I'm not sure how serious this is, but it certainly reflects the design mentality of 50 years ago: If something doesn't work right, it must be lacking features. Here are the most unexpected add-ons recommended by industrial designers, anthropologists, engineers and biologists:

• Folding ears, something like the old-fashioned ear trumpet, to catch low-pitched sounds

• Hooks on heads for straphangers on subways who wanted to read the papers

• A device resembling a giant clamshell can protect internal organs and be opened easily for surgical purposes

• 20 teeth would be an improvement over the present 32, according to dentists

• A long snout to do away with the nose's confusing air flow and related sinus troubles

• Detachable arms so that you can sleep in comfort

• An extra pair of hands coming out of ears to hold hats in high winds

• Antennae concealed in the head that could pick up sound waves, lights and shadows

• A protective covering for the eye, containing substances which would screen out harsh ultra violet rays

• A small food storage compartment like the camel's

• Built-in pockets, such as kangaroos have

• The spine as a solid column, to greatly increase load-carrying capacity and protect vital nerves

Only this last one comes with an admitted downside: "Man would not be able to twist and turn as he does now but the semi-flexibility of the cylinder would allow enough bending for every ordinary purpose." Meanwhile, the only one from the list that may actually be a product soon—the UV protective eye covering—was a suggestion "meant frankly for fun."

In the intervening years, sometime between the Don Drapers and the Gordon Gekkos, the finger stopped being pointed at our inherent form, and was redirected at how we treat it. Not surprisingly, only one of the experts consulted has any real legacy at all, and he—design god Raymond Loewy—is most famous for artifacts like a locomotive engine (the S-1) and a packet of cigarettes (Lucky Strike). Besides, I'm pretty sure Loewy was joking when he suggested the hat hands. [Modern Mechanix via Secondhand Smoke]

Today, however, Apple seems to be taking steps to address the issue, starting with a new list of 11 questions that run the gamut from asking about push notifications; to wifi and Bluetooth; to this one, identified by the iPhone Blog: "When you notice a power drop, does it seem to be a legitimate power drop, or rather an issue with the battery icon indicator?"

There's also an unsigned battery life logger that Apple has offered up for download. Once the user installs the logger, their phone will synch the logs with iTunes, at which point the software will ask if it can report back to Apple. Steve Jobs will then personally respond to you via email*

While battery life issues are nothing new for iPhone users, this approach by Apple is, and it lends some credibility to the many users who have pounded the Apple help desk discussion boards with complaints about 3.1. Who amongst the Gizmodo readership is also losing juice at an alarming rate since the introduction of 3.1?

*Steve Jobs will respond to you via email only if you are Joe Nocera. [iPhone Blog - Thanks, Rene]

On the pre-order page, Verizon notes that, "Pre–orders not available for upgrade orders at this time." So if you're stuck with a years-old Curve 8330 or Pearl and want at least a current-gen BlackBerry, you'd better hope you've finished your contract. Even if you're eligible to upgrade to every other phone Verizon offers, you'll be blocked from nabbing the Tour. Oddly-named Verizon customer service agent "Markelvus" confirmed that the only Verizon customers allowed to pre-order the Tour are those whose contracts are completed.

Even stranger, Verizon customer service rep "Alexis" (who refused to provide me with her last name) stated that existing contract customers may not even be allowed to upgrade to the Tour when it's released. She said that such customers will be notified when upgrades are available, but that she does not know when that may be, and it could be well after the phone's July 13th release date.

She said, and I quote, "There is not a clear explanation on why existing customers are not able to order this device now. I am not sure when you are able to order it."

Those mid-contract upgrades cost Verizon money, so on kind of a cold, reptilian level, we understand the reason for the rule. But there's also a little thing called "not screwing your customers," and Verizon seems to have a tough time grasping that one. The Tour will be the most desirable phone in Verizon's lineup upon its release (and while we like the Tour okay, it's definitely not in the same league as the Pre, iPhone, or Hero), and yet they're keeping their contracted customers from ordering only this one device.

