For years we've been told that gadgets produce EMI—electromagnetic interference—that cause glitches in an aircraft's avionics. A cellphone could interrupt communication between pilots and the tower for a crucial second, or a child's Game Boy could cause a light on a flight computer to go on the fritz.

We can't take excess liquids on a plane on only the slimmest evidence of any real threat. If gadgets were such a threat to safety, they'd be banned entirely.

Instead, an arbitrary set of rules established by the FAA and extended by the airlines prohibits iPods during takeoff, but explicitly allow electric shavers to be used during flight.

Hundreds of travelers at this very moment are using electronic gadgets during takeoff after the flight attendants have taken their jump seats. We're told it's dangerous. It isn't. Let's drop the pretense.*

The EMI Lie

In 1993, the International Association of Transport Aircraft (IATA) suggested that airlines prohibit the use of personal electronic devices during takeoff and landing, despite a lack of evidence that these gadgets had caused a single accident. The IATA's Terry Denny then said, "We haven't been able to trace an accident to the use of one of these devices...but we are convinced that this could happen."

In the intervening decades, gadgets became something more than a toy for the rich or nerdy, but an intrinsic sidekick for nearly everyone. Especially the iPod.

In 2006, the Federal Aviation Administration commissioned a study to see if "intentionally transmitting" gadgets like cellphones and Wi-Fi caused interference with avionics. The final report "said there is insufficient information to support a wholesale change in policies that restrict use of PEDs." ("PEDs" is FAA-speak for a gadget, or "Personal Electronic Device(s)"; a PED with a radio transmitter is a "T-PED".)

Which is to say, they couldn't find a reason to change their policy—but there hadn't been a whole lot of evidence to begin with.

Yet the FAA has approved in-flight Wi-Fi service for a variety of airlines. While the routers and systems must undergo an FAA certification, there's nothing magical about the onboard 2.4GHz signal broadcast that prevents it from interfering with the plane's avionics. The thousands of flights completed safely each day—a marvelous and commendable record, it should be noted—clearly indicate that having activated gadgets on board aircraft does nothing of negative consequence.

So your laptop's Wi-Fi won't mess up the planes avionics, but your Kindle might? How fragile are these planes?

"But it's about paying attention"

I've had conversations with pilots and other employees of airlines about this issue before, and after they realize the electromagnetic interference argument isn't going to fly, they invariably change tack to "safety". "Takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of the flight," they say. "And it's important that passengers be able to hear instructions from the crew in case something goes wrong."

That's a nice idea, but look around the cabin of an embarking aircraft. Parents are soothing cranky kids. People are asleep. Many passengers are drunk or medicated to help address anxiety.

If there were an accident, alerting an unaware person with headphones would take no more effort than nudging a sleeping person next to you. It's not prohibited to sleep during takeoff, just as it isn't prohibited to read a book or magazine or to be deaf. (This also presumes that a passenger could do anything to protect themselves or others during a takeoff accident, even though we all know that in a majority of incidents, there's little to do except pray.)

Ah, but what about gadgets flying around the cabin as missiles if there is turbulence? It could happen, sure, but is a Kindle appreciably more dangerous than a hardcover book? If a Nintendo DS could hurt someone during an unexpected loss of altitude, why are they ever allowed to be unstowed? The answer is simply that the likelihood of these things happening is far less than the likelihood that customers will go absolutely apoplectic if they aren't allowed some sort of inflight entertainment.

If the airlines are already able to make a judgement between ultimate safety and convenience, why not loosen up just a little more?

Little things matter

I have a lot of sympathy for flight attendants. Herding and soothing a few dozen passengers, many of whom are belligerent and rude, is a thankless job. Their jobs should be easier. They're the ones who have to explain to passengers why the pilots were too busy playing with their laptops to land the plane.

But every time a flight attendant perpetuates the lie that these harmless gadgets are somehow a threat to safety, it erodes the faith that they should be cultivating with their customers. How are we to trust someone telling us that reading a Kindle during takeoff is dangerous as we stare across a field of EMI-spewing LCD seat-back screens?

Here's a deal: I'll listen attentively to the flight safety demonstration, make doubly sure to note where the exit doors are and who I'll have to climb over to get to them—and you guys will let me listen to my iPod after the flight attendants are in their seats and I'm making peace with my god.

Trust me, I'll be a lot more apt to listen to flight attendants commands if they don't start the flight with a well-intentioned deception. And more likely to believe the FAA and the TSA when it comes to other security and safety concerns when some of their policies aren't demonstrable half-truths.

