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File this one under 'A' for "alleged," but according to one pissed off cell phone service subscriber who wrote into The Consumerist, AT&T's store employees have a history of telling bold faced lies to boost their commission.

That's quite the accusation, but according to an anonymous Consumerist reader, who we'll hereafter refer to as Walt Whislteblower, it's true. According to Walt, poor service on T-Mobile's network in the Northampton, Massachusetts area prompted him and his wife to switch providers to AT&T, who they heard from other people in the area had good coverage. Walt says an AT&T store employee offered to waive the activation fees, gave the couple free phones, and tossed in a month of free GPS service for good measure.

Not a bad score, except that none of it turned out to be true. Walt says he and his wife were billed for all the charges that were supposed to have been taken off. Walt's wife called AT&T's billing department, and what they heard was "shocking and unexpected honesty."

"The person in the billing department was honest and frank," Walk explains. "She said that the employees in AT&T's stores tend to tell people they waive the fees etc., but it's usually not true. Their commissions -- so she said -- are based on the amount of money made, and they have no interest in taking charges off. So the activation fee wasn't taken off, the phones weren't free, and that GPS service (that we never wanted, but were told would remove itself) also had to be de-activated by us. The lady at the billing department took off the charges, and then she complained to my wife how the employees we had talked to had literally lied to us."

Walk went on to explain that he was told this is a constant problem, but is it? Who really knows -- we're only hearing one side of the story here, and it would seem that reps who routinely did this would end up in hot water, or at the very least a few heated confrontations as customers come back to the store, bill in hand.

Has something like this ever happened to you, either with AT&T or another service carrier? Post your customer support horror stories in the comments section below.

Asus' G73Jh series notebooks already had the gaming chops for gamers looking for a desktop replacement, which was largely the result of the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5870 graphics chip inside. Fresh out of the factory, however, are new models sporting Nvidia's Fermi-based GTX 460M graphics.

Both the ROG G35JW (15-inch) and G73JW (17-inch) models come with the upgraded graphics with 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 (the Mobility HD 5870 shipped with 1GB). According to Asus, these are the first machines to sport Nvidia's mobile Fermi part.

Other than the graphics, the specs are mostly the same, including up to an Intel Core i7 820QM processor, up to 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory, up to a 750GB 7200RPM hard drive, Blu-ray options, 8-in-1 memory card reader, 2MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and so forth. The new models also ship with a USB 3.0 port, which wasn't included with the previous gen units.

Image Credit: Asus

The next time someone asks about that bulge coming from your khakis, you can confidently respond, "Why yes, yes that is a supercomputer in my pocket, and I am happy to see you."

You'll be telling the truth if you install MIT's new software designed to perform complex simulations on mobile phones. The software simulates physical phenomena, such has how cracks form in building materials and how fluids flow in irregular channels, crunching the numbers in seconds that would typically take a supercomputer hours to calculate.

As the eggheads at MIT explain it, the software is designed for situations where the general form of a problem is already known in advance, just not the details.

"This is a very relevant situation," says David Knezevic, a postdoc in the department who helped lead the project. "Often in engineering contexts, you know a priori that your problem is parametrized, but you don't know until you get into the field what parameters you're interested in."

MIT News has a whole bunch more on the topic right here.

Image Credit: MIT News

With all the hoopla surrounding tablets, it's easy to forget that there's still a market out there for netbooks. Samsung hasn't forgotten, which is readying the N350, a new netbook with dual-mode LTE and HSPA+ built-in.

Aside from the 4G connectivity, this new netbook sports mostly familiar specs, albeit around Intel's recently released Atom N550 platform. The N350 ships with a 10.1-inch screen, 1GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB hard drive spinning at 5400RPM, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, memory card reader, USB 2.0 ports, and Windows 7 Starter edition.

German website Mini-Notebook-Laptop.com has the N350 shipping commercially this Fall for 429 Euros, or about $550 in American greenbacks.

Image Credit: Samsung

Nokia leads the world in cell phone shipments, but they're not the first manufacturer that comes to mind when shopping smartphones. Companies like Apple, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung stand in the smartphone lime light, and Nokia would like nothing more than to join them.

Towards that end, Nokia is gearing up to introduce several new smartphones next week, according to a Reuters report. Among the new models will be the E7, Nokia's new flagship smartphone with a fairly large touchscreen and hardware keyboard.

Another new model slated for release is the N8, the first phone to sport the Symbian 3 platform.

"As the N8 starts shipping and other devices are unveiled, Nokia will be hoping that it can lay the foundation stones for its recovery given the onslaught of competitive products currently hitting the market," said Ben Wood, director of research at CSS Insight. "It has made some big commitments on fixing Symbian and its first flagship product using the refreshed Symbian operating system. Failure is not an option.

