Samsung F490. And this one we know a little something about, since we've been teased by it before.
It's tough to get too excited about that display (which looks cribbed off the PlayStation's menu system, whether it is or not), but it'll be rocking a 5-megapixel camera to the M800's 2-megapixels and have haptic feedback on the 3.2" touchscreen (i.e. you'll feel a buzz that lets you know you're doing something) that, yes, has both landscape and portrait modes. The downside? There's only 130MB of internal storage, more with microDS, and it might indeed be tri-band GSM/EDGE only. Why, God? Why?
Well, as a saving grace, you can get a SquareTrade cell phone warranty on them for less than any form of cell phone insurance you can find, even if you add Accidental Damage coverage to the package. Plus, we turn around your claim in just five business days, guaranteed, or your warranty and the service are free. Good luck getting that from T-Mobile.
Release dates for the M800 is nonexistent as yet. Those European people will get their mitts on the F490 before we do (i.e. February), and it'll run at $734 without contract. Pricey, but throw in a few contract deal enticements and a not-AT&T carrier, and we might be swayed.
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Samsung touchscreen phone, cell phone warranty
Creative's inPerson video conference portable: Hands-On.
We finally moseyed over the Creative booth at CES to have a look at and feel of their new inPerson wireless video conferencing portable, and found our naked glee tempered slightly by what we want it to be.
The inPerson is a big step away from Creative's usually line of audio/visual gear, but it's not exactly new technology; it's old technology used in a new, exciting way. They've essentially put a VoIP box together with a webcam and made the whole thing wireless, with WiFi or LAN, so you can tote it with you to another company's office and set up an instant video conference with home base. And while it's nice if both parties have an inPerson, it's not vital. You can log on with a normal camera and video conference all Skype-like. Everything will run on Creative's own servers.
It runs nice, too. We didn't test out the four-at-once max capability, but a one-on-one ran at a pleasant 19 frames per second - a LOT better than Skype - on a high resolution 7" screen. There's a function for adjusting the bitrate to best suit your signal, but the inPerson won't adjust automatically; it's strictly manual. Given how the inPerson is designed to be taken strange places, that seems like quite an oversight. Unfortunately, not the only one.
InPerson's UI is pick-up-and-play easy, with the remote or on the pad - no touch screen, but given the whole video conferencing thing, that's probably for the best. There are two built-in microphones, but as the floor at CES was a tad noisy, we opted for the included headset. Voice quality was good, but there was a very noticeable sound lag from the video image. The VGA camera moves with the cover hinge, so it's adjustable on the vertical axis but not the horizontal. Creative compensated nicely here with a wide angle lens that would do a decent job of capturing a boardroom table. The guys at the booth were fairly cagey about battery life (they kept telling us "standard battery life," but didn't say standard to what), but we've heard two hours tops. Good thing you can plug it in.
The really glaring omission here is the lack of call waiting. Nobody can call into an inPerson video conference in progress. The host has to call out and invite people in, and that just doesn't make any kind of sense to us. Creative told us a call waiting feature was in the works, but frankly, it had better go live before the inPerson ships. It's a Grade-A omission for a conferencing device of any kind.
If that gets fixed and the pictures move as smoothly in the wild as they did at Creative's CES booth, this one could be a big winner. At $700, it's cheaper than any other video conferencing equipment out on the market, its portability makes it infinitely more adaptable, and the $10 a month subscription fee is but a pittance. When call-ins become possible, we'll probably get one for our own office, and we'll put one of our own warranties on it. With Accidental Damage coverage, naturally.
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Eight new Magellan GPS models debut at CES.
Holy crap! The GPS market just got even more crowded and highly expensive with the CES debut of eight new Magellan GPS devices.
Sure, they start small with a redesigned el cheapo Roadmate 1212 priced at $299, and let you pony up an extra $30 to get live traffic reports on the RoadMate 1230. Sure, they're introducing a new 1400 series RoadMate that basically just ups the 1200 series screen from 3.5" to 4.3". Sure, the 3200 series is getting a new addition with a voice-enabled Maestro Elite 3270. But that's where the sanity ends and they start going all kinds of crazy on us with their new Maestro 5300 series.
Take a deep breath here: the Maestro 5310 and 5340+GPRS come with a 3-month real time traffic subscription, text-to-speech, a programmable and "patent pending" OneTouch interface for favorite functions and/or searches, PC connectivity to upload addresses and notes, a built-in AAA TourBook travel guide and Google Local Search, so you can instantly locate any business, restaurant, or event in your vicinity. Loosely translated: the 5310 will price at $700 - that's $200 more than any other North American GPS they offer. The 5340, which comes with even more real-time features, hasn't even got a price tag announced as yet, which makes us giddy with terror.
Abject horror aside, this is a pretty interesting move to make. Magellan clearly thinks there's an open market for an upscale GPS system, one that does just about everything you want to happen in a car (save for the actual driving, but GM's working on that), and they're not shy about charging you accordingly. As such, it might be a good idea to slap a SquareTrade GPS warranty on that investment, and consider putting Accidental Damage coverage on it as well.
So, with Goodyear getting in the GPS game and everybody else eyeing the market greedily, it should be fun to see how market leader Garmin responds. And how quickly.
UPDATE: the 5340 will price out at a cool $1000. Nope, they're definately not martketing these at collage students.
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Magellan GPS warranty
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