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A lot of our case reviews lately have been for enclosures that hover around the price point and then range below. The big, expensive ones are exciting and ultimately many of them are definitely worth your hard earned money, but what about the friend who's on an extreme budget? What if you're on an extreme budget? The case is often one of the easiest and safest places to cut money out of the cost of a custom build, and BitFenix has been diligently serving the cash-strapped for a while now. Today we have on hand the new Outlaw, and we'll show you just how much case you can get for fifty bucks.

CANADIAN GADGET MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has lost cash after selling Playbooks at a discount failed to rid it of excess inventory.

The company announced today that it will record a pre-tax provision in the third quarter of fiscal 2012 of approximately 5 million, 0 million after tax, related to its inventory valuation of Blackberry Playbook tablets.

The firm said that it has “a high level of Blackberry Playbook inventory” and “now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers”.

RIM said several factors, including “recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market” and a “delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software”,  caused the inventory buildup.

The company said it will “record a provision that reflects the current market environment and allows it to expand upon the aggressive level of promotional activity recently employed by the company in order to drive Playbook adoption around the world”.

It added, “Based on the positive response to the promotions that are underway in select markets, RIM believes this strategy will accelerate adoption of its QNX-based platform by consumers and enterprises, as well as help to drive the development of a vibrant application ecosystem in advance of its next generation BlackBerry smartphones.”

RIM only sold 150,000 Blackberry Playbook tablets in the third quarter, but said that sell-through to end customers, based on RIM’s internal data, was higher than this number.

The company said that consumer and enterprise customers that buy a new Blackberry Playbook at the current promotional pricing, along with existing Playbook customers, will be able to upgrade to the enhanced Playbook OS 2.0 software at no additional charge when it becomes available in February 2012.

The company said that it will take a charge of m related to the service outage that occurred in the quarter, so its third quarter revenue is “expected to be slightly lower than the previously guided range of .3-5.6 billion”.

“RIM is committed to the BlackBerry Playbook and believes the tablet market is still in its infancy. Although a number of factors have led to the need for an inventory provision in the third quarter, we believe the Playbook, which will be further enhanced with the upcoming Playbook OS 2.0 software, is a compelling tablet for consumers that also offers unique security and manageability features for the enterprise,” said Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEO of Research In Motion.

“Early results from recent Playbook promotions indicate a significant increase in demand across most channels. We look forward to continuing to grow the installed base of Playbook users and to attracting more and more developers to expand the volume of applications, content and services that leverage the power of the industry leading QNX-based platform.”

The company said it shipped approximately 14.1 million Blackberry smartphones in the third quarter ended November 26, 2011, which was in line with previous guidance. It’s finalized third quarter results will be announced on 15 December.

Whether we’ll see fire sales reminiscent of HP isn’t certain, but it looks like RIM might have realised that £500 for a tablet that isn’t the Ipad just isn’t going to sell.

The Blackberry maker did a “buy two get one free” offer recently, and Playbooks have been available for £250 from certain channels, on and off.

One thing is for sure, selling tablets for £100 certainly gets your sales up, but it’s just not so good for profits. µ

MAKER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP has announced that it will make cut price Touchpads available to its employees.

An email from Stephen Dewitt, SVP and GM of WebOS at HP, states that employees will have “one last chance” to buy a Touchpad through the Employee Purchase Program (EPP). The 16GB model will cost and the 32GB version will be priced at 9 with a limit of one per employee, according to Techcrunch.

Dewitt said, “I’m pleased to share that starting at 9:00am (Pacific Time) on Wednesday, September 28th, HP employees in the United States will have one last chance to buy an HP TouchPad through the Employee Purchase Program on a first come first served basis.”

Stock will be limited so it is unlikely that there will be enough units to go around. Even if employees don’t want a Touchpad, it will be worth their while getting one to then sell it on for profit.

After what has been something of a disaster with its tablet, it will only be available through the online EPP store and won’t be exchangeable for any other products.

Earlier this month we reported that HP was offering UK customers a refund to make up the difference for Touchpads and Pre 3 smartphones purchased at higher prices than the discounted amount. However, this offer did not include any purchases made by HP employees.

The move will “complete the process of clearing out inventories and winding down manufacturing operations,” said Dewitt. µ

GERMAN MANUFACTURER Aiptek has launched a cheap as chips glassless 3D camcorder.

As seemingly the technology fad of the day, 3D display capability has been stuffed into nearly every form of digital display device. Now the flood shows no signs of abating with an entry-level camcorder that’ll be yours for merely £199.99 from Firebox.com.

Panasonic announced that its high-end HDC-SDT750 camcorder would be first to market a few days ago. Nintendo also said it would be the first company to offer a glassless 3D product with its 3DS handheld console. Well Aiptek has beat it to market and pulled one out the bag first. The company is offering an affordable 3D product for the average Joe here in Blighty. No one saw that coming.

Aiptek’s 3D camcorder was designed with portable portrait dimensions. The 3D trickery comes courtesy of two separate lenses and image sensors for recording videos in 3D.

Actually, it’s one up for Aiptek we say because Panasonic’s HDC-SDT750 only uses a conversion lens that records two separate images. Aiptek’s camcorder has an added image sensor to record at 720p.

The video can be viewed without glasses on the Aiptek display using a parallax barrier, which sounds exactly like the same technology Sharp used in its Nintendo 3D display.

3D content can be uploaded to Youtube 3D using the USB connection and even convert to old school anaglyph, with the 1950′s retro glasses supplied. The 3D can even be displayed on an active shutter 3D TV using a mini HDMI port.

The camcorder can record in HD 2D and has a 5MP camera as well. Aiptek reckons the battery will last for one-half hour and the camcorder also supports SD cards. µ