Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Some of you may remember when we reported that select Sheraton hotels were getting a Microsoft Surface table in their lobby.  Well, I happened to be in Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo last weekend, (you can read more about that at Gamertell.com, our sister site) and so I had a chance to sit down and try it out for myself. 

I took a video of my findings which you can check out after the jump, or you can read my quick summary of what I discovered with the three functions of CityTrips, Sheraton Snapshots, and Sounds of Sheraton.

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Perhaps the once king of the netbook market, the Eee PC 701 seems to have been losing some popularity with all of the new introductions. However that may be coming with some good news because according to some reports that will be driving the price down even further. The Eee PC 701 from Asus may not be the most full featured netbook, but its certainly a good option for those looking to do some basic browsing and have something that is lightweight and easy to carry.

UK based online retailer Expansys has just lowered their pricing for the Eee PC 701, which now sits at £158.99 (around $280 US). Not bad for a model that first came to market less than a year ago and was retailing for $399. If you remember the lead up to the Eee PC 701 release, Asus was promising a sub-$200 model, and while we are not at that point yet this is one step closer to reaching that goal.

Of course on the flip side, these drastic price cuts are most likely hurting the resale value for those that were early adopters and since moved on to other netbook models, but I would imagine that is only a small group of people.

Via [Liliputing]

Vodafone and Dell have announced a partnership that will make a special broadband ready version of the newly released Dell Inspiron Mini 9 available. The 3G-equipped Mini 9 will be sold in Vodafone retail stores, online and directly from Dell, and allow users to connect anywhere they may be.

Availability is expected to come in late September, however an exact release date has not yet been announced, but that along with pricing is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Sounds like Vodafone has a winner on its hands.

Its still early to tell, but so far it seems Dell is really pushing their Mini 9 in the right direction, they needed something to set them apart from the rest of the netbook crowd. I can only hope that a US carrier, possibly AT&T will pick up the netbook with a similar offering for those of us in the US.

Read [CNN Money]

Just sending a quick reminder in case you missed the earlier announcement, our contest to giveaway a set of Axiom AudioByte computer speakers ends tomorrow, the official deadline for entry is Friday (September 5, 2008) at 11:59pm EST, which also happens to be just 24 hours from the time of this posting.

Remember entry is simple, just leave a comment on the original announcement posting (link above and below) with a picture of the speakers you are hoping to replace.

You can check out the full contest post including the rules here, and don’t forget to check out our full review also.

Remember two years ago when all these laptop batteries kept overheating, and there were laptop-based fires around the nation?  Apparently, Sony does not want this fad to begin again as they have recalled 73,000 Vaio TZ laptops. 

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the reason for the recall is a possible manufacturing defect that may cause them to overheat.  This defect relates to the wiring at the TZ laptop’s hinge. 

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It turns out the earlier reports were indeed accurate, and the ‘Give One Get One’ program will be making a return later this year, and it will be handled by none other than Amazon.com.

This information comes courtesy of Matt Keller who is the director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at OLPC and he has confirmed that Amazon will begin selling the XO laptop in late November with sales running through the end of December. Keller also went on to clarify their reasoning behind Amazon handling the sales, stating that they are just “a small group of people,” which hopefully will put an end to the shipping issue complaints that we saw last year.

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Asus still has not announced just when we can expect to see the non-Eee branded N10 notebook hit the retail market, however that is not stopping the leaks. The most recent leak comes in the form of some official looking leaked documents that highly detail the N10 notebook along with some in-the-wild style images of the notebook from the recent Asus World 2008 conference.

Based on the leaked documents we can see that the N10 will be a pretty solid offering. The N10 will feature a 10.2-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, an NVIDIA GeForce Go 9300M GS 256MB graphics card, a built-in webcam, fingerprint reader, three USB 2.0 ports, ExpressCard slot and HDMI port. Other features include facial recognition software, a 6-cell battery that will offer up to 6.5 hours of battery life and a switch to use either the graphics from the NVIDIA chip or the pain jane built-in motherboard graphics.

Pricing seems to run as low as $649, and go up to $849 for the top of the line model that is pictured above. A specific launch date has not yet been announced, but they are expected to be available later this month. Keep reading to check out the rest of the spec sheets and those in-the-wild style images…

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HP has come up with a pretty unique take on packaging. In fact they have won Wal-Mart’s Home Entertainment Design Challenge for coming up with their latest idea to reduce packaging.

HP has been able to reduce the packaging for their Pavilion dv692 laptop by an incredible 97% simply by cutting the box out of the picture. That’s right, HP will begin packaging the dv692 in its own messenger style bag. The laptop along with all of the accessories such as battery and power cable will still be wrapped in some bubble wrap to protect it while in shipping, but it will not come with any box.

So overall it sounds like a pretty good idea, not only cut out a lot of the packaging, but users will also get a nice bag included with the purchase. However their packaging savings does not stop there, HP is also able to ship three of these notebooks (pictured below) in a single box thanks to the reduced packaging, which according to Wal-Mart “requires a fourth fewer trucks to deliver to stores.”

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In addition to the rolling out of the Inspiron Mini 9, Dell has also announced a special deal that will allow users to get their new netbook for just $99. Of course that price comes with a catch, and in this case it requires the purchase of another computer. Customers will have to purchase either the Studio 15, XPS M1530 or XPS M1330 laptop in order to grab the Mini 9 for the highly discounted price.

This deal however does not last forever and is valid only from 7am (EST) on September 5 until 7am (EST) on September 9, it is also valid only for US customers. So far Dell has not specified the specific model you will be getting for $99, but its only likely that it will be the lower priced Ubuntu based model that retails for $349, which is still a very nice deal.

[Direct2Dell]

Averatec’s first venture into the All-in-One PC market may not have been that successful because of its high price. Hence, the company is trying its hands once again with the release of the A1 all-in-one PC. And what better way to come up with a cheaper All In One PC but to have it powered by Intel’s Atom processor.

And so with the A1 PC, we’re looking at a cross breed between nettop and a normal desktop boasting of an 18.4-inch display with a resolution of 1680 x 945 and a 16:9 aspect ratio. This All In One PC will be powered by a 1.6GHz Atom processor and will have 1GB of memory and 160GB of hard drive. Averatec also put in Wi-Fi as a standard feature plus a 1.3-megapixel camera. In addition, the A1 PC will only be running Windows XP out of the box, sorry Linux fans.

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