SquareTrade Warranty Blog

Smartbooks vs. Netbooks: First Lenovo Smartbook Unveiled.

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Are you excited about getting a smartbook? Qualcomm, the world's largest maker of computer chips for mobile phones, gave us a sneak peak yesterday of this new product category. According to Qualcomm, "A smartbook is what you get when you marry a smartphone and a netbook."

Laptops, Netbooks, Smart phones and...Smartbooks?

Creative? SquareTrade Fans are Awesome!

We've been blown away with the response to our 10 Day, 10 Kindle Giveaway!

It's a known fact that SquareTrade fans are clever. (After all, you're savvy consumers who know where to get the best deals - and you've helped us start a revolution!)

With the announcement of our 10th Birthday, you have floored us by responding with such enthusiasm and creativity. So much so that yesterday we announced the addition of the Creative Entry Award: $1000 Amazon Gift Certificate!

Here's a glimpse of how real fans are getting really creative:

While we consider an appropriate response to this marriage proposal - here's some creative inspiration. This is just a sampling of some of the #squaretrade entries that caught our attention. Check back to see if your entry is featured on our blog!

Think your entry should be featured here? Check back and post in the comments below. (If you entered via Twitter, be sure to include a link to your tweet.) Thanks!

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!

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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Kodak Easyshare Digital Frames get all Touchy-Feely.

We've been pretty clear about our opinion of digital photo frames, but credit where credit is due... Kodak's stepping it up a notch with their new P720, M820 and M1020 Easyshare digital frames.  How?  Same way everyone else is: touch-screen controls.  Sorta.

Basically you've got the same audo/visual features as before with 128MB onboard memory, in 7, 8 or 10 inch frames, only now Kodak's Quick-Touch interface lets you skip through the pics of relatives you don't like just by sliding your finger across the boarder.  That also activates the aforementioned touch-screen controls... except they're not actually touch-screen controls.  In order to prevent you from smudging your pictures every time you go mucking around with them, the controls are all located on the frame itself, corresponding to the icons that show up on the screen. 

Okay, points for putting some thought into this.  And if you're worried about yours going on the blink at some point in the next three years, you can put a SquareTrade warranty on it for not a lot of cash. 

They're due out on April 16, tagged between $120 and $230.

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Thinkware's iNAVI K2 turns your GPS into GTA.

Let's be honest: 2D graphics were outdated back in 1995.  It's the 21st Century, man! We've got laser guns and flying cars and giant robots now!  So thank goodness somebody's bringing the 3D to a GPS format... namely the Thinkware iNAVI K2.

What you're looking at here is a 4.8-inch touchscreen, and yep, it displays a realistic 3D cityscape of the area you're in... the picture here shows it at street level, but it also pulls out so you can see the surrounding area.  By the looks of things, it's also displaying images of businesses that its local search feature would have on tap, in what we'll calmly describe as stunning detail. 

Under the hood you've got a three-axis sensor that dead reckons the position and direction of your car, so what you see on that screen pretty much matches what you see out your windshield.  There's an 8GB SDHC memory card with 256MB RAM, and supports MP3 playback, video, e-books, photos and - you guessed it - games.  Though it might be just a little too surreal if you were playing Grand Theft Auto on this thing.

Sadly, like all things super-cool, it's only out in Korea at the moment.  But the bar's most definitely been raised, and when the iNAVI K2 makes it over to our shores (or when the rest of the GPS world catches up) we'll enthusiastically put a SquareTrade warranty on ours.  Oh, and yours, too.   We guess.

And yeah, those FamilyMarts are all over Seoul.  Trust us on that one.

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Samsung's Anycall Haptic wants Asia's iPhone Cash.

Somehow, we don't think Asia's smarting over the whole "you don't get no iPhone" thing, particularly when Samsung's out there upping the game with their new Anycall Haptic SCH-W420 smart phone. 

Sure, there's the 2-megapixel camera and the Bluetooth 2.0 connectivitiy, but that's not what we're here for, now is it?  No, we want that 3.2" touch-screen, and considering there are only three teeny physical buttons on the whole phone, it's a given that just about everything is going to happen there. 

