The Nintendo DSi, basically a slimmer Nintendo DS Lite with a camera, launched in Japan at the beginning of this month and quickly sold just over 170,000 units.

Despite handheld gaming systems being a popular item throughout the holiday buying season, Nintendo is set to keep the DSi away from the western market until as late as mid-2009.

"Specific plans will be unveiled by our local subsidiaries, but an autumn or year-end launch would probably be too late," said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata last Friday in a Reuters report.

Nintendo shipped 200,000 DSi handhelds to Japanese retailers at launch, selling 170,779 of them according to PC World’s use of Enterbrain data.

While it’s unclear if Nintendo is hitting limits on DSi production, the handheld’s delay in North America and Europe could mean that those who acquire a new DS Lite this holiday could feel a slight burn when the newer version already exists but just isn’t readily available.

Fujitsu has announced its new N7010 desktop replacement notebook that features a 16-inch LCD display and a secondary 4-inch touchscreen display.

While ultra-portables seem to be the main focus for notebook manufactures these days, Fujitsu’s new N7010 desktop replacement is a bold and innovative step in a different direction. Offering dual-displays, the N7010 integrates a small 4-inch touchscreen just above notebook’s keyboard that can function as both a launch menu for applications or as a built-in secondary display.

The notebook of course still features a large traditional main LCD display, which measures 16-inches in size, has a 16:9 wide-screen aspect ratio and has a resolution of 1366 by 768. The smaller touchscreen appears to have a resolution of 960 by 544 and is treated by Windows as a regular secondary monitor; capable of having applications dragged to it, including movies and photo slide-shows.

As for system performance, the Fujitsu N7010 comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor (2.26 GHz | 3 MB of L2 cache | 1066 MHz FSB | 25 W TDP), an ATI Radeon HD 3470 (256 MB GDDR3) graphics solution and 4 GB of memory. While not particularly fast for a desktop replacement, it should still be able to make quick work of everyday tasks and be capable of some light gaming. Also included is an integrated Blu-ray drive, an HDMI port, an eSATA port, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11a/n (Intel 5100), a touch-pad, a shock-mounted 320 GB hard drive and a spill-resistant keyboard.

LAPTOP reviewed a pre-production Fujitsu N7010 notebook and it turns out that the reviewed N7010 had a battery life of just over 2-hours while surfing the web. The N7010 also weighed in at a hefty 7.4-pounds and was 2.2-inches thick, making it not really the most travel-friendly notebook you can buy, but that is where also having a netbook comes in handy these days. The Fujitsu N7010 is priced at $1,499.

It’s been just over a month since HP announced its intention to integrate VoodooPC into its overall consumer-PC business. Today, HP announced that some of the cost savings it has realized will be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices for the Voodoo Envy 133 notebook and HP Blackbird 002 Gaming PC.

Effective today, the price of a base-model, air-cooled Blackbird 002 gaming rig has been dropped to $1,799. That’ll buy a decent gaming rig hobbled by an underpowered videocard (specs include a dual-core Intel E8400 running at 3.0 GHz, 2GB of 1066 MHz Corsair DDR2 memory, an EVGA motherboard with an Nvidia nForce 780i chipset, and a beefy 900-watt power supply).

Upgrading the Blackbird’s wimpy ATI Radeon HD 3870 (with 512MB of GDDR4 memory) with a second card to run in CrossFire (enabling CrossFire on an Nvidia chipset is a feature unique to the Blackbird) adds $250 to the price tag. Upgrading to a single Radeon HD 4870 (with 512MB of GDDR5), on the other hand, tacks on an absurd premium of $500.

On the Voodoo notebook front, HP has shaved $200 off the price of its ultra-thin Voodoo Envy 133 (dropping its suggested retail price from $2,099 to $1,899). The base-model Envy 133 features an Intel Core 2 Duo SP7500 CPU, 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 memory, an 80GB hard drive, and a 13.3-inch widescreen display (1280x800 resolution). For a limited time (through November 30), every new Envy 133 will come with a free second battery (a bonus that HP values at $139.99).

Oops, you bought Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and you realize your product key is only 19 characters long when it should be 20 – or maybe your key is not there at all?

