Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » novembre 28, 2011

BetaNews.Com (7 non lus)

Would you pay $200 for Motorola XOOM LTE?

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 9:38pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Verizon kicked off helluva holday sale for XOOM LTE on Black Friday -- and you can still get it today online: $199.99 with new two-year activation. But hurry, if interested. Surely pricing like this can't last. That's $529.99 less than the closest comparable iPad 2, and you won't get an LTE radio from Apple.

Is that price low enough for you to buy? In February, when XOOM pricing first leaked, I asked: "Would you pay 800 bucks for the Motorola XOOM?" Eh, no, you wouldn't. You didn't like $600, when I asked about it later on. But now the price is way less, so I'm asking again. Would you pay $200 for Motorola XOOM LTE? Please answer in comments.

Based on a BetaNews tablet pricing poll, $199.99 is just about right. Among the 1,200-plus respondents, 30.31 percent said $199 would be low enough for them to buy a media tablet. For $199 and below -- 64.53 percent; $299 and below -- 92.96 percent. So the majority of respondents aren't willing to pay as much as the cheapest iPad 2: $499. The comparable Apple tablet, with 32GB storage, sells for $729.

Of course, that XOOM requires a 2-year data contract, which the non-LTE, 3G/WiFi iPad 2 doesn't. But for anyone planning to regularly use data anyway, does it matter? You pay less up front and get big data-speed boost. Verizon promises 5Mbps-12Mbps downstream over LTE compared to 600Kbps to 1.4Mbps over 3G.

Let's do some real-world price comparison. Upfront cost for XOOM LTE is $199.99 with minimum $30 per month for 2GB data. Upfront cost for comparable iPad 2 is the aforementioned $729. XOOM LTE then has, comparably, a $529.99 credit to apply against data service -- 17 months against the 24-month contractual commitment. Unless the iPad 2 buyer only plans six months of data, XOOM LTE is the better deal -- and that's ignoring faster bandwidth benefits.

Looked at differently, and acknowledging the iPad 2 user isn't committed to any contract, the holiday-priced XOOM LTE costs $919.99 over two years compared to $1,449 for Apple's tablet, when including data. Buyers could reduce iPad 2 data costs by $120 buying an AT&T model, if opting for the 2GB plan, which is $25 a month. AT&T offers 250MB plan for $15 a month, too. I wouldn't take it for a tablet.

By the way, Verizon's no-commitment, month-to-month data option raises price to $669.99, which is still less than the 32GB iPad 2.

Quick specs:

XOOM LTE: 1GHz dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 processor; 10.1-inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution; 1GB of RAM; 32GB internal storage, expandable to 64GB with MicroSD card; 5-megapixel back-facing and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras; 720p video recording; 1080p video playback; HDMI and USB 2.0 ports; WiFi N; Bluetooth; accelerometer; barometer; gyroscope; Android 3.2 (Honeycomb).

iPad 2: 1GHz dual-core Apple A5 processor; 9.7 inch display with 1024 x 768 resolution; 512MB of RAM; 32GB internal storage (non-expandable); front-and-rear cameras; 720p video playback; WiFi N; Bluetooth; accelerometer; barometer; gyroscope; and iOS 5. There is no HDMI port and external USB connector costs $29 extra.

I've been using a XOOM WiFi, and really like it -- more than the iPad 2 I sold several months ago. Both products appeal differently, and I won't debate Android vs iOS. I leave that to commenters. The point of this post is twofold: To see who finds $199.99 low enough for XOOM (or any tablet) and to compare Apple and Motorola tablets on a purely cost basis, which is the criteria that will matter most to many bargain shoppers over the Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday shopping period. Geeks argue operating systems and ecosystems.

So, would you or will you buy Moto XOOM LTE for $199.99? Please respond in comments.
Authorities squash 150 sites that sell counterfeit professional sports attire

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 9:14pm CET par Tim Conneally

Department of Justice officials on Monday seized 150 domain names for selling counterfeit goods such as professional sports jerseys, golf equipment, DVD sets, footwear, handbags and sunglasses.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) announced the seizures today, as a continuation of "Operation Save our Sites," a federal initiative to crack down on counterfeiting and piracy on the Internet.

This action represents the single largest seizure since the operation launched in June 2010, and brings the total of seized domains to 350.

Of that total, 116 sites have been forfeited to the U.S. government, and many of the sites each run a public service announcement that discusses the effects of counterfeiting and copyright infringement. We've embedded the video below.

Though there were a few exceptions, practically all of the seized domains (PDF here) appear to revolve around professional sports. 118 of the 150 seized domains contain the word "jersey" or "NFL."

The enforcement actions announced today were done by the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force).

Attorney General Eric Holder created this group to: "combat the growing number of domestic and international intellectual property crimes, protect the health and safety of American consumers, and safeguard the nation's economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work."
Apple iPhone violates airline's no-smoking policy

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 7:45pm CET par Joe Wilcox

It brings new meaning to Black Friday.