Sorry, Verizon customers. We feel your pain, we really do. We're getting tired of applauding Verizon's network while bashing absolutely everything else they do. At what point is staying with the Big Red no longer worth the hassle?

Odds are, you won't pay the official prices, so I'm telling you the launch specials first. If you play your cards right, you'll either get it as a free upgrade for buying a PC, or you'll pay $50 for Win 7 Home Premium and $100 for Win 7 Professional. It's not the $30 Mac users will pay for the Snow Leopard upgrade, but it's a move in the right direction.

Free Upgrades
If you buy a PC starting Friday, June 26th, it should be covered under a free upgrade plan. (I say "should" because it depends on the manufacturer, but most of them are jumping on this with both feet.) Say you buy a computer with Vista Home Premium this weekend; you get a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade on October 22, free. If you buy Vista Business, you'll get Win 7 Professional, and if you buy Vista Ultimate, you'll get Win 7 Ultimate. There's no upgrade path for Home Basic (the reason is below) but as I understand it, the number of systems sold at retail with Home Basic on them are in the low single digits.

That should take care of most PC buyers.

The Half-Price Pre-Order Deal
People in the US, Canada or Japan who already own a PC running XP or Vista will be able to pre-order the upgrade disc at around half the price that they'll eventually sell for. The pre-order deal also starts Friday, June 26th, and will run for a limited time.

As I said, Windows 7 Home Premium, usually $120, will cost $50, and Windows 7 Professional, usually $200, will cost $100. Windows 7 Ultimate is not part of this discount plan, but it might get its own incentive plan later on. (You could technically buy Home Premium upgrade, then pay to convert it to Ultimate, saving at least a little cash.) The pre-order deal will be visible at store.microsoft.com and at "most major retailers."

What's this about a limited time? Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Product Management, told me that the pre-order deal will go away when a certain undisclosed number of licenses is sold. "We have enough quantity," he said, adding that the magic number was "equivalent to a year of Vista sales volume at retail." (Ironically, those of you who want this upgrade offer to last have to hope that the Mojave Experiment worked, at least a little.) Some Microsoft materials suggest that July 11th might be the cutoff for the deal, but from what I understand, that's an estimate—this is based on supply. Regardless, if you want Windows 7, pre-order the damn thing come Friday.

European Hijinks
Europe is getting kinda screwed in this deal, because of the European Commission's banning of IE8 from any Windows installer media. Basically, starting July 15th in France, Germany and the UK, Microsoft will be selling full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional at the discounted upgrade prices, but that means there's no way to upgrade directly from Vista.

Euros who buy Win 7 will be forced to perform a clean install, and migrate their data and apps over any way they know how. The logic is that, while the Windows team can do a clean install without IE8, there's not enough quality assurance on what an upgrade install would be like without IE8, with assorted HTML rendering apps co-existing in the OS already. Could be messy, says Ybarra. "We don't want to break anyone else's software, we don't want to break our own software, and we don't want the customer on the phone with support." That funky deal is supposed to run through December.

The Official Prices
So, now that we got the immediate realities out of the way, here are the "estimated retail prices" that we'll eventually see in stores, for the people who aren't yet moving on the upgrade offers:

Windows 7 Home Premium: $120 for upgrade; $200 for full version
Windows 7 Professional: $200 for upgrade; $300 for full version
Windows 7 Ultimate: $220 for upgrade; $320 for full version

To be clear, the term "upgrade" just means you already own and run a version of Windows on the PC you're upgrading. It's still a complete set of bits that you can clean install and even set up for dual booting. The "full" version is mostly for people who are building their own systems.

You may remember that there are other Win 7 SKUs such as Home Basic and Starter. Windows 7 Home Basic is not available in the United States or most of Europe though, along with residents of Burkina Faso and Vanuatu, Montenegrans will be able to buy it.

