Now it appears that a handful of Toyota dealers raised their prices to offset the government rebate and cash in on the high demand for its vehicles.

DailyTech has an exclusive inside look at some Toyota dealers’ so-called “market value adjustments” (MVAs) on popular vehicles such as the 2010 third-generation Prius hybrid.  With the typical sticker price of the Prius coming it at around $26,000, many dealers across the country have been charging $3,000 to $10,000 markups, more than offsetting the “Cash for Clunkers” rebate of $3,000 to $4,500 in some cases.

On the forum PriusChat, one customer reports, “We live in Lake Placid Fl. and could not deal with the dealer here. One charge they wanted was a market adjustment for this area of $3999.99 also dealer fees of $695.00.”

A number of others on the same site share similar stories of their own.  States one buyer, “A certain dealer in NJ that I am not at liberty to mention charges 6500 over sticker and calls it fair market value adjustment. luckily I found another one close by with better morals. They are charging sticker price and not a penny more.”

Speaking with a trusted source who had recently been shopping for a Prius, DailyTech was able to confirm one such dealer that was spiking prices.  Located in the heart of the U.S. auto industry, Suburban Toyota of Troy, Michigan was charging more than a $2,000 markup on a Prius it had in store. 

States our source, “Suburban Toyota in Troy was one of the ones that wanted a $2,000 additional fee over the MSRP, to the best of my recollection. The other places weren’t named, but only referred to by a salesman who was offended by the other dealerships charging what he said was price gouging. I thought it was like ticket scalping. They know they have a hot item and could probably sell all they have, even for $5,000 additional MSRP. The Prius is a great car but they didn’t produce enough, especially ones with the amazing solar roof that keeps your car cool when it’s parked in the summer.”

Hoping to gain further insight into this, DailyTech posed as an eager buyer and called Suburban Toyota.  The following is our conversation:

DailyTech:  “I’ve been calling all over trying to find a new 2010 Prius and no dealerships have any in stock.  Do you have any?”
Sales Agent:  “We do… it’s been sold to Ford but the sale isn’t finalized yet.”
DailyTech: “But I heard from another dealer that I might have to pay more than the MSRP on it — something about MVA or something like that — is that true?”
Sales Agent:  “Yes”
DailyTech:  “How much more?”
Sales Agent:  “About $4,000 to $5,000.”

The sales agent went on to elaborate that we might be able to buy it if we moved fast.  The agent explained, “When one comes in, typically it’s sold before it even gets the chance to hit the lot.”

DailyTech then proceeded to contact six other Toyota dealerships in lower Michigan.  None of the other dealers had stock in, but when related a slightly altered version of the story of the MSRP markup by Suburban, they all said that they sold their vehicles at MSRP.  A couple expressed shock or surprise at the development, but at least one commented, “I know who you’re talking about.”

It appears that most dealers are clean, but based on the feedback DailyTech has picked up on in various Prius forums, there are dealerships in at least several states that are similarly price gouging on the 2010 Prius via MVA’s. 

Toyota was contacted by DailyTech and we are awaiting their comment.

Markups such as these are really nothing new, but are typically limited to low-production vehicles or vehicles that have been recently introduced.  The Prius itself has also been the victim of occasional price gouging since its introduction in the U.S.  While it’s unknown exactly how many people were willing to pay the MVA’s on the Prius, the fact that the elevated MSRP erased or even surpassed the Cash for Clunkers rebate was likely a hard pill to swallow for many buyers.

Update 1: One of the dealerships DailyTech contacted earlier this morning received a vehicle this afternoon and offered it to our “buyer” at MSRP.  This essentially invalidates the argument that no vehicles are available on the local market.

At this year’s conference, IBM is tossing its new Power7 CPU into the fray and many expect it to walk away with a win against new products from Sun, Intel, and AMD. The Power7 CPU is an eight-core CPU that is built using a 45nm process. Much of the expected performance improvements in the chip are not in clock speed, but in the processors ability to work in parallel and in the amount of cache it has.

