div style="FLOAT: right"img title="Kitty USB Hub Has Back That Faces You" alt="Kitty USB Hub Has Back That Faces You" hspace="5" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/kitty-hub.jpg" vspace="5" border="0" //div pThere is just something creepy about this a href="http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/211731888/Cat_Shape_USB_4_port_hub.html"USB hub/a that comes in the form of a forlorn looking cat, as you open up its back downwards to reveal a trio of USB 2.0 ports, while the cover ends up as the tail instead. Pretty clever design if you ask me. In addition, it looks as though it is gazing after its USB cable for the longest time in its life (all nine of them apparently). Too bad you won't be able to pick this up at retail stores since it is only available in bulk purchases via Alibaba. At least this is better than most USB hub designs we see these days./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/kitty_usb_hub_has_back_that_faces_you.html"Kitty USB Hub Has Back That Faces You/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081202184900" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081202184900?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081202184900" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081202184900amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fkitty_usb_hub_has_back_that_faces_you.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ieHlgmm9cfuaKfx12ESssp7_Vdw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/ieHlgmm9cfuaKfx12ESssp7_Vdw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=xNgSTRzd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=1U5tyquE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=1U5tyquE" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=P5FW3BDe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=4blxkUIz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=4blxkUIz" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=uULgZuYp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=uULgZuYp" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/j21_4k6zK_Y" height="1" width="1"/

Wish you could give someone a really special gift this holiday season? You can. With the new iPhone 3G Gift Card. Pick up a card at an Apple Retail Store (or order one at the Apple Online Store), and you can make someone extremely happy. In fact, when that lucky person redeems his or her gift card and picks up a new iPhone 3G at an Apple Retail Store, a Specialist will provide free Personal Setup.

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News via apple.com :

Wish you could give someone a really special gift this holiday season? You can. With the new iPhone 3G Gift Card. Pick up a card at an Apple Retail Store (or order one at the Apple Online Store), and you can make someone extremely happy. In fact, when that lucky person redeems his or her gift card and picks up a new iPhone 3G at an Apple Retail Store, a Specialist will provide free Personal Setup.

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centerimg title="Apple In-ear Headphones On Sale" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Apple In-ear Headphones On Sale" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/apple-inear-headphones.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pAt long last, the fabled in-ear headphones that were paraded by Steve Jobs earlier this September have finally made it to retail stores, accompanied by a a href="http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA850G/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Ngamp;mco=MTcyOTAyNwamp;p=1amp;s=priceHL"$79/a price tag. It will ship within 7 to 10 days, and will feature in-ear stereo buds as well as an in-line microphone and a control capsule that does rudimentary tasks such as adjusting the volume, playing and pausing music while skipping between tracks. It is rather weird to note that this pair of headphones won't work with the iPhone that well - it might cater to the iPhone's music functions, but it will do zilch where carrying a conversation is concerned. Each purchase comes with three silicone ear-tips to cater for just about anybody and everybody./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/apple_inear_headphones_on_sale.html"Apple In-ear Headphones On Sale/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081202083731" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081202083731?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081202083731" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081202083731amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fapple_inear_headphones_on_sale.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/UOk8CQCrfaaXDpBqWGco_AqAoLI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/UOk8CQCrfaaXDpBqWGco_AqAoLI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=oT2xy6zU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=lP5vJrnH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=lP5vJrnH" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=OEfHjj4C"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=vHLyHNqz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=vHLyHNqz" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=Jqvuo4ta"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=Jqvuo4ta" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/Cs8beMc-PXs" height="1" width="1"/

Posted by Dave Merten

Today’s Macsimum iPhone video captures the construction of Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York City. Wishing to immortalize the creation and construction of the unique retail store, Apple commissioned Washington Square Arts & Films of New York City to create a film about the endeavor. Director Peter Sillen and...

News via apple.com :

If you’re in San Francisco, stop by the Apple Retail Store on Saturday, December 6, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., to hear Jim Heid give a special presentation on ”Creating Memorable Holiday Keepsakes.” The highly respected author will show you how to create ”greeting cards, calendars, and even holiday newsletters with video.” It’s just one of many workshops and events you’ll enjoy at the Apple Retail Store.

