After years of selling us junk, Best Buy is now going to take some of it back.

Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don’t poison the nation’s dumps.

The trial, expected to be announced Monday, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer didn’t originally sell the merchandise.

The pilot stores are in Best Buy’s Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore markets, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Now if they would just lower the music that plays in the store so you don’t go deaf just walking in the door.

Seriously though, I think this program is awesome and I hope they expand it to all their locations soon.

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I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I’m getting a new toy in two days and I think the waiting is going to kill me. To calm myself down I have been browsing sites just to keep my mind on other tech toys rather than the one that is coming next week.

You see, I am a techno-toy junkie. If it involves tech, and it involves a device I can carry with me, I want it. In fact, I am so addicted to tech and toys that I spend days looking at all of the different manufacturer websites. I spend hours checking out different suppliers and I compare prices, availability, and most of all “geek factor.

On Tuesday I will have a Nokia N810 in my hot little hands and then I plan on giving that little sucker a workout. I have wanted one of these for a couple months now, and I am so jazzed that I am getting one. My next quest is a Nokia N95, which I hope to get within a couple months. I was looking at them today and I must say, once the newness of my N810 wears off, I know I will be completely focused, okay obsessed, with getting the N95.

Is it wrong that I put Dymo labels on everything I own?

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Does that headline shock anyone, really? Stand outside a Wal-Mart for an hour and tell me how many people look like they are going inside to look at computers, let alone Linux based computers.

Wal-Mart has stopped selling Everex’s Linux-based PC in its stores because of a tepid response from customers, although it will continue to sell the product online, the retailer said Tuesday.

The customer response to the US$199 Everex TC2502 Green gPC desktop was not as high as expected, said Melissa O’Brien, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman..

Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the U.S., agreed last year to carry the product as a test and stocked it in about 600 stores where it saw high interest in computers.

“The idea was to see if shoppers in our stores would respond as they do online to the offering. The answer is that customers did not respond to expectations, so we decided not to restock,” O’Brien said.

So, who sits online and ends up ordering the Linux PC’s? The housewives? The working couple who barely has time to see each other let alone find time to order a computer? The out of work realtor who has nothing better to do? No. The geeks. The nerds. The computer savvy people who know just what their getting when they decide to order a “Linux PC”. Duh.

Once everyone gets it through their head that mainstream America has no idea what Linux is, the sooner we can all move past that and work on ways to make sure people have a choice in the future. Whatever you do, don’t listen to the kid that appears to be trying the best acne treatment when it comes to making such a decision. Trust your instincts.

That new Eee PC looks pretty sharp if you ask me, and at $400, you really cannot beat it.

Taiwanese computer parts maker Asus obviously didn’t get the memo.

Didn’t Asus know notebook computers need hard drives? Or that they’re supposed to run Windows — and the pre-loaded software must bloat the boot-up process to the length of a long weekend? Don’t they know you don’t just go selling laptops for less than $750 — let alone $400 — unless the hardware has been aged like whisky?

Asustek Computers Inc. went ahead and broke the rules with the Eee PC. And we should all be thankful.

…

The $400, seven-inch Eee PC is a new entrant in a fast-growing market for ultra-portable PCs. All such computers, including the Eee, require sacrifices. Its keys may seem painfully small. For people used to a desktop or a standard notebook, its screen makes you feel like you’ve just moved from a McMansion into a studio apartment.

It comes preinstalled with Firefox and OpenOffice, which is no big deal, because you can download those anyway. The only real flaw I see, is the inclusion of Pidgin, which I don’t really care for because it just doesn’t perform for me as well as other IM clients. This would be the perfect computer for all the fun schtuff, like vehicle comparisons, working out grocery budgets, keeping track of Macys coupons, and so much more.

Netflix? Directly to my television? I don’t even want them delivering DVD’s to my mailbox, why would I want to give them access to my television? Plus, I think I already have that service, you know, the ability to pay for movies through the box on my television set.

Oh sure, I can’t watch any one of 50,000 movies, but the ones I have seen, that I may want to see again, have already been purchased, so I don’t need to download or rent the old ones anyway.

DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. will begin delivering movies and other programming directly to televisions later this year through a set-top box that will pipe entertainment over a high-speed Internet connection.

