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Amid auto travail, Mini brand is booming

There's a brand that is raising the price of its newest redesigned vehicle by nearly 10 percent, adding dealerships and boosting unit sales by more than 30 percent year-to-date.

No, it's not fiction or the daydreams of a stress-crazed car executive. Mini--the brand BMW AG management almost didn't bring to the United States--is defying the economic turmoil and the odds.

Mini USA sales topped 50,000 in November, giving the small sporty car brand a year-to-date increase of 31.3 percent.

What's driving sales? Gasoline prices and an expanded range with the Clubman, a true four-seat … Read more

Rumor has Apple updating Mac Mini

Apple will announce a long-overdue upgrade to its Mac Mini during the Macworld Expo next month, according to a Wired.com report.

The report was attributed to an alleged corporate employee at Apple who wished to remain anonymous--"to keep his job," Wired noted. While he was apparently comfortable disclosing that a new desktop would be announced in January, he balked at disclosing any other details.

Rumors have been circulating for more than a year that Apple was getting ready to kill the little cube, and Gizmodo speculated that the end was near when it reported in October … Read more

Creative Vado HD vs. Mino HD: Too close to call

Several people have e-mailed me wondering when we'd have our review up of the Creative Vado HD mini camcorder. Well, now it's up, and the big question everyone is asking is whether it's better than the Flip Video Mino HD. The short answer is yes--and no.

Basically, the Vado HD's video quality isn't quite as good the Mino HD's. But its feature set is superior. So, it's a tough call.

Read the full review of the Creative Vado HD.

Get a Dell Mini 9 Netbook for $299 shipped

My (new) thinking regarding Netbooks: They have their place in the world, but if you're going to spend more than $300 on one, you might as well spend $400 and get a full-fledged notebook. Anyone who agrees should check out Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, currently on sale for $299 shipped.

Available in Obsidian Black or Alpine White (other color choices are available, but add to the cost), the Mini 9 runs Ubuntu Linux and comes with 512MB of RAM, a 4GB solid-state hard drive, and an 8.9-inch LED display.

Dell gives you a host of configuration options, … Read more

Handy Netbook Holiday Gift Guide

Economy in shambles? Cutting back on expenses? Then a Netbook might be just the thing you need to round out that holiday shopping list. After all, for around $500 (or less), you can give someone the gift of Internet access, e-mail, word processing, music playback, and even online video streaming -- Netbooks do all of these things fairly well.

In this video, we check out the pluses and minuses of the most important Netbooks to arrive since our last Netbook roundup, including the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, the Lenovo S10, the Samsung NC10, the HP Mini 1000, and the Asus … Read more

HP Mini 1000: Now with mobile broadband

Though a DIY route was recently discovered to bring mobile broadband to the Mini 1000, HP now saves you the effort by offering 3G connectivity out of the box on its Netbook. You can select the HP un2400 mobile broadband module ($199) for service on either AT&T's or Verizon's network. The price seems a bit steep, considering you can find the un2400 module for $149 elsewhere. Also, choosing mobile broadband forces you to opt out of either SSD offered in favor of the 60GB 4200rpm drive, which adds $55 from the default 8GB SSD option. Why … Read more

Creative readies the Vado HD: Is it better than the Flip Video Mino HD?

Things are heating up in the HD mini camcorder space as Creative gets set to release its new Vado HD next week. The camcorder retains many of the design traits of the original Vado but it doesn't share the exact same body. However, it does have something that neither the Kodak Zi6 nor the Flip Video Mino HD has: an HDMI connection (plus an included cable) for outputting 1080i video to your HDTV. And it comes with 8GB of built-in memory--all for around $200.

In our review of the Vado, we knocked it a bit for being pretty no … Read more

Dell Netbook now 3G-enabled in the U.S.

The Inspiron Mini 9 can now be ordered with built-in mobile broadband, Dell announced Tuesday.

Just last week, CEO Michael Dell confirmed the company was signing up more wireless providers as partners on its new line of Netbooks, but gave no specific date. Dell has offered 3G capability with Vodafone for European customers since the device's September launch.

Now U.S. customers get their turn. For $125 more, the 9-inch Netbook can now be configured with embedded WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network). But right now, AT&T is offering a $120 rebate to those who sign a new … Read more

Opera Mini 4.2 jumps into final release

Only yesterday Opera Mini 4.2 beta joined Google's Android Market. On Tuesday, the mini update to Opera's mobile browser for Java phones became the app's new benchmark.

The version 4.2 release appears identical to the beta version (review), made available for download just two weeks before. It boasts speeds up to 30 percent faster, a modified video playback that triggers a media player to stream a video, greater multilingual support, and the reintroduction of skins, a visual extra that had made a short hiatus when Opera upgraded Mini to version 4.0.

In addition, Opera'… Read more