Reuters slapped a scary headline on this story, but it couldn't really be described as sensational. As much a terrifying portent of electronics companies' coming year as it is an indicator of the company's especially sorry state, this announcement is particularly gruesome when you consider that, unlike Palm, they don't even have an escape plan in place, or even a substantive smartphone line—one of the few areas that is expected to grow over the coming months. [Reuters]

The concept, developed by Brooklyn-based SONIC Design, utilizes a 3-disc adjustment mechanism to dial in the user's net income and estimated cost of living. The resulting calculation determines where the next hole in the belt will be punched. In other words, it's a physical representation of how much you need to save—in this case, the grocery bill is an ideal area to target. You could probably stand to lose a few pounds anyway. [Sonic Design via Core77 via Newlaunches]

Vizio isn't a manufacturer—they buy panels from other producers. Co-founder Laynie Newsome cites the fact that in the showroom, LCDs are brighter and lure more customers, but there are presumably other factors, including the fact that Panasonic, the largest plasma manufacturer, has had to cut back on 2009 production.

The Panasonic cutbacks allegedly mean having fewer panels to sell to partners like Pioneer. Since Vizio did buy source panels from Panasonic, maybe Vizio got screwed out of panels too. The good news is, Vizio is working hard to gain LCD market share by putting out sets with features like LED backlighting—hopefully at low low prices! What this means for the future of plasma is still unclear, but it can't be good.

Note: Pioneer has not officially confirmed that it is out of the plasma business, but in two statements on the subject, they have not come close to denying it either. [NYT Gadgetwise]

The entire list of what has been cut can be found here, simplified for easy understanding, but these are the ones that hit us tech dorks the hardest:

• $2 billion for public broadband access has been totally eliminated. Sorry, "real America," you're gonna keep getting screwed.
• $7 billion for energy-efficient public buildings has been cut in half.
• a fleet of hybrid vehicles for the federal government has also been cut in half, from $600 million to $300 million.
• $50 million for NASA has been totally cut.
• a combined $300 million for scientific research has been totally cut.

As always, if you think this sucks, write to your representative. But not via email. Lawmakers don't believe in email. [CNN]

Among the basic advertisements for hardware and software we find a few hints here an there about Microsoft's internal culture and the mindset of their employees. The best, by far, is the shirt that features the message "Think your iPhone is cool? Let me show you a thing or two about Windows Mobile." Hmm...yes. Windows Mobile. Cool.

No matter where your loyalties lie, you have to admit that even the most die hard Microsoft fan would move quickly to eliminate any reminder of the employer that left them high and dry. Then again, there are always exceptions to the rule. Hit the link to check out the rest of the shirts spotted in the $2 bargain bin. [Tech Flash via Boing Boing Gadgets]

RAM prices are crazy: chip makers are always seeking the hair-thin balance between supply and demand as far as price goes, making them almost like an OPEC, keeping a tight control on supply. A number of factors lately, though, have led to tons of supply in the market and low prices.

The chipmonkeys at Ars, however, think that today's 26% price increase—happening on the first day of the markets being open since Qimonda's bankruptcy—will not be indicitive of a long-term trend. Still, probably not a bad idea to get that RAM upgrade you've been eyeing sooner rather than later. [Ars Technica]

We've seen lots of Win-Mo 7 dates floated; most recently, the "early 2009" projection was more realistically hedged to the "second half" of 2009 by Microsoft in September. Jha's announcement could potentially mean that we won't be seeing any Motorola Windows Mobile 7 phones until 2010, but the Electronista folks have Jha saying on the earnings call that the expected worldwide rollout of WM7 won't happen until 2010.

This is also interesting because it appears to disprove yesterday's rumor in the Wall Street Journal that Motorola was planning on completely abandoning Windows Mobile in favor of the "more competitive" (and completely free to license) Android. Jha says Moto is still focused on Google' open source OS, but we have yet to see any official word of Motorola-branded Android gear getting close to release—they're not expected until the end of this year. Oh Moto. [Electronista, WSJ]

The Equipment Installment Plan applies to both current and new customers and comes without any additional finance fees, interest charges or start-up fees. So, if money is tight but you have been dying to get your hands on a G1, this might be the way to do it. [T-Mobile]

Japan's Nikkei and Reuters are both reporting that losses for the fiscal year ending in March could hit $1.1 billion, with Nikkei saying they may even drift closer to $2 billion. This is, as they say, the exact opposite of the $2.2 billion profit forecast Sony previously cited.

