Nelson Wong Life Blog

Major Rebate Processor Files For Bankruptcy: Deal Rebates May Be Affected

You may have already read or heard, that there is a problem with a relatively large rebate processor, known as Continental Promotion Group, Inc (further CPG) who has filed for bankruptcy today.

Who is affected?
The easiest way to see if you are affected, is to check copies of rebate materials you have submitted recently, which have not yet been fulfilled. You keep copies, right? Take a look at the destination address. The department and name of the recepient will vary depending on the brand of the product that carried the rebate, but the address will most likely have the following in it:

P.O. Box 52900 (or P.O. Box 52911)
Phoenix, AZ 85072-2900

CPG main website for checking upon your rebate is www.rebatestatus.com. If you see this site as point of contact on the rebate, you may be affected.
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Canon 5D Mark II Ships Tomorrow

Good news camera fans, two months after launching and exploding our eyes with its delicious full HD video, the 5D Mark II is finally shipping out of Canon’s distribution centers to dealers. Tomorrow. Price is supposed to be $2699, but depending on scarcity (the demand is going to be massive), you could pay a bit more. All indications are that it’ll be so worth it, though.

Buffalo BR-816SU2 MediaStation 8x Blu-ray burners

Buffalo has announced two new MediaStation 8x Blu-ray DVD Combo Drives in the form of the MediaStation 8x External Blu-ray Drive (BR-816SU2) and MediaStation 8x Internal Blu-ray Drive (BR-816FBS), both of which offer an ‘unsurpassed’ 8x read/write speed and which offer USB 2.0 or SATA connectivity (external and internal MediaStation’s respectively).

‘Everyday digital media continues to grow as an essential part of our lives,’ stated Ken Higgins, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology, who introduced Buffalo’s two new MediaStation combo drives. ‘By combining the ability to read, write and playback DVDs, CDs and Blu-ray discs, the two new MediaStation drives offer the best of both worlds with superior video quality and unmatched performance.’

Apart from boasting 8x Blu-Ray read/write speeds (making them the fastest Blu-ray burners on the market), the new MediaStation’s comes with a host of optical disc support including Blu-ray BD-R 8x, Blu-ray BD-RE 2x, DVD RAM 5x, DVD -R 16x, DVD +R 16x, DVD-RW 6x, DVD +RW 8x, CD-R 48x, and CD-RW 24x and are supplied with PowerDVD for video viewing, PowerDirector for video editing, Power2Go for DVD authoring and burning, PowerBackup for archiving and backup, and PowerProducer for HD video capturing and authoring as well as burning DVDs and Blu-ray as well as InstantBurn and Medi@Show (presentation authoring software).

Due to be released at the end of this month, the MediaStation 8x External Blu-ray Drive (BR-816SU2) and MediaStation 8x Internal Blu-ray Drive (BR-816FBS) will retail for around $400 and $350 respectively.

Cops Confiscate Man’s Xbox 360 Because His Car Smells Like Pot

After Kenyatta Hillman was pulled over for speeding, police detected the odor of marijuana and searched his car. When they couldn’t find the marijuana, they decided that his stolen Xbox 360 would make a fine surrogate…except, you know, the Xbox wasn’t actually stolen property.

As explained in this CNN clip, Hillman returned to the police department later with his original box and receipt, proving his ownership of the system. But the console could not be found because it had not yet been transferred to the evidence room.

We’re still in the dark as to whether or not Hillman ever got his (now) stolen Xbox back. Here’s hoping the authorities drew the lines of decency somewhere and left his frozen pizzas alone.

HP’s Shanghai-packing xw9400 workstation available now

HP xw9400 quite a while back when it was first announced, but it’s now available on HP’s site and we’ve got the full details on the mammoth’s innards. There are quite a few customizable options, including AMD’s Dual-Core Shanghai Opteron CPUs (from 2.0GHz to 2.5GHz), up to 32GB MHz DDR SDRAM, NIVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 or 3050 chipsets, and available NVIDIA Quadro FX cards with up to 1GB of memory. There are also five internal and two external drive bays and eight USB 2.0 ports. The behemoth starts at $2,399 and runs as high as $6,299. Hit the read link for the widest array of specifications you can possibly ever imagine.

HP Mini 1000 now supporting 3G

When we got comfy with the HP Mini 1000 last month, there was talk of a full 3G spec’d version coming in December. Lo and behold we’re not even out of November yet and one owner has managed to get online with his brand spankin’ new 1000. User dplxy over at the Pocketables forum put in some quality time with customer support from both HP and AT&T to figure out how, saving you some minutes by describing the how-to. Full instructions are at the read link, but the gist of it is you need to download a WWAN driver from HP, manually extract and install it, and then slot your SIM card into the battery compartment. Speeds are reported to be solid but, with the lowly three cell battery struggling to keep the thing broadcasting, you’d better hurry up and find what you’re looking for. It’s unlikely this will work with older versions of the Mini 1000, which are believed to lack the hardware internals, but give it a shot and let us know what you find, yeah?

RebateStatus.com Files For Chapter 11, Your Rebate May Be Affected

One of the nation’s largest rebate processing firms, CPG (RebateStatus.com) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What does that mean for you? Well, if you happened to mail-in a rebate form with a company that CPG works with, your check may be in limbo because they don’t have the money to cash it. At this point, exactly how the situation will be handled is unclear—but there are a few things you can do to get things under control. Dealnews is recommending that anyone who has a rebate check or is expecting one not cash it because it may bounce and result in an NSF fee. Instead, you should hang on to it until more details become available (this goes for rebates that have not been submitted as well). If you are not sure whether or not your rebate is invovled, a partial list of affected companies is available after the break.

artial list of companies that have dealt with CFG in recent months:

Acronis Software
ACTIVSION
Advance Auto Parts
Antec
AVG
Bed Bath & Beyond
BIC Corporations US – Shaver Division
BFG
Bridgevine
Canon
Citibank
costco
Fujitsu
Home Depot
Logitech
Motorola (Surfboard cable modems)
Natures Earth Products
Nero
Panda Distribution
Pandigital
PC Tools
PriceGrabber
Rosewill (Newegg house brand)
Samsung
Smith Micro Software
Tabletops Unlimited
TrendNET
Westinghouse
XFX
ZeroTherm
Zyxel

HP Touchsmart tx2

HP’s Touchsmart tx2 is awesome because its the first consumer-oriented convertible notebook to feature a multitouch technology built into the display. The 12.1-inch screen uses a capacitive touchpanel that can track two points simultaneously, operates with fingers or a stylus, and comes with the Mediasmart 2.0 interface customized for the notebook. While Dell’s oft-mentioned Latitude XT came out last year with the multitouch power to simultaneously track all five fingers, the feature was kept dormant until the middle of 2008 and lacks any realy mainstream software to take advantage of the tech.

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G-Speak Minority Report Gesture UI Actually Made By Minority Report Designer

Canon’s 5D Mark II: The World’s First Forbidden HD Video, Finally Official!!