Obsolescence
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Kodak announces 'asset protection' cinema film, thumbs nose at your digital movie collection
Kodak may not be beloved by digital filmmakers, but it's not fallen out of love with the talkies. It's new "asset protection" cinema film is designed to save motion pictures from being lost if your digital-storage-medium-of-choice is rendered obsolete. It's designed for long-term archive storage, with your Hollywood blockbuster stored in a "human-readable" format that'll remain usable "well into the future." As such, the reels are loaded with dyes that will reportedly remain stable for "decades," but the company thinks will remain viable for over a century -- in stark contrast with the short life of your average hard-drive. It'll add a monochrome offering to the range later in the year, but if you want the color version now, your people will have to talk to Kodak's people, Mr. Producer.
Best Buy's Buy Back Program will let you trade in old tat for new hotness
Best Buy's crafty ploy for the new year has seemingly been uncovered by BGR's tipsters. According to those knowledgeable sources (and the paperwork they've passed along), Best Buy intends to roll out a new Buy Back Program, which will guarantee a given trade-in value for your gadgets, depending on how old they are. Thus, any laptop, tablet, or smartphone you buy from the retailer will be tradeable for 50 percent of its original price within six months of purchase, 40 percent before the first year passes, 30 in the 12- to 18-month period, or 20 in the dying embers of a two-year ownership period. That's pretty hefty depreciation and you'll have to pay an up-front fee to get enrolled in the Program, but hey, if you upgrade like mad, maybe there's some way to make this a financially appealing proposition for the consumer. Maybe... though probably not.
Lanyu LY-EB01 is world's cheapest laptop with built-in obsolescence
Step aside, World's Cheapest Laptop, Lanyu of China just undercut you -- and the magical $100 barrier -- with the 666 Yuan ($98) LY-EB01. This marketing marvel might have a processor slower than most netbooks' FSB at 266MHz, and its 128MB of RAM might spontaneously combust if you even type the word Vista into it, but it is, technically, a laptop. And you can totally store, like, a few hundred Word files on the 2GB flash drive. Having played around with the previous champ of the 'cheap 'n useless' weight class, we must at least congratulate Lanyu on a solid looking construction, and hey, apparently there's a chance for a release outside China. Aren't you excited? [Via Cloned in China]
Jobs: "you have to buy a new iPod at least once a year"
Now we know the truth. In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained why Apple comes up with new iPod models so frequently: "You keep on innovating, you keep on making better stuff," Jobs said, in response to a question from Williams about why a new iPod might seem outdated as soon as you take it out of the box. Then Jobs offered a bit of advice to consumers: "If you always want the latest and greatest, then you have to buy a new iPod at least once a year." Gee, thanks, Steve. We always thought it was the dead batteries or battered shell that kept sending us back to the Apple store. Glad you could set us straight.[Via iLounge]
