The $US30 Pixis (Pixies?) are back-ordered already, probably because this is the best deal in town. This news does two things: It raises the possibility of a free-on-contract Pixi sometime in the near future, and calls into question again whether or not the Pixi can ever be a truly good deal. Today, the Pre is $US100 at Amazon, so a $US30 — or even free — Pixi might not be worth the loss of screen size, speed, Wi-Fi and camera quality. And as BusinessWeek crunches it:

Amortised over the required two-year contract, with the cheapest offering being Sprint’s $US70 a month unlimited data, 450 voice minute Everything Data plan, the Pixi works a out to $US74.15 a month and the Pre to $US76.25. Not much to choose from there in budgetary terms.

And that’s at $US100 and $US150 prices for the Pixi and Pre, respectively — not the new bargain basement rates. What does that leave in the Pixi’s favour? Size? Style? The fact that its name actually sounds like a noun? [EverythingPre]

The Telco has also promised to spend a little bit more time focusing on improving customer service.

There’s no word on how soon we can expect to see these price cuts, or whether they’ll track over to the wholesale internet side of things, but any price cut’s going to be welcome for Telstra customers…

[SMH]

The bladeless fan will be landing on October 21 in two different versions: 25cm for $379, or a 30cm version for $399. Sure, that’s pricey for a fan – but look at it! Look at it and then tell me you don’t want one.

[Dyson Air Multiplier Review on Giz]

At a bare minimum, you’re looking at an increase of $2, because the starter package has gone up to $42 (from $40). Platinum subscriptions have added $4 from $106 to $110, while Platinum HD have gone from $131 to $135. The HD add-ons ($10 for HD Sport, $10 for HD Explore and $15 for both) have been consolidated into one package called HD, which is $16.

Aside from that though, all that’s really happened is all the packages have been renamed.

The HD package though, is slightly different for your $16, you get the HD channels that correlate with the other packages you subscribe to. So if you’re on basic, you’ll just get Discovery HD, Fox8 HD and National Geographic HD. If you also subscribe to the Sports channels, you’ll get the HD sports channels as well. Although it would reach a point fairly quickly when you’d just be better off with the Platinum HD package, I’m sure.

Finally, Foxtel have added some new iQ and iQ2 packages. Starting at $72 with an iQ (not iQ2) and ranging up to the $135 HD Platinum pack with an iQ2, each package offers a selection of channel packages and a DVR.

You can check out all the new package details here.

Starting with the iPod Touch, the 8GB model will sell for $269, with the 32GB costing $399 and the 64GB set at $549.

The iPod Shuffle now starts at $79 for 2GB, or $109 for a 4GB model. It comes in the same five colours as the US.

The new Nano starts at $199 for 8GB or $249 for 16GB, and is available in silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, (PRODUCT) RED and pink.

iTunes 9 and iPhone 3.1 updates are available now as well. iPod Touch owners with software older than 3.0 will have to spring $5.99 for the iPhone update though.

[iPod launch on Giz]

Meanwhile, the Arcade version remains at $299 and the Pro version will remain at $399 “while stocks last”.

It looks like Sony’s run as “not the most expensive console” was pretty short, huh?

David at Kotaku yesterday got confirmation from Sony that they were planning on selling the PSPGo from October 1 for a RRP of $449. That’s just $50 less than the new PS3 Slim. The PSP-3000 will remain on sale for $299. Even with the loss of UMD and the inclusion of inbuilt flash memory, there’s no way the new hardware is worth a $150 premium.

Sony, I really want to help you here. I love my old PSP. But if you really want to take on Nintendo and get yourself out of this horrid spiral of self loathing, you’ll need to help yourself first…

[Kotaku]

You can now pick up the 10-inch Agora, which features the gOS Linux operating system and 1GB RAM, for just $399, while the Agora Pro – which bumps up the RAM to 2GB, includes a little USB Bluetooth module and a six-cell battery – can be picked up for $439.

Whether or not you want to tackle the questionable Wi-Fi and the OS difficulties I experienced when reviewing it is completely up to you.

[Kogan]

When asked about the launch plans for the PSP Go!, Ephraim responded:

“Because of the fluctuation in the exchange rate, we’ve decided to hold off on our announcement until closer to launch date. We will probably make that announcement [soon] so we can start working with retailers and preorders and those things. You are definitely going to see a premium price on the PSP Go! as it was announced in Europe and the US.”

But exactly how much of a premium is still unknown. David floated a $400 price point, and Ephraim hit back with the “we want to bring it in as cheap as we can, that’s always our objective” response.

In any case, expect to be paying more than $300, which is the current price for the PSP-3000. Ouch.

[Kotaku]