Friday December 16, 2005

- Free phonecalls abroad with Free - Lionel - 13:31:48

Source : Free

In the all-out war of the French Internet Service Providers, Free has launched a massive assault. Besides a general lowering of their international rates, phonecalls made from the freebox (their adsl modem/set-top-box) to the following countries will be, well, free, and unlimited from January 1st onwards,:
Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom and USA. Calls made to mobile phones in the US or in Canada will also be concerned.

[translation by Greg]

- iPod Shuffle: a real fake - Lionel - 11:27:32

We have already reported about iPod models fakes that can be manufacture red by Asian unknown companies, or iPod-killers launched by Apple's competitors. Today we will report the first real counterfeiting product that could lead to legal actions.
Thansk to Macman for having posted this information on our forum:

Yes I admit I might be stupid sometimes, I wanted to buy an iPod Shuffle for my sister as a Christmas present, and while browsing eBay, I spotted a seller proposing iPod shuffle (with a 40 units stock). He was reporting to have them bought in China, so I assumed he must have had a good deal:


All iPods are sold between 72 and 90 Euros, in any case at least 20 euros cheaper than the original one.

But I was a bit surprised because the iPod is certainly not a mobile audio player for which price difference is so big from one country to another that it si worth buying overseas... having also read about fakes on the web...
Anyway, I bought it, and receive it for a final price of 86.5 Euros and hereafter is a “real” photo of what I have received :




If the logo fake made me laugh for maximum 3 seconds... for the rest I was amazed, because it is a true counterfeiting, a copy : it looks like an iPod Suffle (from the packaging color, to the earphones), it tastes like it, but it is NOT an iPod Shuffle. Of course the quality of the packaging and the materials used for the player are strictly not the same as for the original one, there are even traces originating from the mould used for the plastic case.

Of course, I immediately called the seller who:

.... answers and remains polite
.... tries to act as he was a victim rather than guilty: "look I have bought those iPods Shuffle, I have paid xx Euros/unit, and I even have a bill. it is not my fault I did not know about it."
.... claims he did not know what was a real iPod Shuffle.
.... tries to negotiate a new price for this counterfeiting.
.... accepts to take back this iPod Shuffle fake .
.... complains about the fact that he has to pay half of the shipment costs.
.... but at the end agrees that it is not an iPod shuffle
.... agrees that he would not be able to sell me this iPod fake (iFake)
.... argues that it is the risk linked to the way he is selling products via eBay.
So today, I will send this fake back to me, expecting that he will pay me back.

So be careful this type of counterfeiting will for sure become quite usual on the internet 9eBay and others) due to the huge success of all iPod models.


[translation by Eric]

- AMD's response to the Centrino - Lionel - 07:48:11

Source : CDR Info

AMD which is running strong, has decided to attack the Intel Centrino platform.
So, the Texan founder will present his reference platform, which should be called Yamato.
It includes a dual core CPU, DDR2, and a NVidia GPU.

[translation by jwa]

- Power Consumption of the Mac - Lionel - 07:38:14

Arnaud measured the power usage of some Apple machines very precisely:

I measured the electricity usage of various recent Macs with a wattmeter. Here are the results in the On/Sleep/Off modes, as well as the length of time it takes to save power by shutting your computer off rather than putting it to sleep.

- iMac G4 40W/4W/3W, shut off for 15 minutes of inactivity;
- iBook G4 14" 23W/8W/1.8W, shut off for 5 minutes of inactivity;
- PowerMac G5 (dual 2Ghz, 23" Cinema Display) 250W/10W/3.2W, shut of for 55 minutes of inativity

You can see that all the machines should be off for the afternoon break, and even more-so during the night. For more details, the you can find the complete article [in French] here:
http://www.cohabiter.ch/blog/2005/wattmetre

[translation by jwa]