News Bits: Panasonic Battery Recall, Windows Vista Pricing and RC1 Download, Korean Air Bans Dell & Apple Laptops

Panasonic recalls 6,000 notebook batteries

Matsushita, better known as Panasonic, this week recalled 6,000 notebook batteries sold in Japan. Although it isn't nearly as large of a recall as the ones Dell and Apple issued, it is still worth noting the lack of attention paid to battery production.

Notebooks are not the only products with battery recalls; in June of this year, HP recalled 679,000 camera batteries that could catch fire if improperly charged. Cell phone companies have dealt with battery problems for some time now as well. Although Sony was the manufacturer for Dell and Apple, Matsushita refuses to identify the company that made the 6,000 recalled batteries, but it did say that it wasn't Sony, and it wasn't them.

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Microsoft releases official Windows Vista pricing

Amazon.com leaked pricing for Windows Vista last week - their prices were right on the mark. Microsoft today released official pricing for Vista, shown below (full/upgrade):

• Windows Vista Home Basic: $199/$99.95
• Windows Vista Home Premium: $239/$159
• Windows Vista Business: $299/$199
• Windows Vista Ultimate: $399/$259

Microsoft did not confirm Amazon's leaked January 30 ship date, but did say that volume license customers would receive the operating system in November, and it would be available to the general public in January 2007.

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Windows Vista RC1 available to the public

Last week, Microsoft issued Windows Vista RC1 to testers, and now it is available to anyone who wants to give it a go. The 32-bit version is approx. a 2.6GB download, while the x64 edition is ~3.7GB. They can be found here, and to obtain a product key, register here.

RC1 can be used until June 1, 2007, at which time you will have to purchase a full version of Windows Vista.

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Koenigsegg Supercar Laptop

Koenigsegg today released its own line of laptops, joining the ranks with Ferrari and Lamborghini. It will be available in two models; the 1.7GHz, Intel Centrino lower-end model comes with a black casing, while the higher-end 2.13GHz Centrino model comes in fancy Orange. Both models have the Koenigsegg logo on top, and are priced around $2,044.

Product Page

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Alienware Aurora m9700 SLI notebook now available in different colors, 1GB video memory

September 5<SUP>th</SUP> - Alienware today spruced up its 17" Aurora m9700 SLI notebook today with two more color options and a video card upgrade. The m9700 is now available in Conspiracy Blue and Cyborg Green.

The m9700 also received a video upgrade, and is now available with dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go7900GS cards. The m9700 is the first notebook to feature Nvidia SLI dual-GPU technology, and after today's video upgrade, becomes the first 17" notebook with 1GB of video memory. Other features of the m9700 include AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology and up to 320GB of hard drive space via dual hard drives (available RAID 0/1).

Product Page

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Korean Air follows QANTAS, bans Apple &amp; Dell notebooks

Korean Air has followed suit with QANTAS in banning Apple and Dell notebook onboard flights. A Korean Air spokesperson, who confirmed the ban, cited their policy of "safety first", and did not give a date when the ban might be lifted.

All models of Apple and Dell notebooks are banned, and it is not limited to the affected models. An Apple Korea spokesperson, said Korean Air was "overreacting", and Dell said they hope to resolve the issue with Korean Air.

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And the competition rejoices. *applause applause*

 

That's lame Korean Air and Qantas. -.-;

I remember the exploding cellphone batteries well. There was a local case where a kyrocera phone from sprint ignited and burned an Orlando man's ear off. Worse yet, sprint still tried to hit him with all the penalties when he canceled.

Cool looking colors, nice to see them back. It would be cool if AW brought the white back on the 5550 and smaller 14.1 notebook.

 

Expensive OS. I'm gonna be broke if I install those in 4 computers even as an upgrade. But not quite neccesary yet.

 

The interesting thing is, that Koenigsegg laptop is a Quanta KN1-PM. And while it's a good laptop, it is getting a little old, especially to be paying $2,000 for. Still, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those lid stickers.

 

Hrmm. With this RC1 release of Vista do we need a new key, or will the one from Beta 2 work? I am pretty sure I am registered, but I haven't gotten the e-mail they said was sent out.

-Zadillo

 

I'm downloading RC1 right now, but I don't know if my product key from Beta 2 will work, and for some reason, I never got an email from Microsoft about RC1, even though I joined the CPP program back in June. Did anyone else get an email?

EDIT: I just read on ActiveWin.com that my Beta 2 Product key will work, and that not all the emails have been sent out yet. Guess I should have read around first. And advice to anyone downloading this... don't use their download manager. It won't start in Firefox and stops and says it's done after 900KB in IE7. Just use Firefox's built in download manager.

 

that Koenigsegg is such a rip... haha. The design is no where in the same league as ferrari or lambo. What fanboys out there would cough up the money for an underpowered laptop for the same cost of a better performing ferrari?

 

Actually the Koenigsegg ( car ) is very fast and very very stylish at the same level if not above the competition . Still paying premium for a colored laptop with a car badge , any badge , is just st***d .

 

They should have charged him if he was cancelling his contract. It's not their fault that the phone exploded and exploding phones do not absolve people of their contractual obligations.

 

Umm... okay. While there is a VERY slight possibility that that is true, that's just the company being a**holes. Seriously. It wasn't the guys fault that the cell phone exploded in his face either.

 

You mean to say that if you bought an expensive cellphone (this was on of those PDA phone) from sprint and it exploded while in use, deforming the side of your face. You would be perfectly happy with Sprint when you decided to cancel the line because you never want to see another cellphone again, If they decided they were still going to charge you all the penalties? I have to agree with notebook_ftw there. That's just the company being A-holes.

 

Thats what I was wondering. I never got an email either. Thanks for the info.

 

okay when you follow the link to register and get a key where on that page does it mention anything about registering or the keys?