Windows 7 Starter will be offered to Dell, HP, Asus and other manufacturers to stick on netbooks. Just in case you were concerned, Windows XP will also be available, distributed and supported for 12 months after Windows 7 launches though limited to these same "small notebook PCs." I think Microsoft—and quite a few non-vested-interests—are expecting netbooks to ditch XP for Win 7 pretty fast.

When You Actually Get It
As we've previously reported, October 22 is the day when almost everybody gets Windows 7. Anyone, anywhere in the world, in 35 different languages, will be able to buy a Windows 7 PC on October 22. The actual box of software will be available in most countries, covering 14 languages, on the 22nd, with the other 21 languages getting their retail boxes by October 31. It's a damn fast rollout, especially given all of the terrain it's going to cover.

Stay tuned, because we're going to post more details on this pre-order business soon. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. Is this a good deal? Is it crap? And most importantly, are you going to pony up cash on Friday? [Windows Blog]

And don't forget to check out our Complete Guide to Windows 7, covering all the new features, plus our experiences with the Beta and RC1 releases.

The upgrades aren't trivial either—now the old-style MacBook almost matches the unibody model, spec for spec. The processor is updated to the newer Core 2 Duo, the RAM to 2GB (though still DDR2), and most importantly the integrated graphics to Nvidia's 9400m unit.

In other words, the extra $300 you have to spend to get a unibody model gets you a nicer-looking laptop, slight bump in HDD space, faster RAM, a proprietary display port and not much else. From the glass-half-full perspective this does mean that for once, $999 is all you'll have to spend to get a perfectly capable, latest-gen MacBook. [Apple via Engadget]

From the press release:

T-Mobile is pleased to announce that beginning yesterday, the company has ditched the handset upgrade fee for customers. The elimination of the $18 upgrade fee applies across-the-board to all handsets (including the T-Mobile G1) and in all channels (e.g., retail, online, etc.).

With consumers watching every dollar this holiday season, the savings come at a perfect time. Note however this is NOT a holiday promotion, as there is no specified end date; it's just another way T-Mobile is thanking its loyal customers.

We can only hope other carriers that continue to charge these fees will follow suit.

Previously, users had reported the existence of a dormant SIM slot inside the Mini 1000's WWAN module, and ability to hack the drivers to enable the hardware. Now that it's official, it's as easy as firing up connection manager 1.0 to get 3G going on the 10-inch netbook, albeit for an extra $200 (?!?!?!?!). In any case, the new and improved Mini 1000 is available from HP now, but dont forget, the MIE version is coming soon. [HP]

From Best Buy and Wirefly:

AT&T Cell Phone Upgrade
Am I Eligible for an AT&T Cell Phone Upgrade?
Not all Cingular/AT&T customers may qualify for a cell phone upgrade. At this time, AT&T Mobility allows these customers to upgrade with no upgrade fee when they commit to a new 2-year contract:

AT&T customers who have had 24 months of cell phone service since activation of their cell phone or since their last phone upgrade.
Certain AT&T customers may be eligible for a cell phone upgrade even if they have been in their current plan for less than two years (24 months), if they commit to a new 2-year contract and meet these eligibility requirements:

Customer has had a standard calling plan plus data services costing at least $68.99 a month but no more than $98.99 a month, and who has been in contract (and not had a phone upgrade) for 21 months or more,
or
Customer has had a standard calling plan plus data services costing $99 a month or more, and who has been in contract (and not upgraded) in the last 12 months.
A customer with a calling plan and data services of less than $69 who is 21 to 23 months into contract may upgrade for a fee and a commitment of an additional two-year service contract extension. No upgrade fee is assessed for any customers who are on a month-to-month agreement.

Note that AT&T upgrade eligibility may be further limited based on customer’s usage history, payment record, previous phone replacement, etc. Upgrade eligibility is solely determined by AT&T Mobility at its discretion.

