No $99 4 Gig iPhone, but WalMart Sales Start Sunday

Apple

I think it’s a shame. I might’ve bought a 4 gig model.

Walmart confirmed it will be selling the iPhone at select stores – most likely the ones that already have an Apple section to it. They will be selling the 8 and 16 gig iPhones. If you want to save a couple bucks (literally), you can get them there for $197 and $297 respectively. Purchasing in other stores will cost you $199 and $299.

There was a lot of buzz on a $99 – 4 gig model. In all reality, a 4 gig model is pretty good for those who want to use it mostly as a phone. My current smartphone (an HTC) only has 128 Meg on the phone and a Mini SD card that adds another 2 gig to it. Then again, I don’t have the iBeer application or anything like that.

It doesn’t mean that Walmart wont offer a 4 gig model down the road. Maybe they will announce at MacWorld new iPhones. I don’t think Apple would go backwards – unless it’s a 4 gig iPhone mini. I would guess, though, they would announce new iPhones at 32 and maybe 64 gig. That could push an 8 gig iPhone to $99 – or maybe $97 at Walmart. Of course we won’t know until MacWorld – that’s only a couple weeks away.

For now, if you want to save the $2, then it’s off to Walmart you go. That is, unless the Walmart is a farther drive than the Apple store. Then $2 is not going to help.

Mele Kalikimaka – Merry Christmas from Geek News Central

Information

2008chritmastAloha and Merry Christmas

I want to extend a warm Mele Kalikimaka to all of our readers and listeners from all over the world. The team of writers and I hope that your stockings are full and that you have a wonderful Christmas.

Many in the world and in our own back yard are hurting right now and as we move towards 2009, I am going to look for stories that will help you not only save money but give you the availability to invest in technology that makes sense not technology you will waste you precious dollars on.

Enjoy the holidays as the real work begins in the New Year.

Mele Kalikimaka to all..

ProMed Network Soft Launch

Podcast

I want to draw your attention to a new media network called the ProMed Network. My team at RawVoice have partnered up with the team at ProMed providing the RawVoice Generator technology to power their new site.

I am really excited to see the site up live, with new content being added each day it will fast become a premium destination for medical news and content.

Nextar MA588-1R MP3 Player Review

Commerce

2008nextarMP3 Players come in all shapes and sizes and having been sent one of these units to review I decided that it would be a great thing for my 10 year old to play with.

The price on these are really cheap generally retailing for around $24.99 they make a great stocking stuffer for the parent on a budget.

Ray played with it for a couple of days, used the computer here in the office to load some tracks. I provided no assistance to make sure he would be ok..

His response has been pretty positive for a 10 year old and says that it sounds as good as the one my older daughter has and that he fiddled with the EQ to make some of the songs sound better. His only complaint the screen was hard to read.. Well for $24.99 do you expect the screen to be big..

Overall no complaints and if the 10 year old is happy then it should make for a good stocking stuffer.

Note: The device under review was used for two days around the house and in transit in the car.

GoodYear GY-145 GPS Review

Commerce

2008goodHaving had my hands on a number of GPS units over the past couple of years I was very curious when the folks at GoodYear came out with a GPS. Not exactly a product you would expect them to come out with.

I tested the device here in Hawaii and while some will say why test a GPS in Hawaii, I had a specific mission in mind when I tested this unit. First of all the traffic is really bad at times so I waited till it was one of those days in gridlock when I employed my strategy.

This GPS comes with the ability for it to look ahead and give you some alternate routes. So I followed the alternate routes that the GPS gave me in my time of need and found some back streets the locals knew well but not having been born and raised here I did not know about.

Much to my surprise more often than not I was able to get ahead of the traffic by using back streets it routed me to which was good considering the price of gas here.

Second thing was I wanted to test usability and I found that the device was easy to navigate with one exception. The map zoom features really drove me crazy. Two small icons in the touch screen caused zoom in and zoom out. Often the zoom feature would only hold a few minutes and resort back to a wider view which I did not care for.

The GPS Unit seemed forever to pick up a GPS signal even in clear skies and the unit had a tendency to reset itself whenever I restarted the car which was annoying. Overall my impression on the route around feature was good but sadly I cannot recommend this unit as a product to purchase largely because of the zoom feature controlled on screen. The folks at Goodyear need to go back to the drawing table on this one.

Note: I was provided a unit to test and tested this unit in real world conditions for 7 days.

Zero pollution energy creation and storage

Technology

Regular readers may remember me talking about the dead-end that is electric cars with batteries. The complexity, weight, recharge time and dangerous chemicals that go into them make them of low practicality to the mass market. Bio-diesel is an even worse idea given the low energy recovery and the land it takes away from producing food. These two technolgies seem to form the cornerstone of almost all low emmision vehicles being produced or planned.

We are wasting time and money on these dead-end technologies when better solutions are available. Hydrogen fuel cells are a very possible and safe technology, and there has been success with trial and even production vehicles using this method. And while there is no widespread filling infrastructure in place today, it should be no harder to introduce than unleaded gas, or LPG was.

A team at MIT has taken the next step in making this technology truly viable. They have put together a method that produces Hydrogen from pure water at room temperature using solar energy. The catalysts used to do this are phosphate cobalt and platinum, all of which are fairly benign chemicals. Once it is built this system is a truly zero emmision power source. Solar energy splits water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. The Hydrogen is burned, mixing it with Oxygen to produce water.

Combine this with some of the new high efficiency solar cell technology that is on its way and there is a true potential that not only our cars, but our homes as well could be completely zero emmision within a relatively short time. A medium size array on the roof of your house could produce twice your power needs. Some of the excess power goes to produce hydrogen for night and the car, and some goes back into the grid for those in apartment blocks and industrial needs.

I am very excited about the potential of this path to energy production.

A New Reprieve for Windows XP and Vista Not Being Deployed

Microsoft

Two things in the news today. First, Microsoft has once again, for at least the third time, granted an extension to PC manufacturers who are insisting that they still want to purchase XP. Such manufacturers can now order XP through the end of January, even if they don’t want delivery of the software until as late as May. In my recollection, this is definitely the third, and possibly the fourth, reprieve for Microsoft’s most-used-to-date operating software.

And in another survey, Microsoft is finding out that 10% or less of corporate environments have deployed Vista. Educational environments are showing a slightly higher rate of adoption, but not much, at about 15%. Corporations and institutions of higher learning are holding onto the more stable and less resource-hoggy (is that a word) XP. If Vista is deployed, it is on individual laptops that are used for travel or other off-corporate-network projects. I know our institution is not deploying Vista except into a limited number of classrooms where the software is being taught. It has not been rolled out to staff or faculty systems except for laptops that are used mostly off-grid.

Microsoft is being pressured to produce on their Windows 7 promises. A release seems likely by late 2009 as customers continue to refuse to upgrade to the Vista platform. Vista has ended up being a dismal and financial failure for Microsoft. Even though I use Vista on several machines, I still defer to my XP machines for most of my day-to-day work. Unless a corporation can afford the massive hardware upgrade that Vista requires, XP is still the way to go, and these corporations are talking with their wallets.

It would be nice to think that Windows 7 will be a more natural progression of Microsoft operating systems than Vista is. What we all wanted and needed was an upgraded XP, not something completely new and different and expensive to deploy. I don’t know if I can think that hopefully, but maybe Microsoft has learned a few lessons with Vista.