.::REALITYRECALL::.

It’s a decidedly case-by-case question, and you shouldn’t let silly things like “data” and “value judgments” get in the way of an enthusiastic impulse purchase. But for the more prudent types, Consumer Reports has compiled handy a repair-or-replace guide.

The magazine drew together reader survey results with their own internal data to evaluate peoples’ experiences repairing and replacing certain classes of products, and the results aren’t terribly surprising: Point and shoot cameras are cheap and difficult to repair, and get noticeably more advanced over short periods of time, you may as well just replace them if they break outside of two years of ownership. LCD HDTVs? Hold on a little longer.

Granted, the general trend here seem to be that it's not worth repairing anything that's more than a few years old, so it's less a guide about when to replace than confirmation that today's gadgets—even the most expensive ones—are more or less disposable. Full chart below. (Click to enlarge) [Consumer Reports via Consumerist]

First-day sales of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke records, raking in an estimated $310 million US in North America and the United Kingdom alone.

Project Natal has been listed as one of TIME Magazines Inventions of the Year.

The Toronto Maple Leafs topped Forbes magazine’s list of the NHL’s most valuable franchise for the fourth straight year.

Remembrance ceremonies attracted crowds in Canada and around the world to honour those who died while serving their countries.

Since yesterday’s rumour about the amount of consoles banned from LIVE during this Ban Wave (altho I wonder if I should still call it a ‘wave’) lots of general-public news sites started posting it as a fact today. It even seems like msnbc (FYI: a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC) puts these numbers in the mouth of the Redmond company:
[QUOTE]
Anywhere between an estimated 600,000 and 1 million players who use Microsoft’s Xbox Live gaming service will be cut off from the service because they have modified their game consoles or played games that were illegally downloaded from file-sharing sites, according to the company.
[/QUOTE]

However a real quote made today by Microsoft on venturebeat.com says:
[QUOTE]
“While we don’t comment on specific numbers, Microsoft’s commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure game play for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken.”
[/QUOTE]

You’ll notice the latter part of the quote is also on the msnbc article.
So while the number might be right (or not), I believe this rumour got out of hand and Microsoft never actually confirmed these numbers to anyone, at least not on-the-record. FYI: There are about 33M consoles sold worldwide (19M in US/CA) to-date and about 20M Xbox LIVE users.
And … I’m not even gonna start about how inaccurate and incomplete many of these articles are 😉

It’s been a little while since we’ve seen a good multi-billion dollar acquisition, but HP’s sure come through in a big way today, announcing that it plans to acquire networking giant 3Com in an all-cash deal valued at $2.7 billion, or $7.90 a share. The deal will, of course, still have to clear a few regulatory hurdles and receive the approval of 3Com’s stockholders, but it has already been given the go-ahead by both company’s boards of directors, and HP expects the transaction to close in the first half of 2010. Not surprisingly, HP sees nothing but pluses with the acquisition, saying that it will do nothing short of “transform the networking industry,” and “enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.” Equally optimistic but slightly cooler on the world-changing language is 3Com CEO Bob Mao, who says that its company’s “extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity.”

Filed under: Networking

HP to acquire 3Com in $2.7 billion deal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Need some extra space for your gigantic Gmail habit, or to stash more pics in Picasa Web Albums? Google took a knife to its extra storage prices, offering, for example, 80 GB for $20 per year.

At the bottom end, 20 GB goes for $5 per year, or a bit over 41 cents per month. Want to get crazy with it? A terabyte runs $256 per year, and 16 terabytes tops the list at $4,096. The extra space is officially shared between Gmail and Picasa Web albums, but, as Google Operating System suggests, it might be a preemptive step toward making the expected, anticipated “GDrive” storage space a real thing.

If you’ve already bought extra Google apps space, your account should see an automatic space boost for the remainder of your year’s purchase to match the new prices. Does this kind of cheap space make you consider moving your pictures to Picasa, or investing a bit more in Google as a storage platform?

Ads by Pheedo

The mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that killed 10 in the Washington, D.C., region has been executed.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite antivirus application and then we rounded up the five most popular candidates for your review and a final vote. We’re back with the results, and this was one very close race.

In the end AVG came out on top as the most popular antivirus app with 23 percent of the vote, barely beating out Microsoft Security Essentials (22 percent), which in turn beat out ESET NOD32 (19 percent).

If you’re unfamiliar with Microsoft Security Essentials, the newest kid on the antivirus block, check out our feature on Microsoft’s security tools for a little more on why we think most users should stop paying for their Windows security applications. For more information on the winner and runners up, check out the full Hive Five.

