Nokia has announced today that the highly anticipated Booklet 3G netbook will begin selling at Best Buy for $300 USD, as long as customers sign up for a $60 USD per month mobile data service plan with AT&T.
Those who do not want to sign up for the service, will have to shell out $599 for the device and can use Wi-Fi.
The full specs for the device are:
Dimensions
Weight (max) 1250 g
Dimensions (max) 264 x 185 x 19.9 mm
CPU and Chipset
Intel Atom Z530, 1.6 GHz
Intel Poulsbo US15W, fanless design
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Subscribers of Netflix‘ online DVD/Blu-ray rental service have been complaining about receiving damaged or cracked discs from the company. “Over the last two months, we’ve had probably four to six Blu-ray discs in a row arrive with small cracks at the edge of the disc that render it unplayable,” says Pete Brown, whose wife has been a Netflix subscriber for three years.
Blu-ray is structured significantly different to DVD in that DVD is comprised of two 0.6mm thick polycarbonate discs with the data recorded to a thin metal substrate in between, while Blu-ray is a single 1.1mm polycarbonate disc with the data recorded at the top, and protected by a 0.1mm coating. The Blu-ray discs circulated by Netflix may be more affected by the process than DVDs, and you have to remember Blu-ray is still a very young format.
“The coating is supposed to protect the discs but it could also be making them more brittle,” says Adrienne Downey, senior analyst at research firm Semico. “Ultimately Blu-ray is a new technology and they are still working the kinks out of it.” The problem can’t just come down to the discs however, as BlockBuster customers don’t complain about damaged Blu-ray titles as much.
For Pete Brown and his wife, the experience has been particularly bad. They added Babel to their queue and received a cracked disc. Upon receiving a replacement disc of the same movie, they checked and found that it was also damaged. To make it worse, the same thing happened the third time too. “At a point, my wife was like, maybe they are sending us same thing to us over and over again,” said Brown.
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Microsoft has announced they have signed a movie deal with NBC Universal that will bring 30 catalog films to the Xbox Live Marketplace for European regions.
The titles are immediately available in the UK and Ireland and will be available in France, Germany and Spain soon.
“NBC Universal has a fantastic reputation in the film world and have some true blockbusters in their portfolio,” notes David Gosen, VP of marketing for Xbox Europe. “We are delighted to be working with them to bring major titles from Universal Pictures into Xbox Live living rooms - this is all part of our ongoing strategy to make Xbox a major entertainment hub.
“This agreement makes the Xbox Live film offering bigger and better than ever. For Xbox, we want to ensure that we have the best entertainment content available - Xbox Live has grown into one of Europe’s largest providers of on-demand high-definition movies and we’ll continue to grow the content offered through the service.
“Working with NBC Universal is further proof of our goal to be in business with the best in the entertainment industry.”
