extend

So you ran over your shiny new iPhone 4S with the car. Or dropped it in the potty. Or got there too late as your toddler took a hammer to it. These things happen. Like, for real.

Replacing a busted iPhone can cost a small fortune, as you're not subsidizing it with that juicy two-year contract the carriers love. If you're the clumsy or unlucky type, you might possibly want to consider an insurance policy.

Apple has just the one. The company's new iPhone AppleCare+ plan extends your one-year warranty and 90 days of tech support to two full years. And the "plus" part adds coverage for two incidents of accidental damage (like, say, a fatal run through the washing machine).

Now for the bad news.… Read more

Mozilla, faced with business users' stiff resistance to its new rapid update schedule for Firefox, has proposed a slower-moving version of the browser.

Under the proposal, Mozilla would issue a new Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox every 30 weeks. That's five times slower than the new rapid-release cycle for regular Firefox, which updates the browser every six weeks. And each version would be supported for 42 weeks under the proposal.

After Mozilla got an earful in June about how the rapid-release program outpaces some users' needs to test the browser and in-house Web sites that use it, … Read more

At this point, Fisker Automotive has been showing off various incarnations of the Karma series hybrid sedan at various auto shows for about four years now. It's practically done at this point. Not wanting to show up at the 2011 International Auto Show in Frankfurt with the same song and dance, the automaker slapped a hatchback onto its mustachioed Karma and dubbed it the Fisker Surf.

This week, the Surf shows off its shooting brake design in a B-roll video released on the Web by Fisker. Check it out below. There's no music, but if you crank your … Read more

It seems I've been obsessed with size lately, so let's move on to capacity immediately. If for some strange reason you want to exactly double the limited storage capacity of the iPad, then the Kingston Wi-Drive would fit the bill perfectly.

The portable storage device is available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, which corresponds exactly to the first and second storage tiers of the iPad. The Wi-Drive is supercompact, about a third the size of the 500GB Seagate Satellite, which was the first wireless storage extender for tablets.

Though much smaller, the Wi-Drive offers one thing that the … Read more

I'm just going to go ahead and apologize right now for this being sold out, which it inevitably will be by the time the Cheapskate newsletter arrives in your inbox. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I say so, but if you want to catch the deals while they're in stock, you have to visit the site in the morning. I almost always post before noon, ET, and more often in the 9-10 a.m. range. OK, end of rant.

Looking for an inexpensive media-center extender? Check this out: GameStop has the refurbished Xbox 360 Pro 20GB for just $99.99, … Read more

Microsoft has officially released its new Windows Home Server 2011.

With the release to manufacturing, Windows Home Server 2011 is now slated to reach MSDN and TechNet subscribers in early April where they can download the software via their subscriptions. The latest version should also start to pop up on computers in May, according to Microsoft, which said that manufacturers have already been working with the new home operating system.

The official version of Windows Home Server 2011, codenamed Vail, comes almost a year after the beta was released and close to two months since the release candidate made its debut.… Read more

One of the crowning features of Windows Home Server, which Microsoft announced it was cutting as part of the next major version of the OS, is set to return with the help of some third-party software makers.

Drive pooling, which lets users take multiple hard drives and turn them into one solid block of storage was made possible by a feature called Drive Extender. In November, Microsoft announced it would be removing the feature in the second major version of the Windows Home Server software, code-named Vail, citing higher-capacity commodity hard drives as making the feature obsolete.

Users cried fowl, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you have a large house or apartment, it's tricky to get the Wi-Fi signal to every corner. Even when you have the most powerful wireless router, the range never seems to be far enough.

This has been an ongoing issue with consumers, but Netgear offered a new and easy solution today by announcing its new universal Wi-Fi range extender, the WN3000RP.

The device increases the coverage of an existing home wireless network by automatically extending the signal of the network to which it is connected. According to Netgear, all consumers need to do is place the product … Read more

In the world of software, features come and go, though most of the time it's in the direction of growth.

Such has been the story of Windows Home Server--that is, up until now. Microsoft has announced that the next major version of the software, codenamed "Vail," will do away with what has arguably been one of the most user-friendly features: the drive extender.

This feature would let users take multiple hard drives of various sizes--like the ones that people might have left from old computers, or something they got at a Black Friday sale--and let them … Read more