* I'm not talking about using Wi-Fi or cellphones during takeoff. I'm in complete support of "Airplane Mode" during takeoff, if not the entire flight. What anecdotal evidence there is about EMI from gadgets is almost exclusively suspected to be from radios and other transmitters.

@joeljohnson deals primarily with first-world problems, but hopes it does not interfere with your pursuit of fixing third-world ones. This isn't the last he's got to say about this issue.

Last updated December 8th, 2009 but we'll update this list as the new stuff replaces the old and crusty. We read and write reviews so you don't have to!

Smartphones

• The Best Smartphones: We like the iPhone, the Motorola Droid because it runs Android 2.0 operating system, and the Palm Pre for people who have stuck with Sprint. We do not like anything Symbian or Windows Mobile 6.5, for the time being. (But are excited for Windows Mobile 7.)

• Cheapest Android Phones: Droid Eris and HTC Hero.

• The Best Smartphones, By Carrier: We sorted out theses answers on Nov 24th, but this category moves quickly so stay sharp when researching.

• Best Windows Mobile Phone We Wish Didn't Run Windows Mobile 6.5: The HTC HD2

• Best BlackBerry: If you're into phones with exceedingly reliable push email, the Bold 9700 is your phone. (We don't like Blackberry's touchscreen interfaces, so the Storms are no good.)

• Non-Smartphones: You mean dumbphones? No thank you.

Computers

• Netbook: If you must get one of these small, cheap and utterly slow machines, the HP Mini 311 with ion graphics is a good one.

• Netbook for Hackintoshing: Dell Mini 10v (and it must be the v) is the top choice. Here's our guide to making it run OS X.

• Laptop: Our bias for OS X and Windows 7 becomes apparent in our choice of hardware that can run both without hacking. Macbook Pros. (Plus, we like unibody construction.)

• Best Non-Apple Laptops: Dell's Adamo XPS may not be fast but it is "insane," raising the bar on design and quality outside of Cupertino. We also like Thinkpads in general, like the X series and the new multitouch t400s. (It's probably also worth noting that Asus and Toshiba recently came out on top in reliability.)

• Gaming Laptops and Desktops: Our friend Will Smith at Maximum PC likes these two laptops and two desktops. I personally like Xbox.

• All in One: We like the iMac, the HP Touchsmart and although we haven't used it yet, the Sony Vaio L because it can double as a TV even when the PC is off. The PCs here have infrared touchscreens, so they do multitouch, but in a really shoddy way.

• MIDs: We hate MIDs. Always have, always will. Intel said they had the tech to make them; but the world never had the need. It either fits in a backpack and lets you do real work on a real screen and keyboard, or it fits in your pocket. There's no real need for anything inbetween.

• Operating Systems: Windows 7 or Snow Leopard

• Network attached storage: We like the HP Mediasmart series with upnp, iTunes and Time Machine servers among other things. But the Iomega NAS is only a little less fancy and costs half the price.

Audio

• The Best receiver under $1000: We haven't tested one in awhile, but we're going to go out on a limb and say we like Onkyo, Denon, Yamaha and Pioneer gear. While some of our own testing is in progress, we'll go with what our friends at Sound and Vision like: The Onkyo TX-SR706 7.1 receiver with 4HDMI ports and THX certification for $900.

• The Best High-End Portable Media Players: Zune HD and the iPod Touch. We Like the Zune pass system a lot, which allows you to keep 10 songs a month out of your unlimited downloads, even after you stop subscribing. But the iPod Touch's large app library makes it a powerful little computer.

• Best high-capacity media player: iPod classic is pretty much the only one left, since Zune has been discontinued and Archos is a mess.

• Flash Media Drives: We've always loved the screenless shuffle's utility, but there are other drives to be had with more functionality for cheaper. Especially now that the buttonless iPod shuffle is sort of annoying to use. We like the Sandisk Sansa Clip+.

• Surround Soundbar: There's only one series of soundbars that uses cold war submarine tech to bounce soundwaves off your walls for surround, and they're made by Yamaha. I tested the YSP-4000.

• iPod Speaker Dock: JBL OnStage 400p (A winner from last year — I'm almost certain we should be retesting this category)

Video

• Best HDTV under $1000: Panasonic's X1 series plasmas, and four more here.

• Best HDTVs, period: Here.

• 1080p Projectors Under $1000: The Vivitek H1080FD is one we like, although we have not tested many.

