One of the biggest drawbacks to Apple products such as iPods and iPhones is that the user can’t (easily) replace the battery on their own.  While work arounds have been found, they void the warranty on the products.  It appears that the iPad will be no different, however Apple has come up with a different system this time to try to make sure you just go through them to service the battery.

It seems that the iPad battery replacement FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) has been released, and instead of replacing the battery when you send your iPad in for a dying battery, the company will instead send you a whole replacement iPad.  It will cost you $99 plus $6.95 shipping (pre-taxes), and you will be shipped a completely different unit.  Now, do note that nowhere does it state that the iPad will be a brand new unit or if it will be a refurbished one, so I wouldn’t run around thinking, “Woo!  Brand new iPad!” quite yet.

Now, no matter if it is a brand new unit or a refurbished one, this means you will not be receiving a unit with any of your personal data or applications on it, so you will need to back it up before you ship it off so you can sync the data back when the new one arrives.

It isn’t clear why Apple is opting to replace the entire device as opposed to just the battery, but that is the road the company is taking.  Of course, this shouldn’t matter for a year or more as everyone who reads this site is of course following our advice of not ordering the first generation release … right?

If you’ve ever wanted thought to yourself, “I wish I could watch high definition television programming on a bright yellow television set …”, your dreams have come true.

Marvel Entertainment, formerly known as Marvel Comics, has teamed up with RTC23 to release a line of LCD and LED high definition television sets.  Each unit is themed around a different famous Marvel character, and will show their name and images of them on the frame, and will also show pictures of the character during the start up process and on menu pages.

The TVs, which can also double as computer monitors, come in sizes of 22, 32, 42 and 55-inch  for the LCDs and 40 and 46-inch versions for the LED.  Some of the characters also come with options for different colored bodies  like the yellow one shown here also comes in blue and black.

Depending on model and size, prices range from $339 to $1989.

While this is cute and kinds funny, call us old sticks in the mud if you must, but isn’t the performance of the television more important than the comic book character slapped on it?  We know nothing about the quality of the RTC23 units, but we just can’t see the point in the garish colors, and won’t you get bored with seeing the same images of the characters over and over again?  Our suggestion would be, as always, look at reviews and shop for quality over some gimmick that seems rather pointless to us.

Starbucks is trying to get a bit more hip on the social scene with the addition of a “Barista” badge to the popular location-based game Foursquare.

Foursquare has been the big buzz word lately in location-based games.  By checking-in at locations you visit, you unlock badges and get to see who else is at the same location as you.  Some businesses have already arranged promotions with Foursquare, but the biggest name yet becomes active today, and that would be the coffee mega-chain, Starbucks.

Starting today, after you check-in at five separate Starbucks, you will unlock the “Barista” badge.  For right now that is the only perk to the promotion, but there are some definite hints of more coming down the road according to The New York Times.  “This allows us to do things that are not just coupons,” said Chris Bruzzo, vice president for brand, content and online at Starbucks said. “You can expect us to be experimenting in this space,” he concluded.

Some of the possible future promotions mentioned include things such as invitations to special events, photo sharing or online reputation scores.

The problem we see with this particular promotions it the requirement to visit five locations.  This puts this badge firmly in the arena of badges that can only be unlocked by those in major cities.  For instance, there is one Starbucks in a 90-mile radius of the StarterTech offices.  Doesn’t appear any of us will be unlocking this one.

While this particular badge isn’t the exciting, it’s what it possibly foretells that is most interesting.  What other possible big name brands may sign up with the location service?

If you are continuing to use Windows XP like a goodly number of people are, and you need a new hard drive after Jan. 2011, you may run into some new issues.

According to the BBC, all hard drive manufacturers have agreed to change how their devices store information effective with January of next year.  Under the old method, hard drives store data in blocks that are 512 bytes in size.  This was dune to work with floppy drives, and it stayed with the storage industry until now.  Under the new architecture, blocks will be increased to 4K in size, or nearly eight times the old size.  This is expected to make hard drives 7 – 11% more efficient than the current drives.

The problem is that Windows XP, despite its age, is still a very prevalent operating system, and it has no clue how to handle blocks of that size.  Mac OS X (Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard versions) Windows Vista, Windows 7, and versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are all able to handle the new file format.

A workaround has been designed to trick the hard drive into working with Windows XP, but it could result in reduced speed performance of as much as ten percent.  So, it will work, just not at peak performance.

In short, if you feel like you may need a new hard drive, do it before the end of this year so you can get one of the old style drives.

Virtual marketplaces are becoming all the rage, and now Google is jumping into the game with their business services arm, Google Apps.

Google Apps is a product of Google that allows companies to use the popular Gmail and Google Docs tools under their own company banner for an annual fee per user.  It can also be used for free by smaller companies or Web sites as a way to to route their e-mail into a Gmail interface while using their own domain name.  (i.e. owner@sitename.com would route to a Gmail account as opposed to your standard e-mail account)

Now Google has teamed up with multiple services to launch the Google Apps Marketplace.  For a separate fee per service you can add services such as Dimdim Web Conferencing, eFax, SurveyMonkey and many more to your current account, so that you can use all of them from one interface as opposed to going out to multiple sites and having to log in to each separately.