The set-top box, to be made by LG Electronics Inc. as part of a partnership announced late Wednesday, is designed to broaden the appeal of a year-old streaming service that Netflix provides to its 7 million subscribers at no additional charge.

LG Electronics didn’t reveal how much the set-top box will cost when it hits the market in the summer or early autumn. Similar devices made by Apple Inc. and Vudu Inc. cost $299 to $399.

My bet? It tanks. Why? Because people don’t want another box, in addition to all of the others they already have, sitting on their television. Oh yeah, and people only want to see so many older movies, once the newness wears off, they’ll never use it.

Are you ready for New Years? I’m not sure I am. Well, I am looking forward to the day, but not what comes after. I am so not looking forward to next week. Our router at the office went down the week before Christmas and I am sure we didn’t get everything back up before our weeklong holiday.

Our used cisco router decided to die after a few years, but we should have everything running smoothly before the week ends.

I have decided it’s time to step into the new millenium by looking at HDTV’s. Yeah, I know, I am behind the times, but at least I am trying to catch up.

I found a great site for such a purchase too, called Second Act. They specialize in finding factory closeouts, refurbished products, overstocks and much more.

Second Act even has a deal of the day, where you never know what they will offer. I added their rss feed for their deal of the day to my reading list. Now I can just wait for the right deal to come to me.

If you’re looking for a great deal on an HDTV, check out Second Act.

It’s funny. Whenever I get a new cell phone, someone releases a new one, and usually I get jealous… This time I’m not. I love my T-Mobile Wing.

The Shadow knows what you want — a simpler smartphone with many capabilities. That’s T-Mobile’s Shadow, announced on Monday as the first in a new product line that the company said “will become synonymous with playful, easier, and richer communications experiences.”

Your actual shadow is one of your closest companions, which is T-Mobile’s reason for the name choice — staying closely in touch with your companions with a “screamingly simple interface.”

T-Mobile president and CEO Robert Dotson said this new device is not a productivity tool, but is “designed for people who have lives beyond work.”

People have lives beyond work? Really? Who would have thunk it?

Now if they can just make it so I can sync my phone without needing Outlook, life would be perfect.

So all those people hacked their iPhones for what? To get away from AT&T, or to install third-party applications?

If they did it to install applications, I bet they feel stupid now.

Apple Inc. will allow third-party applications on the iPhone, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a posting on its Web site Wednesday.

In a decision that marks a clear turnaround from Apple’s previous desire to control the applications consumers have on their iPhones, Jobs said the company intends to release a software development kit in February that will let people outside the company to create iPhone and iPod touch applications.

“We are excited about creating a vibrant third-party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users,” Jobs said in the posting.

[Source: AP via Yahoo! News]

I don’t even have an iPhone, and I know this is a stupid lawsuit.

Complaints over Apple Inc.’s use restrictions and recent software update for the iPhone have erupted in two lawsuits alleging Apple and its carrier partner, AT&T Inc., engaged in illegal monopolistic behavior.

Two separate lawsuits were filed in San Jose on Oct. 5 — one in federal court and the other in state court and both seeking class-action status.

Both cases accuse the companies of unfair business practices and violations of antitrust, telecommunications and warranty laws.

Apple spokeswoman Susan Lundgren and AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel both declined to comment on them Wednesday.

Wouldn’t this be like suing a jewelry store because the ring you were trying to melt down didn’t fit any more?

Okay… So here’s my unrelated story. I have a T-Mobile Wing. Thanks to the awesome power of Windows Mobile 6 I can set up 6 pop3 email accounts in addition to the Outlook Mail default eamil on the device. Last week I decided to hack the device to delete the Outlook Mail, since I do not use Outlook. After hacking the registry to remove Outlook Mail, the messaging on the Wing, text messaging, email, etc. No longer worked. It literally killed the Wing.

Of course, I was able to do a hard reset to return the phone to it’s pristine naturally installed state so I could start all over installing stuff on it again.

Long story short. If you hack a device and that hack results in killing your device, either through the hack itself or a software update, it is YOUR FAULT. Not your cell phone provider, not the company that makes the phone, not the company that designed the software. It is YOUR FAULT.

Got it yet?