• Best Monitors: If your'e a Mac user, the 24-inch Cinema Display has a built in magsafe adapter. The Asus 23-inch VH236H is good deal at about $230, but Samsung and Dell are our solid choices for monitor brands, as well.

• The Best Pocket Projectors: There is no such thing, friend. Wait a generation or 3.

• Blu-ray player: The LG BD390 with WiFi with Netflix and DivX playback is awesome, but we'll never leave out the PS3!

• Media Streamers for People Who Hate iTunes or Love Piracy: The WDTV Live is a good one for people who like it easy, but hackers will probably choose Popcorn Hour, both which did well in our battlemodo. However, the current king is the Asus O!Play, which also wins an award for worst use of an exclamation point in a name.

Cameras

• Best Entry-Level Video-Capable DSLR: Canon T1i

• Best Midrange DSLR: The Nikon D90 has the same sensor as the D300 at a better price.

• Best Prosumer DSLRs: The Canon 7D is great at shooting video and has great low light performance for an 18MP camera.

• Best Flash Camcorder: The Flip Ultra HD.

• Best Quality Point and Shoot: We like the Canon G11 (which is pretty big, but pretty wonderful.)

• A Camcorder We Like: We haven't tested any in awhile, but we tend to like DSLRs that shoot video or cheap flash camcorders. If you must have a camcorder, our friends at CamcorderInfo liked the Panasonic HDC-TM300 for ~$1000.

• Best Point and Shoot: We like the Canon S90, even though we're sure there are slimmer cameras. This uses the same sensor as the G11 and a faster lens, so it takes great shots for a slim.

• Best Rugged Cameras: The Pentax W80 is the best all around camera because of it's depth and temperature ratings and size. The Lumix has the best picture quality but is a bit of a wimp with low thresholds for dives and temperatures. Canon's the best for water only because of its huge nose. And the outstandingly rugged Olympus has a fatal flaw, which is its terrible video.

• Best Helmet Camera: We love the GoPro Hero HD Wide because it mounts anywhere, is really waterproof and lives in a protected case. Plus, 1080p for $250 bucks.

• Best Slow Motion Pocket Camera: Casio EX FC100

Random Stuff

• The Best iPhone Apps: Here's our monthly list of iPhone Apps, as well as our weekly roundups of the best new releases.

• The best GPS: It's really hard to justify these when smartphones are doing so well with their turn by turn apps. But they still need car docks and some of their UIs are not great, so if you want a dedicated unit, bide your time with the cheapest Garmin Nuvi you can find. Usually about $125 at Amazon.

• The Best iPhone GPS Apps: Motion X GPS is our favorite value GPS app, but ALK's CoPilot is another cheap champ. Navigon is still the classiest, but it costs a lot. (We're hoping for free Google Maps with Navigation to come to iPhone.)

• The Best Android Apps: There aren't as many Android apps out, but here are the ones we think are worth checking out.

• Ebook reader: Now that we've reviewed the Barnes & Noble Nook, we can safely say there are finally two great contenders. But until Nook gets some firmware updates making it smoother and quicker, Amazon's latest Kindle will remain king.

• USB drive: The Patriot Xporter is fast, but if you have cash to spare, the Corsair Voyager GT is slightly faster and has 128GB of space.

• The Best Video Game Console: Xbox 360

• The Best Video Service: Anything, really, combined with Hulu and Netflix (for free old stuff).

• Best mid-tier office chairs: Herrman Miller Setu and Steelcase Cobi.

• Vacuums: We will always be loyal to Sir James Dyson because he tried to sell bagless vacuum tech to big vacuum corporations and they shut him down motivated by the profitability of bag sales. Then he started his own company. His machines are loud, but you can't argue with their industrial design. Here's his latest handheld and ball vacuum.

• Routers: D-Link Dir685. I know it has a digital picture frame built into it, but it also has a HDD and a bittorrent client. And Jason says it's been more reliable than the top line Linksys he tested it against. I also like the Time Capsule, but haven't yet tested the one with 2x the wireless performance.

• The Best Headphones: For in ear buds, we like the Shure SE110/SE115, Ultimate Ears Metro.fi and Etymotics hf5 won our tests. (The Last updated August 2008, so look for updates to winners.) We like the Klipsch Image S4i earbuds for people who want to use the iPhone's voice control or iPod shuffle's Voiceover function. For Bluetooth stereo headsets, we like the Motorola s305.

• Rechargeable Batteries: Duracell destroyed Energizer, and kept up with the legendary Sanyo Enerloops.