At fault are, well, the financiapocalypse of course, which has resulted in subdued demand for HDTVs in the American market and elsewhere, as well as a booming yen that has driven up the price of exports. Stocks for all of the Japanese tech companies plunged today from the news, with Toshiba, Canon and Panasonic all down in the neighborhood of 7%.

So the idea of Sony shuttering a major division by the end of next month rings a bit more true now, doesn't it? Who will get the axe?

[NYT, Variety]

The Times doesn't get super specific about what they mean by major divisions—Walkman? PlayStation? That kind of sacred but highly unprofitable cow?—but do say that the restructuring will "abolish or fundamentally alter many of Sony's long-established business practices," meaning we could be seeing a very different Sony emerge next month.

What it will look like, though, is anyone's guess. Sony, for the record, denies any such plans existing, though a) these kinds of denials typically don't mean a whole lot and b) this kind of deep restructuring may be just what Sony needs. [Times Online via Reuters via Kotaku]

Analysts at DisplaySearch have told Eric Taub at the NYTimes that they are projecting a dismal year for TV sales in 2009: not only are sales of all TVs expected to decline in all of North America by 4%, LCD TV sales are expected to grow only 2%. That's compared to a 22% gain in 2008 and 77% in 2007. Always thought to be recession proof, TVs are getting hit.

But why the slowdown on continuously plunging prices? Expecting reduced sales, panel factories are cutting back on production. And if you've been paying attention, you know that production efficiencies at high volume (via things like 150-inch panels of mother glass) are what drives prices down.

DisplaySearch is seeing panel factories in Taiwan and Korea are currently scaled back to 80% capacity; pair that with cancelled plans for new, more efficient manufacturing plants, and you've got the recipe for a halt to the downward pricing trend on HDTVs:

Mr. Semenza [of DisplaySearch] expects that prices for LCD sets 32 inches and smaller will remain fairly stable. Retail prices on TVs 42 inches and larger will not decline as fast as they have in years past.

Bummer. [NYTimes, Photo: mgminthu/Flickr]

To find out, we grabbed five HDTVs you can find on the street for under $900—some require a little snooping to find that price, but they're out there. We've got four LCDs and one plasma, with four of them were discount brands, while one was from a pretty top name brand. We're looking at a few things: are any sub-$900 TVs actually watchable? Are any lower-tier brands as good as big name brands? And finally, which TV delivers the most bang for the buck?

The HD Guru Gary Merson and Cnet senior editor for TVs David Katzmaier—two guys who know more about HDTVs than I know about my mom—graciously came by to help us calibrate the sets, in order to coax the absolute best picture out of them and give us some insights on what we should look for.

Here's how we set up the tests: Every set was calibrated with a THX Optimizer disc, with an emphasis on getting the darkest possible blacks while maintaining detail and acceptable brightness, since blacks are LCDs' big weakness, and the most likely attribute to suffer in cheaper sets—in more expensive sets, like Sony's LED-backlit Bravia XBR8, a lot of what you're paying for are deep, detailed blacks. From there, we tested the sets playoff style—two at a time with a 2-way HDMI splitter using The Dark Knight on Blu-ray as the test disc because it's a beautifully shot film with all kinds of perfect HDTV test scenes, and its excellent master makes it solid source material. Plus, it's the one Blu-ray movie everyone will own. And it's awesome. So, two may enter, only one may leave: The set that wins the showdown advances to the next round. Here are the five cheap HDTVS:

•Insiginia NS-LCD42HD-09 1080p LCD$800 (Note: We actually tested the 52-inch version because Best Buy didn't have the 42-inch model, but they assured that the guts are the same, so we assume that the results would be the same)
•Toshiba Regza 42RV535 1080p LCD $875-$930
•Vizio VO42LF 1080p LCD $830 MSRP-$880
•Vizio VP423 720p Plasma $830 MSRP
•Westinghouse VK-40F580D 1080p LCD$850-$899

