Top 5 MUST have gadgets in 1st half of 2007
The electronics market is booming. Every week innumerable new gadgets grace the shelves of stores across the USA and, indeed, across the globe. Each of them is designed to improve your quality of life by entertaining you or by making some tedious task easier. This is all very well and good but with a plethora of gadgets to choose from how are you to know which are worth having? Below are what we believe to be the top five gadgets of the first half of 2007. The selection was by no means easy. The competition was stiff, but each one of the gadgets below is sure to delight and astound you, selected for their functionality, ingenuity, design and, of course, value for money.
5th - Nikon D80
Digital cameras have completely revolutionized photography, therefore, there had to be one somewhere in our top five. The Nikon D80 is neither beautiful nor compact. You could not slip it into the inside pocket of a suit without ruining the tailored look that you paid so much for and you most certainly could not fit it into one of those ridiculously small designer purses that seem to be all the rage. However, beauty is not everything and despite what they say; not all good things come in small packages. The D80 is Nikon’s upgraded version of the D70. In this newer model, Nikon have moved with the market and switched from compact flash based memory to SD cards, while this may not be to everyone’s delight, most will welcome it as a step forward. Although it is far from being the smallest camera available, the D80 is, in fact, smaller than it’s predecessor and it provides a comfortable shooting experience. Moreover, unlike some the uncomfortably small cameras now available, the Nikon D80 does not suffer from an undersized, fiddly user-interface. It features a 2.5 inch LCD screen and takes pictures at a resolution of 10.2 mega-pixels - much, much more than your average camera user could ever require.
4th - Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet
The X60 makes it to number four in our round up of early-2007’s top five gadgets. It comes with 2GB of RAM and a 1.83-GHz Core Duo L2500 processor. It uses the latest Windows Vista operating system and has an above average battery life of just over 5 hours. However, a lot of computers match or, indeed, exceed these specifications and if this was all there was to the X60 then its place in our top five would be unjustifiable. Luckily, the is something that sets Lenovo’s X60 apart from the competition; it is readily convertible from a standard laptop to a tablet. Furthermore, the X60 can be calibrated to compensated for screen rotation, automatically switching from portrait to landscape screen layouts. Input into the touch screen can be via a digitizer pen or simply using a finger - although be prepared to wash off frequent accumulations of smudge marks on the screen. Overall, the X60 is extremely well designed from top to bottom and provides a fantastic user-experience for students and business-people alike.
3rd - Creative Zen V Plus
With the arrival of the Creative Zen V Plus, finally, the iPod Nano has some serious competition. Creative Zen V Plus is available with 1GB, 2GB or 4GB memory capacities and is able to play music, videos and FM radio, as well as record sound and display photos. The organic LED display is not the best screen on the market but at 1.5 inches it is unlikely that it will be your primary video playing device. The limited memory capacity (at a maximum of 4GB as outlined above) also limits the length, quantity and quality of videos that the Creative Zen V Plus can store and display. The feature that gives this device the edge over the iPod Nano is customizability, for instance, users are able to select a color screen and even choose a background photo. Whether this offers a unique opportunity to express your individuality or is just a crowd pleasing gimmick - I’ll let you decide.
2nd - Apple TV
Apple TV can be found at number two in our list. It is a simple but beautiful media streaming device that does exactly what you would expect. This may not seem like great praise, but considering the failures of other such devices, a media streaming device that works and works well already sets Apple TV apart. At the time this article was written the Apple TV was available in two models, a 40GB model at $299 and a 160GB model at $399, the latter offers much better value for money but both prove affordable. The only drawback with this gadget is that you can only watch what you have on iTunes and not all movies/television shows are available from their online store. Luckily, the iTunes catalog is expanding daily,so Apple TV users will undoubtedly benefit from perpetual improvements.
1st - Nintendo Wii
Coming in at number one in the top five is the Nintendo Wii. The choice may be criticized for being a little predictable but Nintendo have done more than enough to earn the top spot. It is the games console of 2007. The only place to start when describing the Wii is with the controller. Both a wireless remote-style controller (known as a wiimote) and a nunchuk controller, which is basically a joystick, are included with the Wii console. The wiimote is perfectly designed for an interactive gaming adventure: from golf and tennis to sword fighting and shoot’em ups - you will feel like you are at the very center of the action. Those that ardently favor the offerings of Sony or Microsoft will tell you that the Wii lacks the high quality graphics of the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360. This is undeniable but besides the point. No matter how graphical realism develops over the next few years, this is one console whose entertainment value will prove lasting, what is more; at half the price of the Playstation 3, it is an absolute bargain.
So concludes our round-up of the top five gadgets of the first half of 2007, if the rest of the year offers up as much as the first then we are all in for a treat, with the arrival of the iPhone and others it already looks promising.
8 Responses to “Top 5 MUST have gadgets in 1st half of 2007”
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Shouts
July 8th, 2007 at 3:47 am
looks like a very slow year.
I dont have any of these “hot” new items. But I have cool old alternatives for 4 of them
5. Sony cyber-shot 5.1 about 4 yeras old and working great
4. Dell 6400 works well and I have it configured dual boot for linux
3. Ipod Gen 2 with 60GB still working got it the same year ad the camera
2. Well my laptop has a video port and combined with VLC player not only does it play everything without restrictions. Also it’s on the local network and I can stream media from my desktop PC.
1. well cannot argue with a Wii
July 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Perhaps you are not aware of the new Leica.
It beats the Nikon hands down for two reasons:
1) 35mm-420mm zoom in one lens. No need to carry additional lenses.
2) image stabilization
July 8th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Top 5 MUST have gadgets in 1st half of 2007…
A good look at this year’s MUST have gadgets, how many of of the top 5 gadgets do you own?…
July 8th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Apple TV? At least you didn’t put the iPhone on your list…
July 8th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Don’t own a single one of them. Don’t want any of them. Too many gadgets as it is. Only keeps making the companies that produce them rich and the purchaser poor. NO thank you.
July 8th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Technology is a great thing, I own a IBM laptop, a SLR Digital camera, and a Wii. If people did not buy technology, then technology companies would not exist and advancements in technology would be going no where, or just really slow. So it’s a good thing that the people that can afford to buy the newest technology, do. So to Amazing, sure they make money off of us who buy their stuff, but we work for a living to buy those kinds of things. Am I just not gonna buy a car, because it makes car companies richer. If everyone thought like that then they would not have the money, resources, or demand to produce the kinds of cars we have today and we all might be driving around in a horse and buggy or the Ford Model T right now. All because you don’t want to make someone who works for a living a little richer. You can apply that to anything you use toady, not just cars. ex. TV, phone, refrigerator (lets all build our own ice boxes like in the old days so we don’t make anyone richer)
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Does anyone else worry that the Nano 4 feels too light and is so thin that it will easily break ?
June 10th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Marlene…
…