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If you’re in San Francisco, stop by the Apple Retail Store on Saturday, December 6, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., to hear Jim Heid give a special presentation on ”Creating Memorable Holiday Keepsakes.” The highly respected author will show you how to create ”greeting cards, calendars, and even holiday newsletters with video.” It’s just one of many workshops and events you’ll enjoy at the Apple Retail Store.

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via MacNN:

Apple's first German retail store is due to open this week, the company has announced. The shop is situated at 1 Rosenstraße in Munich, and will throw open its doors at 10AM local time this Saturday, December 6th. Visitors will of course be able to test Macs, iPods and iPhones; as an incentive to arrive early, the first 2,500 people to come will be given a free Apple t-shirt. Although the store...


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As someone who owns eight different video game consoles and spends as much as four hours a day "gaming," Rumen is all but a certified expert on today's video game market. Rumen knows something that no Wall Street analyst does - how today's video game audience thinks. He knows what games are on the cutting edge, and more importantly, what games and consoles are most playable and popular among his peers.]


Despite all of the uncertainty of 2008, video game sales have been booming.

U.S. sales of video game hardware, software, and accessories surged 36% in the first half of the year to $8.27 billion. That even outpaces the $6.1 billion grossed over the same period in 2007, which was a record year for the industry.

Indeed, the video game industry has acquired the reputation of being recession proof, and the statistics bear that out. In 2002, after the technology bubble burst, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 22%. Meanwhile, video gaming revenue climbed 43%.

And after a banner year in 2007, in which industry sales soared 50% to an all-time high of $18.85 billion, 2008 - even with all of its misgivings - is shaping up to be a new industry standard. Worldwide revenue is expected to exceed $57 billion in 2008, up 35% from the 2007 record of $41.9 billion.

With 267 million video games sold, an average of nine games per second were carried out of retail stores across the country last year. But as remarkable as that is, video games are flying off the shelves even faster in 2008, with sales up 41% in the first half of the year.

As the world’s leading format of entertainment, the video game industry had global sales of $41.9 billion in 2007 - double the total sales of 2002, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. At this rate, global sales will hit $68.3 billion by 2012. That’s a 10.3% annual increase over the next four years.


The Video Game Cheat Sheet
Video games have come a long way from the days of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Pong…

There are gun-toting shooter games like Call of Duty, Halo, and Grand Theft Auto. There are fantasy, or role-playing games (RPGs), like Spore and Final Fantasy, that allow players to reshape an imaginary world in their own image.

And now, with recent advances in motion and sensory technology, there are games like Guitar Hero, MarioKar, and Wii Fit, that allow players to become active participants in the games they play, and physically control the onscreen action.

Here’s a quick look at the games that have sold the most copies over the past 12 months, in order of sales to date. (Note that the sales figures are approximate, and that the release date is the first date the game was released globally.)

1. Call of Duty 4 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC (10 million copies sold-Released November 6, 2007)-Activision, now Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI)

2. Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 (8 million copies sold -Released September 25, 2007)-Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)

3. Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC (6.5 million copies sold -Released April 29, 2008)-Take Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO)

4. Mario Kart Wii for the Wii (6.5 million copies sold -Released April 10, 2008)-Nintendo Co. Ltd. (NTDOY.PK)

5. Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii (6 million copies sold -Released November 1, 2007)-Nintendo

6. Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii (5 million copies sold -Released January 31, 2008)-Nintendo

7. Wii Fit for the Wii (5 million copies sold -Release December 1, 2007 (in Japan, later elsewhere)-Nintendo

8. Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PlayStation 3 (3 million copies sold -Released June 12, 2008)-Konami Corp. (KNM)

These are the games that have proven most popular over the past year. It’s important to note that all except one, Wii Fit, are sequels to previous releases. This is important because it shows that gamers are most comfortable buying and playing updated releases of games they’ve enjoyed in the past.

