Well today I received a call from an HP Tech Support guy. I was informed
that liquid had been inside my keyboard and when they opened the computer to
diagnose it, the liquid spilled onto the motherboard causing damage. He also
informed me that in order to fix this I would have to pay $1,099.

Wow, that’s just — wow. Zack mentions there was no liquid inside his keyboard when he packed it off, as if he even needs to say that. Also, HP technician, even if this mysterious liquid managed to stay inside the keyboard for the entire shipping process, how exactly did you manage to spill it on the motherboard? Did you hear it sloshing around in that spacious, hermetically sealed keyboard and decide to investigate — directly over the mobo?

The guy then told Zack that he would receive his computer back, but it may “blow up.” I’m sure that for every experience like this, there are a thousand perfectly good interactions with HP’s customer service, but that doesn’t reduce the impact when you hear something as ridiculous (almost Comcastic) as this. Sounds like HP HR could use a little QA, IMHO.

Motorola's got another Q in the queue in the form of the new Napolean world phone. It's a CDMA smartphone for Verizon that does double duty with GSM, so you can use it pretty much anywhere. It also includes Wi-Fi if you're not feeling like using its EV-DO Revision A or EDGE data, runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and includes a fingerprint scanner and a 2-megapixel camera with flash. It sounds like a great phone for world travelers, but probably overkill for anyone else. [BGR]

It’s a tube, LED, USB, NO, it’s a USB LED Light Tube speaker that can perfectly complement any of your iPod/MP3/MP4 devices with its cool glowing light.  This goes well on any Star Wars enthusiast’s desk, provided you have muppet dolls of all the chararcters too.

At $22, the USB LED Light Tube Speakers will get you sounds worth bang for your buck.

via brando

Our review unit is an XPS M1330—Dell shipped us a fresh hard drive with Vista Ultimate and the latest Dell software. (The Dock will arrive on new Studio laptops, and eventually ship on some legacy systems, like the XPS M1330 and 1530.) Problem one is right when you boot it up. Windows started, and I thought they had accidentally given me a drive without the dock. The dock appeared a full minute after I started wondering WTF it was. Not a great start to the dock experience! A less savvy user might think the dock is just slow balls and turn it off. I did what I usually do when I get a notebook: Yank out the crapware, plus, in this case, the fingerprint reader and other Dell-specific software. Then reboot.

Dock comes up instantly. Yay. Okay, so while I don't find the default options useful, they were easy enough to swap out, move around, whatever. My desktop is spotless, the dock itself is beautiful. I'm happy—until I start using the computer. That's when I realize the dock's fatal flaw.

It's not a real "dock" but just a dumb, pretty shortcut bar. It can make your desktop tidy, but you still have to use the regular Windows taskbar to interact with applications and see what they're up to. When I minimize Firefox, it goes to the taskbar, and I can't pop the window back open from the dock. The AIM icon doesn't bounce when I have a new message. It just sits there, lifeless, looking high-res and pretty. And what I want, what I expect, what I'm subtly promised is something like OS X's dock. (Even if they won't let you stick it on the bottom.) If it was, and I could ditch the Windows taskbar, I would be in love with it. It would change the way a hefty chunk of the masses use their Vista computers, and maybe, just maybe, even keep them from making The Switch.

But it's not that. So instead of being in love with it, I'm just in like with it. [Dell]

As if we didn’t already have enough acronyms and TV types to decipher, Sony now tells us to get ready for FED displays in 2009. Invented in the 70s, Sony and Motorola have stepped up research of Field Emission Display (FED) tech in the past few years, and now Sony says we can expect its first FED screens for sale at the end of next year.

The most compelling news is that FEDs possess the best of all display characteristics. They work in a vacuum much like an old-style tube-type TV, but they're only a few millimeters thick instead of having a bulbous back that takes up half your living room. Plus, they’re said to be sharper and more energy-efficient than LCDs and plasmas, and are easier to build in huge sizes than the up-and-coming OLED displays.

Sounds perfect. The first FED displays will be going to broadcasters and medical applications, so that tells you these things aren’t going to be cheap out of the gate. It remains to be seen how long it’ll it take to bring the FED’s pricing down to earth.

Via übergizmo

It's one of the most inspired and ridiculous patent designs we've ever heard: A machine with over 200 different parts whose sole purpose is to change a light bulb. 

The joke is too obvious right? So much so that you have to wonder whether the inventor created it with ridicule in mind.

According to the United States Patent # 6826983, the light bulb apparatus seen above instantly detects a burned out bulb (with the help of a detecting sensor, and some hardware to build a mechanical trigger). Once its detected, it is automatically replaced when an outer cup-like swivel grabs on to the bulb and rotates it off the light fixture, ending up in a nice cone-shaped sleeve.

Detect, remove, replace. Sounds like a good idea, no? Depending on the amount of energy it takes to create something like this, we're going out on a limb and say that it's probably a waste of time as well.

For a patent to be accepted by the US office, an invention must be 'novel, non-obvious, and useful.' So what did the inventor use as his justification for this thing? Basically, that sometimes it's really hard to reach places where a light bulb needs to be replaced, and that extending the lifetime of a bulb (while a good idea), isn't optimal because they're just a bit more expensive than regular ol' bulbs. That's it.

Clearly, this patent was conceived before the growing concern with energy conservation. Plus, it only changes one light bulb -- or did we miss something? Is there a place to store more than one in here and we didn't catch it? Suddenly, this doesn't seem like a great idea.

It also makes us think of the commercial with the guy whose sole job was to change the light bulbs of a lamp store. Maybe the same guy came up with this idea. Repetitious and boring jobs are often the cradle of true innovation.

Here are a few extra of the necessary parts of this craziness, with their number parts (check out the full patent right here):

12   Rubber Feet
22   Power line
50   Cam follower transfer arm
60   Optical sensor determines burnout condition
70   Light bulb in lit condition monitored by optical sensor  60
178  Rotatable cam
84   Nut/washer for stopping upward movement of rotatable assembly end

CMMB (or S-TIMI) is a technology developed in China and selected by the State Administration for Radio, Film & Television (SARFT) as the main platform for delivering TV services to mobile devices. The CMMB network will use both satellite and terrestrial signals, to obtain effective coverage both in densely populated cities, including indoor reception, as well as in sparsely populated rural areas.

The SMS118X supports reception and display of multiple TV channels in parallel. In addition, it includes two complete, distinct UHF and S-band paths, strong baseband processor for the challenging performance requirements and also all the common interfaces required for the consumer market — USB, SDIO, SPI, memory-mapped, transport stream and I2C. The device does not require any external active component such as memory, to support CMMB.

Sounds like quite a powerful little chip then - and this on the back of the release of their SMS1100, which is a multi-standard chip, capable of receiving ISDB-T TV signals (those used in Brazil and Japan), in addition to Siano's existing support portfolio of DVB-H, DVB-T, DAB, DAB-IP and T-DMB….

[Via: Tech-On]

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Nvidia will be making significantly less money this quarter thanks to defective GPUs. The company said yesterday that some of its laptop graphics processors have a tendency to overheat, and that it’s taking a $150-$200 million charge to cover the costs of repairs. Yes, I had to look up what “charge” means in this context.

Nvidia says the problem is caused by weak materials. Sounds a lot like Microsoft.

So if you though your laptop GPU was running hotter than normal, turns out you were right. Best get Nvidia on the phone and complain.