If we had to guess one way or the other, this no-feature upgrade doesn't seem to be something Apple would do. They gave away 10.1 to 10.0 owners because 10.0 was lousy and needed a bugfix badly, but 10.5 Leopard works just fine. They probably wouldn't waste their goodwill on their point upgrades being $129-worthy by doing something like this. But you can't really tell what's going to happen at WWDC, really, and if there's a time to do OS news, it's at the dev conf. [Ars Technica]

While CompactFlash will still have lower read/write limitations, this development is important in opening a potential bottleneck as well as paving the way for faster technologies. Sounds good to us. Hit the jump for the full press release.

COMPACTFLASH ASSOCIATION DISPLAYING NEW CFAST™ CONNECTOR & PACKAGE AT CES 2008

CFast Utilizes SATA Interface for 3Gb/sec Interface Data Rate.

Palo Alto, California - January 4, 2008 - The CompactFlash Association (CFA) announces that CFast connectors and package will be displayed at CES 2008 in the CFA booth South 3 30166.

The CFast WG was formed in July 2007 to develop the CFast specification for a CompactFlash card with a SATA (Serial ATA) interface. CFA members interested in the SATA interface should apply for inclusion in the CFA's SATA working group.

Mr. Shigeto Kanda of Canon and the CFA chairman of the board said "The development of a CompactFlash card with a SATA interface will maintain the dominance of CompactFlash in the non-consumer (embedded systems, single board computers, data recorder, etc.) markets as well as promote its use in other applications such as digital SLR cameras and professional video cameras. Having the SATA interface will be a significant step for CompactFlash."

The current PATA (parallel ATA) interface provides up to a 133MB/second interface data rate. The SATA interface will provide interface data rates up to 3Gb/sec as well as compatibility with the SATA disk drive interfaces that are increasingly being used.

CompactFlash card slots are in over 360 digital cameras/video cameras and over 745 other electronic platforms including embedded systems, single board computers, data recorders, heart monitors, defibrillators, slot machines, etc.

CompactFlash cards are currently available up to 32GB with sustained data rates of 45MB/sec. and provide the dominant SSD flash storage solution for embedded systems, single board computers and the new multi-mega pixel DSLR cameras and other devices.

The CF+ and CompactFlash Standard ensures that today's and tomorrow's digital cameras will be compatible with faster and even higher capacity CF cards, as they become available.

In addition to CompactFlash data storage cards, there are CF cards that provide I/O capability. VGA, Ethernet, modem, serial, parallel, digital phone, GSM, Bluetooth, Ethernet wireless, wand & laser barcode scanners, finger print scanners, TV and GPS CF+ cards are all available.

CFA members can participate in the CFA CFast working group and access documentation as the CFast specification is developed.

With less material between the light and your eye, there's less obstruction and thereby more brightness.

Granted, the holes are made through a technique of nano-imprint lithograph, a resource-consuming technique. But researchers believe that the idea could be commercially viable within just three years. You don't need to mark it on your calendar, just know that better light is on the way.

The Mac Miniesque Gefen upconverts a small but decent selection sources to 1080p (2 HDMI and 3 analog sources), but what we find most promising is its ability to upconvert game consoles. While there's only so much improvement that upscaling can do, the Gefen Plus only delays the A/V signal by one frame, meaning that it's viable to play SNES' Super Mario World in semi-stunning 1080p. If you're interested, the Gefen Home Theater Scaler Plus runs $499. [product via slashgear]

RSS is getting a revamp and improvement, video clips will be searchable by scene and PSP Wi-Fi spots will start offering a few demos and wallpapers.

While Sony's recently gone on record that they are aiming to cut down on the amount of firmware updates they release, the PSP and PS3 are both quickly becoming multimedia powerhouses. If only the best functions were available in the US... [famitsu via kotaku]