SquareTrade

Kick off of SquareDeals of the Day and SquareTweets!

It almost feels like we’re back in school – sneaking notes.  We can’t let the cat entirely out of the bag just yet.  But since you’re our fans, we wanted to let you in on the secret.

There’s a lot going on here at SquareTrade HQ. This week, we’re gearing up to launch a series of SquareDeals of the Day! 

Raise your hand if you’ve recently purchased an LCD TV, a washer/dryer or perhaps a new wii.  Maybe you’ve been planning to buy a new laptop? 

Well, this week we’ll be offering even greater savings on coverage for things like digital cameras, LCD TVs, home appliances and game consoles.  Yup, we’ll be offering up to 40% additional savings with a new coupon each day!

So stay tuned (and don’t let Miss Othmar catch you passing this note!)

On a related note, if you’d like to be the first kid on the block that has the inside scoop, you can follow us on twitter. We’ll tweet breaking news on specials like the upcoming Deals of the Day as well as nifty things we hear are going on in the world of gizmos and gadgets.

Sorry, did you ask “What's a tweet?!”  Well, Mike Massimino has been tweeting from space. Even Oprah is becoming twitter savvy. You can also ask google. 

Updated Apple iMacs: now with more Boom.

It's a day earlier than expected, but considering everybody in the entire world knew Apple planned to release an updated iMac this week, was there really any reason to make us all wait an extra 24 hours?  No, there was not.

The new secret formula is, as expected, faster Core 2 Duo Penryn processors, but they didn't change the starting prices on these machines.  Nice touch, Cupertino.  The base 20" iMac opens at $1200, and that nets you a 2.4GHz processor, 1GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 4GB) and 250GB available on the hard drive for whatever shenanigans you care to plot.

But if you really want a little something-something, the top-of-the-line 24" iMac fronts a really, really fast 3.06GHz chip with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics card and 512MB video RAM, so you'll never want for buttery smooth video again.  It comes with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, plus a 8x double-layer SuperDrive.  That'll run you a cool $2200 out of the gate (a 2.8GHz/320GB version drops it to $1800), but you can boost those specs to 4GB of RAM for a extra $200, and a full terabyte on the HD for $250 more.  And why the hell wouldn't you?

We'd also suggest a SquareTrade warranty for your new toy, so you can make sure it's still around long enough to justify all the cheddar you shelled out for it.  Use the quote widget in the sidebar to see how much money we'll save you, too... AppleCare protection is a flat $169 across the board.  Our prices pretty much beat everything except warranties on the highest-priced iMacs, and the difference there won't be more than a few bucks.  But we've got great reviews and a 5-Day Service Guarantee that ensures you're back up and running in no time.  They don't.  That's probably worth a couple of bucks to you.

Nice as all this is, let's be honest... it's just a tease before the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference in June, where we'll see a 32GB iPhone with high-speed 3G connections and haptic feedback and true GPS and all of our other dreams come true.

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Asus' concept bamboo laptops go into production.

Oh sure, Asus was just gagging around with it when they took their concept bamboo laptop around the trade shows.  But here in the cold light of Earth Day +1, they've announced they're actually going to mass-market these babies, in two flavors.

Essentially, these are going to be the standard 11.1" Asus S6 and the 12" Asus U6 (which they've previously covered in leather) cased in eco-friendly bamboo instead of mean ol' plastics, so prepare for a bunch of In your face, greenie! smack talk at your local Starbucks.  No announcements yet on chipsets, but the current S6 uses a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 Processor while the U6 runs a snappy 2.4GHz chip.  Both pack a gig of RAM, a gig of super-quick DDR2 memory, and 100GB or more on the hard drive.  The U6 rocked 3G internet connection capabilities, too, making this thing possibly the fastest environmentally conscious toy on the planet.

The new bambooed versions are expected to retail in the $1700 range, so they're not totally out of reach, either.  We honestly can't tell if Asus weatherproofed those decks, but if saving the world means that much to you, you really might want to put a SquareTrade laptop warranty on yours, with or without Accidental Damage coverage, just to make sure your investment's saved as well.  Sorry, that won't include termite infestations.  We think.

Is this a brave new step for Ecolectronics (a word we just made up) or the My Pet Rock of laptops?  We'll find out when the lumber starts shipping in June.

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Five new Toshiba Satellite Pros: because they can.

Ah, we remember our first 8-pound grey slab of Toshiba Satellite, all tricked out to 8MB of RAM.  Good times.  So news of five newly redesigned Toshiba Satellite Pros warms our hearts just a little... and we're cutting them a break, because they already lost a format war this year.

It's a pretty decent spread, starting with the 13.3" Satellite Pro U400, a 2.1GHz ultra compact with a 1.3-megapixel web camera and microphone, fingerprint reader and 3D accelerometer protection system for the 250GB hard drive.  And it ends with the not-so-compact Satellite Pro L350, at 17" laptop that includes a 10-key pad to go with the full-size keyboard and 160GB hard drive.  Stuck in the middle are the 14.1" M300 and 15.4" twins L300 and L300D.

Somebody needs to proofread Toshiba's press release, though, because they're listing the low-end L300 at an "affordable $6991, the U400 at $1,0991 and the L350 at $1,0991.  We figure every "1" is a typo unless it's right behind the "$." 

And as long as we're cutting them a break, you should get one, too.  If you're interested in getting a 3-year protection plan on your new laptop, maybe with Accidental Damage protection, feel free to check out our reviews and use the widget in the sidebar to get a quote on a SquareTrade laptop warranty so you can compare our prices to anyone else's. 

