Been brushing the idea of a netbook off for months now? Let’s see you ignore this. Hot on the heels of the Inspiron Mini 10 going on sale, Dell has lowered the barrier to entry on its marginally smaller Mini 9 to a rather amazing $199. For under two bills, you can now grab yourself an Obsidian Black 8.9-inch netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, WiFi, a 4-cell battery, GMA950 graphics, 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD and a copy of Ubuntu Linux. Of course, that price heads up a hundred bucks if you just can’t live without Windows XP, but if there’s ever been a time for learning how to deal within an open source environment, we’d say this is it. Good luck with that whole “resisting the temptation” thing.

[Via technabob]

Filed under: Laptops

Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 drops to a delicious $199 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PC World – Facebook launched on Thursday a campaign polling users over its new draft Terms of Service (TOS). Applauded by advocates and seen as a revolutionary move toward democratic social networking, Facebook’s new campaign is making its way on the Internet. But what are the new TOS all about?

More here:
Rewriting Facebook’s Terms of Service
(PC World)

There was a bit of a false alarm at the flagship stores yesterday — Nokia’s New York and Chicago stores got inventory, but didn’t start selling the 5800 right away, causing much anguish in the hearts of American plectrum lovers and our very own Chris Ziegler. Well, all has been rectified, and now you can pick up Nokia’s touchscreen pioneer, the 5800 XpressMusic, for $399, unlocked and unsubsidized. If you aren’t so much into retail stores you can head to Nokia’s online store, though the phone is still inexplicably listed as “pre-order” there — we’re sure things will be rectified soon enough.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic finally up for grabs Stateside originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It takes a awful lot of ingenuity and creativity — and maybe just a touch of dumb luck — to come up with a unique, truly innovative phone form factor in the year 2009. Somehow, LG and Verizon have managed to hit that rare combo with the Versa, a full touchscreen bar that can be augmented with add-on modules for those times when function takes priority over form. Right now, the only module available is a full QWERTY keyboard — a good first choice, we’d say — and it’s included with the package. Cool concept, yeah, but is it usable? Read on.

Filed under: Cellphones

LG Versa hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re still waiting on a solid bit of subsidized US availability on Sprint, but Canada’s got things all figured out — how typical. Palm’s Treo Pro is doing the EV-DO Rev. A thing on Bell Mobility up there, going for $99.95 on a three-year contract — 1 and 2-year contracts are $0 and off contract is only $49, so we’ll likely be updating when things settle down. That sounds like a silly amount of time to be tied to Windows Mobile 6.1, but we’re temporal pessimists like that. Bell Mobility customers can pick up the phone as of today.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm’s Treo Pro hits Bell Mobility in Canada originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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