Gadgets Base

With Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Helio recently advertising unlimited calling plans AT&T must have felt left out. They have since announced their own unlimited calling plan, which will be available February 22 and cost just $99 per month. The plan will be open to both new and existing users but is going to be available for a limited selection of phones. AT&T’s unlimited plan will cover US based calls with no roaming or long distance charges. The plan will be open to standard phones only, PDA’s, smartphones and the iphone are left out. Overall it seems Helio has the closest offer to unlimited, which includes both calling and data. Of course a calling plan technically is for calling.

Via [CrunchGear]

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Posted Feb 19th 2008 3:06PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Wireless
We knew Hitachi’s Ultra Thin HDTV family would boast ultra-wideband technology, and while little was said about this aspect during CES, we’ve now learned that Tzero will be responsible for handling the aforementioned UWB duties. As expected, the UT HDTVs will “be able to receive high-definition video wirelessly from any HDMI equipped audio / video component,” as Tzero promises that users will see transmission speeds of up to 480Mbps. Interestingly, we’re told that the UWB-equipped sets are available in Japan right now, but only time will tell if those luscious wireless abilities will make the trip stateside in Q2.

The rumors have been floating around for a few months now and we have even seen a few in-the-wild, so this may not come as that much of a surprise but AT&T has officially announced the availability of the GSM Palm Centro. The AT&T branded Palm Centro will offer push-to-talk, an optional TeleNav GPS Navigator, MobiTV and use the EDGE network.

The Centro will be available immediately in glacier white, and follow up with an obsidian black model that will hit the stores in about a month. They will both retail for $99 after a mail-in-rebate along with a 2-year agreement.

Read [AT&T] Read [Palm]

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Posted Feb 19th 2008 8:54AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Laptops
Ubuntu lovers, rejoice. The Round Rock powerhouse has saw fit to add the open-source OS to yet another one of its products, this time the recently released Inspiron 1525. No surprises here — just a vanilla 1525 with Ubuntu 7.10 loaded in along with built-in DVD playback capabilities and a warm, fuzzy feeling to boot. It should be noted, however, that US users will be forced to wait until “later this month” before being able to snap up one of these rigs, while consumers in the UK, France, Spain and Germany can indulge right away.

Dell has once again added to the Ubuntu lineup. This time its the Inspiron 1525 notebook and it will come with Ubuntu 7.10 along with built-in DVD playback capability.

The Inspiron 1525 will be immediately available for those in the UK, France, Spain and Germany. Those in the US will have to wait till later in February for availability.

Read [Direct2Dell]

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Posted Feb 19th 2008 6:50AM by Thomas RickerSigh. You know the drill. A couple hours of downtime and then we’ll see nothing (maintenance), or new products that range from the mundane (Aperture 2) to the golly (32GB ipod touch). We already saw the iPod shuffle drop by $30 this morning before Apple pulled the plug on the store. Perhaps the $100 drops on the iphone and touch are just minutes away? It is Tuesday after all.

Posted Feb 19th 2008 7:03AM by Steven Kim
Filed under: Displays, HDTV
Possibly buoyed by margins produced by its $2500 XEL-1, Sony is pumping 22-billion yen ($203.5 million) into scaling OLED production technology up to medium and large panels. No word on what sort of sizes are meant by “medium” and “large,” but we’re hoping that “medium” comes in around 30-inches and “large” runs upwards of the 45-inch mark. Competition being what it is, Sony probably hopes so, too. With OLED lifetimes on the rise, the only thing that keeps these power-miserly, high-contrast, great color and wide-viewing angle displays out of a home theater setup is sheer size. Given the race between manufacturers, we’re hoping to see falling prices, rising sizes and shorter times to market.

Posted Feb 19th 2008 4:45AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Meet Ricoh’s latest compact shooters. The aluminum R8 — Ricoh’s R7 followup — drops the Caplio moniker wihle bumping the specs with a 10 megapixel, 1/2.3-inch CCD covered with a 7.1x optical zoom lens. Around back you’ll find a 2.7-inch LCD with CCD-shift image stabilization and Smooth Imaging Engine III processing on the inside. Expected to roll in Japan for ¥50,000 or about $460 in backs of green. The ¥30,000 (about $280) R50 maintains that 10 megapixel sensor, processing engine, and stabilization but rolls back the zoom to 5x. Both should pop in March. Oodles of R8 pics in the gallery.

Gallery: Ricoh’s 10 megapixel R8 and R50 are ready to dance

Read — R50
Read — R8

Posted Feb 19th 2008 4:03AM by Ryan Block
Filed under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentAt all curious to find out just how rare that HD DVD player of yours really is? Well, we hate to tell you, but it’s probably not rare enough to fetch anything special on eBay in a couple of years — but still every bit rare (read: discontinued) enough to justify taking up space in your home theater. The numbers, according to Nishida-san, at this morning’s press conference:

• Xbox 360 drives (worldwide) - 300k
• US - 600k units
• Europe - 100k units
• Japan - 30,000 units

Add it all up, and that’s about a million customers that got boned on hd dvd. Thanks, Toshiba and Sony!

Posted Feb 19th 2008 3:30AM by Thomas Ricker
In the Q&A session following Toshiba’s hd dvd dumping event in Japan, Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation made a bit of a surprise announcement. While it remains committed to standard DVD, they have “no plan at all at this moment” to take up the Blu-ray format. He also stated that Tosh has no plans for a next-next gen format at all. Perhaps they are just licking their wounds until HD downloads become a reality.