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12 months of live for 35 smackers
Walmart.com is currently selling 12 month Live Gold subscription cards for the low price of $35.82. Usually priced at $49.99, the savings are fairly substantial. It's currently unknown if this offer is available in-store or only online. If anybody snaps one up, let us know how it went.[Via del.icio.us]
A hard shopping lesson taught by APEX
Lets be honest. How many of us have been tempted to buy an entry-level (read: cheap-no-name-but-it-is-a-heck-of-a-deal) consumer electronic? Most have 'cause they might have a great picture or the styling is rather nice. You would think that in these days of class action lawsuits and consumer watchdog groups that manufactures would not be able to get away with selling...crap. Well, this isn't entirely true. Walk into any major electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City and take a look at their lineup. They will have some nice name brand products and then some no-name entry-level products at the other end of the price range. Ron Donoho bought the APEX at the low-end of the scale and is now paying the repercussion. Most people remember APEX as a rock bottom priced product line-up sold almost exclusively by Walmart and Circuit City from 2002-2005. Ron purchased his 27-inch APEX LCD from Circuit City in February of '05 and well, it broke. Very long story short, he declined the extended service plan from CC but it still had parts covered by APEX and local service centers won't touch the set because of bad relations with APEX. In fact APEX themselves are in heaps of trouble with the Chinese government (CEO was physically tortured for fraud and bad debt - can we send Ken Lay over there?) so they aren't any help at all. So the moral of the story? Sometimes those entry-level products that look like such a good deal might not be that. Sure, there are always exceptions to the rule and even name brand products go bad, but more often then not, they outlast no-name products. Mr. Ron Donoho has a very lengthy write-up on his experiences with APEX that might be worth a read if you are in the market for a new TV. We are curious to hear your experiences with entry-level product lines like APEX. Tell us everything - good or bad.
DS Lite US street date broken, now available!
Whoa Nelly! We're getting reports that Walmart and Target have jumped the gun on the June 11 DS Lite launch date and are selling DS Lites ahead of schedule. Forum jockeys over at Cheap Ass Gamer and elsewhere are declaring mixed success after febrile trips to their local big-boxes across the nation. So check it, skip the Trix this AM and go trolling the aisles -- you might just get lucky. [Via Joystiq, thanks stisev1]
'Wii' not unique enough, search engines yield strange results
Anyone that has conducted a simple online search for "Wii" since the name of Nintendo's next-gen console was officially unveiled less than one month ago has undoubtedly turned up some interesting results. PunchJump.com has put together a status report of the search term, which still yields the Wildlife Institute of India as the top result on Google. Turning to the websites of many major retailers, "Wii" searches often produce shopping lists of World War II memorabilia.But Nintendo's Wii is quickly gaining ground, already nabbing most of Yahoo's top results. Now, it's only a matter of time before Nintendo's console dominates search engines across the 'net. Still, the current results suggest that "Wii" isn't as unique a name as it's been chalked up to be.
Where's J Allard? Working at Wal-Mart
When we interviewed Peter Moore at E3 we asked him right away, "Where's J Allard?" Peter said he was riding BMX bikes or some such nonsense, whereas Dean Takahashi says he's been working on a top secret Xbox portable project. Turns out they were both wrong: J's been busy making guest appearances on television's The Apprentice! That's a pretty public showing ... so is he the face of the 360 or not? Really, I'm confused.On Monday's episode of The Apprentice, J was there to judge the results of the contestant's Xbox 360 Wal-Mart displays. You can check out photos and a summary of the show on NBC's website, or download the show from iTunes (link). Heads up to NBC, it's "J" not "Jay." It's not spelled out like Homer's middle name, it's just a letter. Why? 'Cause it's just cooler that way, okay?[Via GamerBabble](Update: Corrected my Homer-history. D'oh!)