Round 1: Toshiba Regza vs. Vizio LCD

It's pretty much a blow-out: The Regza wowed us against the Vizio with blacks that weren't just deeper, but more detailed with a much cleaner contrast. In night-time skyscraper shots, you could make out windows and other smaller details much more clearly. The Vizio's viewing angle was not nearly as wide as the Toshiba, and it had a more noticeable color distortion at a 45-degree angle. Color wise, the Vizio might be a bit more appealing, because even after calibration, they tend to be more saturated. The Toshiba had noticeable instances of showing shiny moire pattern when panning down a building that was essentially a set of verticals lines—in other words, they got kind of warped. But dialing down the sharpness, as David suggested, reduced this quite a bit. Both sets have below-par motion resolution, one of Gary's favorite picking points. If you watch text as the camera zooms by, it gets mad blurry, but as Gary himself admits, most people don't notice this kind of thing unless it's super egregious.

Winner: Toshiba

Round 2: Westinghouse vs. Vizio LCD

This was a really tough one. We went ahead and slotted the Westinghouse against the loser of the first LCD battle because we noticed it had a really obnoxious backlight issue during calibration: It's much brighter on the right than on the left, a problem that gets worse when you view it off-angle. The picture exaggerates how bad it is, but it's definitely noticeable.
That aside, it performed favorably against the Vizio. It has a better viewing angle with less distortion as you swing to the side. But it also has some of the moire problems we noticed with the Toshiba. Motion isn't fantastic on either set. What did the Vizio in was how badly it crushed the blacks vs. the Westinghouse. In other words, at the brightest black level we considered acceptable, a lot of detail was lost. Gary pointed out the problem there—which you'll see again in the plasma: Its settings don't have fine enough gradations for picture fine-tuning. It got brighter or darker in huge leaps, preventing us from finding a happy medium with solid blacks that have detail. So, as we said, it's a tough one. If the Westinghouse didn't have the backlight issue, it would've won hands down.

Winner: Tie.

Round 3: Vizio vs. Insignia
The Insignia is the worst set we tested. It's just bad. The blacks are really crushed, the details are mushy, the colors don't pop—we even tried tweaking post-calibration to bring them up, but it just made them look unnatural—and the few aspect-ratio options all resulted in a noticeable portion of the picture being cut off, even as it displayed perfectly on the Vizio LCD next to it. If you buy the 42-inch version for $800, you're getting hosed. If you buy the $1500 52-inch version, you're just screwed. It made the Vizio, the loser in previous rounds, look almost amazing.

Winner: Vizio

Final Round: Toshiba Regza vs. Vizio Plasma
This was the hardest fought battle of the competition. We gave the plasma a bye to skip to the final, because we rightly figured plasma's inherently better picture qualities suited it for a boss battle, the Sagat to LCD's Ryu.

One of plasma's greatest strengths against LCDs is that, unless you're talking about super-high-end LED-backlit LCD, plasma will beat LCDs with darker, richer blacks every time, simply because of the technological differences. So it was stunning that the Vizio essentially forfeited this advantage by crushing them. Hard. They were darker than the Toshiba's, obviously, but bringing the brightness up to a level where you could make out the same dark details seen on the Toshiba without washing out the picture was impossible because of the controls. Gary says he routinely advocates that TV makers build in finer gradations in adjustments, and in this case, the ability of the user to more finely adjust the picture. Better controls would have been to the Vizio plasma's tremendous advantage.

The Vizio plasma maintained its other inherent strengths though. It had zero viewing-angle trouble, looking essentially perfect from all angles. Motion was better, with more details preserved, in signs for instance, as the camera passed by. Like the other Vizio set, the LCD, colors were verrry saturated, especially out of the box, with a lot of red in the picture. Calibration helped, but the Toshiba still seemed to provide more accurate color. A few people in our office who passed by said they preferred the extra pop of the Vizio plasma's color and saturation, so this might come down to a personal preference.

At our viewing distance of six feet, the difference in detail between the 1080p LCD and 720p plasma was noticeable, particularly when we examined facial details and hair. The 1080p Toshiba was, well, more detailed than the 720p Vizio plasma. From nine or more feet away though, most viewers would be hard pressed to discern a difference in screen resolution.

