The Wall Street Journal’s top seven items of techno-lust, with commentary by me:
7: Fancy new does-everything cellphone.
Ugh. God no — at least, not for me. It’s a personal thing, but one I’ve yet to see any need to change my stance on.
6: DVR (Digital Video Recorder — a hard-drive based VCR).
I don’t watch enough TV to bother. Sure, sure, I’ve heard the arguments that DVRs make watching TV worthwhile (easier than ever to weed out the chaff and only see the good stuff), but I just don’t have enough interest in the television world.
Amusingly enough, I actually am considering signing up for cable TV for a few months sometime soon so that I can keep up with the upcoming presidential debates, and as I work nights, I’ll need some form of time-shifting device in order to actually watch the debates. However, given that I have every intention of turning the cable service back off once the election is over and done with, a cheap VCR should do me just fine when the time comes.
5: iPod Mini.
Yup. If I had to replace my iPod, I’d replace it with a Mini (if one were available). Most of the time, I’m only using between 2Gb and 4Gb of my 10Gb (2nd Gen) iPod, so the 4Gb of the Mini would work out quite well for me, and be smaller and lighter. Can’t complain about that.
4: USB flash drives.
If I didn’t have my iPod, sure. As it is, though, I can just drop any files I need to schlupp around on the iPod and call it good.
3: A really big, really flat TV.
Oh, definitely. Not for TV, of course, but I’m a movie geek. Size does matter.
2: Apple’s new Airport Express.
Yup. Even in my little studio apartment, I can easily see myself using at least two of these little gadgets (one for the main room stereo as it’s too far from my ‘puter to get an optical digital audio cable between the two, and one for the bathroom for shower tunes), and possibly three (unwire the webserver).
1: A Gmail address.
Hm. Apparently I’m the only geek on the ‘net who doesn’t care about Gmail. I’ve got enough e-mail addresses as it is, the last thing I need is one more to have to keep track of. Count me out of this one.
(via Buzzworthy)
iTunes: “I Wanna Take You Higher” by Duran Duran from the album Thank You (1995, 5:05).
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I actually just signed up for a GMail account, even though I’ll never use it. I already have unlimited disk quota, in the form of CDRs and a home PC that stores all my e-mail, so I’m not sure why I should settle for a paltry 1 gig on GMail… but I still signed up for it so as to follow the crowd.
6, 5, and 3 are my big picks. I really can’t see the point in a “do-everything” cell phone; I mean, it’s just a phone! You’re supposed to talk on it, it should serve that purpose the best. Texting, video, pictures and a calendar are secondary; everything else is tertiary at best.
I have an iPod original 5 gig, a next-Gen 15 gig (IPNG?), and STIL want an iPod mini - AND the Airport Express (I actually need it for Wi-Fi relay and it’s cheap by Apple standards). The iPod just seems to generate lust. Actually, I think I want two - a blue and a green.
I too do not understand the gmail rage. I guess those who take care of their own mail/domains are a bit less likely to take an interest. About the only thing that would entice me in to signing up for one is if I could have a five character username, but as I can’t figure out who I need to sleep with to get a five character username, I guess I won’t be signing up for a gmail account.
It’s kind of like senior prom—most people only went because their friends were going, and at the end of the night/morning, it really was no different from any other drunken high school party—it just required fancier clothing.
I don’t have the do-anything cell phone, but on the days that I pack a laptop, ipaq, blackberry, cell phone, digicam, and book (or 2) into my backpack because each does a different thing for me, I get a little cranky that I could at least have the ipaq, blackberry and cell phone all in one package, so it’d be one less thing to leave on the bus.
‘Course, then I’d have to have the bluetooth headset, so I didn’t have to hold the blackberry to my ear to talk, but whatever…
Otherwise, the PVR is my favorite, because I’ve got the early shift at work, getting up at 4:30 am, which means the late shows like 24 and West Wing that are worth watching can be recorded automagically, there’s no tape to accidentally overwrite, and I can watch the whole season in one sitting with no commercials if I don’t get back to it until whenever.
I just have to avoid my wife giving me all the spoilers.
“3: A really big, really flat TV.
Oh, definitely. Not for TV, of course, but I’m a movie geek. Size does matter.”
Why? I’d rather go for a projector. Sure, their expensive but not as much as a flat TV. Also, the quality on projected movies doesn’t get worse the closer you get the the image. You do have to change the bulb every so often though. shrug Just thoughts.
Oh, a projector would be a lot of fun too.
I had one for a while at my old apartment back in Anchorage. Picked up a old used (huge) one through some of my contacts at the club I worked at and turned one entire wall of my apartment into an 8’x10’ screen. The quality wasn’t all that great, but the sheer size made up for it!
We had a blast watching movies on that beast, but we also had fun with the playstation that one of my roomies had. We’d put Tekken on (a martial-arts fighting game), and the characters would be life size — six feet tall, easily. I was always a big fan of Wipeout XL, a high-speed racing game, and one of my friends had to leave the room when I was playing Wipeout on the big screen, because the picture was so large and took up enough of his field of vision that he’d get carsick sitting on the couch watching me play.
Fun times.
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