• Mice: For gaming, the Microsoft Sidewinder X8. The Logictech MX1100 for regular mousing. And the Magic Mouse is not amazing, but it's pretty good if you have a Mac—the best mouse Apple has ever made.

• Keyboard: We like the Logitech DiNovo.

Suggestions? Requests for review? Leave em in the comments or email us!

Here's the place: Black and White at 86 E. 10th St. Special guests include Adam Pash, Gina Trapani, Jason Chen and Brian Lam, who are here from the west coast for a limited time only. All the normal NYC guys like Adam Frucci will be there too.

We'll start heading there at 6 or 7PM, and if you're in the area, come say hello. [Location]

The Price: $40

The Verdict: This is one of my favorite inventions ever. Treadmill computing—or using a treadputer—is one of those ideas that's ideal for out-of-shape people who work at home, since you're still capable of doing all the work you were doing before, except now your legs are moving. Its major barrier is the fact that you had to have a treadmill, plus a stable enough platform to keep your laptop on. If you could rig that up yourself, great, but most of us were too lazy or too disinclined to. Now it just costs $40.

To answer your first question, yes, it is ill-advised to type and run at the same time. But typing and walking fast, or running and just watching something on your computer works just fine. In fact, I'm typing this entire review up while I'm walking on my treadmill.

How it works: The SurfShelf consists of two interlocking polycarbonate pieces supported by either one or two straps to your treadmill, elliptical or stationary bike. If rigged up correctly—something I had to ask for help with—it's incredibly stable, capable of supporting somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 pounds. Plenty solid enough for your laptop provided you don't constantly lean on it.

This thing has basically turned working into exercise. By spending 2-3 hours a day typing, emailing, and reviewing while walking, you basically get free calorie burn doing something you'd be doing anyway! According to Nike+, 2 hours of fast walking while working burns 1,000 calories. And even if you're not lucky enough to work from home, being able to watch YouTube or BitTorrented content makes any workout go faster.

Assuming you already own a treadmill that's gathering dust, the SurfShelf is the easiest way of getting you back on that thing. And if you're a freelancer or the type of person who spends much of your day on a computer, this could be the healthiest gadget you buy this year. [SurfShelf]

Makes treadputering an incredibly straightforward process

Relatively cheap

Stable enough that you can trust your laptop to it

Instructions aren't universal enough for every type of exercise machine, but you can get the idea fairly easily

Snow Leopard, as a follow up to Leopard, is almost absurdly insubstantial at first glance. The new operating system takes the same old boring, every day tasks like opening files, for example, and makes them happen subtly faster. But that performance is not being utilized by any third-party programs right now. And there are practically no new first-party programs by Apple. Nope, mostly just rewritten old ones and dozens of little interface tweaks. Some fanboys will ask, incredulously, "This is a new operating system?!" Those people are missing the point.

On deeper inspection, Snow Leopard's inconspicuous aspects—performance squeezed from underused CPU multicores/GPUs and basic UI tweaks—are found to be the kind of refinement generally reserved for virtuosity. These speed optimizations are deep, reminding me of when a master martial artist puts the entirety of his weight behind a strike (while a neophyte would flails his limbs like a henchman in a Bruce Lee movie). The little UI tweaks are no different than when a great sculptor's chisel works to remove everything non-essential during the final steps on a statue. Challenging 30 years of ever more bloated software tradition, the changes here are about becoming a more effective middleware between the media and the hardware, reducing friction while becoming more useful by, well, being lighter, less visible.

And if you think that's bullshit, well, I can't say you're completely out of your mind, but there's always the consolation that this OS upgrade costs about the same as a used Xbox game.

Performance

After some benching on a first-generation MacBook Air, an older MacBook Pro 15 and a pair of current-gen 13-inch MacBook Pros, it's clear that Snow Leopard is faster—sometimes drastically—but almost never in third-party applications. Some people like charts. If you feel like skipping them, here's a summary:

• In preview, where opening six 35MB 20,000-pixel-wide images of Tokyo's cityscape each took half the time in Snow.
• Safari's javascript processing, using Snow's specific tech, is about 40% faster—useful for all those Ajax-heavy websites we all use now.
• Time Machine backed up a 1GB dataset nearly 40% faster than on Leopard.
• There was no discernible improvement in non-optimized 32-bit programs: Photoshop testing and Handbrake DVD ripping times were identical. High-def playback on QuickTime 7 (not the new QuickTime 10 version) was identical in CPU usage, too.
• Synthetic benchmark results were interesting: The aging Xbench app, which tests everything from graphics to disks to memory, took a slight performance dip, implying older software may, too. Geekbench, a multicore optimized, newer benchmark available in both 32- and 64-bit saw a lift on Snow. But the test is only focused on theoretical CPU and memory performance, which may not translate into every day use.

