You’ve probably already noticed, but Gizmodo AU has a great new design which launched today. We’re still working out a few unexpected bugs, so bear with us if it’s not 100 percent perfect and rest easy in the knowledge that it soon will be.
Feel free to let us know what you think of the new design in the comments. And if you like it, please join me in an impromptu, completely random standing ovation for our IT guy Kaan – he’s been working on this redesign for months at the same time as keeping all our sites growing strong. I swear, the guy must see the world in code. Good work Kaan!
Apparently some previous-gen Nvidia graphics cards that shipped in “significant quantities” of notebooks are defective, built and packaged with “weak” materials that are leading to them to overheat and fail at a “higher-than-normal” rate. Enough are bad that Nvidia is taking a US$150-US$200 million hit on its earnings for the quarter. Do you have one of these cards?
It’s been a crazy day, what with Optus unleashing their pricing extravaganza on the world, and the new Gizmodo AU design going live. But throughout it all, I’ve been constantly reminding myself: Don’t forget to pimp the comps! Don’t forget to pimp the comps!
So here we are. I’ve put on my finest fake furs, shined the handle of gold-plated walking stick, packed on the bling and am taking my competition hos out to market.
Firstly, we’ve got our iPhone 3G giveaway in conjunction with iWorld Australia. All you need to do is click on the link here, answer a simple survey about accessories, and you could win your own iPhone 3G. This one closes at the end of July, so get entering, fools!
The second comp is in conjunction with Sony, who are giving away 10 Playstation 3s to the best answers of their competition question. What’s the question you ask? Well, if you want to know, you’re going to need some QR code decoding software, which is available on Telstra NextG phones and certain Nokia models (and, I’m told, you can find online versions as well).
To enter, get the question from the code, then answer in the comments section for the original post. Don’t enter here. There’s nothing for you here but disappointment and a Giz AU editor pretending to be a pimp.
So what are you waiting for? Get entering!
[Win an iPhone comp and Sony's QR code Comp on Giz]
This is the final part of our look at Optus’ iPhone plans. If you’re not into that whole “capped plans” deal, then this is your best and only option on Optus for the iPhone 3G.
Prices range from $19 per month to $149 per month, with the level of included calls just underneath the amount you pay. Data incluions here are the same as the capped plans, starting at 100MB and maxing out a 1GB for the $99 and $149 plans.
The iPhone itself will cost up to $59 per month (16GB iPhone, 12 month contract, $19 plan) but you can pick it up for free on the more expensive plans.
This is very similar to what you get with the capped plans, and so has the same level of disappointment at the lack of an appropriate data allowance for power users.
However one really cool feature that was overlooked in the previous two plans (although still applies to them) is the inclusion of free Wi-Fi at Optus Wi-Fi hotspots. I have no idea how prevalent these are around the country – I’m much more familiar with Telstra’s hotspots – but it’s still a great added bonus for users. Remember that the iPhone can automatically detect a wireless network and switch to it from mobile data.
So, now that you know what Optus is offering, how many of you are going to sign the contract with them next Friday? Or will you wait to hear what the other networks have to say first? Let us know in comments…
Continuing on from our in-depth look at Optus’ iPhone plans, we now look at post-paid. Things here are a little more complicated.There are two post-pay options: Cap plans and “yes” plans.
The cap plans start at $19 per month and go all the way up to $179 per month. For the sake of convenience (mostly because I’m lazy), we’ll look at these two extremes in particular.
The $19 cap plan gives you $50 worth of talk time and texts and 100MB worth of data. This is the plan that you put your grandma on because she only really needs to receive calls and check the odd email from your cousin who’s backpacking around Eastern Europe. At 47 cents per 30 seconds and a 35 cent flagfall, anyone on this plan is likely to chew through their cap and data within a few hours.
But of course, that doesn’t include the iPhone itself. To get your Jesusphone, it’s either a 12 or 24-month contract, with the 8GB iPhone costing $51 per month for 12 months or $21 per month for $24 months. Ouch.
On the other end of the scale, you can drop $179 per month on your iPhone. Aside from the ludicrous proposition of actually spending $180 a month on your mobile phone (seriously? $180? You should try texting, Skype or the age-old art of shutting the hell up), you get 1GG of data and $1500 worth of calls.
The Intertubes have failed! Within half an hour of Optus’ pricing release going up, the site has become overloaded with people trying to find out how much it will cost. Fortunately for you, we’re about to take a closer look at those pricing deals right here, right now.
From the get go, it’s clear that Optus has planned a scattergun approach for their pricing deals, hoping to take out as many potential customers as possible. There are three different alternatives available: Pre-paid, post-paid cap plans or post-paid “yes” plans.
Let’s start with the pre-paid. To buy the phone outright, you’re going to be forking over $729 of your hard-earned for the 8GB model or $849 for the 16GB model. There are five different Turbo caps available, starting at $30 and going all the way up to $100. They obviously have a heap of value with them – like the standard cap plans – but there are two things that really stand out:
Hot on the tail of the D700 release, Nikon let loose firmware 2.0 for the D3 DSLR making the amazing camera even better. The main points of interest are improved autofocus and white balance, but I’ve blockquoted the laundry list below. The D300 gets a firmware update to 1.03 to fix incorrect battery indicator readouts, which is not nearly as exciting. [Nikon via Rob Galbraith via Gadgetlab]
The Gadget: Linksys’ Dual-N Band Wireless Router just became official, giving users simultaneous 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands so 802.11N users and 802.11G users can coexist without N users having to use the crowded 2.4GHz space. Also, since it’s dual N-band, two N users can connect (one to each frequency) without interfering with the other. It’s styled in Linksys’ new form factor, which helps emphasise that Linksys is more for consumers (especially compared to their parent company Cisco).
It’s not totally carbon-free, and it’s probably ugly as sin, but a man in Ohio has found a way to get 110MPG out of a 1987 Mustang. He and his team made many modifications, but it’s not a hybrid. The man’s not a total altruist, though; he’s entered in the Progressive Automotive X Prize contest, a race to be the first to develop a commercially viable car that can get over 100MPG. No details on how they’re doing it, so you can’t quite try it yourself yet. If we were Doug Pelmear, the man who invented the system, we’d watch our backs, as the oil companies have killed people like him before. It’s true, I read it on the Internet. [Local 6]
With only 8 days to go before the iPhone 3G gets announced, Optus is the first Aussie Telco to release comprehensive information on their iPhone pricing plans.
If you head on over to their iPhone page. You’ll see a comprehensive breakdown of postpaid pricing data. The interesting thing is that the maximum amount of included data is 1GB. To be completely honest, this will be more than enough for most users, although we expect to hear a lot of grumbling from potential power users. The excess usage fee of 35 cents per MB does seem a bit steep.
There’s a huge range of pricing structures that we’ll go through in a bit more detail soon. In the meantime, head to Optus’ iPhone page for more.