Likewise, the newest installment of the popular John Madden NFL football series is a sure-fire seller every year.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1085...ecession-proof

Apple's first German retail store is due to open this week, the company has announced. The shop is situated at 1 Rosenstraße in Munich, and will throw open its doors at 10AM local time this Saturday, December 6th. Visitors will of course be able to test Macs, iPods and iPhones; as an incentive to arrive early, the first 2,500 people to come will be given a free Apple t-shirt. Although the store...

centerimg border=0 title="Motorola Concept Phone" alt="Motorola Concept Phone" src="http://www.uberphones.com/photos/2008/12/motoconcept.jpg" style="margin: 0 0 0 0;" //center br/pA Motorola concept phone has appeared online, and while the green-and-white color scheme of the phone looks quite interesting, we seriously doubt that we’ll be seeing this phone at retail stores anytime soon. It’s cute in its own weird way, and we wouldn’t mind taking the time to play with one, but it’s hard to imagine a fashion junkie or even a tech-savvy user picking such a phone up. Typing a text message on such a phone might be a little tricky though, as there is no keypad in sight, guess that means that the phone has some sort of touch-screen?/p pPermalink: a href="http://www.uberphones.com/2008/12/motorola/motorola_concept_phone/"Motorola Concept Phone/a from a href="http://www.uberphones.com"Uberphones/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/MidZ_4uoU7EVxusI2Cqwdxm0L3Q/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/MidZ_4uoU7EVxusI2Cqwdxm0L3Q/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

pConsidering the economic climate, it is no surprise that visitors and spending at retail stores was down on Black Friday. Online traffic and spending, however, are a different story./ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-online-only-outlets-see-black-friday-boost-over-2007.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ciHeoUYYanjKZgp1gqKzymTsHPE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ciHeoUYYanjKZgp1gqKzymTsHPE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=7UbbDrp7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=7UbbDrp7" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=c619TYJN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=SZa5EUpx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/FFNWS5ST_K4" height="1" width="1"/

pConsidering the economic climate, it is no surprise that visitors and spending at retail stores was down on Black Friday. Online traffic and spending, however, are a different story./ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-online-only-outlets-see-black-friday-boost-over-2007.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ciHeoUYYanjKZgp1gqKzymTsHPE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ciHeoUYYanjKZgp1gqKzymTsHPE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=7UbbDrp7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=7UbbDrp7" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=c619TYJN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=SZa5EUpx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/FFNWS5ST_K4" height="1" width="1"/

Mapple comes to Springfield as the Simpsons skewer Steve Jobs, those white earbuds, and the pristine shopping environment that is an Apple retail store.

Mapple comes to Springfield as the Simpsons skewer Steve Jobs, those white earbuds, and the pristine shopping environment that is an Apple retail store.img src=http://dw.com.com/clear/c.gif?ts=1115768950edId=3prtnr=CNET%20Networks,%20Inc.oid=2100-null-ptId=2547onId=nullsId=17asId=astId=1CTYPE=rss_feedsCVAL= border=0 height=1 width=1 alt= /

Mapple comes to Springfield as the Simpsons skewer Steve Jobs, those white earbuds, and the pristine shopping environment that is an Apple retail store.

via AppleInsider:

After two years in the making, Apple this weekend will open its first retail store in Germany, a multi-level flagship shop in the heart of Munich.


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span style="font-style: italic;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126892/resistance2_qjgenth.jpg?993033" rel="lightbox[article126892]" title="Resistance 202 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126892/resistance2.jpg 3F993033 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Resistance 2 - Image 1" title="Resistance 2 - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126892/resistance2_qjgenth.jpg?993033" align="right" border="0"/aa title="Resistance 2 news and updates" href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Resistance-2/cid/4691"Resistance 2/a/span's November 28 launch didn't seem to go as smoothly as planned. Reports have come in that distributor Entertainment a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/uk/4320" id="tag" title="United Kingdom"UK/a is struggling with supplying its customers copies of the said triple-A title.brbrSo far, the known clients of the distributor still awaiting stocks of the game are Key Zavvi stores in Brighton, a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/london/3659" id="tag" title="capital city of England and UK"London/a and Manchester, as well as WHSmith and Currys.digital. One staff member encapsulates the issue: "We seem to be having supply problems at the moment."brbrMeanwhile, a spokesperson from Deloitte, which is currently serving as the administrator of EUK and Woolworths, have said that their administrators have met or talked with most of their customers and suppliers, and that constructive talks are ongoing. However, they cannot, at this point, confirm a specific date when the copies will arrive.brbrIf you're looking to buy a copy of the game, we suggest you head over to GAME and a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/hmv/11503" id="tag" title="His Master's Voice (a retail store)"HMV/a for it; they're healthily supplied with span style="font-style: italic;"Resistance 2/span stock, we hear. Too bad for the EUK customers.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Resistance 2 Articles:br/spanul style="font-style: italic;"lia title="Resistance 3?" href="http://ps3.qj.net/Resistance-2-spoiler-theater-Resistance-3-coming-soon-/pg/49/aid/125930"nbsp;Resistance 2 spoiler theater: Resistance 3 coming soon?/abr/li/ulbrbrimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/D3XOg-Iane8" height="1" width="1"/