Three days ago, airline Regional Express dropped a press release about a passenger's cell phone "emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow". That must be air industry lingo for fire. That's a word you don't want to hear aboard jetliners in flight. Running for the exits could be worse. Of course, no airline wants to admit to flaming anything inside one of its cabins. The smoker was an iPhone, by the way. Can you tell from the photo whether it's the 4 or 4S? The incident occurred on a flight from Lismore to Sydney, Australia -- yes, on Black Friday.

"In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the flight attendant carried out recovery actions immediately and the red glow was extinguished successfully", according to a Regional Express statement. In other words, he or she put out the fire! No one was harmed in the incident, according to the airline, which claims to be Australia's largest independent carrier.

My colleague Tim Conneally spotted the press release, but he didn't want to write the story. But I asked, pleading "I'll be called anti-Apple" -- again. Since many readers will do just that in comments anyway, they should have reason. So here's one: I propose that the aviation administrations and airlines the world over ban iPhones on all flights. The reason: Non-removable batteries, which sometimes smoke and glow. ;-)
Did you get a great Black Friday deal? Tell us about it

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 6:34pm CET par Joe Wilcox

The tech gods blessed those who worshiped at the Black Friday altar, or so claim industry analysts releasing numbers yesterday and today. I confess to taking my daughter to an outlet mall, where the checkout line at the Sony store snaked from register to door. But I bought nothing. What about you? Did you do the Black Friday diddy? Please tell your story in comments.

Doorbuster sales -- those with really low prices for people willing to wait in line -- started as early as 10 pm local time Thursday night. Many tech retailers, Best Buy and Microsoft Store among them, opened Midnight Friday. "More than one-in-three (36 percent) Black Friday tech purchasers bought a doorbuster item -- an increase of four percentage points compared to 2010", says Ben Arnold, NPD's director of industry analysis. By NPD estimates, more broadly, American consumers completed one-quarter of their holiday shopping on Black Friday. However, tech buyers finished significantly more -- one-third.

Deep discounting, early Black Friday sales and retailer nervousness about the economy contributed to tech shoppers' bargain successes. The latter is most disturbing with possible collapse of the Euro zone imminent. This Economist editorial claims the "single currency could break up within weeks". Meanwhile, stateside, the Economic Security Index, which measures the number of Americans who experience a 25 percent or greater decline in household income, released startling stats. After dropping sharply during the housing bubble, the share of Americans "who experience a major financial loss" tops 20 percent this year.

Many retailers are taking a "sell it now while we still can approach" to Holiday 2011, because the Grinch and not Santa may come in a few weeks, if the Euro collapses.

"Rock-bottom prices and record early-opening hours illustrate the concern of the entire technology industry views this holiday season", says Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis. "NPD has been predicting that this would be the worst holiday since 2008, on a revenue basis, and the early season aggressiveness from the industry confirms this level of concern".

Among the many debates every year is brick-and-mortar vs online -- which will be more. NPD sees nothing in the early sales trends to suggest that online will be bigger. Still, online is big if for nothing else than research. "Technology purchasers favored online sources for information on sales and Black Friday doorbuster deals leading up to the event with 59 percent indicating this", Arnold says. He adds:

I fully expect mobile apps (used by just 3 percent of purchasers this year) to gain more traction as smartphone adoption increases. Prior to my outing Thursday evening, I used a few retailer apps (most notably apps from Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy) to find store hours, locations, and product pricing. Another tool that was truly valuable was Twitter which enabled me to search tweets referencing 'Black Friday Deals' for real-time updates on sales and stock levels. A search of local tweets in my area was also great for gauging how long lines were at the stores.

As for actual online sales, comScore offers insight. Online Black Friday spending rose 26 percent year over year to $816 million. Thanksgiving Day bargain buyers spent $479 million, up 18 percent from last year. For all November through Black Friday: $12.737 billion spent, up 15 percent.

"Despite some analysts' predictions that the flurry of brick-and-mortar retailers opening their doors early for Black Friday would pull dollars from online retail, we still saw a banner day for ecommerce", comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni says. "With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels".

About 50 million American shoppers spent some time at online retail sites this Black Friday, whether buying or doing the research Arnold calls out. That's a 35 percent increase from last year. Most visited retail sites (other than auctions) from first to fifth: Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple. I wonder how many of those online Apple shoppers actually bought, considering the retailer had some of the stingiest deals of the day, ranging from 7 percent to 16 percent.

Would you stand in line at Apple Store to save 10 percent on MacBook Air? Perhaps I shouldn't ask, since so many people will wait for iPhone for full price. Beware the real bargain hunters, by the way. They are ruthless. The big Black Friday story out here in California was the woman who pepper-sprayed other shoppers. She wanted her cheap Xbox, and who doesn't?

