5 Tech Gadgets I Would Like to Buy in 2009
So as many of you have undoubtedly have heard, I am getting married in September, and with that means Jenn and I are going to be getting our own place. Although we eventually will buy a house we are going to more then likely to start with an apartment which gives me a little extra breathing room when it comes to spending money on gadgets. So with that being said lets check out five items I would like to purchase this year. Will I actually do so? Probably not, but its always fun to dream.
#5: DirecTV HD-DVR
This is one item that I can almost guarantee I will be purchasing, unless the place we move into doesn't allow DirecTV, if it does this is a for sure must have. Jenn has a standard DVR and I have an HD-receiver right now and it seriously time to combine the two into one box. I love watching TV and Jenn does to so we often like to watch our shows on the weekend, especially when work gets hectic so having this ability especially in High Definition will be critical. Can you say two of them? One for our master bedroom and one for the living room!
#4: Roomba Vacuum
So I don't plan on Jenn and I having that large of a place and I know one of my duties around the house is going to be to vacuum. Why Vacuum though when you can have a Roomba do it for you? Now I have heard stories that these do and do not work. I am willing to invest the $200-$300 to test this theory. If this gets me out of vacuuming for a month or two that will be money well spent. Plus if it does work for a small apartment then all the better, our apartment will stay nice and clean!
#3:Nikon D40: Digital SLR
Jenn loves photography. I am more of the point and shoot variety. But if you ever travel with Jenn to Europe she likes to take her time to line up her photos and since I have known her has wanted a Digital SLR. The Nikon D40 is our choice right now and I think it would be a great starter for us. I have a nice pocket size Sony digital camera that Jenn got me for my birthday before last year's Europe trip and I thought it took really nice photos but after seeing what the D40 can do I am convinced that for our honeymoon we should take this camera for a whirl.
#2: Apple iMac 20" (With iLife 09)
Jenn and I are both Mac users. I took the switch 2 years ago and Jenn last year and I can tell you I don't lan on going back. I love my Macbook, I love OSX, I have fallen in love with countless Apple products. My Macbook is hitting the end of its lifetime, at least for me. My battery is starting not to hold that long of a charge and my daily activities on the Macbook are starting to get a bit slow. I need a computer thats going to give me a lot more power to do my daily updates for Darkstation.com and to store our pictures and movies. The iMac is both sleek and powerful and I really hope we decide to buy one. I am just skeptical that if I buy one they will come out with a new model the next week.Regardless I can't wait to buy one and try out the new iLife 09 suite which has a lot of features that I really want/need.
#1: LCD TV 40"+ (Brand Not Decided)
Right now I have a 37" Toshiba 720P LCD and Jenn and I are going to be using that for our bedroom. I would like to get a 40"+ for our living room that is in full 1080P. As I mentioned in a previous post I have started to invest in some Blurays and I would like a TV that can nativley display the picture in its full glory. If I was going to buy right now Best Buy has a good deal on a 46" Samsung 1080p LCD which is pictured below. I am not all that picky on brands, although I have heard the best things about Samsung. This is another must have for our new digs.
Apple Officially Announces the 3G iPhone
I was really looking forward to today, among being one of my last days of school (1 final today and my last on Wednesday) I was more interested in finding out what Steve Jobs had to say at WWDC. Most of the conference that I heard on Twitlive.tv was rather slow and unlike many other Steve Jobs conferences I have watched. I have said that I would look forward to apps on my iPhone and I truly am. However what stole the show was the already given fact that the iPhone 3G was announced. Some of the new features is a nice new black or white coat of paint on the back, the Me service which is hopefully going to do much better then .Mac and GPS.
Do I want to upgrade to the 3G version of the iPhone? I actually am very content with my current iPhone, besides a nice crack in the screen that I happened to cause last week. I just don't want to be locked in to another 2 years of AT&T which has given me spotty service since August of last year when I first switched to them. More over it seems like they are going to be doing yearly updates (at least in my opinion) of the iPhone and although the GPS and 3G sounds fantastic I am not sure its worth putting another two years on my plan. Whatever the case its always excited when Steve Jobs gets up to talk, and it makes me very excited and hopeful that we will see a new Macbook and Macbook Pro this holiday season.
