Do you find yourself out and about in the city enough that you hardly use your broadband at home? Neither do I, since said broadband is usually downloading the latest this-and-that while I’m gone, but it might be nice to have a “second line” of high-speed internet for when I don’t want to compete with 20 other people for a cafe’s wi-fi. Others, in cities where free wireless isn’t quite as plentiful as in Seattle, may find wireless broadband a more compelling option, and pretty soon you’ll be able to get it through Comcast in a few choice areas.
I find it interesting that Comcast says they’ll be offering the service, when really they’re doing no such thing. They’re offering Clearwire’s service and splitting the bill. At any rate, if you have Clearwire in your area, chances are you’ll soon be able to get it through Comcast and bundle it with your TV and stuff for a better price. Portland will be the first to see the service, so you Oregonians can do your little victory dance. I’ll wait.
The service, called “Comcast High-Speed 2go Metro” because someone thought that was a good idea, will run you $73 a month, but call now and you can get it for $50, a savings of $23(RIP Billy Mays)! You can also throw down an extra $20 to get access to Sprint’s 3G network. Not my style, though. For a blogger, the internet is his leash, and if you’re carrying it around with you, you’re never off. That’s assuming we’re ever really even on.
The Internet - a barren wasteland full of haterage and pain and woe betide the company who wanders into its unblinking eye of malice. After saying that the Pre was an also ran last week, other interested parties have started to come out of the woodwork to predict a fiery demise for Palm’s savior-phone.
William Hurley, for example, writes in BusinessWeek that Palm’s efforts to court developers failed early on and that the Palm’s efforts will all be for naught. Here’s the kidney jab:
Well, it seems like that rumor of each Best Buy store only getting four Pres each has been busted. EverythingPre’s forum member atlanta has posted a bunch screenshots showing Best Buy’s expected inventory levels for the Pre. Most stores are getting slightly more than four phones, and a lot getting dramatically more.
Now that we know that the Pre will be in very short supply at Best Buy, you may want to try a Sprint store. But, in Sprint’s and Palm’s infinite wisdom, not every store will stock them right away. At least you can use the Store Locator tool on Sprint’s website to figure out which stores will stock the phone on June 6th.
Well, Twitter has become the pinnacle of gossip, grapevine chatter, and frankly, just good ol’ breaking news. Yesterday, Palm made a very subjective statement through the company’s Twitter account in response to the question about Visual Voicemail: “Palm Synergy presents integrated messaging in lots of useful ways, but not that particular way”.
Whhaaa? This must be some sort of pre-release nonsense ’cause we already know that Best Buy will sell the Palm Pre for $199 without a rebate and the off-contract price will be $549. Still, why wouldn’t the correct price be set on the Palm Pre product page from the getgo? More as we get it.
[Thanks for the tip, Nate]
For those of you who haven’t noticed, the Pre will launch two days before the WWDC keynote, traditionally a time of great nerdgasm when Apple announces some new products but, more importantly, has been recently been announcing new iPhone hardware and/or software. The Steve-less Steve-note will happen on June 8 while the Pre will excite and entice us on June 6.
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Finally! Sprint has officially announced that the Palm Pre will be launching on June 6th for $200 after a $100 MIR and a two-year contract. You’ll be able to purchase a Pre from Sprint, Best Buy, Wal Mart, and Radio Shack.
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Attention Sony PlayStation 3 owners-
Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic is free this week in the US. Thank Sprint. Hit up the Sprint Channel on the PlayStation store for the free download. That is all.
via PlayStation Blog
We at CrunchGear love us some MiFi. From its first appearance at CES this year to the Verizon launch, we’ve been all like “I love you MiFi.”
Now you can love the MiFi even more because it’s available on Sprint. Here’s the important stuff:
Sprint plans to launch the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 intelligent mobile hotspot device for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year service agreement (excluding taxes). The MiFi 2200, available in the first week of June on www.sprint.com, in Sprint retail stores and other select channels, will allow users to connect to the Internet by bridging WiFi-enabled devices like laptops, MP3 players and gaming devices to America’s most dependable 3G network* – the EVDO Rev A Sprint Mobile Broadband Network.
* $59.99 per month mobile broadband only plan (excluding taxes and surcharges)**
or
* $149.99 per month Simply Everything Plan + Mobile Broadband (phone plus device connectivity — excluding taxes and surcharges)**
Both plans include up to 5 GB per month and 5 cents per megabyte overage for the MiFi 2200.
Sprint employees may be getting fired for piping up about the Pre, but that hasn’t stopped this guy. Blasting away at a keyboard “deep within customer care”, InsideSprintNow has a few previously unearthed details to share about the Pre.
We’ve wrapped up all the details in one tight little package after the jump.
Even though WiMAX is only available in Atlanta, Baltimore, and Portland, Dell is now offering up the wireless broadband as an option on select notebooks. The upgrade only costs $60 for the Studio 15, Studio 17, and Studio XPS line, but don’t forget that there will be a monthly cost from Sprint too.
Everyone, take notice: Sprint is very serious about not letting any tantalizing details leak about the upcoming Palm Pre. Apparently, the struggling wireless carrier cannot afford having any good, free press wrote about them. From what we hear, at least three retail employees have been let go for speaking about the Palm Pre outside the store’s walls.
The Wall Street gurus understand that some companies aren’t doing that well during this recession, but Sprint surprised some folks today when the company released its quarterly financials. It seems that the wireless carrier’s $594,000,000 loss wasn’t as much as the experts expected causing the company’s stock to rise. But isn’t it crazy that we’re living in a world where a $594 million net loss is considered a good thing?
If you’re taking the original Palm Eos story with a grain of salt, you’re going to want to find another, slightly smaller grain for this one.
So, Laurence Toney or @lo_toney as he likes to be called on Twitter decided to flaunt the Pre he presumably has in his possession on Twitpic. I don’t know who he is and why he has a Pre but he’s a “busy Internet exec” and is some VP of Product and Marketing at Cake Financial. Anyway, he took some craptacular photos on his iPhone of the YouTube client and what appears to be the e-mail composition screen. Both are too blurry to note any significant details, but it’s out there and it’s just a bunch of random folk with the device.
I don’t see the point of purchasing any new phone on Sprint with the launch of the Palm Pre looming, but if you’re itching to get something new because your old phone was dropped in the toilet after a drunken night out this weekend then I’ll have you know that the mini Instinct is now available.
For $130 ($100MIR) you can get this little monstrosity of a touch-screen device that’s essentially a baby Instinct but now supports 32GB microSDHC cards. Because, you know, those are really affordable right now and everyone has them.
According to a leaked memo that is supposedly going around Sprint retailers, the Palm Pre has two possible launch dates. Retailers are expected to receive shipments of the Pre in late April or early May and based on the initial batch of units, the Pre could launch on May 17. But if supplies are limited then the launch date could be delayed until June 29.
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AT&T and Verizon might have the lion’s share of the mobile broadband market, but don’t count Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX out just yet. The chairman of Clearwire was nailed down for an interview at CTIA where he championed the high bandwidth wireless solution by talking about the low capacity of VZW’s and AT&T’s 3G network. And how WiMAX can even handle the Skype calls despite the application’s inefficiency.
If you’re lookin’ for a barebones QWERTY candybar on the cheap, Sprint and Sanyo have a handset you should see. Well, they will in May.
We’re not quite sure why they announcing this one a whole month early, but Sprint and Sanyo have let it be known that the SCP-2700 will be hitting the shelves (exclusively at Sprint) come May 10th.