I wonder if she bought the weapon of mass-Black Friday destruction at Walmart, which sells the "Sabre Red USA-Formula Pepper Spray Keychain" for just $7.97. Oh, but wait it's suddenly "not available at this time". You want to guess why?

If you were pepper-sprayed or peppered with bargains on Black Friday, do tell us, please, in commments below.

Photo Credit: K2 images/Shutterstock
RPost debuts registered email app for BlackBerry

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 5:53pm CET par Tim Conneally

RPost provides a service for serious emailers that turns e-mails from any origin into official registered documents that can be encrypted, tracked, and verified for legal purposes or "e-signed" for contractual reasons.

This week, RPost is officially launching its registered email service for BlackBerry with the RPost app for BlackBerry. This application integrates into BlackBerry's native email client, and lets users choose to "Send Registered" emails from their mobile devices, which are the same trackable, encrypted, time-stamped messages that are sent from RPost's other platforms.

The principal features of the service are its HIPAA-compliant encryption; the ability to track when the recipient opens the email with an official timestamp; the ability to send e-signature documents; and the ability to receive auditable, time-stamped proof of content in replies to the BlackBerry sender’s email.

"Normally, people don't send very long documents from their mobile devices," Said Fernando Neves, General Manager at RPost. "And the use is a little different from your usual emails. But we see a lot of things going on. Many professionals, such as corporate lawyers or real estate agents, need to be able to compose secure, verifiable, legally provable documents at all times. This way, they can protect future discussions and cover any liabilities. When times get tough, people do need to be protected."

RPost has been testing this mobile client in closed beta since October of 2010, and until now, only existing RPost customers could get the application to deploy to their internal users. Now, the beta period is officially over, and the company is looking to extend its reach to new clients...not solely RPost subscribers, but BlackBerry users.

"Right now we have an adoption rate around 41 or 42 percent for the mobile client," said Neves. "We expect a lot of BIS users, subscribers with AT&T and Verizon, to consider the service."
Got non-Apple SSD and Lion? Check out Trim Enabler 2.0 beta

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 4:38pm CET par Nick Peers

Trim Enabler 2.0 Beta 2 has been released for Apple Mac owners running OS X Lion on non-Apple SSDs. By default, OS X only supports the TRIM command -- a technology designed to keep SSDs running at optimum performance over a prolonged period of data writes and deletes -- on Apple SSD drives. Trim Enabler is designed to extend this support to cheaper SSDs manufactured by third parties too.

Version 2.0 is a major rewrite of the original code, which was optimized for Snow Leopard users. Although marketed as Lion-compatible, the free app’s author (Cindori), has since admitted that the older version wasn’t optimized for use with the newer OS.

Previous versions of Trim Enabler replaced the existing SSD driver with an older version that supported TRIM. The new version simply patches whatever driver is currently installed with the necessary TRIM support.

Version 2.0 has also been completely rewritten from its original AppleScript in 100 percent Objective C, and features a new built-in SMART tool that provides information about the drive’s physical health.

If you’re a Lion user upgrading from version 1, you’ll need to follow the advice posted on the Trim Enabler blog to restore your original SSD driver before installing the new version.

Trim Enabler 2.0 Beta 2 is a freeware download for Apple Macs with non-Apple SSDs running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7.x (Lion). As it’s still classified as a beta release, we strongly urge caution using the software.
Find files faster on your NTFS drive

Publié: novembre 28, 2011, 3:45pm CET par Mike Williams

German developer JAM Software has released the latest version of its speedy MFT-based file search tool, UltraSearch 1.60.

The program makes use of the NTFS Master File Table to enable very fast searches, without having to spend valuable time and system resources in building any indexes. So you can just launch UltraSearch, type a keyword, and any matching files or folders will appear almost immediately.

The big addition this time around is Explorer integration. If you’ve ever tried to use the Windows Search tool to display all the files in a particular set of folders -- \Program Files, say -- then you’ll know this can take a little while, especially if the location isn’t indexed. In UltraSearch 1.60, though, it’s now just a matter of right-clicking the folder, selecting UltraSearch, then watching as a table of files appears in perhaps two or three seconds.

And if this doesn’t deliver quite the report you need, then as with previous UltraSearch versions, there are some useful configuration options that may be able to help you out. If you know you’ll never be interested in particular folders or file types, for instance, you can add them to a set of “Exclude” filters and they’ll never be included on the list, so helping you zoom in on what’s really important.

This kind of technology does have its limits, of course. As UltraSearch doesn’t index your files, you can’t search for metadata, emails or file content in general: it’s strictly file and folder names only. And the program only works with NTFS drives, so you won’t be able to use it to search most USB keys, memory cards or other FAT-based storage devices.

UltraSearch is free, fast and easy to use, though, and could be particularly handy if you’ve disabled the standard Windows search tool to try and save system resources. If you’re interested then version 1.60 is available now.

Photo Credit: Angela Waye/Shutterstock