What is Wrong with Time Machine?
So for those of you who use Mac OSX Leopard, you know how great and useful Time Machine can be. For those who don't know what Time Machine is, it is a built in backup system for OSX which synchronizes your data at specific intervals to an external drive. It's great for someone like me who does a lot of writing, and e-mails and doesn't want it all to go away with one bad save or trashing of a document. When I first upgraded to Leopard I had no issues running Time Machine, I bought an Iomega 500GB External Drive from Apple, and felt as though I was not going to have to worry about my backup any longer. Well I reinstalled OSX a few months back because I was feeling the clutter of a year old notebook, and I had my data backed up and when I reinstalled OSX I recovered all of my data and began to use Time Machine like nothing had happened.
One day out of no where I got an error message saying that Time Machine failed to complete my backup, I thought it might be a fluke so I tried it a few more times with the same results. I read online that people were having similar issues so I followed their advice and reformatted the hard drive. Two months later and 30 different methods later I am still not able to use Time Machine. If anyone has any idea why I can get only 50% or so of my backup done followed by an error message that would be great. All I know is that its frustrating as heck. I am trying to be good, I want to backup, I have been foolish in the past, and even when I want to be good Time Machine won't let me!
UPDATE: As soon as I posted this my next stop was at Digg.com, and low and behold there is a Mac 10.5.3 update that was released today that was suppose to help reliability on Time Machine! When I get home today I will test out the new update (which I have already installed) and see if that helps my Time Machine predicament.
UPDATE #2: After installing 10.5.3 which was to fix some areas of Time Machine I am still having the same issue, it is still telling me that it unable to complete my backup. Back to the drawing board.
5 Applications I Would Like to See on the iPhone
So it will be a year in August that I have had my iPhone, and since purchasing it, I have wanted applications! When Apple announced the SDK a few months back it got my mind racing as to what apps I would want to buy or download to my iPhone. So here are five apps that I want to buy right now for my iPhone.
1) To-Do List: I am big on having schedules, especially for my video game reviews. We have the notepad on our iPhone but I want updates, reminders, and check lists that will help me keep on top of my deadlines.
2) Movie Listings: This should be free, but I can't tell you how many times I have looked on my iPhone for movie times. I want an app that will not make me search on Safari to find them, and having implemented youtube trailers would be fantastic.
3) Video Poker: More then anything I want games on my iPhone, but I do know that video poker and video blackjack would be great. A whole casino package would be even better. Something to do while sitting in a boring lecture, or in some sort of less then ordinary place.
4) Instant Messaging Software: I know AOL showed off AIM at the SDK conference for Apple, which i think is great. But bring over some of the hacked iPhone software so we can go on AIM, MSN, and GTalk with the same application!
5) VIDEO CAMERA SUPPORT: We all know the iPhone has the capabilities of doing video, and in my opinion (I COULD BE 100% WRONG), but it seems like a software issue that is causing the iPhone not to do video. Especially for those who have 16gb iPhones, its time we got video support.
Some other various things include Simple photo editing, RSS clients, Firefox, and a whole lot more. All I can say is that I am 100% excited for what is to come from iPhone apps.
Would I Buy a MacBook Air?
I have become a Mac user through and through. Jenn owns a MacBook she loves it, I own a MacBook and a Mac Mini and love them. I love the new Leopard which I got for Christmas. It just seems like Apple is on a roll with there Mac lineup. When Apple announced there latest thin notebook the MacBook Air I sat there are really scratched my head. This wasn't one of those sit and scratch for a minute, I am talking at least ten minutes. I remember thinking of going through the positives and negatives. Here they are
Positives:
- Super stylish/sexy
- Light, thin, and according to Apple great Battery Life
- Beautiful Large Display
- iPhone Like Gestures on Touch Pad
Negatives:
- Looks like it might break easily
- No on board CD-RW/DVD Drive
- Not great system specs.