Electronic Arts (EA) has apparently misprinted the serial numbers needed for activation. The proper code should be 20 characters long, but it accidentally printed codes 19 characters long. The good news is that it managed to accidentally drop the last character in the string.

EA is working cooperatively with its customers by offering replacement codes if you are willing to photograph your current serial number and email it in. If you are not able, or unwilling, to photograph your serial and mail it, EA suggests you try ‘guessing’ the last character of your product code since there are only 36 possible entries to try – 0 to 9 and A to Z. This is what EA originally suggested on their support page.

“There is currently a work around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try "guessing" the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game.”

The above quote has since been removed, but still available through Google’s cache feature. The EA support page now reads the following:

“If you are trying to install Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 and the code is only 19 characters long, then it is missing the last letter or number. This was due to a misprint on a small number of manuals and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. In order to get a replacement code, please click the "Contact Us" link on the left side of the page to send an e-mail to our team. If you would like you can also contact us by phone using the number found on page 28 of your manual.”

Even though guessing 36 characters is not a big task, it poses a huge problem. What if your original key was to end with ‘8’ and someone else had the same key, but ending in ‘0’. Oops! This is probably part of the reason why EA has removed their original suggestion from their site. Nonetheless, accidents happen, and this similar issue has happened with other games before as well – as long as the people responsible are holding up to their commitment, it is all good.

Does the purchase of used games hurt the gaming industry? Ask yourself that question, and perhaps five of your friends — you will more than likely get a mixed bag of answers. David Breban, a British programmer behind the open ended space-trading game ’Elite’ seems to think used games sales do in fact bugger the industry.

Braben’s reasoning behind his view adds a new twist when answering the question at hand:

"The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new. So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry... We’ve got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful. Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price... That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games."

Most game shops we visit keep the ’pre-owned’ titles on a shelf clearly marked ’pre-owned’ or ’used’. If a retailer were to keep more ’used’ than ’new’ in stock, and this type of practice was widespread, then it would definitely be detrimental to the industry, to some degree.

Braben’s proposed solution to his dilemma is as follows:

"My argument is that for every game there are two versions. One is personal, not for resale and it’s made abundantly clear you can’t sell it. And it’s made available for something like GBP 25. And a resale and rental copy, which in film is actually about GBP 80."

Some people believe the reasoning behind the lowered availability of ‘new’ titles on the shelf is due to a number of apparent obvious factors, such as Digital Distribution. Digital distribution is becoming more and more popular by the day with companies jumping onboard with services such as Steam.

Quoting an employee of EB Games Canada we get the following response:

"There is nothing strange about the abundant availability of used titles in specialty stores such as EB, or other game shops. The specialty stores rely heavily on revenue from the sale of new releases or still popular titles. New or existing titles that sell in large numbers are going to be priority on the inventory control list when ordering stock, naturally.

It all comes down to how receptive the target audience of the title is. If the title is good and attracts a lot of buyers, the buyers tend to buy new only — and if new is not available, they will wait until it is available through order, another store, order online, or go to Steam to get it if its available there."

Take it as you will, however, it appears that the sale of ‘used’ titles does actually hurt the industry - when it comes to stale titles or titles with low sales numbers out of the gate. One has to consider the flip-side though, if used game sales are hurting the industry — then digital distribution is hurting the retailers just as well — food for thought.

Original Story from PC World.

Amazon is finally doing something about the worst invention in modern product packaging, the hard plastic clamshells.

At one point or another, we’ve brought home a shiny new toy only to discover that it’s protected by some custom shaped force field that prevents us into easily freeing our purchased good as quickly (and sometimes safely) as we’d like.

Amazon today is fighting back against such senseless packaging with its just launched “Frustration-Free Packaging” store, which as the name suggests, sells products that don’t come encased in the horrid packing method.

"I think we’ve all experienced the frustration that sometimes occurs when you try to get a new toy or electronics product out of its package," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "It will take many years, but our vision is to offer our entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging. We’d like to thank Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend for working with us in this effort - we truly appreciate it."

With only four the above mentioned companies on board so far, there are only 19 products that currently offered in the new section.