Power7 is expected to support as much or more cache than the competition and have bandwidth for threads and memory bandwidth as high as any of the competing chips.

Analyst Nathan Brookwood from Insight64 said, “I am sure Power7 will be the fastest processor around, probably faster than Intel’s Nehalem in some benchmarks.”

Among the advances in the Power7 CPU is the use of a mix of SRAM and embedded DRAM technology. The two types of memory are packed into one die along with the processor; previous generations of the Power processor from IBM used separate dies.

IBM’s Bill Starke said, “We knew when we hit this level of multi-core design, we would have to make the shift (to one die for CPU and cache). We’ve been talking about this for several processor generations.”

The Power7 has an eDRAM cache and a few other tricks that allow IBM to go beyond the 300Gb/second bandwidth range. The CPU runs a lower clock frequency than the Power6 CPU it replaces did, but makes up for that with better support for multithreading, which has been bumped from two threads per core to as many as four per core.

IBM is reportedly running systems in its labs with up to 32 of the Power7 CPUs inside.

A researcher for the University of Utah named Graeme Milton has developed a new cloaking method that may someday allow buildings and other large objects to be shielded from things like sonar, radar, earthquakes, and even tsunamis.

Milton said, “We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source.”

He continued, “It’s a brand new method of cloaking. It is two-dimensional, but we believe it can be extended easily to three dimensions, meaning real objects could be cloaked. It’s called active cloaking, which means it uses devices that actively generate electromagnetic fields rather than being composed of ‘metamaterials’ [exotic metallic substances] that passively shield objects from passing electromagnetic waves.”

Milton’s new breakthrough will allow for the cloaking of objects much larger than a few particles. Milton says that radar microwaves move on a wavelength of about four inches so using his cloaking method an object of about 40-inches could be hidden. The scientists have been able to cloak a copper cylinder about an inch wide in experiments so far.

The cloaking method may be used to cloak objects from incoming waves like sound waves, sea waves, and seismic waves. This may one day lead to the ability to cloak buildings from earthquakes, oil rigs form tsunamis, and submarines from sonar. The researchers do acknowledge that practical optical cloaking for invisibility is years away.

The first cloaking technologies used metamaterials to cloak objects. Milton’s new cloaking method sea waves to cancel out other waves. He said, “The problem with metamaterials is that their behavior depends strongly on the frequency you are trying to cloak from. So it is difficult to obtain broadband cloaking. Maybe you’d be invisible to red light, but people would see you in blue light.”

Milton’s cloaking devices uses “destructive interference” and is very similar in principal to the noise cancellation headphones many people use on long air flights.

TomTom has announced that its iPhone GPS navigation app is now available in the App Store. The app is one of the more expensive available costing $99.99. AT&T has its own navigation application called AT&T Navigator that is free for the initial download, but comes saddled with a $10 per month subscription fee. The subscription fee over the course of a full year would make the AT&T navigation app more expensive than the new TomTom offering.

The TomTom app uses the iPhone touchscreen for navigation and lets users tap the screen to get from a starting point to their destination. The app will also work in portrait or landscape mode depending on how the phone is turned.

Features of the application include the ability to meet with friends by using the contacts menu and the ability to find local restaurants and then call for reservations. TomTom also includes its IQRoutes feature that calculates the most efficient route based on what real drivers are finding and actual road speed data. This allows the app to route users around accidents and construction.

TomTom is also offering a kit specially designed to work with the app and the iPhone. The kit offers enhanced GPS features and a mount to hold the device on the windshield of your car. There are other GPS navigation apps available on the App Store other than TomTom’s offering and AT&T’s own Navigator app. EWeek reports that the Navigon MobileNavigator app is available for $69.99 until August 31 and offers many of the same features the TomTom app offers.

The system uses the Traffic Message Channel data broadcast system to pick up data about jams, and though gathering the TMC data was slow, the system worked well. When you’re at or nearing your destination, Clever Parking comes into play.