In the end, we, along with Gary, came down on the side of the Toshiba. Its picture has a clarity that the plasma didn't quite touch, both in dark scenes and its colors were truer to life. Overall, we feel it's the best buy for the money, though it will take a bit of gumshoeing to buy it for under $900.

Winner: Toshiba

Other Considerations
There are a few larger points to take one. First and foremost, any of these sets will be more amazing than your standard-def set, and none of them, except perhaps the Insignia, are a total waste of money. Another important point, one that David stresses, is that we were able to make the picture on each one worlds better than it was out of the box—if you calibrate your TV, you will get more out of it, no matter who you buy it from. Finally, Gary notes that the lower-tiered brands can have worse warranty and customer support terms, so while the Toshiba might run the highest price initially, its overall cost of ownership may possibly be lower. If you haven't bought an HDTV yet, we hope this little test-bed has served you in making this very important step.

Before you drop the dough on a whole new system, here's a list of upgrades for squeezing a few more months, years even, out of ol' faithful, during these trying economic times.

If your Windows PC is seriously Dark Ages material, you might want to try converting it into something altogether different, like an NAS or media center. But stick around here if you're riding that thin line between acceptable day-to-day use and the scrap heap and try these quick and cheap upgrades first.

1. Reinstall Your OS
Over the years, operating systems inevitably pick up random pieces of clutter that start hogging your limited resources and bring your system to its knees. Forget spyware and malware cleaners—they're often just as guilty of mucking up your machine.

No, the best way to start fresh is of course to reinstall Windows. It's a pain, but thankfully there are a number of tools that will make the process easier.

• nLite and vLite for XP and Vista respectively are great tools for not only automating a large chunk of the reinstall process, but also for slimming down and customizing the installation to make sure you have a version of Windows that's optimized for your old hardware

• Kevin from Lifehacker also has a great guide for slipstreaming XP Service Pack 3 onto a custom install disc so you can avoid hundreds of Windows Update downloads after you reinstall using the older XP disc you probably have lying around.

• There are a ton of tools to help back up your data before a reinstall, but an easy no-brainer (especially if things have gotten so bad that you can't boot) is to boot with a Linux live CD like Ubuntu and move your files from your Windows volume to an external drive before wiping it.

2. Buy a New Graphics Card
A huuuuge part of what we humans perceive as slowness while using a computer are delays and hang-ups in the graphical UI—something that doubling or quadrupling your available video memory and beefing up your GPU rendering muscle will go a long way in alleviating. Graphics cards are super cheap these days, so think about dropping $100 or less on a new video card for your system and see where that gets you before going full monty on the replacement. As you probably well know, Newegg is the place for cheap hardware—for $150 or less you can do very well with a variation on the solid Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT or ATI Radeon HD 4850.

3. Max Our Your RAM
Many of you may be saying "duhhh" here but this can't be more of an important point—if you haven't maxed out your RAM yet, do it. Now. Just like graphics cards, RAM is super cheap, especially if you're running a common motherboard configuration. So head to Crucial or OWC, have it scan your system, and price out some new RAM sticks for you. Remember—matched pairs (in terms of size) are always faster than unmatched, and to taste every last bit of a 4GB upgrade, you'll need a 64-bit OS.

4. Get a Bigger Display
This one is more of head game than an actual upgrade, but I swear, every time I hook my laptop up to the big 22" widescreen monitor here in the office, my machine feels about a year or two faster. Something about having more screen real estate just helps. Plus, once you do finally get a brand new screamer, you can just swap it right over. Cheap LCDs are our daily Dealzmodo Roundups bread and butter, so keep an eye out there for a good bargain on a decent brand.

5. Get a Bigger, Faster Hard Drive
You can never have too much storage. So abiding by this rule, a few bucks spent on a new HD will at the very least free up more space for virtual memory on your boot volume. You could also look at a 10,000RPM drive for a desktop or a 7,200RPM drive for your laptop, which will undoubtedly be faster than your stock drive. Don't worry so much about your new HDD's cache size so long as its at least 8MB (which is common), as anything higher tends to offer diminishing returns. For everything else you'd want to know and more about getting a new hard drive, check out yesterday's Giz Explains on HDDs.