Part of the challenge for Nokia will be in convincing developers to create apps for the Symbian platform, which so far hasn't been as easy as one might imagine considering Symbian's dominating mobile phone market share.

The tablet market continues to inch closer to a competitive field instead of just a one-man show dominated by Apple. ExoPC, for example, is now taking preorders for its upcoming Windows 7-based slate.

Preorders were originally limited to 1,200, but now it's open to everyone. The 32GB version will run you CAD $649 (about $625) while the 64GB is being sold for CAD $749 (about $720). Both models come with up to 160MB/s SanDisk P4 mini-SSDs and a rated battery life of up to four hours.

One change since the last time we heard about these tablets is that GPS has been pulled from the 64GB version. ExoPC said it wasn't able to get it to work right on the prototype and doesn't have enough time to track down another provider, so they're dumping GPS altogether, at least for now.

Enticed? More preordering info here.

Image Credit: ExoPC

It doesn't matter whether you spent $500 or $2,500 on your laptop, chances are the interior came riddled with stickers. Popping open the $1,600 Asus G73Jh-A1, for example, you'll find no less than five stickers advertising the processor (Intel Core i7), OS (Windows 7), graphics (ATI Mobility Radeon), sound effects (EAX Advanced HD), and overall system specs.

Despite the prominence of stickers on laptops at every price point, not everyone is on board with this, namely AMD, according to a recent report in The New York Times.

"As AMD points out, it's like buying a new, luxury car -- and discovering that it comes with non-removable bumper stickers that promote the motor oil, the floor mat maker, the windshield-fluid company, and the pine tree air freshener you have no intention of ever using," writes David Pogue of The NYT.

According to Pogue, AMD is planning a switch to new stickers in 2011 that will peel off a lot easier without leaving behind any residue. What's more, AMD is considering dumping its sticker program completely. Until then, AMD is making its sticker program optional, so even if a company decides not to slap an AMD sticker onto their notebook, they'll still receive the same marketing dollars.

What's your stand on laptop stickers -- nuisance or no big deal?

Don't waste your time trying to figure out if Rydeen's new GCOM701 device is a bona fide slate or a Portable Navigation Device (PND), according to Rydeen, it qualifies as both.

On the tablet front, this 7-inch slate comes armed with an 800MHz Amrada 166 processor from Marvell, 2GB of DDR2 memory, and up to 32GB of external storage (microSD card slot). It also comes with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, and support for a whole host of picture, video, and audio formats all wrapped in Google's Android platform.

Rydeen says you can also use the GCOM701 as a PND "complete with 4 million Points of Interest (POIs), powered by Navteq.

Look for this one to ship sometime in November. No word yet on price.

Image Credit: Rydeen

Apple announced on late Friday that it’s Ping Social networking service has hit 1 million users since its launch 48 hours ago. Few doubted that the service would be an instant hit since, like Google Buzz, it was shoehorned into existing products that we are forced to use everyday.

According to Apple “One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping,“ said Eddy Cue, vice president of Internet Services. “As many more people download iTunes 10 in the coming weeks, we expect the Ping community to continue growing.“

It will be interesting to see if Ping catches on in any meaningful way, but it has a number of interesting limitations to overcome. Anyone who tried out the service since launch will know that unless you’re a Lady Gaga or Yo-Yo Ma fan most of your favorite artists have yet to establish a profile. This is likely because of the veil of secrecy maintained around all Apple products, but they would have been far better off risking an information leak than unveiling a service that many will try once, get frustrated with and never return to.

We are also left scratching our heads as to why we need to use iTunes to check our feed, haven’t these guys heard of a web browser? Time will tell if they can iron out the kinks, but can we at least agree iTunes did not need any more features?

SD memory cards are the format of choice for mobile devices, but as megapixels continue to rise and HD video recording becomes the norm, flash memory speeds will become an increasingly important bottleneck. SDHC cards are cutting it for now, but according to CNET the SD Card association isn’t resting on its laurels and is hard at work on the next generation of flash designs.

Modern high-speed SD cards have data-transfer buses with a maximum theoretical speed of about 104MB per second, but in reality most cards are yielding speeds much slower than this. The new standard called SD 4.0 will increase the theoretical maximum speed to 300MB per second, and the association believes this will give them the headroom they need to build faster cards. The higher speeds are accomplished by adding an additional set of pins to the bottom face of the card, but the dimensions and backwards compatibility will be maintained.

The specification is expected to be completed by Q1 2011 meaning we could see products with the new standard by the end of 2011 or early 2012.