Because it's Toshiba, you can get all those laptops at both higher and lower prices, depending on how you decide to trick your Satellite out. Unfortunately, it looks like Blu-Ray DVD drives aren't one of the available options.  How odd.

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New Gateway Desktop releases with Dual Format DVD player.

 It's true we sometimes forget they're still making computers you can't fit inside a manila envelope, but we've always liked us some Gateway no matter what size they come in.  And it so happens they're dropping two new desktops on us today: Big and Na' So Big.

The latter is the Gateway GT5662, an AMD quad-core machine with a 500GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM and a ATI Radeon HD 2400XT graphics card, and that's probably good for what you need if you only want to spend $750 to type some emails and surf some web.  But then there's the Gateway GM5664,  which is very much more a multimedia computer.

How much more?  Well, apparently, somebody at Gateway didn't get the memo (or else it's time to liquidate those soon-to-be obsolete dual-format DVD players), because the GM5664 sports a Hybrid-SuperMulti optical drive that plays both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as your standard issue DVD-RWs.  The CPU bumps up to a 2.3GHz AMD Phenom 9600, which you'll need if you really want to use the 1TB hard drive and its internal analog/digital TV tuner.  All together, it runs $1150, which is only about $150 more than the last dual format DVD player we looked at.

Both are eligible for a SquareTrade computer warranty.  It's true Gateway's warranty is one of the very few warranties that's a little cheaper than ours, it has to be said that ours is the best rated warranty on the market, period.  Also, their service agreement specifically doesn't cover "normal wear and tear," whereas ours specifically does.  Feel free to compare the two, prices and all.

But hardware-wise, we bow our heads.  Now if we could only get them to ship those babies without Windows Vista...

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Sony releases the Mylo 2.

Hey, want to spend $300 on a pocket PC that does everything a top-end smartphone does, minus the phone part?  Sony's just released the slick-looking Mylo 2 for immediate preorder.  First units ship in just three days. 

Don't get us wrong, we're sure the new update to 2006's PDA works just fine, and the new Mylo adds the 1.3 megapixel camera that its predecessor was lacking. The music and video media playing and web browsing is all there, like it should be.  You can put a SquareTrade warranty on it for not a lot of money, and even protect it against Accidental Damage if you want.  We're just not sure that the Mylo 2 - which only has 1GB of internal memory, no touchscreen or GPS (or even GPS Lite map functions) - is really enough versus all the possible alternatives. 

If, on the other hand, you text more than you call, and you don't mind paying Skype to call non-Skype people, and you don't have an iPod or PSP, and you really like getting McDonald's Wi-Fi network access for free, then don't let us hold you back.  Owning a Mylo 2 is your God-given right.

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New Mac Pro Goes Live with Eight Cores of Power.

Waitaminute… didn't somebody tell the guys at the Apple Store that Macworld is next week?  Because they just put the new Apple Mac Pro up for sale on the website, and the thing is a monster.  A glorious monster with a face like a screen door and the heart of a lion. 

We already know this thing was going to show up with a lot of muscle under the hood, but we thought this would mark the debut of an 3.2GHz eight-core Penryn processor.  Not so, apparently.  The new Mac Pro runs off two 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Xeon "Harpertown" processors instead (featuring speeds "up to" 3.2GHz), giving it roughly four times the processing power of the computer you're likely reading this on.  That's 12MB of L2 cache per processor, 1600MHz dual independent front-side buses, and 800MHz memory, and a whopping 4TB (Terabytes are the new Gigabyte) of storage possible if you add a few Serial ATA drives.  Also standard: ATI HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB of video memory (upgradable to  NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT) and support for four simultaneous video cards, should you want to run four movies simultaneously. 

In layman's terms, this is the new BMOC.  Easily one of, if not the fastest, most powerful personal computers on the commercial market.  That and our copious drool more than justify the $2799 price tag (and free shipping!), but seriously now, would you rather pay their $249 for a Apple Care Plan, or $216 for a 3-Year SquareTrade computer warranty with a 5-Day Service Guarantee that's rated better than any other extended warranty by our own customers?

Apple's used to putting game-changers on the market, and it looks a lot like they've done it again.  The 8-Core computer has arrived, and it's only a matter of time before the entire industry follows.

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Mac Pro warranty, Apple warranty

Best Buy Holiday Sales roll on: Televisions, Cameras, Computers.

The doorbuster deals may be gone for now (and it was perhaps the most thrilling six seconds of our entire lives), but your major electronics retailers aren't even pretending that the holiday shopping season only runs from Black Friday to Cyber Monday anymore.  It goes 24/7 now.

To prove the point, Best Buy's advertising a heady mix of online-only and in-store deals.  They're offering 10% off on select HDTVs, and while that doesn't sound like much, keep in mind these are four-figure items.  We located a nice on-sale 65" Mitsubishi 1080p HDTV for only $2000 (the next size up is about a thousand bucks more), and a Samsung 50" 1080p HDTV for $1530, and that's a good price in anybody's book.

Ah, but it doesn't end there.  You can also pick up your choice of HP Elite desktop computers for $185-200 off when you buy HP desktop bundles, which includes widescreen flatpanels and inkjet printers.  Which you'd have to get anyway.  You can also get 10% off select add-ons like wireless keyboards and wireless routers.

It hardly seems worth mentioning, but they're also pushing a 5-15% off sale on digital cameras and camcorders.  Dig down a bit and you'll find more interesting camera deals, like a JVC camcorder with a 30 GB hard drive for only $500 (that's $150 off the top). 

Our 20% Off coupon for a SquareTrade warranty (with or without Accidental Damage coverage) on any or all of the above is still good, too. 

Courage, America.

HDTV sales, Digital Camera sales, Computer Sales