Here's a video of those JPEGs cranking open in parallel, rather than serial, fashion:

Impressed yet?! You shouldn't be. Well, not by the act of opening images. But you definitely should once you realize what it really shows: Apple just pulled 2X performance out of my hardware, by software alone. Tada!

How is Snow Leopard Getting Faster?

There are three fundamental reasons for these performance increases: Better multicore processor support through what Apple calls GCD (Grand Central Dispatch—which we explain here); OpenCL APIs for utilizing the processing power in any graphics cards above the GeForce 8600 Series for video acceleration and general purpose computing; and they've rewritten almost all the applications that ship with Snow Leopard to run in 64-bit mode while taking advantage of GCD and CoreCL. So it's making processing for today's chips more efficient and easier for developers. And giving programs a way to utilize the power of the video card when it's not playing games. It also allows programs to run in 64-bit mode, the main theoretical advantage of which is to allow these programs to access more than 4GB of RAM on systems that have it. (More on all that at the bottom of the page.*)

Snow Leopard is efficient in other ways too. Install size is down to 10GB from 16GB, most of that weight shed by losing printer drivers and the PowerPC part of universal binaries. (Snow Leopard runs only on Intel hardware and downloads printer drivers it needs from the net, as you need them.) Installation is also quicker by about 30% on any given piece of hardware (consistent with the smaller install footprint). And in a move that can only be categorized as showing off, Snow Leopard can finish its installation if you accidentally power it down midway through.

But I'm digressing. The bottom line on performance is that the programs included with this operating system will do just about everything faster on modern machines that support those technologies—that is, most of the multicore Macs or those running Nvidia 8600 series video cards or higher. And not just a bit faster, but faster on the scale of 25 to 50% which means there's typically a good amount of latent processing juju in your video card and CPU. Great, but to be honest, it's a bit less impressive than it sounds in real life today, because all the basic system tasks happen fast anyhow. (When was the last time you sat around while a JPEG opened up?) Again, no other apps that use GCD or OpenCL are available from software makers outside of Apple. But if the theoretical gains are here to be had via easier programming methods, I'd bet those apps will come soon.

Interface Streamlining

There are 5 major changes in the UI:

Finder
Icons now scale, courtesy of a little slider on the bottom right of the pane, up to 512 pixels wide. It sounds wasteful, except that video files can be played directly from the finder window. Honestly, I don't prefer it more than the QuickLook (hitting spacebar to popup a quick preview window) in Leopard and carried over in Snow Leopard. I don't mind the option, but I have no use for this feature.

Dock
OS X's dock has been interactive for some time. You could drag a file to an icon there to somehow get the two to interact, but you could never use the dock to select which window instance of an app to use. Now clicking and holding (empty handed or with a file) triggers Expose, Apple's window management doohickey, for that particular application. Being able to quickly pop out an app's windows and then select the right one in a single step is terrific, but you still can't use Expose to quickly find the browser tab you want within a window. That's an increasingly big problem as the time spent in browsers goes up.

Expose
Expose itself has been improved, too. When viewing all the windows for one application in Expose's zoomed-out view, the items are now arranged in a grid instead of a single, impossible to read line, and each window has a text label. (That's helpful when you're trying to recognize a particular window amongst lots of similar looking—and rendered tiny by Expose—text documents or emails.) Minimized windows are also now shown at the bottom of the screen under a faint line dividing it from other maximized windows from the same application.

Stacks
When Stacks made its debut in Leopard, the dock mounted quick file viewer was too twitchy to use. You'd try to move a file andit would snap close, offended you'd try to do anything but open a file. And the space was always too limited in fan or grid mode to display more than a few icons. Stacks improves on this by allowing scrolling in the Grid view, but by also adding a smart list view capable of showing numerous files at once. It's an improvement.

QuickTime 10
Putting QuickTime in this list is questionable, but aside from its acceleration, there are some major changes here. That is, as you mouse away, the video screen loses all borders and buttons, appearing like the video equivalent of an infinity pool or one of those ultra thin LCDs. The program has a new capture system for encording video and audio clips and even voice annotated screen capture sessions. It also borrows the trimming thumbnail line from iMovie '09. I love it.

