Bad news out of Sony today, as the company has issued a recall of many of its TZ-series notebook computers (see the full release here). “Irregularly positioned wires near the computer’s hinge and/or a dislodged screw inside the hinge can cause a short circuit and overheating.This poses a burn hazard to consumers… …Sony has received 15 reports of overheating, including one consumer… → Read More
Look. If I was an old Canadian playwright who couldn’t get on the Internet, I’d be mad too. People over 50 generally don’t understand the relationship between an Internet connection, a router, and an Ethernet port (or wireless connection). That is to say, when an old person’s connection goes down, they automatically just assume that it’s the ISP’s fault without realizing that it could… → Read More
Whoa, look at me! I just got an e-mail from Best Buy telling me that I’m now part of the company’s “most elite membership level – Premier Black.” That’s probably just fancy-talk for saying that I’ve spent most of my earned income over the past 15 or so years at their stores. Aside from bonus points and whatnot, the kicker to this program appears to be a concierge service which, as a… → Read More
Here’s an update to the story about the FCC versus Comcast that we posted on Wednesday. The FCC has officially ruled today and it turns out that Comcast will not be fined for throttling peer-to-peer network traffic, but it will have to stop discriminating against certain internet traffic until the company comes up with a compliance plan “to fully disclose its practices” to customers. → Read More
Oh wow. Wow. This is a really odd decision. MSI has raised the prices of its Wind notebook (see our review here) from $479 to $499 for a version with Windows XP and a three-cell battery and from $499 to $549 for the version with XP and a six-cell battery. An MSI rep told Laptop the following: “Since the cost of the battery and materials raise (sp), we had no choice but adjust the MSRP to $499.99… → Read More
Just got an interesting tip from a reader. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened, but apparently one of the AT&T stores in my neck of the woods has some iPhones in stock but can’t sell them until tomorrow because of some cryptic agreement with Apple. They’re taking orders for the phones today, but won’t sell them. Weird. → Read More
Last week’s PS3 firmware update left some angry gamers in its wake as reports of jacked up consoles made their way around the internet shortly after Sony made version 2.40 of its PS3 software available for download last Wednesday. The company quickly pulled the problematic update and has now said that version 2.41 will be available “midweek,” according to CVG. While most PS3 owners were able… → Read More
EVDOinfo.com is reporting that Verizon has halved its per-megabyte overage fees for EVDO data and will set a cap of $250 per month in maximum fees for any three of a customer’s billing cycles. After that, subscribers will be subject to unlimited, non-capped overage charges. So if you go over your 5GB limit by one extra gigabyte, it could cost you $256. However, Verizon’s been nice enough to… → Read More
The Seattle P-I has tracked down an old e-mail from 2003 that Bill Gates sent out to members of the Windows Usability team. The pages-long e-mail message chronicles Gates’ attempt to download Windows Movie Maker. Here are some especially tantalizing tidbits, with the full e-mail message to be found after the jump. “I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. → Read More
T-Mobile will be joining the various other wireless providers in providing prorated early termination fees. I use the term “prorated” loosely, as you won’t actually save any money until you’ve been a customer for a year and a half. At 180 days from the end of your contract, though, your early termination fee will drop from $200 to $100 and at 90 days, the fee will drop to $50. The new fee… → Read More
Since about 2002, the Department of Justice has had a special “Technical Committee” overseeing the development of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The committee’s main job was to monitor the implementation of the Microsoft-owned middleware products that get (or used to get) installed by default on new computers like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media… → Read More
Well, the secret’s out. People who are into technology and gadgets have a high tendency to be a-holes. Can you believe it? According to Reuters… “An online study evaluating the characteristics of 25,000 American adults found avid technology consumers tended to score highly in personality traits such as leadership, dynamism and assertiveness — but low in modesty.” → Read More
The MSI Wind has been delayed by a couple weeks. It was supposed to be available yesterday, and now MSI’s site pegs the shipping date at June 27th. I suppose that’s not the end of the world, but what’s pretty disappointing is that the Wind will now ship with only a three-cell battery instead of a six-cell battery thanks to supply shortages. I’ve been playing around with the Wind for the… → Read More
Apparently the US government is above paying early termination fees. I’m not going to sit here flailing my arms around and pounding my fists on my desk, because I’m sure that every single government agent with a state-issued cell phone is walking around with a Nokia 6110 with duct tape over the battery cover. Ha! Because the government is slow to adopt change, get it? Anyway, the story is that… → Read More