Then there's that haptic feedback, which doesn't just let you know when you're actually touching a control... there's a 22-sound/vibration vocabulary the Anycall Haptic uses to let you know which controls you're touching and what's happening when you touch them, and that's just five kinds of clever.  We approve.  And they've loaded their new TouchWiz UI onto it with its drag-and-drop customizable widget set, which we've only heard good things about.

Of course, it's only available in Korea at the moment - so any SquareTrade warranty you get for one will be on the unlocked model you bought on eBay - but c'mon now, Samsung... you're really asking $700-$800 for these things?  Let's see you try that in America! 

Please?

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Clever Chinese get GPS on their Rear View Mirror.

Sure, everyone driving a motorhome these days has a liquid-crystal rear-view mirror that pops of their dash, but peep the DSUS DS-400GB, a 4" GPS unit that sits flush to the right of your rear-view mirror.  And it's not a concept, either... this thing's live in China right now.

It's a touch-screen unit that synchs to your phone via Bluetooth for a hand-free mode, and comes complete with integrated speakers and an SD/MMC memory card slot for your expansion needs.  Is it safe?  Well, we like it better than the DVD in-dash player a few car makers were pushing a few years ago, and we don't figure it's much different from any other mounted GPS.  We just hope it's got text-to-voice so drivers don't have to keep looking in their rear-view mirrors.  Lord knows we never do.

This might just be a sign of Things To Come, given more fun toys like this are becoming standard issue in more cars, and there's a finite amount of space on the dash.  Sooner or later, we'll work our way up to semi-transparent displays on the windshield itself - probably in our Lexus Flying Car, but this is a nice intermediary in the meantime.  Be sure to pick one up when you're at the Olympics.

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The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 gets all touchy-feely.

What's the latest gadget to jump on the touch-screen bandwagon?  Why, that would be your humble digital camera... the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500.  And it's not all that humble, either.

What you've got here is a 10.1-megapixel point-and-shooter with a 25-125mm wide angle lens, equipped with a 5x optical zoom.  That's serious business right there.  But notice the general lack of controls in sight on the front?  That trend continues on the back, though there's still a clickwheel and Mode/Display buttons as backup.  Mostly, there's a 3" touch-screen, from which you can do things like set the Auto-focus and exposure, or adjust shots on the fly with your finger or a LUMIX stylus pen that's hidden somewhere in the casing. Damned if we can figure out where it goes on the camera.

Similar to its TZ5 cousin, the FX500 also notches up a video feature that clocks 1280 x 720 movies at thirty frames per second.  Not bad at all.

And the whole thing is eligible for a SquareTrade digital camera warranty when it arrives in May, with or without Accidental Damage coverage.  At a retail price of $400, you could cover it for three full years for almost half what a retail store would charge you.

Somebody got aggressive about camera development over at Panasonic, because we're seeing some nice toys coming from them lately.  But we're still waiting for our touch-screen HDTV.

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Apple puts the patent on iPhone 2.0 (maybe).

Those wacky guys over at Unwired View have unearthed some pictures from patent-happy Apple for what look like the next version of the Apple iPhone.

Take all these with an entire shaker of salt, because Apple would patent letters and colors if they could, and they've been known for slamming the patent hammer on concepts as a pre-emptive strike so other companies don't scoop their coolness.  That said, let's just ignore that bit of advice and geek out a bit at the Big Ideas.

First, we're looking at a flip-iPhone, which rocks the house because all truly worthy cell phones are modeled after Star Trek communicators, and this all men know.  But this flip phone has a few twists: the clamshell is transparent, and both sides are touch control-enabled.  Presumably not at the same time (why would you need that?), but we do have to wonder what the point would be of having a transparent touchscreen directly above another touchscreen... when you flip it open, you get double the surface area, but closed it seems a bit redundant.  Staggeringly cool, yet redundant.

Other fun bits shared in the patent: this would make for a smaller, squatter iPh one, and you'll be able to dial by drawing numbers on the touchscreen.  Rotary phone interface, anyone?

That's a Photoshop piece (also from Unwired View) of what it might look like.  And should this ever come to pass, odds are it'll go down just like the current iPhone.  Which is to say, a SquareTrade iPhone warranty with optional Accidental Damage coverage will still outperform Apple Care for less money, and last a year longer to boot.  And AT&T still won't even offer rip-off cell phone insurance.

So, Apple... will it be 3G?  Please?

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