Let's face it, in the big picture, calling these changes "major" is generous. But there are literally dozens of even smaller examples, all welcome, all reducing friction points in the OS's usage, eliminating clicks needed and making the OS less obtuse. You can read about all of these additions in the gallery below, or here on one page, if you're curious to read about them all. If not, take my word for it: They all make things better.

While it's not UI- or performance-related, one additional Snow Leopard benefit is free Exchange support, so your mail, address books and calendars can all sync through it. I don't work at a corporation, so I don't care, but you may.

Bad Things

What kind of sick fanboy would I be if I didn't mention the imperfections?

And Safari 4's ability to segment unstable browser plugins made itself useful when many more flash powered pages crashed in Snow Leopard than Leopard.

Other reviewers have discovered that Snow Leopard has disabled or quirk-ified some of their apps.

I've also noticed that Expose doesn't work as smoothly with spaces now. You sometimes select a window on another virtual spaces desktop and it won't bring the window up top.

If you've got some third part mission critical app that you need to run every day, you should double check its compatibility and wait for a new version before upgrading your OS. Look before you leap here. The OS isn't so radically new that you have to have it right this moment.

Meow

The changes here are modest, and the performance gains look promising but beyond the built in apps, just a promise. If you're looking for more bells and whistles, you can hold off on this upgrade for at least awhile. But my thought is that Snow Leopard's biggest feature is that it doesn't have any new features, but that what is already there has been refined, one step closer to perfection. They just better roll out some new features next time, because the invisible refinement upgrade only works once every few decades.

Uses latent multicore and GPU power to speed up
the apps it comes with by relatively huge amounts

Costs $30 to upgrade

Still haven't seen any third party apps
rewritten to take advantage of Snow Leopard's speed yet

No major new functionality might turn off
some

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

*Performance Background: You May Skip This Section.
Today's chips have hovered in the 2-3.6GHz range for some time, with gains in theoretical processing power made by increasing the number of CPU cores on one chip and optimizing the silicon in those cores. Think about it as roof shingles: It's easier to protect your roof with lots of little shingles than one huge one. Unfortunately, the power afforded by the additional CPU cores has largely gone to waste, because it's difficult to write code that takes full advantage of multiple cores. The programmer has to write the application in a way that breaks down large problems into multiple smaller problems (called threads), each of which runs on a single CPU core. The application then becomes a traffic cop keeping threads in sync. If any part gets out of sync, the app crashes or hangs.

This problem is made more complex because many apps are written with a maximum number of threads in mind. While some workloads, such as video encoding or photo processing can take advantage of many cores innately, most need to have some work done to add support for more threads, so future-proofing has been difficult. I don't know if programming GCD is easier than straight-up multiple-core programming—we cover some of those details here—but the key here is that Apple's created a middleware that developers can write for, which automatically scales up to work with the number of CPU cores or other hardware in your system. The developer writes for GCD, while the system handles the gruntwork. Apple hopes more people will use this easier, more future-proofed way to tap into multiple-core power. Of course, no one has so far, except Apple programmers themselves. This explains why Finder, Preview and basically everything else that ships with Snow Leopard run faster. But in my tests, Photoshop, still a 32-bit program on the Mac and written without any support of GCD or OpenCL, showed less than 1% variation from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Still, as we can see from the system apps, there's potential here. And let's face it, the majority of us are not rendering Photoshop files all day, so this is performance you can put in your pocket today.

There's a story of efficiency here, too, however. Because GCD is better at managing resources, a program like, Mail, for example, shows less system impact (thread usage, cpu usage) while sitting idle in Snow Leopard, than on Leopard. When testing OpenCL's hardware acceleration, something Windows machines have had for awhile, by playing a 1080p trailer of James Cameron's awesome new Avatar movie, CPU usage dropped drastically when machines were using the 64-bit CoreCL and GCD supported version of QuickTime. Any modern machine can play 1080p video well, but here, we were talking about Snow Leopard causing the strain on the system to take total CPU usage from 30% to 16% on the 13-inch MacBook Pros. Other apps will eventually be able to use these GPU superpowers, but what Apple claims is the real potential for GPU processing is that OpenCL will let computers use video cards for not only 3D acceleration, video encoding, and heavy math, but more general computing tasks, too, because its written in a non-specific (C-based) programming language.

Furthermore, there have been a number of good articles questioning the speed benefits of 64-bit computing. Apple only goes so far to claim that math-based tasks benefit from the larger bus, but generally the only concrete advantage of 64-bit computing is the ability apps gain to manipulate over 4GB of RAM, a 32-bit limitation. Apple's dev docs go on to say that some apps will incur a penalty if going 64-bit. So, rewriting apps in 64-bit versions is not a surefire recipe for speed improvement.

