The DOJ announced that after investigating the joining of Sirius and XM, they would take no action to stop the merger.

Official statement:

“After a careful and thorough review of the proposed transaction, the Division concluded that the evidence does not demonstrate that the proposed merger of XM and Sirius is likely to substantially lessen competition, and that the transaction therefore is not likely to harm consumers. The Division reached this conclusion because the evidence did not show that the merger would enable the parties to profitably increase prices to satellite radio customers for several reasons, including: a lack of competition between the parties in important segments even without the merger; the competitive alternative services available to consumers; technological change that is expected to make those alternatives increasingly attractive over time; and efficiencies likely to flow from the transaction that could benefit consumers.

“The Division’s investigation indicated that the parties are not likely to compete with respect to many segments of the satellite radio business even in the absence of the merger. Because customers must acquire equipment that is specialized to the satellite radio service to which they subscribe, and which cannot receive the other provider’s signal, there has never been significant competition for customers who have already subscribed to one or the other service. For potential new subscribers, past competition has resulted in XM and Sirius entering long-term, sole-source contracts that provide incentives to all of the major auto manufacturers to install their radios in new vehicles. The car manufacturer channel accounts for a large and growing share of all satellite radio sales; yet, as a result of these contracts, there is not likely to be significant further competition between the parties for satellite radio equipment and service sold through this channel for many years. In the retail channel, where the parties likely would continue to compete to attract new subscribers absent the merger, the Division found that the evidence did not support defining a market limited to the two satellite radio firms that would exclude various alternative sources for audio entertainment, and similarly did not establish that the combined firm could profitably sustain an increased price to satellite radio consumers. Substantial cost savings likely to flow from the transaction also undermined any inference of competitive harm. Finally, the likely evolution of technology in the future, including the expected introduction in the next several years of mobile broadband Internet devices, made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term. Accordingly, the Division has closed its investigation of the proposed merger.”

Matt Ryan

Yesterday, Steve Jobs brought the MacBook Air to the world in a big way. The initial design is amazing. A notebook you can fit inside a manila envelope that features two gigs of RAM, an 80 gig hard drive with 64 gig flash option, and a new flavor of multi-touch goodness. This notebook has all the bells and whistles that one comes to expect from Apple over the past decade.

Steve Jobs has predicted the end of the optical drive, which has a portion of the tech community blinking in thought over what this means. It means that in order to achieve this thin architecture, there was no room for the components of an optical drive. This reminds me of the day Steve Jobs gave all the reasons that video was not going to be on the iPod, only to add it to the feature list once they discovered how to play video on a device without sacrificing size. I’ll predict that an optical drive will continue to be available on future releases of the PowerBook and MacBook. The fact that you have to rely on a networked system that allows you install software to utilize their optical drives in order to take advantage of the technology on the go is rather annoying. Burning a disc for a client on the road is still common practice, as is watching a DVD. Let’s face it, 80 gigs doesn’t store as much content as it used to. There are of course workarounds, though I can see a portion of the potential buyers of this new system being turned away by this.

If you are on a trip that takes longer than four or five hours, you will find yourself in dire need of an outlet should you need to do some work on the plane or wherever you may traveling. Being unable to carry extra batteries to give yourself extra time when unable to reach a plug is a strong setback for mobile users. Should the battery go bad, you’ll need to bring it in for servicing and pay $129.00 for a new battery.

This is a brilliant design, and one I am very happy is coming to the world of portables, though it appears that it is not quite ready for prime time. Just as with the iPhone early adopters that long for 3G, I’m going to hold out for second or third gen before grabbing one of these ultra-thin wonders. Great job Apple, despite these minor setbacks.

Matt Ryan

I’m sitting at a desk with an iPod from before color screens, a Zune first generation, an old Palm Handspring, a Palm Tungsten E, and a few other gadgets of yesteryear. As the Frugal Geek, it seems only fair that I attempt to find a way to recycle old tech short of donating it all to my local Goodwill. I donate a lot of my old equipment, though I’m interested in how the community recycles their devices for their own purposes. My question to the community at large is, what do you do with your old tech?

One suggestion I can offer for the Tungsten E is that it makes a great palm-size reader. The Sony reader is a great invention and has a useful purpose of its own, though with the Palm™ reader, the Tungsten E shines as a useful reading device. Unfortunately, neither the iPod Classic nor my Blackjack have or would have that ability to any degree of usefulness.

Do you have any handy tips or tricks to make that old iPod worth keeping charged? Have you hacked any of the old devices and made them useful again? Do you still use old Palm devices, and if so, what for?

Please leave a comment below with your handy tip, trick, or suggestion.

Matt of MattRyan.TV

Tags: mobile, device, old, previous, model, frugal geek, matt ryan