- Price $300 overpriced.
To me when I sit back and look at those Pro's and Con's I didn't have these problems with the MacBook or Mac Mini. There is something about that MacBook Air that attracts me to it but at the same time says wait for something else. If money was no object I would love to try the Air with the solid state drive. It will be interesting to see how places start benchmarking that drive. You got to hand it to Apple though, even if I am not necessarily sold on the product, the commercial for the Air is fantastic.
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At the end of the day, I would say I am going to be on the waiting end, whether money is or isn't an object.
10 Awesome Home Cinema’s
I go on Digg about once a day, usually for a few seconds and then click off. Today I saw a Digg for "10 stunning ultra-geeky home cinemas" and I clicked it. Let me tell you these are some of the most original and unique home cinemas I have ever seen. It got me to thinking if I was to build a home theatre would I model it after these or build my own? I have always wanted a theater room setup like a Sportcenter set on ESPN. Or at least an entertainment room with a full on ESPN/Sportcenter feel. But to compete with these cinemas would be quite a tough feet. My favorite out of the ten is either the Bat Cave (shown below) or the Titanic room.
The Art of Bidding on eBay
Whatever sort of skill, strategy, or patience it requires to win items on eBay I don't have it. First off I have been sniped in the last minute of three auctions tonight. I want to buy a bigger memory card for my digital camera, just a simple 4GB memory stick, its like $30 no big deal. Twice i bid in the last 45 seconds of an auction and lost once by a penny and the other time by a dollar. I am not in desperate need of the item but it would be nice to have. I am great at selling things on eBay I have had a lot of success over the years in that, but when it comes to buying I get all panic stricken and always want to bid earlier then necessary. Half the time I think I am getting lousy deals because instead of wanting to get an item I would rather win the auction. Crazy right? Heck you know eBay is loving it. When I finally got a memory card it says:
You won the item in the last few minutes. Congrats, you beat the competition!
That is why I should never be allowed to bid on eBay, I take it more as a game then actually trying to buy a good. Oh well I got my 4GB Memory Stick!
Another Great Apple Experience
There is no denying, at one point I did anything to stay away from Apple, I was a PC guy all the way. Then came the iPod's then the Mac Mini and then the Mac Books and now the iPhone and I am officially hooked. I have to say I was a little disappointed with the quick price drop, but it was pretty expected. However today I was so excited and amazed to find that Apple was giving $100 credit to the Apple Store to anyone who purchased there iPhone before the price drop. To me this couldn't have been a more pleasant and welcomed surprise for all the earlier adopters of the phone. So I got my $100 credit within three minutes (that is what I call customer service) and bought iWork 08 family pack for Jenn and I for the upcoming school year, and it cost me literally five bucks! What can be better then that? I am just so pleased to find that Apple really is customer focused. Some may say that they did this out of the outcry of the Apple faithfuls, and I agree, but talk about a great mechanic for keeping faithful clients, they just earned so many brownie points in my book I can't even count them. Great job Apple, another job well done!
The iPhone Price Drop.. Even more Marketable?
I have to say I was stunned when I heard what I believe was the final announcement of the Apple press gathering this morning, and that was the impending iPhone price drop. The 8GB version as many of you know has been dropped from the $599 price point to $399. What do I, a current iPhone owner have to say? Well more then anything a bit of anguish as I would have loved to have seen those price points out of the gate. Apple by dropping the price a few months after launch was saying that they wanted to force out the hard earned money of the Apple faithfuls, and now go for the general populous. It seems like extremely smart business, but then again I am sure I am not the only one who is a little upset about the whole ordeal. Not only that but you have to give those credit who wanted an iPhone but didn't want AT&T, well now the iPod Touch seems like a great solution as well.
You have to hand it to Apple, I am a newly converted Apple lover and I am really finding myself more and more amazed. They sold me on there new iMac's which I really want to look into getting, and there new iPod lineup is impressive. I do think that now they are at the $399 price point, this becomes even more of a solution for a new cell phone. Apple another thumbs up from me, good work.