In many cases, with many of the built-in apps, Apple attributes the performance improvements to all three core technologies above. That stuff that means not so much today, but might mean a lot tomorrow as GPUs get faster and CPUs gain more cores and there's already an infrastructure in place to take advantage of all that.

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

RyeBrye has pieced together an Android app that does all the rooting legwork, a process that used to range from mildly intimidating to headache-inducing. In either case, the prospect was always daunting for the mainstream, which kept the joys of an unbound Android from most G1 and MyTouch owners. With this app, here's the new, streamlined procedure:

• Download "Recovery Flasher" From the Android Market (or sideload it)
• Run it
• Tap "Back up recovery image"
• Tap "Flash Cyanogen Recovery 1.4"

Seriously, that's it. Now your Android phone is splayed wide open, and ready for you to have your way with it. But, uh, what does that mean, exactly?

Plenty of things! The biggest draw to rooting is the ability to install a new ROM—in other words, replace the operating system on your phone. There are two ways to go with this, both equally awesome. The first is to go with a super-customized community ROM. These are tweaked and enhanced versions of the phone's default software, often grafted with pieces of Google's forthcoming updates to Android, some near, some far, and all dessert-themed. Practically, this means multitouch—since the G1 and MyTouch already support this on the hardware side—app storage on SD cards, tethering, more home screens, new system keyboards, and perhaps most importantly, vastly improved performance. A lot of users say using one of these is a night-and-day difference, and given the kinds of things the HTC ROM community has done with Windows Mobile phones, I'm inclined to believe them.

Your second path is to go full Hero—in other words, to install the HTC Hero's heavily customized OS, which is nothing short of fantastic, and about to get even better. This is a full phone conversion, and even in its current, slightly precarious state, well worth it.

In either case, you're going to need to choose a ROM, download it, and put it on your phone's SD card. You can select from an expansive list here—for reference, the MyTouch 3G is also known as the Magic 32B—but as far as non-Hero ROMs go, your best bet is the near-legendary, well-supported CyanogenMod. The newest release, out just two days ago, is fully compatible with the G1 and MyTouch. But don't stress too much over which ROM to choose, since changing them over is a breeze now that you're fully unlocked. An overview from Android and Me:

• Power off your phone.
• Boot into recovery mode. Press and hold the Home key, then hit the power button.
• Before you flash a rom file, perform a wipe. Press Alt+W to wipe the data and cache folders. You must wipe when going form different builds of Android.
• Wait for the wipe to finish and the recovery image to display again, then select "apply any zip from sd". Flash the zip file of your choice.
• After flashing any zip you should be able to reboot your system and watch it load to the home screen.

You'll want to read their full rooting and flashing guide for caveats, but that easy little list there is about the size of it.

A few more reasons to root that don't involve totally flashing your phone:

• Full backups to SD cards
• Wi-Fi tethering!
• Autorotation for all apps
• Install apps to an SD card

This alongside a treasure trove of smaller tweaks and tricks you can find at the every-active XDA forums. And of course, it should go without saying: this is potentially risky, and could brick your phone. The rooting process is almost foolproof, but before you jump in, make sure you've got the right hardware (American MyTouch 3Gs and G1s only) and have backed up any important data. Happy hacking! [RyeBrye, AndroidAndMe]

Rob's chart, with all its scary red marks and mysterious orange ovals, has the tendency to give the impression that the outlook is fairly bleak; almost every row of "confirmed working!" ticks is broken up by at least one pesky caveat, and some netbooks on the list are not sold anymore. But your prospects really aren't so bad. Buck up, kids! Here's what that chart means, practically, with a real-world rundown of what these netbooks can offer, what they can't, and how best to try your hand at Hackintosh.

The HP Mini 1000
Status: In production
Now that the Dell Mini 9 has passed on, in retail terms, this is your best option. Main components are compatible across the board.
What you get: A well-styled 10.2-inch machine with respectable guts, a notoriously great keyboard and an increasingly reasonable price. In fact, the slightly smaller Windows-less 16GB SSD version, a prime candidate for OS X-ification, is listed on Best Buy's site for $280 right now.
What you sacrifice: I think the styling works; some people get turned off by the large bezel around the screen, though it's on par with other 10-inch netbooks. Many Hackintoshers find little gremlins after install—lack of fan speed control and temperamental Wi-Fi control, to name two—which can generally be fixed, though rarely simply. By and large, though, this is as good as OS X gets on a cheap netbook.
Resources: Install guide, with video; support forums.