The Motion Picture Association of America wants to release movies to TV, pay-per-view, on-demand, and premium movie channels before releasing them for sale on DVD. Sounds good, no? There’s a little catch, though. The MPAA wants to block these early releases from being recorded on your DVR. Traditionally, new movies get released into theaters, then get shown on airplanes and in hotels, then are… → Read More
InfoWorld has a somewhat long-ish article about how to beat the drop-dead date for Windows XP sales, which Microsoft has set as June 30th of this year. That’s in less than a month! What to do?! Well, here are a couple of options. First, June 30th is the last date that Windows XP can be sold. However, retailers and manufacturers can still sell copies of XP to the public and/or load copies of XP… → Read More
Comcast will be running a month-long trial in certain areas of Pennsylvania and Virginia, which “will result in delayed response times for Internet traffic only for those customers who are using more than their fair share of available Internet resources at the time.” The basic idea is that when the network gets clogged up, those who are downloading a bunch of stuff will have their… → Read More
New York judge Joseph Teresi has found Dell to be guilty of fraud and false advertising, saying… “Dell has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive and unlawful business conduct, including false and deceptive advertising of financing promotions and the terms of warranties, fraudulent, misleading and deceptive practices in credit financing and failure to provide warranty service and… → Read More
Remember AllofMP3.com, the easy to use, consumer-friendly music downloading site based in Russia? It got shut down last July amidst threats that Russia wouldn’t be able to join the World Trade Organization. It’s a long story; read more here and here. Well, the RIAA brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3.com back in December of 2006, saying that the company made some… → Read More
Yesterday we reported that games purchased via Nokia’s N-Gage platform weren’t transferable to new devices. The Internet was outraged! Today, however, Nokia has responded with refreshing speed and Madeleine Albright-like diplomacy, stating that it will fix this problem once and for all. Nokia’s Conversations blog states the following: We’ve dug in deeper and we’ve… → Read More
N-Gage fan web site All About N-Gage is reporting that games purchased through Nokia’s gaming service are locked to one particular phone and can’t be transferred to a new device should you lose or break your old one. The process for purchasing a game involves downloading a feature-limited demo and then paying to unlock the game with an activation code. That code is tied to the IMEI… → Read More
See that Sprint broadband device on the left there? It’s about to be capped, just like Sprint’s “unlimited” data plans. For shame, Sprint. For shame. According to the SprintUsers.com forum, effective July 13th, data plans on the Sprint network will top out at 5GB per month. What’s more, if you’re roaming on another network, you’ll only get 300MB of data… → Read More
Napster’s had it up to here (pointing near the top of my head) and wants to regain its position as the King of Online Music. The new Napster web store opened its doors today and features six million DRM-free tracks, most for 99 cents apiece and most full albums for $9.99, according to Reuters. You can still opt for subscription pricing at around $15 per month if you have a Napster-to-Go… → Read More
GigaOM has a list called 5 Ways Your Gadgets Will Betray Your Privacy, which should reinforce the idea that you can pretty much be followed unless you move off the grid. And if you’ve already moved off the grid, you’re not reading this since CrunchGear is a member of the evil network of interconnected computer machines. The five things include; a box that goes inside malls to track… → Read More
Will Microsoft extend the life of Windows XP after all? Steve Ballmer told reporters today that “If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter,” according to the Associated Press. He conceded that most of the customers who are still buying XP are IT departments but said that “most people who buy PCs today buy them with Vista. That’s the statistical… → Read More
Seems nobody wants to let Michael Robertson help people back up their music online. First it was My.MP3.com which, as you may or may not remember, was a very cool service where you placed one of your CDs in your computer’s CD-ROM drive, the MP3.com software scanned the disc, and a few seconds later all the tracks from that disc were available for you to stream from any internet-connected… → Read More
Get this. It turns out that various parts of the music industry are very, very greedy. I know, I was shocked too! The Music Business Group (the UK’s version of the RIAA, basically) is proposing that music creators and rights owners should be entitled to profits from anything that facilitates you ripping a CD to your computer — anything used for “format shifting,” as… → Read More
Verizon Wireless has announced some new data-only plans that “are designed to meet the needs of customers who primarily rely on messaging to communicate with others.” Now replace “customers” with “Verizon” and “communicate with others” to “make an ass-load of money.” Far be it for me to tell you how to spend your hard-earned cash, but $35… → Read More
On June 30th, Microsoft will stop selling Windows XP. According to the Associated Press, some people aren’t too thrilled “that Microsoft has the power to enforce the phase-out from a stable, decent product to one that many consider worse, while profiting from the move.” Better start a petition, huh? Galen Gruman of InfoWorld has done just that with the “Save Windows… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
