The Friendly Manual » Gadgets

AT&T Offering Cheap Laptops With Contract

Joe Rybicki — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:20:23 +0000

AT&T Wireless has launched a program to offer notebooks for as little as $50 in some markets. With a similar setup as a cell phone plan, the wireless carrier is now offering plans that let customers get their hands on tiny laptops for barely more than the cost of a new phone.

The idea is, you sign a two-year contract for a data plan, and AT&T will heavily subsidize the cost of a cell-connected laptop. So what’s the catch? Well, since AT&T’s data plans start at $40 a month, you could look at these laptops as actually costing a minimum of $960 before taxes — when the cheapest of them can be had for around $300 at retail. Of course, that $300 doesn’t include internet access from anywhere a cell signal reaches, so it’s not like that extra $600 is completely wasted.

It’s important to note the restrictions of the plan, though: That $40 plan allows you to transfer only 200 Megabytes of data, which is very limited. If you plan to do anything more than check e-mail, you’re going to eat up 200 MB very quickly. The other data plan is a more reasonable 5 Gigabytes — but it also costs $20 more per month.

What about you — would you find this sort of setup useful?

[Read - via Liliputing]

How a Starbucks Founder Takes His Coffee

Joe Rybicki — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:35:18 +0000

The Atlantic just ran a really nice little piece about making the perfect cup of coffee. The kicker is that it’s written by Jerry Baldwin, one of the cofounders of Starbucks (and current director of excellent California chain Peet’s).

In it, Baldwin discusses the joys of a correctly brewed cup of French press (or press pot) coffee. If you enjoy coffee but have never used a French press, I envy you. You are about to make a wonderful discovery. I remember the first time I ever had French-pressed coffee; my coffee-appreciating life is essentially divided into B.F.P. and A.F.P. eras.

Bottom line: For fans of coffee, this is an indispensable bit of simple technology.

[Read] (And if the story appeals to you, here’s a link to a staggering collection of French presses at Amazon.)

Newspaper Publisher Proposes E-book Reader

Joe Rybicki — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:18:15 +0000

The internet is all aflutter today with news that the Hearst Corporation — publisher of venerable print publications like Esquire and the San Francisco Chronicle — plans to launch an e-book reader to compete with Amazon’s surprisingly successful Kindle (pictured).

This is a big deal because print media (and newspapers in particular) have been taking such a beating from the internet. A slick new technology, coupled with — no doubt — a subscription program, could open a path back to profitability for the struggling print media.

I spent over 10 years working for magazines, and let me tell you, it’s the manufacturing and distribution costs that really cut into the bottom line. Because of archaic and inefficient distribution methods, magazine publishers routinely print three to four times as many issues as will ever be sold — because that’s the only way the current system will allow them to sell any at all.

Moving to a product-on-demand system while maintaining the portability of printed media would be a very good thing for the business model as a whole.

[Read]