usa

It's been almost a year since a judge in Alameda County, Calif., ruled that Sprint Nextel's early-termination fees are illegal, and yet Sprint and every other major U.S. wireless operator still charges customers a fee for canceling their services before a contract expires.

So what gives? Why are these pesky early-termination fees still around if they are against the law?

That's a good question and one that many readers have asked me over the past year. Because I get so many questions about these fees, I decided to put together this FAQ to help people understand … Read more

Computer vendor Systemax is bringing CompUSA back to life, and now it looks like it might be doing the same for Circuit City. The company bought the intellectual property and domain name this week.

The two might rise as separate chains, but we wouldn't be surprised if they end up as some sort of mashup, a Frankenstein-like monster of retailers.

But why stop there? We can think of a few more franchises Systemax could add to its unholy abomination of shops to round out its offerings to customers. What should it be? Vote in our poll. And if we … Read more

The prolonged death spiral of its retail stores have been well-documented (not least by our undercover spy shots of the so-called liquidation sales), but the Circuit City story seems to have added yet another chapter.

Computer vendor Systemax has agreed to purchase the bankrupt company's trademarks and domain names for $6.5 million, according to the Houston Chronicle. The actual sale is part of a May 11 auction of assets, and in court filings, Circuit City said, "The sale of the intellectual property and Internet assets would bring significant recovery for the sellers' estates and creditors."

If … Read more

Though presumed to be dead since it went bankrupt more than a year ago, CompUSA is showing signs of life.

As Wired noted in a post Thursday, there are 30 new retail outlets bearing the CompUSA name in the U.S. that are trying a new retail strategy that includes computers available for customers to do price matching on the Web sites of CompUSA's competitors.

Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax, the company that bought CompUSA, told Wired: "We have invented this idea of retail 2.0...Every screen in every CompUSA store … Read more

Our economy is in a shambles. We all know there's a lot of blame to go around, but the fact is that most of the products we buy are made offshore. It's going to take some time to see if the stimulus plan's billions of dollars are going to turn the economy around, but each of us can do our part by buying American right now.

Our troubled domestic auto industry is at least still building cars here, which is more than you can say about electronics, computer, video, and camera vendors. Even clothing and shoes are mostly made elsewhere. It's not just the loss of blue-collar manufacturing gigs; design and engineering jobs are increasingly outsourced.

When shopping, do you look at the label or box to see where the product you're about to buy is made? If you had a choice of an American-made product and an imported one, would the country of origin play a part in your buying decision? If the American product was 10 percent pricier, would you buy it, even if you judged quality of the two to be about the same?

I just bought a new couch (for a great price), and it was made in North Carolina. That's my personal stimulus plan.

Sure, quality matters, but if we go on exporting jobs, how will we maintain our standard of living? I could make the same case for buying online versus shopping in your city or town. Those local shops employ your family, friends, and neighbors; would you pay extra to keep the dollars in your community?… Read more

T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest cell phone operator in the U.S., is launching new service promotions in an effort to keep long-term customers and attract new ones.

The company plans to offer a special $50 per month unlimited voice plan to longtime customers in San Francisco, initially. It will also offer new customers who switch from a competitor a $135 rebate, Reuters reported Thursday.

T-Mobile's new plan will only be available to San Francisco customers who have used its service for 22 months or more, according to a T-Mobile representative who spoke to Reuters. An analyst told the wire … Read more

If you happen to have to sleep next to a snorer, there's now hope. And it runs with batteries.

HBI, a maker of biomedical devices, on Tuesday introduced a new device, called SnorePro, that can keep you from being awakened by snores. It's a small wrist-worn device that a snorer wears when going to bed. The device uses HBI's proprietary Dynamic Snore Detection technology to detect snores and gently issue a programmable digital pulse to prevent snoring.

HBI--which not long ago came out with an acupressure wristband to induce sleep--claims the digital pulse functions much like … Read more

Correction, 4:03 p.m. PST: This story misstated the day the company announced subscriber figures. It was Thursday.

Competition is heating up in the wireless market and it looks like T-Mobile USA is getting singed.

Deutsche Telekom, which owns the wireless company T-Mobile International and T-Mobile USA, reported earnings on Thursday citing slower subscriber growth for its U.S. wireless entity.

During the fourth quarter, T-Mobile USA, which is the fourth largest wireless operator in the U.S., added 621,000 new customers. This was down from the previous quarter when the company added 670,000 new subscribers. And … Read more

A company called EFi-X USA (no, that's not a throwaway droid from Empire Strikes Back) apparently plans to take on Mac clone maker Psystar by bypassing the consumer market and jumping straight to the power user demographic.

The machines it's prepping sound pretty nice, with a 3.8GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 1TB storage on 7200 rpm drives, a 150GB 10k rpm system drive, 4GB of included RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GTS GPU.

What's more, according to AppleInsider, the company is planning to let consumers customize their machines, meaning that if the current crop of … Read more