Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Blu-ray has always been fighting against the tide, struggling against high prices, general reluctance to move on from DVDs, and now the “credit crunch” as well.  In fact, many people were beginning to think that the victory against HD-DVD may have been in vain due to the apparent lack of consumers, and that the aim of 5 million units to be sold this year was laughable.  However it would appear that both parties are in the process of being proved wrong with figures released by Sony showing some interesting truths.

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The Eee PC has been the most popular net book since it started selling, namely because it was the first, but also because it is damn good at what it does. However a few people have some qualms with it, mainly about the fairly low storage that it offers: 12GB.  I know I could easily fill that in a day and obviously the people at the Japanese company GreenHouse agree with me as they have released some Eee PC hard drive upgrades.
You can now replace your measly 12GB SSD with either the 32GB or 64GB modules which will over quintuple your storage, making the Eee PC a much more attractive option.  The specifications aren’t awful (considering that it is for the Eee PC) with 35MB/s and 15MB/s, but comparing that to a desktop internal hard drive it is poor and even for a laptop it is slow.  What’s it cost to upgrade that Eee?  Keep reading.

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Looking to get an Eee PC for less than an iPod?  Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?  Well, in its quarterly investors earnings call, Asustek announced a great number of things, including the fact that the baseline Eee PCs will be lowered to $200 by the end of 2009.  It seems 1.7 million Eee PCs were shipped last quarter, and Asus is expecting 1.8 million to be shipped this coming quarter.  There is some bad news for some, though.

Along with the price announcement, Asus announced that the 7” and 8.9” models will soon be phased out in favor of the 10-inch models.  That’s somewhat sad to me at least.  The 8.9” is the perfect size I think, especially if the screens on the 8.9” and 10” are the same resolution.

More after the break.

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Hit by hard times?  Financial markets got you worried about dropping bucks on a shiny new phone?  LG feels your pain and wants to reach out to all those folks who want the sexy touchscreen-type phone with the aptly named KP500.  KP as in “Kitchen Pass,“ as in you won’t need to check with your significant other to buy it thanks to its super low retail price.  Unfortunately, I suspect LG did not name it the KP for that reason.

To find out why this phone is a big deal, hit the “more” link below.

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While we have heard the rumors, it now looks like it will soon be official. During a recent conference call, the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings announced that because Blu-ray discs cost more money to purchase, that they need to charge a higher rental rate for them. He also went on to state that “consumers are used to paying more for high-definition.“

Personally I think consumers are used to paying more to own high-definition, I am not so sure how eager they will be to pay more to rent it. Currently Netflix has a small amount of subscribers who choose Blu-ray over standard DVD’s and with a price increase it seems that small percentage will remain small.

While the statements from Hastings seemed pretty clear that the price increase was going to happen, there has not been any official statement as to just how much the increase will be. As for when it will take effect, customers can expect to see it “later this year.“

Via [Crave]

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