From a security perspective we can see the benefit, but each of the ones we looked at has some sort of cost associated with it.  If you’re a small company there are numerous free alternatives out there for just about everything we looked at.  In these tough economic times, weight convenience VS. cost, and you may not see the benefits of this immediately.  If you’re a big company, known yourselves out.

Are you ready to start seeing your television in 3D all the time?  Ready to start straining your eyes on a regular basis?

Panasonic 3D TVs will be hitting the shelves at Best Buy on Wednesday for around $2500.  The question is if you even need this technology in your life?

Personally I see 3D as a fad.  It has come and gone over the years, and while it may be nifty to go to a 3D movie from time to time, do you really want to have to wear those glasses all the time you’re in your own home?  (and, by the way, your $2500 only gets you one pair of glasses, so be ready to pick up more sets)  You know how some people have gotten headaches from watching Avatar?  Imagine doing that every night while you watch television?  No thanks.

When you add in th fact that people are still in the adoption process of HD TV sets, this was not the time to introduce a whole different set of technology.  Even if you have an HD TV already, you haven’t had it that terribly long in most cases, are you ready to plop down money again so soon for a technology that will be even more limited?

While the home electronics industry seems to think we’re ready for this, and I simply say we aren’t.  I have no desire to sit around with glasses on in my own home on a regular basis just to watch TV.  Thanks, but no thanks to all of the electronics companies that are so excited about this, but it just isn’t for me.  And, honestly, I think the electronics companies are going to find I’m not alone.

During the 82nd Annual Academy Awards last night, Apple debuted its first commercial for the upcoming iPad tablet.  There is one thing you can never say about Apple, and that is that they have bad advertising.

Lets just get the actual video out of the way.

If you had any question about what this device would do, you shouldn’t have that anymore after having watched that.

This commercial said in 30-seconds what bloggers have been writing about for five weeks now … if we just had an iPad to film we could have been done with this!

Honestly, we’re still saying you should skip the first generation, but we also know that most of you won’t listen to us, and this thing will be a huge seller.  We like the device, heck, we’d love to have one, but we also know the second generation will be even more impressive, so why not wait a year?  it’s not like this is a device you need, it’s one you want.

No one is quite sure what is going on with Apple and its recent application bans, but something is definitely not right over there.

Not too long ago we brought you the news that Apple had banned around 5,000 apps from the App Store for being too sexually suggestive.  Well, this past week, another round of bans happened, and this time it makes absolutely no sense.

In the first round, Apple eventually came out and explained themselves, but thus far there has been no word on why they removed Wi-Fi detection apps.  These are applications that actively searched for a Wi-Fi signal, but the ban does not impact applications that simply contain a database of Wi-Fi hotspots that can be accessed via the iPhone’s GPS or by entering an address on the iPod Touch.

Apple has offered no comment on why these applications were removed, although it may have something to do with the rule for developers about how an application may not duplicate functionality of the device, and the iPhone and iPod Touch do have the ability to scan for Wi-Fi signals.  The question then would be why were they approved in the first place?

With two rounds of purging, should we expect more?

When you’re an unemployed late night talk show host, what do you do with your time? Well, if you’re Conan O’Brien, you change the life of one Twitter user with the simple click of a button.

On February 24th, Conan O’Brien launched a Twitter account that he has been posting to once a day ever since.  The Tweets have all been extremely random, and mainly make fun of his unemployed status since he left The Tonight Show.

As his follower count grew past the 500,000 mark, there was an oddity in that he was not following any one back.  Around 4 PM EST on March 5th, Mr. O’Brien decided to change all that with just one Tweet:

I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.

Before this Tweet, Ms. Killen had three followers, but as I write this she has 9,438 followers.  She has received a free Mac as a gift, been extended an offer for a wedding ring for pending nuptials, been interviewed by MTV and who knows what else.

Will her new found Twitter fame last?  Who knows.  So long as Conan O’Brien follows only her, she will stay in the spotlight, and it does make for a heck of a joke.

Congratulations Ms. Killen on your new Internet fame, and on your impending nuptials.

(In case you’re curious, Mr. O’Brien’s people reached out to Ms. Killen prior to the Tweet via MySpace to make sure she would be okay with this, but she didn’t believe it would actually happen … apparently he is a man of his word)

While we already explained Chatroulette to you recently, The Daily Show did a video (mildly not safe for work due to some language) that not only demonstrates how odd the site is, but how potentially dangerous it could be for kids.  Yes, it is all done with humor, but in his effort to mock the site, Mr. Stewart and his writers may have done the most effective job of demonstrating the problems with it.

Sit back and laugh, but realize … this isn’t too far off from the truth.