Sony America abandons UMD-to-PSP Go “good will” program, offers 225 games at full retail price instead

March 11, 2010 – 4:50 am

You know that UMD-to-PSP Go conversion program? Ain’t gonna happen. The “good will” program that would have provided free (or at least heavily discounted) digital copies of games already purchased on UMD discs has been scrapped. A spokesman for SCEA said, “We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time.” Adding insult to injury, the PSP Go Rewards program offering 3 free games to European UMD owners will not be offered in the US. That’s the bad news. The not so bad news is that 16,000 pieces of digital content will be available for the US PSP Go launch on October 1st. These include 225 downloadable games (full PSP titles, PSN exclusives, UMD legacy titles, and Minis), 2,300 films, and 13,300 television episodes. Still, not quite the “at least 300″ digital games we were expecting. So US PSP owners, still planning to “upgrade?”

Read — UMD-to-PSP Go program scrapped
Read — 225 games at US launch

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Sony America abandons UMD-to-PSP Go “good will” program, offers 225 games at full retail price instead originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Windows Cafe opens its doors in Paris

March 11, 2010 – 4:50 am
Japan may be home to the Windows 7 Whopper, and the US has the less edible contents of the very first Microsoft Store, but it looks like Paris may be the real place to be for out and about Windows fans, as it can now claim the only Windows Cafe in the world as its own alongside all those other little tourist attractions you might be interested in. Better still, it looks like the cafe serves up at least as many types of drinks as Windows editions, and there’s some WiFi available for those looking for a place to loiter around. Hit up the link below for a peek inside courtesy of Le Journal du Geek.

[Thanks, Anh]

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Microsoft’s Windows Cafe opens its doors in Paris originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Vista SP2 is live, ready to download

March 11, 2010 – 4:50 am

Face it: in between waiting for Windows 7 to launch and tweaking the XP build on your newly purchased netbook, there’s this little thing called Windows Vista that needs to be maintained. Today, Microsoft did its part and released the standalone installers for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Service Pack 2 for Vista and Server 2008. Now it’s all up to you. Hit the read links to patch the Wow with a little SP2 Meh.

[Thanks, Justin W.]

Read — 32-bit
Read — 64-bit

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Windows Vista SP2 is live, ready to download originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 May 2009 07:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony offering ePub upgrade / trade-in program for PRS-500 e-reader

March 10, 2010 – 4:50 am
Sony’s already made its commitment to the ePub e-book format fairly clear, but it does still have a lingering problem with some older e-book readers that don’t support the format. While some of those are beyond hope, the company does now have an upgrade available for the PRS-500, although it’s not quite as simple as you may hope. Turns out you actually have to send your reader in to Sony to receive the firmware update, which is completely free of charge and should take less than 14 days. For those looking to make a clean break with the past, however, Sony is also offering a trade-in program for the PRS-500, which will give you either $50 or $75 off the new Reader Pocket or Touch editions. Hit up the link below for complete details on both options.

[Via jkOnTheRun]

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Sony offering ePub upgrade / trade-in program for PRS-500 e-reader originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: NVIDIA’s ION-based netbooks and nettops are go for launch

March 10, 2010 – 4:50 am

Things are finally hotting up in NVIDIA’s ION camp. An official press release now tells that the first batch of “incredibly small and affordable PCs” (like the Acer Hornet rumored for an April 8th launch) are due in Q2 — that’s as early as today folks, on up through the end of June. Along with the new gear, NVIDIA is promising optimized software support from powerhouse developers like Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Electronic Arts in an effort to signal the platform’s suitability for serving up 1080p video over HDMI in a home theater as well as gaming, photo editing, and general computing in nettop- and netbook-sized devices. Bring it, we say… we’re so over Intel’s GM945-class chipsets.

Continue reading Video: NVIDIA’s ION-based netbooks and nettops are go for launch

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Video: NVIDIA’s ION-based netbooks and nettops are go for launch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI debuts Wind Top All-in-One AE2010 desktop

March 10, 2010 – 4:50 am
MSI’s just announced the Wind Top All-in-One AE2010 desktop — a step up from the previous AE1900. The 20-incher boasts a 1600 x 900 touchscreen, an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core CPU (an improvement over its previous Atom 230 / 330), onboard ATI Radeon 3200 graphics card, 4GB of DDRII 533MHz SDRAM, a 320GB hard drive, 6 USB ports, and a 4-1 card reader. This bad boy has a starting price of $649.99, and will be available next month.

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MSI debuts Wind Top All-in-One AE2010 desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Hero hits FCC with US 3G

March 9, 2010 – 4:50 am

No mention was made of a Hero with 3G that’d work on Rogers or AT&T back at its announcement a few days ago, but HTC has been getting awfully good at making phones that work properly around these parts — so we can’t say we’re entirely surprised to see a Hero approved for WCDMA on Bands II and V gracing the FCC today. For the record, Bands II and V are 1900 and 850MHz, respectively, which is exactly the combo AT&T subscribers would need to flip the switch on high-speed data. We’re not sure if this negates rumors that the Hero would be coming to Sprint, but if we can just get this version released and in our hands, you know… maybe our minds would be operating with a little more clarity.

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HTC Hero hits FCC with US 3G originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft confirms: no three app limit in Windows 7 Starter

March 9, 2010 – 4:50 am

We’d heard it through the grapevine that Microsoft was gearing up to right the wrong and nix that ludicrous three application limit for Windows 7 Starter Edition, and sure enough, it did just that via The Windows Blog. The company admitted that it was removing the three application at-a-time limit previously slated for inclusion in Win7 Starter “based on the feedback it has received from partners and customers.” (Psst… thanks for yelling, people!) That said, the OS is still severely gimped, with no multi-monitor support, DVD playback, Windows Media Center, remote media streaming, XP Mode or network connectivity. Just kidding on that last one… we think.

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Microsoft confirms: no three app limit in Windows 7 Starter originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 May 2009 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corsair DDR3 memory clocked at 2533MHz, women swoon ’round the world

March 9, 2010 – 4:50 am
Corsair — the swashbucklin’ favorite of privateers in need of RAM and SSDs — has just announced that its Dominator GT DDR3 memory has been overclocked at a pretty astonishing 2533MHz. As you’d expect from a company made of braggarts and rogues, its claiming the world record for itself — unless, of course, one of you other memory manufacturers feels like taking this bad boy on. Kingston, we’re looking at you. Hit that read link for all the salacious details.

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Corsair DDR3 memory clocked at 2533MHz, women swoon ’round the world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 May 2009 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung M1 PMP to challenge Zune HD with some Tegra of its own?

March 8, 2010 – 4:50 am

Samsung’s launched a teaser page for its YP-M1 media player (look familiar?), and while a 3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen is impressive in its own right, it’s the mention of a NVIDIA chipset that has us most intrigued, especially given Samsung’s earlier promise that a Tegra-based device was in the works. There isn’t an indication that these are one in the same just yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find that CPU packed away somewhere inside. Other known details at this point include a DMB TV tuner, 8GB of storage (at least for the base model), Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, text-to-speech functionality, Bluetooth, and DivX support — not a bad spec list considering it’ll likely be up against the definitively Tegra-based Zune HD. Currently up in the air is any word of a price or release date (let along a release ’round here), although it seems Samsung could have more to say on August 13th.

[Via DAP Review]

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Samsung M1 PMP to challenge Zune HD with some Tegra of its own? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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