replacement

Your kid dropped the remote in the toilet, or it smashed to pieces after you dropped it on your marble floor one too many times. Or it just disappeared from plain sight. Sure, you could buy a programmable or universal remote, but they can be a hassle to set up, and it's hard to get used to a completely different button layout.

A replacement remote is just so much easier to use, but getting one from the original manufacturer can be a challenge in its own right. If you're stuck try New Remote Control, they stock original factory … Read more

Verizon and Motorola announce the pre-sale of the Droid 2, which will run Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Flash 10.1 and comes with a pull-out keyboard.

Netflix sign a deal with Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate and MGM to stream their films 3 months after they air on paid television and rentals.

BlockBuster adds game rentals to its service, which brings it into direct competition with GameFly.

Hong Kong jumps into the 3D world with pornography.

Apple in Japan will replace 1st generation iPod nanos that overheat.

Apple's Japan unit is offering to replace the batteries of first-generation models of the iPod Nano, a device that has seen its share of complaints about overheating that triggered fires and burns for some customers.

A notice buried deep within the Web site for Apple Japan links to an Apple support page that advises customers concerned about their first-gen iPod Nanos overheating to contact AppleCare for a new battery. Any customer who has actually experiencing an overheating incident can contact AppleCare to receive an entirely new iPod Nano unit, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told CNET.

The overheating battery, which Apple says occurs in very rare cases, is symptomatic of iPod Nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006, and could prevent the unit from working or deform its casing. Apple Japan says that the issue was traced to a single battery supplier and that it's received no reports of similar problems with other iPod Nano models.… Read more

Are you in the market for a desktop replacement laptop?

At Circuit City, you can get a refurbished Acer Aspire AS7540-1284 17-inch laptop for $439.97, plus about $8 for shipping.

That's not the lowest price I've ever seen on a 17-inch laptop, but this is definitely one of the better configurations I've seen for the money.

Beneath its attractive blue lid, the Aspire packs a 2GHz AMD Athlon X2 M300 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and downright mammoth 17.3-inch LCD.

Also of note, its keyboard is wide enough to accommodate a full-size … Read more

DataMystic's WordPipe is an enterprise-class search-and-replace utility for Microsoft Word documents. With it, you can search for and replace text, hyperlinks, contacts, drop-down fields, bookmarks, document properties, and more, in thousands of documents at once. It updates UNC paths when servers are renamed and automatically handles passwords and read-only files, too.

WordPipe's Evaluation version opens with a countdown nag screen. The program's main interface is a businesslike dialog with a few simple file menus, including a Help file, and basic control icons above a tabbed display. Add and Delete buttons below the main window make it easy … Read more

Editors' note: Read part one and part two of this three-part article.

"Where's iBooks?" the man was asking. "I want to see iBooks."

An older guy, one of the half dozen or so Apple sales associates on the floor, didn't know exactly what he meant at first. But then he figured out the man just wanted to see an e-book on the screen. That's why he'd come to the Apple Store: to see what an e-book looked like on an iPad.

The customer peered down through his fairly thick glasses at the James Patterson novel the sales associate had opened for him.

"Is it backlit?" he asked.

"What?"

"The screen."

"Sure," the sales associate said. "It's an LCD."

For some reason the guy seemed shocked to learn the truth.

"I will go blind reading this," he declared.

"Why?" the sales associate asked.

"It's backlit. I will go blind."

The sales associate asked him the next obvious question: Did he use a computer? … Read more

Note: You can read part one of this article here.

For those of you who didn't read part one of this little tale, I was recently in an Apple store in New York looking for the new, updated MacBook Pro units and toying with the idea of buying an iPad, when I was approached by one of Apple's friendly and knowledgeable sales people, who asked me whether I needed any help finding what I was looking for.

After conversing with her for a few minutes and having a frank discussion about some of the product's shortcomings, including its overheating issues, I found myself ready to take possession of Apple's "magical" new slate despite my reluctance to buy first-generation products. I wrote how she'd sold me with her zen-like anti-sell and I realized that "a thousand iPad ads seared into my retinas had taken their toll and worn me down. I was a beaten man, ready to submit."

But alas, there were no iPads to be had, and when we last left off, I was in the MacBook section of the store, filling out an online form to reserve a 32GB iPad, feeling disappointed yet relieved that I'd been temporarily released from the iPad's gravitational pull.

As I filled in my iTunes account name and password to generate the request, I actually thought the white entry-level $999 Macbook I was writing on looked better than I remembered it looking (somehow when you're in an Apple store, the products just have an added glow to them, a halo effect if you will).

"Do you have the new, upgraded MacBook Pros?" I asked, suddenly having an urge to pick up a laptop instead of an iPad.

Maybe the fact that there were no iPads in stock at this particular store was a sign from God for me to buy another product instead.… Read more

I know plenty of people who are looking to replace aging Windows XP desktops. My advice: choose a so-called "desktop replacement" laptop. These systems provide roomy screens and full-size keyboards, yet they can still move around the house with relative ease.

TigerDirect has a seriously solid deal on a refurbished desktop replacement: the Acer Aspire AS7540-1284 17-inch laptop for $419.97 shipped.

Yes, we've seen models in this price range before--but not quite as nicely equipped as this one. For starters, the Aspire's mammoth 17.3-inch LCD isn't powered by some wimpy Intel graphics chip; … Read more

Windows Explorer is a pretty basic application, and if you've ever tried to do any serious file management with it, you've probably wished for an alternative that's easier to work with. NexusFile is just such an alternative. This flexible file manager lets you work with files in ways that would be impossible with Windows Explorer.

The program's interface is fairly intuitive, although aesthetically it might not be everyone's cup of tea. White and colored type on a black background isn't the easiest thing to read, and although the program is skinnable, this is only … Read more