A blue ‘P’ icon appears on the screen. Tap it, and you’ll be navigated to the nearest car park. It’s a simple idea that makes perfect sense. Other features like Reality View Pro, which show a CGI version of the road ahead, are also praiseworthy.

We found Lane Assistant Pro, which guides you verbally through tortuous motorway junctions, very helpful too.

With a £200 price tag, however, this is a luxury buy. You’ll need to be in the mood to treat yourself, but if you are, this is the machine.

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To charge the unit, just unclip one panel, flip it over and reconnect it to the other, then place in direct sunlight.

On a bright UK summer day, charging takes around nine hours, but clouds or being behind glass mean waiting two to five times as long. You can also charge the Pro in about four hours from a USB port.

Once full, you can use the bundled adaptors to recharge an iPod, iPhone, mobile phone, and just about anything that uses a 4mm charging tip or a mini USB connector.

Unusually, the Pro can output 9.5V to power heavy-duty gadgets, and the bundled CamCaddy recharges just about every camera battery out there (3.2-7.9V).

Battery capacity is less than some other units, but its versatility means the Pro is the best choice around.

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The life of 16-year-old Deng Senshan was cut tragically short when several counselors at a camp for internet addiction gave him a beating which proved fatal.  The boy had been sent by his parents to the camp — the Guangxi Qihang Survival Training Camp, a branch set up by Guangzhou Self-help Teenager Development Training Center — in hopes of ridding their son of his preoccupation with the internet.

Deng Fei, the boy’s father, paid 7,000 yuan ($1,024) to send his son to the camp for one month after he graduated from Ziyuan No. 2 High School in Guilin in July.  The camp sounded promising, assuring “close management with training teachers.”  The camp’s mission statement also solemnly promised, “Our methods are tough but do not include torture or other methods that might damage a child’s health.”

That statement turned out to be the stark opposite of reality.  The camp quickly put Deng Senshan in solitary confinement.  A few days later the deadly beating occurred when camp counselors felt the boy was running to slow during a workout. 

Realizing how severely they injured the boy, they took him to a local hospital, where he died after only 10 minutes.  According to the medical records, “The boy showed no response to emergency treatment.  He arrived with a very weak heartbeat and could not breathe. He was exhausted after being beaten. We were unable to save him.”

A man surnamed Xia, who serves as the camp’s principal, steadfastly claims the boy was not beaten and was taken to the hospital for a fever.  However, the boy’s father says that he had blood on his face and that his wrists featured bruises and other signs of being handcuffed.

Mr. Deng Fei is furious at his son’s apparent murder and is seeking justice.  He states, “My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an Internet addiction when I left him at the camp.  The police informed us that our child had died on Monday morning. We can’t believe our only son was beaten to death.  The teachers promised me that they would not use any physical punishment on my son when I dropped him off.  We’re planning to sit before the local government for a protest tomorrow. If they don’t give us justice, we will go to the camp to confront them.”

The three camp counselors responsible for the beating have been taken into custody.

In a land where public executions are considered acceptable, still, it seems like he has a good shot at getting his justice.  However, one must wonder whether the corporal punishments inflicted by Chinese law enforcement are just an example of violence and brutality begetting more of the same.

On sale at retailer Maplin, for £180, you can now get your mitts on a high-definition enabled Metronics set-top box, a 48cm Freesat mesh antenna and various accoutrements.

As WotSat points out – you will still need a drill and a spirit level (not to mention a ladder) to get yourself on the Freesat bandwagon, but there is a helping hand with the signal.

Hot and cold

"The Sat HD 100 has an onscreen signal meter that should be sufficient to fine-tune the signal with a someone shouting ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ from the living room," notes WotSat editor Alex Lane.

The kit has got the full backing of Freesat, although we should point out that falling off your roof can be detrimental to your health.

Via WotSat blog

The feature, however, was only in rough form in the beta candidate and previous release candidate builds.  Yesterday Microsoft release a new release candidate that at last added a near-finalized version of this functionality.  The build is available here and runs Windows XP SP3. 

