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Sony officially unveils new Readers, drops price of e-books

After enduring a couple of rumors and leaks that took the lid off its latest e-readers a little earlier than it would have liked, Sony's officially announced the two new models: the Reader Pocket Edition ($199) and Reader Touch Edition ($299), both of which will hit stores at the end of the month. The other big news is Sony is going to match Amazon's e-book pricing, making new releases and best seller titles $9.99 instead of $11.99.

As for specs, here's what you're looking at:

Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-300):

5-inch E-ink electronic paper display … Read more

New Sony Readers leaked

A couple of days ago I posted an item on how I'd heard whispers of a new Sony digital reader potentially hitting the market in August. Well, now some images and details of two new Sony Readers, the PRS-300 and PRS-600, have made their way into the blogosphere, thanks to a poster in the Sony Insider boards who simply wrote: "I just found service manuals for 2 unannounced Sony Reader model-the PRS-300 & PRS-600."

The links to the "freshly minted" PDF files have been taken down but Sony Insider preserved the information before it disappeared. (… Read more

XM available as factory-equipped option on new Toyota and Lexus models

Sirius XM Radio announced that the XM Satellite Radio service is now available as factory-equipped standard equipment on 2010 Camry vehicles with premium audio, while model year 2010 Camry vehicles with standard audio will continue to offer XM service as a dealer-installed option.

XM Satellite Radio will also launch as a factory-installed option on many other Toyota vehicles throughout 2009. The company estimates the number of Toyota vehicles on the road by the end of 2009 available with XM Satellite Radio will exceed one million.

In addition to XM Satellite Radio, XM NavTraffic will be standard equipment on all Camry … Read more

New portable TVs are hot sellers during DTV transition

As most people are by now aware, on June 12, full-power broadcast TV stations in the U.S. will stop broadcasting their analog TV signals and will only broadcast TV signals digitally. Obviously, that impacts people who have older TVs and still use antennas to get a TV signal at home. But what's not talked about as much is the thousands of portable TVs that will stop receiving signals once analog signal disappears for good. For those who rely on such sets to tune into sporting events, such as the NBA Finals, the analog switch-off requires immediate action.

It'… Read more

Toshiba announces world's first 512GB SSD laptop

While it's now easy to get a desktop with a terabyte or more of storage, it's still pretty hard to find a laptop with even 300GB. That's why I am very impressed with the Portege R600-ST4203 laptop that Toshiba announced Thursday.

The Portege R600-ST4203 is one of world's first laptops with 512GB of storage and it's definitely the first with that much storage in the form of a solid-state drive (SSD). Until now, most SSDs for laptops have remained in the 32GB to 128GB capacity range.

The Portege R600-ST4203 is the newest model in Toshiba'… Read more

Samsung Hue II: New and improved

When we saw Alltel's original Samsung Hue, we thought it was a decent phone, but we had a few issues as well. Most of all, we didn't care for the flat and slippery navigation controls. They didn't ruin our experience completely, but they weren't ideal for rapid texting.

With the new Samsung Hue II, however, we found some much needed refinements. The keypad and controls remain flush, but they're separated into individual buttons, which gives them a better feel beneath the finger. We also liked the good call quality, vibrant display, and functional feature set … Read more