There are two reasons to buy a product from a local electronics store as opposed to ordering online: Either you need something immediately or there’s a sale price that makes buying in-person worth the hassle of doing so. It’s comparatively rare for a store to claim jacking up the price is an advantage to its customers, but that’s what Best Buy is arguing. The iPhone X went up for pre-orders late last week–it’s already listing with a 5-6 week wait time, so if you were hoping to have one by Christmas you’d best get that order made sooner, not later.
PhotoPlus Expo is the CES of cameras, a show dedicated to photography equipment, printing services, and how-to seminars for professionals and advanced amateurs. It’s virtually all about digital photography and video, although one (well-used) Beseler enlarger for printing from film was spotted on the show floor of the Javits Center in New York City. Here’s our take on some the most intriguing gear for pros, amateurs, and even Instagrammers whose main camera is a smartphone. The seminars were useful, including on specialized topics such maternity photography at the Olympus booth by photographer Tracie Maglosky (main image).
For a limited time, you can pick up this manufacturer refurbished dual-core 13.3-inch Dell Latitude laptop on eBay at a 27% discount. And since it’s under warranty with Dell until July 13, 2018, you can rest easy knowing that your purchase is covered. • (List price: $479) Inside, this config has a sixth generation dual-core 2GHz Intel Core i3-6006U CPU, integrated Intel graphics, 4GB of DDR4 RAM (2133MHz), a 128GB solid-state drive, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi support. As for the 13.3-inch display, it features touch sensitivity and a full HD resolution of 1920×1080. Whether you want to crank out some word processing on your keyboard, or swipe through your photo album, this highly flexible machine can contort to fit your needs.
AMD announced its new Ryzen Mobile APUs today, kicking off what’s arguably its most important refresh of 2017. Over the past decade, laptops have accounted for a steadily growing percentage of the total PC market. At the same time, however, AMD was forced to fight a defensive rear-guard action with a CPU design that was fundamentally unsuited to high-efficiency, low-power operation. As of today, that’s (hopefully) changing. Like Intel, AMD is taking a staggered approach to its rollout and launching just two new mobile parts: Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U. Both new cores are 15W parts; a summary of the two chips and comparison to their closest Intel counterparts is shown below:
Although the infrastructure crisis in Puerto Rico is an ongoing humanitarian disaster, there is a bright spot in news from the beleaguered island. Tesla is swooping in with Powerpacks and solar panels to help re-establish Puerto Rico’s power grid, starting with a major children’s hospital. When Hurricane Irma made landfall on Puerto Rico, some of the strongest eyewall winds made a “direct hit” on key power infrastructure. The island was already heavily reliant on diesel plants for power generation; now that so many roads have been washed out, it’s hard even to get diesel to individual homes so people can use generators.
Backups are vitally important, but they aren’t perfect. Multiple drives can fail in a short period of time, software can bug out, and mistakes happen. And if you accidentally delete something on your camera’s SD card, you’ll definitely want a way to get those photos back. As such, it’s worth picking up Prosoft Data Rescue to have at the ready. • • Regardless of whether the data is on an SSD, an external hard drive, or a memory card, you can use Data Rescue to search out your lost files. Run a new scan, narrow down the search to what you need restored, and recover them on the double.
In past years, “unlimited” mobile data actually meant unlimited. Today, there are myriad limits placed on the so-called unlimited plans sold by , T-Mobile, and others. For example, to a lower bitrate than other data. If you really want to get around that limit, Verizon will now be happy to to do away with video throttling. Video throttling on mobile plans gained traction recently when T-Mobile introduced its Binge On service. That granted customers unlimited video streaming that didn’t count against their capped plans, but the video would be limited to 480p (standard definition). T-Mobile kept this restriction when it moved to offering only “unlimited” plans.
Apple’s iPhone X is supposed to represent the future of technology. Unfortunately, it appears that future isn’t going to be one any of us can afford. The company’s service pricing page for its upcoming phone makes it clear that anyone who breaks their can look forward to paying an arm and a leg to have it fixed. The iPhone X’s repair fees are . If you crack the screen, you’ll have to pay Apple $279 for a new phone. If you break anything else, including the back of the device, you’ll have to pony up $549. This huge leap in repair costs is both a blatant attempt to force people to use AppleCare+ and an unprecedented increase even compared to Apple’s previous products.
The online computer component and electronics giant Newegg has been sued by four Korean banks for its alleged role in a massive, Ponzi-scheme like fraud. This is an extension of an earlier case that sent the former CEO of Moneual Inc, Park Hong-seok, to jail for 23 years. In that case, Park was jailed for forging export contracts and using said contracts to secure bank loans. A similar method of action is alleged to have been used here as well. The case alleges that Newegg and wholesale computer distributor ASI Corp made fraudulent orders for home theater PCs (HTPCs) from Moneual, a South Korean manufacturer of computers and small electronics.