6. Optimize Your Boot Time
Another psychological downer is waiting 5 minutes for your machine to boot. Again, Lifehacker to the rescue: Less than a month ago, Gina published a complete guide to streamlining your Windows startup speed—make that your first stop.

7. Clean Out Your Browser
Your web browser is where you spend most of your time—and just like Windows, Firefox can get bogged down in bloat. If you have a ton of extensions installed that you never use, disable or remove them. You can also dive into the world of about:config and follow the numerous guides to tweaking FF's guts for more speed. Opinions on whether these are real or placebo is mixed, but even so, there are a lot of cool things you can do.

You can also make the leap to Firefox 3.1 (still in beta) with its drastically sped-up TraceMonkey rendering engine. Here is a guide for safely playing with the Firefox 3.1 beta without touching your Firefox 3 profile.

And if you're using Internet Explorer, um, stop it.

8. Ditch Windows Entirely
If things are really dire (on the money or performance front, or both) you might want to think about making a switch to Linux—especially if your main PC usage entails not much more than your typical web browsing, emailing, IMing and media playing/managing. There are a million and half tutorials out there for switching to Linux (Ubuntu's own is pretty good), which will almost certainly run considerably faster on your hardware than Windows does.

Special thanks to the Lifehacker folks for just doing what you're doing.

Dealzmodo Hacks are intended to help you sustain your crippling gadget addiction through tighter times. If you come across any on your own that are particularly useful, send it to our tips line (Subject: Dealzmodo Hack). Check back every Thursday for free DIY tricks to breathe new life into hardware that you already own.

Your regular Dealzmodo hacker John Herrman will be back next week.

Each F-22 costs $143 million, and at stake is a $9 billion proposal to build 60 more Raptors over the next three years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is fine with axing the program (as was the Bush administration, who has of course deferred the decision), favoring instead the development of unmanned UAVs that are more adept at the reconnaissance and surgical strikes used in fighting terrorists, not the air-to-air dogfights that would have been expected when facing up to a Soviet superpower with its own modern air force. The L.A. Times cites one such unmanned project as "a small blimp equipped with an automated high-powered sniper rifle that could provide a form of inexpensive but effective air support for platoons in Afghanistan."

The decision is a dicey one, because while saving money in the Pentagon's budget, a decision to axe the F-22 would mean a loss of jobs and defense contracts for U.S. workers. Unsurprisingly, the F-22's most vocal supporters are in Congress; the jet uses parts from 1,000 suppliers spread across 44 states. That's a lot of pork, and if we know there's one way to make someone sad, it's take away their pork. The NYTimes quotes Democratic congressman Norman Dicks saying “I think we’re going to keep the F-22 going, that’s my gut instinct." Someone tell this dude that "following your gut" is so over! [NYTimes, LA Times]

A list of the store closings has not been made available, but the breakdown will look like this: "45 stores in the Central U.S., 40 in the Northeast and Canada, 19 in the West and eight in the South." They are also shutting down six of their 33 distribution facilities and scaling back openings to 20 in 2009. [Yahoo Finance via TG Daily]

The segment of elevated walkway will be built at the the Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, and embedded with motion detectors. As soon as visitors enter, hydraulics will start to make the segment shake while low rumbling sounds—like an earthquake or avalanche—will emanate from hidden speakers. The end result, as Dezeen says, is supposed to convey a feeling of "deep uneasiness."

Cuz, see, that's what I've been missing! Stock markets all gone to hell, fate of the nation hanging in the balance, wars raging pretty much every place that Bush can actually identify on a map... yeah, I still somehow need an artificial dose of "deep uneasiness." Thanks Tom... thanks a freakin' lot. [Dezeen]

The Apple Tax is a popular term for people who believe Macs are overpriced. It's usually screamed at the top of lungs (or the blog-commenter equivalent), but it's rarely been dissected. The truth about the Apple Tax is straightforward on one level—you will pay more for the same specs on a Mac—and surprisingly complicated on another. It definitely exists, but it's not a flat tax. Even avoiding build quality and OS differences by looking only at Apple products, a Mac's price tag is justified in some configurations while in others, it's downright punitive. If you're a PC user thinking about switching, or just a Mac user looking to upgrade, our comprehensive look at the Apple Tax is for you. It's what you really get for what you pay.