Besides being better for the customer, the environment is less affected with Amazon’s “Frustration-Free Packaging.” Exceptionally small products such as memory cards come in plastic clamshells many times its size (to deter shoplifting), and consumers who order online are then shipped the memory cards inside larger cardboard boxes. This leads to an unnecessarily larger carbon footprint.

Transcend now provides Amazon with just the flash memory card, the plastic case, and required documentation. The cards will now ship inside recyclable cardboard envelopes which use less material, and Amazon says it is working to shrink the envelope size even further.

The project will expand across Amazon’s international sites beginning in 2009. Check out Amazon’s new “Frustration-Free Packaging” storefront here.

It appears that some people are feeling a little ‘left out’ regarding an older issue with Apple and its PowerBook G4s. A New York resident, Giorgio Gomelsky, last week filed a nineteen page complaint in a Northern California court.

The complaint has been lodged by Gomelsky on behalf of himself as well as ten-of-thousands of other complainants which purchased defective PowerBooks manufactured between January 1, 2003 to present. The suit specifically alleges that earlier generation Mac notebooks had an issue with memory upgrades. When owners tried to upgrade their memory by adding additional modules to the first or the second slot available in most PowerBooks, the system would not recognize the memory correctly or at all.

Quoting the complaint lodged by Gomelsky:

"Typically, when the additional memory is added, the PowerBook does not recognize the memory, resulting in slower processing speeds, decreased computer function and other computing problems, Unfortunately for consumers, because both memory slots are hardwired to the PowerBook’s motherboard, consumers who choose to repair the defect can incur costs of more than $500 in parts and labor."

When Apple was slammed with all the complaints over the original memory upgrade issue they (Apple) launched a Memory Slot Repair Extension Program covering 15-inch 1.67 GHz and 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4s which were manufactured between January of 2005 and April of 2005. The extension program expired on July 24, 2008.

Gomelsky’s suit alleges that the original scope of the issue goes far beyond the range of PowerBooks that Apple agreed to initially cover in the repair program. Gomelsky was one of those customers which purchased PowerBooks with the defective memory slot problem – and his serial number fell outside of the range that Apple covered within the program – leaving Gomelsky and thousands of other customers to pay for their own repairs out-of-pocket.

Attorneys handling Gomelsky’s case are seeking reimbursement of expenses for their client and other class members whom have had to pay for their own repairs on defective notebooks which should have been covered under the initial repair program. Also, another part of the claim against Apple alleges other offenses committed by Apple such as violations to the California business code, breach of warranty, negligence, and unjust enrichment.

Further, the complaint also alleges that Apple failed to give proper notice of the Extended Warranty and did not contact PowerBook G4 owners to inform them that their notebooks may be covered under the warranty program before it had expired on July 24, 2008. Since the defect can sometimes take months or even years before it manifests itself to the user, a lot of customers have just begun to notice that they have been affected and they are now stuck with paying for repairs out of pocket.

Apple was unavailable for comment.

For those of you eyeballing the upcoming Motorola Aura phone, you might want to consider the fact that if you get bored of it, you are stuck with it unless you sell it back to Motorola.

Motorola’s new Aura phone, along with its oddly inspiring design and features, will also come feature packed with a contract for buyers stating that they will not resell the device on ‘eBay’. So what do you do if you get bored of the device? You can sell it back to Motorola!

Each device will come with a unique ID making it nearly impossible to resell the device outside of the contract rules. The question then becomes, what happens with hardware upgrade periods that most providers have? In other words, you can purchase a phone on a contract, and after a certain period of time, you can go get a newer device on the same contract at the subsidized price or close to it. So does this mean that providers will offer the upgrade free upon returning the Aura? Or does it mean purchasers of this device will not be eligible for upgrades?

The price at which Motorola will pay for returned ‘used’ devices is unknown at this point in time – and Motorola was not available for comment.

Some people wonder why anyone would buy such a phone, especially at its estimated cost of nearly US$2,000 (without subsidization). Some mobile forum users think the binding contract is just a good way to deter people from buying it in the first place – stating there are devices out there that range between a quarter and third of the Aura’s price and have four times as many features.