Windows only: Planning an upgrade soon? Save yourself the web searches for your specs and download Speccy. Speccy does a quick scan of your machine and gives you a complete rundown of every piece of gear that’s in your computer.

Upon first glance, Speccy seems like something that’s only attractive to power users, but it can be useful for anyone. When the Device Manager doesn’t give you enough information about what kind of RAM you have (say, if you’re looking to upgrade), Speccy will give you all the information you could possibly need, including the RAM type, how much you currently have, and even the number of slots used so you can buy with confidence.

You can view your computer’s information in a brief summary (as shown), or click on any of the categories for a very, very detailed report. Speccy gives you detailed information for CPU, motherboard, graphics, hard drives, optical drives, and audio, all so you don’t have to go searching somewhere else to find out what you have. In addition, it also gives you real-time information on things like bus speed, DRAM Frequency, and temperature, to name a few.

We’ve featured one or two different tools like this in the past, but thus far, this is the cleanest and most detailed one we’ve used yet. Speccy is a free download, Windows only.

Windows only: Free application Comodo EasyVPN creates a virtual private network between your computers for a hassle-free, secure private network. That means you can access, for example, anything on your home computer from work as though you’re on the same local network.

Comodo EasyVPN, like previously mentioned VPN app Hamachi, is simple to set up. Just install the application, register for an account, and then log in. Once you’ve got the app running on a couple of computers, you can easily (and securely) access one computer from the other as though you’re on the same local network.

As we mentioned in our guide to Hamachi, a VPN comes in handy when:

• You’re on the road with your laptop and want secure access to your PC’s files.
• Your office or dorm room computer is behind a restrictive firewall that doesn’t let you reach it from the internet.
• You want to add encryption to insecure network protocols like VNC.
• You want to set up a shared folder of files for friends and family to access.

We showed you how to set up secure VNC with Hamachi, and the same basic steps would apply with Comodo EasyVPN. So is EasyVPN better than Hamachi? Not necessarily, but since LogMeIn bought Hamachi, it’s only free for non-commercial use. If you want or need to use a VPN for work purposes and don’t have the extra budget, Comodo EasyVPN will do the job nicely. Update: Apparently EasyVPN is also only available for non-commercial use. This information was not on the main page, but I missed it on their download page. Apologies for the confusion. Apart from the basics, EasyVPN also comes with a built-in, secure chat tool.

Comodo EasyVPN is a free download, works with Windows XP and above with support for 32- and 64-bit systems.

Windows: Panda Cloud, the constantly updated, cloud-run antivirus app that promises almost real-time protection from burgeoning web threats, is out of beta and available for a free download.

As the How-To Geek detailed in his beta write-up, Panda does most of its computing, file-checking, and threat updating on its servers, leaving a very light and agile app presence on your system. It caches its threat database offline with a minimal bit of hard drive space, and the interface is far from cluttered, as you see above. In general, it's a very polite anti-virus app, and if the Geek considers it worth mentioning, well—he's far from calmly objective on the topic of anti-virus apps, so consider it a recommendation.

During the beta process, Panda appears to have focused on tightening up CPU and memory usage even more, as well as fixing the “stuck” errors encountered by some users. If you’re already running a beta, Panda recommends uninstalling that, and installing the 1.0 final.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is a free download for home users and educational groups on Windows systems only.

Crutches. In a thousand years, their design hasn’t fundamentally changed. And for something as minor as a sprained ankle or broken foot, the Freedom Leg looks like a welcome alternative.

A light, 2.5lb exoskeleton, the Freedom Leg moves all of your body weight from your injured foot to the prosthesis frame and your upper leg, meaning that you can walk pretty much like your used to while you heal up. And while I welcome resident doctors to list all of this product’s flaws in the comments, to my pea brain, the idea seems so obvious and simple that it just might work. [Forward Mobility via medGadget via OhGizmo!]

I’ve started to buy vinyl records again. It’s not because of the sound. It’s the touch and the pretty pictures. Obviously, vinyl is not why CDs are dying. Zoom-zoom in, digital boys and girls.

What surprises me about these facts and figures—apart from iTunes skyrocketing again after the introduction of variable pricing—is the fact that CDs are not completely dead yet. They are clearly going down, but I had this mental image in which all of those round mirrors were destroyed, melting like Dali clocks in a desert of indifference. [Mint]

330 million users and 7,000 add-ons

Calgary’s Jarome Iginla was named the NHL’s first star of the week Monday after scoring five goals in three games, helping lead the Flames to three consecutive victories.