If It Prints, I'll Let You Know

We have done quite a number of posts about the ongoing court – and ad – battle between AT&T and Verizon, and we now bring you the latest installment to the “drama”.

Judge Timothy Batten has denied the request for a temporary restraining order filed by AT&T to temporarily stop Verizon ads form getting air time. The denial was given through an oral statement during the hearing in the Federal District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta that lasted for nearly two hours.

Since AT&T first filed suit against Verizon on November 3, more people seem to have become interested in the ads and what they meant to consumers. In addition, Verizon got busy and managed to churn out three more TV ads with a Christmas-y feel. This is on top of the first ad that earned the ire of AT&T as well as the one where an iPhone was “banished” to an “Island of Misfit Toys,” which we also featured in a previous post. There are now a total of five TV ads that revolve around the issue of 3G coverage, along with associated radio and print advertising.

One of the points that AT&T tried to make was that the ads brought about “confusion” about AT&T’s coverage in general, at least based on a study that they had reportedly commissioned. The results of that survey reportedly showed that the viewers who saw the original Verizon ads thought that the maps were referring to network coverage in general and not just 3G coverage in particular.

The full lawsuit is still in court and a preliminary hearing has been set for December 16.

One generally does not have the time – probably, nor the energy – to go store-hopping on Black Friday. Everyone will have stores on their priority list, depending on the kind of deals and stuff that they would like to enjoy and purchase. In our case, we usually go to two stores on Black Friday — Best Buy and Wal-Mart, in that order.

And as far as doing one’s Black Friday homework goes, we find one site helpful — Black-Friday.net. And for those who intend to troop to the nearest Best Buy or Wal-Mart, here are some of the deals that we will most probably be going for:

Wal-Mart has a huge array of goodies, and you may laugh at us but one of the bins we usually make a beeline for are the DVDs. Prices range from $2 for titles such as Blood Diamond, Casino Royale and I am Legend; $5 for Kung Fu Panda, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Dark Knight; and $9 for Marley and Me, GI Joe and 17 Again. Some Titles, such as Braveheart, Gladiator and Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince are available in Blu-ray for $10.

Wal-Mart will also have sales on home items and apparel, as well as electronics. There is an HP 15.6” Notebook with Intel Processor, 3GB Memory and 250GB hard drive for $298, a Sony Cyber-Shot 10 MP camera digital camera for $79, an Apple 8GB iPod Touch with a $50 iTunes GC for $195, and a 46” Sony Bravia HDTV for $798.

Best Buy’s deals will reportedly include a 13.3” Macbook with 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 250GB Hard Drive and a $150 GC for $999, a Canon EOS Rebel T1iD-SLR Camera for $699, the 8GB iPod 5th generation Nano for $159.97 and the Epson Stylus NX110 MFP for $24.99. Smallville fans can also purchase DVD sets of the show from seasons 1 through 8 for $9.99 per set.

Since early this week, we have been reading about an excited frenzy over big, big discounts from the one company that rarely gives them out – Apple. Something inside just clicked and said — well, this thing looks too good to be true; and experience tells us that when something is that good, then it most probably is just a figment of someone’s imagination, or wishful thinking gone wild.

So, what kind of discounts were we supposed to look forward to from Apple? The discounts will reportedly be available on “Select Apple Stores” – no mention of the online store – starting at 6 in the morning on November 27th only. Consumers can look forward to “up to” 30% off on ALL iPods, 25% off on ALL Macs and 15% of on ALL accessories, Apple software and Apple hardware.

We would have been okay with the “up to,” which means there will probably be a great deal or two on models that people do not really go for all that often, and then 4 to 5 percent off – or even less – on the more popular stuff. But to say that discounts will be given across the board? It will always be on selected models – it always has been; we just don’t think that any company can afford to offer discounts across the board.

And we cannot help but wonder whether Apple stores are prepared to handle an even bigger-than-expected influx of consumers come November 27 if these rumors are, indeed, true; this is considering they run out of regularly-priced items.

We have not seen a feature that absolutely discredits the rumors, nor has any official statement from Apple stores been released as of this writing. If anyone has information about that, we would certainly appreciate a shout-out or a link. For the moment, though, we will personally dismiss these rumors as something not worth watching out for; what about you?

Google has just released the code for the Chrome Operating System. The Chrome OS is currently available open-source via the Chrome OS project, and the development community has free and open access to it. Included are the current code base, user interface experiments as well as initial designs for ongoing development.

Google intends to have netbooks that are running the operating system available in the market just in time for the 2010 holiday season. When the Chrome OS does break into the market, “all activity will be stored in the cloud”. This was explained by Google product management vice president Sundar Pichai during a technical preview at the company’s headquarters.

What this means is that if for any reason you no longer are able to access your Chrome OS-based netbook (such as if you lose it), recovery of all information is possible as soon as the user will log in to a new machine.

There was no talk of dollars in Pichai’s part, but he did hint that the price range for the Chrome-based netbook will be within what one would expect from such a gadget. He did say, however, that they fully intend to come up with a netbook design that is slightly larger than usual in order to allow for a more convenient viewing and typing experience.

We will have to wait a year, though, for what this Google netbook would look like. But even this early, Google is already saying that they will not be stopping at just netbooks and eventually intends to expand to laptops and desktops.

When we come to think of it, we may consider this period as the age of the laptops. This machine has, indeed, gone from being a convenient add-on gadget for the select few to being part of the mainstream. It is not uncommon for households to have more than just one laptop, and to see old desktops gathering dust in a corner.

Anyone who owns a machine or a gadget, however, has one thing to think about — reliability. Surely, no one will want to part with hard-earned cash to purchase something that will conk out in a day or two.

A feature on CNET.com discusses reliability, and how the various laptop brands fare against each other. Some of the data, indeed, came as a surprise; there are some brands out there that we thought could perform better. This information is nice to have before we head out for the shopping extravaganza of a lifetime on Black Friday.

The feature referred to a research paper released by the warranty firm Square Trade. They analyzed the failure rate for 30,000 laptops and compared the failure rates of various brands and hardware categories. According to the paper, over a period of three years, one out of three laptops is expected to fail; that is certainly a frequency that is surprising, and a bit concerning.

Leading the pack as far as reliability is concerned are Asus and Toshiba, which also surprised us somehow since we were not exactly too happy about our Asus. But then again, it was rather unfair for us to pit a Dell laptop against an Asus netbook, and the figures do speak for themselves.

Among the least reliable as far as the analyzed data was concerned were Acer, Gateway and HP; these three brands reportedly had higher than average failure rates.