fixed

In 2010, Apple enabled some of the top book publishers to set their own prices for electronic books they made available on the iPad.

Since then, prices that consumers pay for e-books have risen and Amazon and other online book sellers that discount have been under pressure. The government said today in an antitrust complaint filed in New York, that the arrangement Apple struck with publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster was an attempt to control prices and violated the law.

The case could hurt Apple's position in the e-book market, a sector that is growing … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice may file an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for alleged e-book price fixing as early as tomorrow, according to Reuters.

Apple had reportedly been in talks with federal regulators but had failed to come to an agreement to settle their concerns. Along with Apple, five book publishers are also reportedly under investigation for alleged price fixing: HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster. (CBS owns Simon & Schuster and CBS Interactive, which publishes CNET News.)

Apple representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department … Read more

According to a post on the Transformer Prime XDA Developers forum, Asus will soon release an attachment for the Prime that will "address the GPS function and be a fully usable GPS that will lock onto many satellites and keep their lock with Wi-Fi active."

The post goes on to indicate that the proposed dongle will be offered for free and will arrive in mid-April.

Though the original post was copied from an e-mail exchange with a purported Asus rep, no official announcement has been made by Asus.

Back in Feburary, we gave Asus the chance to address … Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- So far in this five-part series on my five-year attempt to bring decent broadband to my remote mountain home, I've struck out with cable and DSL and struggled with overpriced, under-performing satellite access.

Technology has, of course, advanced in the last half-decade, including here in the tiny Penasco valley, but it seems to keep passing me by. In the last installment, I explained how the DSL access available at my house isn't worth much, thanks to a lack of investment by our regional telecom. About the same time it was making its "upgrades," another broadband technology was making its debut here.

Fixed wireless service went up on Picuris Peak and another nearby rise in the valley, promising to bring speeds "at least five times faster than dial-up." That doesn't exactly qualify as an offer you can't refuse, but the top-tier package does amount to a baby step upward from the brutal satellite Internet setup I described in part 1 of this series.

Currently, the rural co-op offering the service provides speeds up to 3Mbps, but it will cost you $95 a month. That still looks pretty attractive when you're living with a 1.5Mbps connection with a harsh data cap for about the same price.

So I scheduled a site survey. In fact, I scheduled two after the first one didn't go too well without the senior installer on hand. The second one didn't go well either. The line of sight to both nearby fixed wireless towers -- the service requires an unobstructed path between an antenna installed on the roof and a tower as much as 15 miles away -- is blocked from my property.… Read more

Apple is fighting back against allegations that it has been involved in e-book price fixing to counter Amazon's dominance in that space.

In a court filing obtained by PaidContent yesterday, Apple argues that any claim that it views Amazon and the Kindle e-book store as a threat is nonsense.

Here's what Apple had to say in the court filing:

"Nor does this 'Kindle theory' make sense on its own terms. For example, if Amazon was a 'threat' that needed to be squelched by means of an illegal conspiracy, why would Apple offer Amazon's Kindle app on … Read more

When it comes to packing more storage into Mac systems, the only model that Apple supports adding more internal hard drives to is the Mac Pro, where you have four drive bays to use for new hard drives. While drives on other Mac systems may be user serviceable, the only supported options for adding more drives to them is to use external storage options.

External storage options are relatively fast and easy to set up, however, they do offer a bit of an inconvenience as they can clutter your workspace, or be a burden to lug around with a portable … Read more

If you bought a laptop, computer monitor, or television with a flat-panel LCD display between 1999 and 2006, and you live in one of the affected states, you could be eligible for a damages payment under a half-billion-dollar settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving price-fixing.

The California attorney general's office issued a statement this week urging residents of the state to visit a new class-action Web site--lcdclass.com--for information on how to file a claim.

In October 2010, California's attorney general filed a lawsuit against 10 companies, including Samsung, Hitachi, and Sharp, that alleged the companies &… Read more

Vit Registry Fix Free is one of the nicer freeware registry tools we've tried, and one of the more thorough in its actions, too. It creates automatic backups of your registry before it changes anything, so it's safe for beginners.

Vit removes a variety of unnecessary entries from your registry. That usually makes your system boot more quickly and run faster. Vit also packs in some useful extras, including a Registry Optimizer and Disk Cleaner.

Vit Registry Fix has a clean and attractive interface that is a welcome break from the overstyled GUIs so common these days. Before … Read more

Users of the iPad and the Kindle Fire share some of the same technical issues but also face their own unique challenges, according to a study out yesterday from FixYa.

Analyzing the array of problems seen by site users who own one of the two popular tablets, FixYa boiled the list down to the top five major glitches.

Looking at Apple's iPad, Wi-Fi connection issues came in first, cited by 35 percent of FixYa site users included in the study.

iPad 2 owners have bumped into trouble connecting or staying connected to Wi-Fi networks. The site noted that this … Read more