Amazon adds laptops to trade-in program ahead of MacBook refresh

After many customer requests, Amazon has expanded its trade-in program to include mobile computers. As of yesterday, you can use the service to exchange your used laptops and netbooks for an Amazon gift card. To get started, search for eligible items here, provide information about the condition of your belongings, and use the supplied shipping label to send your package within one week.

Assuming your trade-in isn't rejected (in which case it'll be sent back to you), your Amazon account should be credited with the gift card. There's surprisingly little fine print and there are only a few real limitations: you must be 18 years old, live in the US, you can't send more than $1,250 worth of goods in a given trade-in and you can't send more than two of the same item in a three month period.

Whether by coincidence or not, Amazon updated its program only weeks before Apple is expected to refresh its MacBook lineup. The etailer's trade-in program seems to offer competitive rates compared to Apple. For instance, the late 2011 13.3-inch MacBook Pro (model MD313LL/A) is fetching a maximum of $625 on Amazon, whereas Apple's best rate is $605.25. However, you could get $900+ on eBay.

You might make more selling the items yourself, but that comes with extra responsibilities, so services like Amazon's are worthwhile for many people. The trade-in program also covers CDs, movies, books, games, cameras, tablets, smartphones, MP3 players and other electronics. In the case of textbooks, Amazon is running a test program at select colleges that let you exchange the books in person.

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Amazon adds laptops to trade-in program ahead of MacBook refresh

After many customer requests, Amazon has expanded its trade-in program to include mobile computers. As of yesterday, you can use the service to exchange your used laptops and netbooks for an Amazon gift card. To get started, search for eligible items here, provide information about the condition of your belongings, and use the supplied shipping label to send your package within one week.

Assuming your trade-in isn't rejected (in which case it'll be sent back to you), your Amazon account should be credited with the gift card. There's surprisingly little fine print and there are only a few real limitations: you must be 18 years old, live in the US, you can't send more than $1,250 worth of goods in a given trade-in and you can't send more than two of the same item in a three month period.

Whether by coincidence or not, Amazon updated its program only weeks before Apple is expected to refresh its MacBook lineup. The etailer's trade-in program seems to offer competitive rates compared to Apple. For instance, the late 2011 13.3-inch MacBook Pro (model MD313LL/A) is fetching a maximum of $625 on Amazon, whereas Apple's best rate is $605.25. However, you could get $900+ on eBay.

You might make more selling the items yourself, but that comes with extra responsibilities, so services like Amazon's are worthwhile for many people. The trade-in program also covers CDs, movies, books, games, cameras, tablets, smartphones, MP3 players and other electronics. In the case of textbooks, Amazon is running a test program at select colleges that let you exchange the books in person.

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Posted in: ahead,Amazon,laptops,MacBook,program,refresh,tradein

Amazon Cloud Drive gets desktop app for Mac and Windows

Amazon's Cloud Drive has been around for a while, but yesterday the company made it much easier to upload files from its servers by releasing dedicated apps fow Windows and OS X. The move comes hot on the heels of Google Drive's launch last week and Microsoft revamping its SkyDrive cloud storage solution.

Unlike the aforementioned two, as well as services like Dropbox, Cloud Drive doesn't create a specific folder that syncs its content automatically to your Amazon-hosted storage. Rather, you use a contextual menu or drag files onto the cloud icon in your taskbar to upload them, and have to manually re-upload stuff if you make changes that you want stored in the cloud. When you want to download or manage and move files to appropriate folders on your Cloud Drive account, you have to access the service via a web browser.

There's no support for syncing data between multiple devices using the cloud as an intermediary, and you also don't get any features to share files publicly or with other users. In other words, it’s a simple one-way tool for uploading specific files or folders to the cloud, with the ability to pause or resume interrupted transfers.

We wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon adding some of these features with later builds of the application -- it seems like the way to go if they want to compete with other cloud-based storage providers.

Amazon Cloud Drive comes with 5GB of free storage space and is available to anyone with an account at Amazon.com. You can upgrade to several tiered packages at a dollar per gigabyte: 20GB for $20 a year, 50GB for $50 and so on up to 1000GB. Songs purchased through Amazon MP3 don't count toward your Cloud Drive storage limit on any plan, while paid tiers also allow unlimited storage of digital music acquired elsewhere.

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Posted in: Amazon,Cloud,desktop,Drive,Windows