Meijer's brand new $99 (shipped) Blu-ray player brings joy to skinflints everywhere
Update: Looks like it's sold out now, sorry folks!
[Via Dealnews]
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In a press release recently issued by Qualcomm, the company states that it's taking direct aim at the sub-$150 smartphone market with a new chipset on offer. The platform -- known as the MSM7227 -- is apparently designed with higher-power, lower-cost handsets in mind, offering HSDPA / HSUPA radios, a 600MHz CPU, 320MHz application DSP, 400MHz modem processor, hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, Bluetooth 2.1, and GPS support integrated in a 12mm x 12mm chipset. The MSM7227 can also supposedly handle 8 megapixel camera and 30 FPS WVGA encoding / decoding with ease, and is capable of supporting Android, S60, Windows Mobile, and BREW platforms. Given the company's recent foray into Snapdragon and other pricier options, it's interesting to see them taking a shine to the low end of the market. We know that ASUS are planning on launching a cheaper Eee phone sometime soon, and they're currently snuggling up to Qualcomm for chip duty on an Android device. Is this the year we'll see the rise of the smartphone version of the netbook (cheap, plentiful, almost disposable)? Only MWC knows for sure.
Amazon's top 10 laptop sellers may be clogged with netbooks, but you can bet this one isn't in there. Paradoxically available from The Really Useful Store, the very useless Cuol Book shames itself with a Windows CE 5.0 operating system that should honestly be reserved for PDAs manufactured on or before January 1, 2004. For those who care, further specs include a 7-inch display, SD / MMC card slot, two USB ports, 1GB of RAM, a 533MHz Samsung ARM processor and a built-in speaker for good measure. Sure, the thing only weighs 1.5-pounds, but the almost insulting £159.99 ($298) price tag really pushes it over the edge. Thanks, but no thanks.
CTL, the same cats who brought us the 2go PC laptop, are apparently working up an equally cheap and not-exactly-flashy nettop PC. The 2go PC Nettop will reportedly range in price from $149 to $299 depending on specifications, and the baseline model will feature Intel's DG945GCLF motherboard, Intel's Atom 230 processor, 1GB of Kingston DDR2 RAM, a GMA 950 graphics accelerator, support for one HDD and one optical drive, six USB 2.0 ports and an Ethernet jack. The Essential Plus Edition ($199) adds in Ubuntu and an 80GB 7,200RPM hard drive (while slashing RAM to 512MB); the $299 Essential Performance Edition comes with Windows XP Home, a 160GB hard drive and 1GB of memory. There's no word just yet on when the 4.5-pound boxes will be released, but we'd expect 'em to surface pretty quietly.
Though this isn't the first music player we've seen with dual headphone jacks, it's still one of only a handful available today. Head Music's 4GB Blizzard offers up a rather plain (okay, exceptionally plain) design with a 2.8-inch 320 x 240 touchscreen, FM tuner, rechargeable battery, USB connectivity, microSD slot, twin headphone ports and support for MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AVI, WMV and MPEG-4 file formats. Word on the street puts a $103 price tag on it, though you'll probably have to hunt high and low to actually find someone selling it.