In the case of Macs vs PCs, you could argue that customer support, the Leopard OS and design elements such as the new unibody construction and glass trackpads are what make up the Apple Tax. The only problem with this logic is that, when you compare Apple computers alone with no PCs in sight, the tax still swings wildly.

Click on the chart for an even larger view

Here we've compiled for you two massive tables of raw specs. One covering the lower-end MacBook, new and old, and its best PC equivalents; the other covering MacBook Pros in the same manner. Each is organized by price, lowest to highest, in order to show value tradeoffs. While they're broken into two charts for readability, really you can think of them as just one—prices and capabilities of the MacBook line bleed into those of the MacBook Pro now more than ever before. Just because they're easy to read, doesn't mean they're easy to read, though.

Click on the chart for an even larger view

As you can see, in a purely spec-based, part-to-dollar fight, PCs win. HP's dv3500t handily beats the new cheap MacBook in specs—same Intel chip, more RAM, discrete graphics for over $100 less. Similarly, HP's dv5t essentially matches for the high-end MacBook Pro's specs for $1,000 less, and you can add Blu-ray playback and a 400GB hard drive—features not available on the Pro—and still save more than $600. Asus's m50V stacks up similarly for an even lower base.

Interestingly, Dell fares pretty poorly in comparisons. Pricing isn't terrible, but the chipsets used to get the prices are last-gen; we're still waiting for Dell to join the Centrino 2 party. The end result is that the XPS M1330 is neck-in-neck in performance with the new cheap MacBook—Nvidia says the integrated GeForce 9400M performs comparably to the older discrete 8400M GS—with a similar price. Same situation on the XPS M1530, which gets handily trounced, spec-wise, by Asus and HPs in the same price bracket. The point worth making is that PCs are not generically of better value—it varies from brand to brand. But what you save may cost more later in less measurable things like durability, or even customer support.

When it comes to Macs alone, here's how specs and prices stack up—surprisingly, this where the Apple Tax reveals itself to the be most sinister and disconcerting. Two things make looking at Apple's lineup right now extremely messy—the beefed-up specs (and price) of the new MacBooks against the Pros, and the end-of-life last-generation notebooks that are currently available at steep discounts.

Strictly speaking, the best value right now are the last-gen MacBook Pros—they're so cheap they essentially negate the Apple tax, and destroy the new ones in performance-to-dollar ratio. The older, discounted black MacBook is also a decent alternative to the new "cheap" MacBook model.

The real takeaway is that Apple's lower-end $1,000 models appear to be shitty value propositions. The performance gap between the cheapie white MacBook (available for $150 less at Amazon) and the new $1300 MacBook is significant. Thanks to the faster RAM and graphics upgrade, it's dumb to pay Apple $1000 instead of getting the new one. But its 2GHz processor is not exceptionally fast and it lacks a backlit keyboard, so there's an even more compelling case to step up to the $1600 model, especially when you consider the hard drive bump alone is $100. Like the bottle of wine second from the bottom of a wine list, that $1,300 appears to hold a slightly larger profit margin than its more expensive ilk.

The MacBook Pro situation is worse, especially when you factor in the oh-so-viable option of a $1700 last-gen MBP delivering the same basic performance as the current $2500 model. But even when you consider the $2000 config against the $2500 one, the pricier one holds more value: Double the RAM, video memory, L2 cache and more storage/speed. It's almost dumb to get the $2000 one. Except for the fact you're now talking about a $2500 computer.

The real takeaway about the Apple Tax is that it's regressive—that is, lower-priced models get hit harder. It's like a tax break for the rich, cuz it almost always makes more sense to buy the higher-end product, especially given that build quality, customer support and warranties are all equal here. This is especially galling now, since being able to configure a cheaper model with what you really need—just the better graphics card, for instance—matters more than ever in this crappy ass economy.

Correction: The previous-gen MacBook on Amazon has a combo drive; the current-gen white MacBook on Apple's site has an 8x Super Drive.