Paint retail giant Sherwin-Williams announced it will standardize on Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service (SLEPS) for its multi-function desktop registers and in-store servers. More than 3,000 retail stores will install systems running the Linux distribution, which is optimized for point of sale/service (POS) operations, say the companies.

After two years in the making, Apple this weekend will open its first retail store in Germany, a multi-level flagship shop in the heart of Munich.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.tuaw.com/category/apple-financial/" rel="tag"Apple Financial/a/ppa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/indieman/5858851/"img vspace="5" hspace="5" border="0" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2008/12/roundup-438537592.jpg" alt="" //aApple met or beat analyst expectations for sales over the weekend, a href="http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/analysts_apple_one_bright_spot_in_otherwise_lackluster_black_friday/"selling 13 Macs and 3.4 iPhones every hour/a, according to one Piper Jaffray estimate./p pa href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/d13179e4705a23da181f1133cc8e03bc.htm"Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu/a said that Apple's Black Friday promotions helped drive retail store traffic, according to reports from distributors. Wu also noted that the iPod touch is sold out at Amazon.com, which leads him to believe that Apple could sell $10 billion worth of products this quarter./p pThomas Weisel Partners' Doug Reid got the impression that Apple sales were up from last year. He was less optimistic about Dell's retail performance at Best Buy locations, noting that salespeople there were not strongly recommending Dell models at 35 stores they checked./p pWeisel analysts expect Apple to sell 2.4 million Macs during the fourth quarter./p pa href="http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Analysts+Weigh-In+On+Apples+(AAPL)+Black+Friday+Results/4200713.html"Deutsche Bank analysts/a also conducted their own checks over the weekend, and found demand to be "solid," considering the current global economic woes. They expect Apple to sell 5 million iPhones this quarter, and reiterated their "buy" rating and price target of $150 per share./p pa href="http://finance.google.com/finance?q=aapl"AAPL/a was down slightly in morning trading./pp style="padding:5px;clear:both;"a href="http://www.tuaw.com"TUAW/aa href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/01/analyst-roundup-black-friday-pretty-good-for-apple/"Analyst Roundup: Black Friday pretty good for Apple/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.tuaw.com"The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)/a on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a.br style="clear:both;"/ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/analysts_apple_one_bright_spot_in_otherwise_lackluster_black_friday/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/01/analyst-roundup-black-friday-pretty-good-for-apple/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/forward/1387201/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/01/analyst-roundup-black-friday-pretty-good-for-apple/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/WtU35ifnwXeJm7-4N-bg6nykUVs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/WtU35ifnwXeJm7-4N-bg6nykUVs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=lOVz3ZFP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=lOVz3ZFP" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?a=aArhzk6t"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/tuaw?i=aArhzk6t" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/tuaw/~4/qLMgw4ee5kg" height="1" width="1"/

I'm buying a MacBook Pro, and cannot decide whether to get it from John Lewis with a 2 year warranty, or from Apple with AppleCare?

To extend the warranty with John Lewis from 2 to 3 years is £250, compared with £273 for AppleCare extending from 1 to 3 years.

Does anyone have experience of the John Lewis warranty - is it the same as AppleCare (presumably you don't get the extra telephone support, and probably cannot take it into the Apple Retail Store genius bar?)? Presumably if you want a 3 year warranty its better to have AppleCare, but in terms of value for money the standard 2 year warranty with John Lewis sounds much better.