Aware of security risks, Microsoft has accompanied the build with a warning that users should install anti-malware and antivirus software to protect Windows XP.  It has been speculated that malicious users could exploit the virtual machine via vulnerabilities — such as lack of ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) or a Internet Explorer Protected Mode — to perform guest-to-host attacks.  This problem is minimized by the fact that the install comes with a firewall and that Microsoft will be offering free antivirus support for XP as well as Vista and Windows 7 this fall (a second beta is expected to drop soon).

Brandon LeBlanc, a Windows communications manager at Microsoft comments on the new RC build, stating, “Windows XP Mode is specially designed for small and medium-sized businesses to help ease the migration process to Windows 7 by providing additional compatibility for their older productivity applications. The newly updated Windows XP Mode now works with the RC and RTM versions of the Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise SKUs.”

The differences in functionality of the XP Mode are subtle, but significant. Windows XP applications running on the Windows 7 task bar can be accessed by right clicking.  Disk sharing between Windows 7 and Windows XP mode can now be disabled and users can choose where there Windows XP differencing files are stored.  USB devices can now operate within Windows XP without needing to go into fullscreen mode, useful for accessing content from programs like Word 2003 running in XP Mode.  Finally, a tutorial about XP Mode is now included, a great feature for new users.

Tom Quillin, director of Intel vPro Ecosystem Development lauds the feature, praising that its not only a fun toy for home users, but a valuable asset to businesses.  He states, “The increasing prevalence worldwide of PCs based on Intel Core 2 processors with Intel Virtualization Technology is enabling a variety of new applications that provide business opportunities for greater manageability, security and cost reduction. Used with Windows XP Mode, Intel Virtualization Technology helps small- and medium-sized businesses migrate more efficiently from Windows XP to Windows 7.

They do all kinds of useful little jobs. Like holding up your roof, keeping the wind out and dulling the noise from your bickering neighbours and their ASBO-generating kids. But did you know that CPUs also have walls?

OK, we’re only talking metaphorically. But a wall is the best way of thinking about the thermal limits of any given CPU. And like real walls, thermal walls are best avoided at high speeds. At this stage, you might be wondering what all this has to do with AMD’s latest speed bump of its 45nm Phenom II X4 processor, the 3.4GHz 965 Black Edition.

Well, there’s a bit more to this story yet. So bear with us, it will all make sense in the end.

You see, the lives of most CPU designs tend to follow a similar path. The longer they’re on sale, the more mature the underlying architecture becomes. Tweaks are made here and there to improve the likes of efficiency and clockability. Big gains tend to be made at first followed by diminishing returns as room for improvement decreases.

Consequently, the gap between the most expensive examples of a given CPU design and the cheapest ones tends to shrink over time.

By the time a chip family is ready to drop off the price lists, the budget variants are often capable of pretty much the same overclocked frequencies as the most expensive. They all hit that annoying wall at the same speed, in other words.

When it comes to AMD’s 45nm Phenom II X4 chips, it seems the big gains have already been made. The new 965 BE runs just 200MHz faster than its predecessor, the 955 Black Edition. If that’s sounds pretty undramatic, it delivers even less additional overclocking headroom.

If our test chip is anything to go by, 3.7GHz is the best you can hope for using stock voltages. That’s just 100MHz better than the 955.

With that kind of incremental increase, it seems likely that there’s not much more to come from AMD’s 45nm family of processors in terms of clockability. Of course, speeds well in excess of 3.7GHz are possible with fancy cooling and tweaked voltages.

Problem is, voltage tweakery is a bit of a black art at the best of times. Moreover, Intel’s 2.66GHz Core i7 processor will hit a heady 3.9GHz on stock voltages, proving that it’s possible to achieve great results with zero overclocking skills.

Having said all that, we still prefer AMD’s simpler platform proposition. With the arrival of Intel’s Lynnfield CPU (see page xx for our in-depth analysis), Intel has introduced yet another new socket.

Meanwhile, AMD has gone to great lengths to maintain compatibility, both backwards and forwards. We just wish its CPUs were a tiny bit faster.

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