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. 

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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ASUS Eee 900 with multitouch is fingerprinted by the FCC.

Guess what just popped up on the FCC website?  Yep, a second-generation ASUS Eee PC, still referred to in the filing as the Eee 900.  Same size, but with new specs and... what have we here?  Why, it's a "multi-finger gesture input" they're trying to sneak in.

So the new Eee trackpad will get a multi-touch sensor that lets you zoom in/out, widen/shrink windows, and amaze your friends with two-finger scrolling.  That's not bad for a cute little 9" PC.  The projections and specs we've heard before say this'll sport 1GB of RAM and 8 to 12GB SSD, though 8 sounds more likely to us.  We've also heard that Microsoft was planning to release an optimized-for-Eee Windows 7, but as-is, we're hearing "Windows-ready" and "Linux is Great!"  The Eee 900 was rumored to launch at $500, but that tricked out trackpad might add another $100 to the picture.

Word is they're targeting a Q3 release for the Eee 900, and assuming it sails through its FCC molestation unscathed, it'll likely make that.  We'll have your SquareTrade warranty waiting for you, with optional Accidental Damage coverage.  It's just a wee computer, y'know.

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Intel's low-cost 2go PC laptop (sorta) dated and tagged.

It's been called the Netbook and the Eco PC, but now it's the Intel 2go, and the super-geniuses at Engadget just got an under-the-table hint on when it'll finally go live and how much (or rather, how little) it'll run you.

What you're looking at is a 9-inch, CTL-made, highly inexpensive My First Laptop for the kids, or for the cheap kid in you.  It'll sport an Intel (naturally) Celeron M CPU with 512MB of RAM (upgradable to 1GB) backing a 40GB hard drive, with all the ports and slots you've come to know and love.  Even better, it comes standard with Windows XP (yay) with an option for a Linux OS (more yay!) and even has a VGA webcam built in.  Battery life is claimed at three hours.  All together, that makes the 2go far more sophisticated than Our First Laptop, but then, we're older than dirt.  The dirt on a really old rock.

According to their spy, the Intel 2go could wind its way to store shelves within the next 60 days, so that tax refund is going to come in real handy, real soon.  And because it's so affordable, the SquareTrade laptop warranty for it will be equally affordable... check the sidebar widget to find out just how much (or rather, how little) 3 Years of protection will run you. 

You'll even have an option for Accidental Damage coverage, and let's face it... if you are buying this for the kids, it's gonna need that.  They don't know their own strength. 

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Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX1 doubles up on the SSD.

Memory's improving faster than you'd believe, from Megs to Gigs to (soon) Teras.  It's really just a matter of making it fit now.  And it looks like Toshiba's fitting 128GB of solid state drive into the Toshiba Dynabook SS RX1.  That's dust you're eating, MacBook Air and Lenovo Thinkpad X300.

Yep, the going rate for SSD drives at the moment is 64GB, so Toshiba just upped the market to a new standard.  And they did it in a 12.1" laptop that's got a battery life up to 12.5 hours.  Part of that's because their Core 2 Duo processor only grinds up to 1.2GHz (the Air goes from 1.6 to 1.8), but the bad news is this: it's only available in Japan starting next month.  And it'll run those salarymen in excess of $4000, for something they likely won't be able to use on the subway (trust us).

But the good news is upping the game there means people will start upping the game here before too long.  And if you get your mitts on the Dynabook or any other laptop, you can put a SquareTrade laptop warranty on it... and at $4000, that could be one expensive drop without one.

We'd guess a minimum six months before Apple or Lenovo offer a 128GB SSD, but then it'll be a race to see who gets one out first.  Our money is on Lenovo, if only because they don't feel the need to call a big press conference to announce their new toys.

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Acer Gemstone laptops shine on like crazy diamonds.

Acer president Gianfranco Lanci took the podium in New York today to unveil some new hotness... namely, the second-generation Acer Gemstone line.

What we've got going on here is one color ("gemstone blue," naturally) and two flavors; 16" and 18.4".  But both start with a few sweet basics: 1080p screens showing off 512MB NVIDIA 9650m GS graphics, run off a 1.5GHz Penryn processor.  Oh, and Blu-Ray drives, because that's the wave of The Future (for two or three years, when we'll digitally download everything). 

The batteries look a little weak - between 2.5 and 3 hours - but the base models will start around the $900 level, with upgradeable hard drives that'll push them into the mid-high 1K range. 

All told, it looks like a nice new deck from a solid company (they did just place second in worldwide notebook sales), and we'll have your SquareTrade laptop warranty ready for you when the Gemstones ship sometime next month.

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The Gigbyte M700 UMPC is pretty, oh so pretty.

What, so the Panasonic Toughbook UMPC is too much UMPC for you?  Well, how about a daintier, prettier Ultra-Mobile PC?  That's not afraid to share its stats with us?

Behold, the Gigabyte's M700 UMPC, and while it looks a lot meeker than Panasonic's mini-bruiser, we're willing to bet it's got more muscle under the hood.  Our first clue: a 40GB to 60GB hard drive (not quite the same as a full-sized Toughbook) and an unusually robust 2GB of RAM running at 1.2GHz.  That's a 7" 1024 x 600 touch screen, and as you can see, they're expecting you to happily run Windows Media Center on it.  Vista is the pre-load. 

We haven't seen a picture of the keyboard yet... are they expecting to keep it all on that touch screen or is that conspicuous seem along the edge strongly indicating a slide-out?  We'll see, and we'll hope this beauty doesn't just run skin deep.  There's definitely enough depth here to keep us on the line for now.

We can't quote you a price on the SquareTrade warranty for this yet, because they aren't giving out prices and dates for the M700 yet.  But based on other Gigabyte UMPCs, expect it to run somewhere in the low 1K range.

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New Panasonic Toughbook UMPC mans the hell up.

Maybe it's a sign of the times that everybody's showing up with a new high-impact laptop that's just begging for the old Samsonite treatment. 

The smallest of the bunch is a just-confirmed Panasonic Toughbook UMPC, powered by the Atom chip, Intel's super-tiny, power-saving processor and sporting a shock-resistant 5.6" touch screen. 

But if you're looking for slightly larger toughness, DRS Tactical Systems' ARMOR C12 clearly wants to push Toughbook's face in with a 12.1" outdoor-readable touch screen display, shock-mounted 60GB HDD, 1.2GHz CPU, 512MB of DDR2, biometric scanner, WiFi, Ethernet, a die-cast magnesium case, and more testosterone than the WWF and the WWE combine.  But if you want even more - and about $4000 to spend - you can get a Desert Tan Dell Latitude XFR D630, which ups the stats to 14.1", 80GB, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, and 2.2GHz.

We really don't think you'll need Accidental Damage coverage on these, but a SquareTrade warranty will cover any mechanical or electrical problems that crop up inside all that armor.  Though frankly, we can think of a lot of uses for a nine-pound, metal-cased laptop that won't power on... most involving crime or Olympic events.

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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 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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