Dell Mini 9
Status: Out of production
This was, and still is, a fantastic candidate for Hackintoshing. As such, they're not that easy to find for a reasonable price. Even Dell's been getting in on the post-Mini-9 action, rereleasing the little laptop for brief period last week. UPDATE: The Vostro A90, the Mini 9's equally Hackintoshable business counterpart, is still around in some retail channels.
What you get: Just like the HP, Dell's Mini 9 lays claim to near-total hardware compatibility, including mobile broadband support. The fact that everything just kinda works is pretty wild, if you think about it.
What you sacrifice: Battery life isn't great. And since release, the Mini 9's hardware has aged a bit. That said, entry-level netbooks all more or less live on the verge of obsolescence by definition, so having a slightly older Atom processor than your friends shouldn't be much of a concern.
Resources: Our definitive install guide; support forums.

Dell Mini 10v
Status: In production
For some time after release this Mini 9 replacement was held up by Mac driver difficulties. Now it works fairly well, and could serve as a replacement Mini 9 for some Hackintoshers.
What you get: In some ways, this is better than the Mini 9. It's a newer unit, updated to address some of the general population's broader problems with the Mini 9: The screen is slightly larger, and more importantly, the keyboard has some room to stretch. It's cheap—often cheaper than the a coveted used Mini 9—at about $300 new.
What you sacrifice: The Mini 10v is patchier than its predecessor across the board. The onboard microphone is difficult to get working, video drivers are still a little precarious, often causing crashes when external monitors are connected, and sleep and hibernation modes aren't very reliable, which is crucial for a totable netbook. If you're willing to bet on driver support improving, it's a prudent purchase. That's a big if, by the way.
Resources: The Anguish Install+Fixes Guide; User forums.

Lenovo S10
Status: Out of production
Like the Mini 1000, the S10 is a worthy replacement for the Mini 9. Or, it was, before it was replaced by a touchier, more erratic S10-2. (More on that below).
What you get: Another capable machine, though it was—and still is—a little too expensive for what you get. Hardware works across the line, down to the webcam and two-finger touchpad scrolling.
What you sacrifice: Ethernet doesn't work, which could kill the S10's usefulness as a travel device (old hotels, etc) and the 3-cell battery is a little anemic. It too suffers from age: The cheapest version and most popular spec comes with 512MB of RAM, which will suck the joy right out of your OS X experience.
Resources: Multi-boot guide (attached to linked post in PDF); User forums.

Lenovo S10-2
Status: In production
This bears the outward appearance of a minor update to the S10. As far as Hackintoshing is concerned, it's a major step backwards.
What you get: Compared to the S10, a better touchpad, bigger keyboard, nicer case design, slimmer profile, more default RAM, and lower price. Great!
What you sacrifice: Any semblance of usability in OS X. Adding to the lack of ethernet support, everything from sleep to external video to stability is lost, to the point that the S10-2 isn't really much of an option.
Resources: The same S10 guide, with caveats; User forums.

MSI Wind U100
Status: Out of production
A perennial Hackintosh classic, it's still a safe choice, and fairly easy to track down used.
What you get: A Mini 9 level of compatibility, with very similar hardware. Styling is clean, but not as pleasing as the Dell, Lenovo, or HP alternatives, and the keyboard is usable.
What you sacrifice: Again, we're dealing with old-ish hardware here, and again, the three-cell battery won't run marathons. The touchpad is janky, and, I almost forgot, this guy really doesn't like them.
Resources: A whole bunch of install guides and support info.

Acer Aspire One
Status: In production
A hugely popular, widely available and all-around decent netbook, the Aspire One is a cautionary tale: No matter how tempted you are to pick one up, Hackintosh development has come too slowly to justify buying one for that. This rule applies to other netbooks not shown, too.
What you get: An expensive-looking, cheap-as-chips workhorse.
What you sacrifice: Virtually everything, including the biggest dealbreaker of them all: Wi-Fi. Lots of netbooks don't work, but I wanted to include this one as an example: Just because a netbook is wildly popular and bolstered by a huge community of support forums doesn't mean that Hackintosh will eventually work. Some hardware and software issues are just beyond the hobbyists' purview, so don't buy a netbook with the hopes that issues will be resolved. They might not be, and you'll be stuck swapping out hardware components just to get basic features working.
Resources: Install guide with some fixes, wi-fi recommendations; user forums.

Despite losing its greatest soldier (well, almost), the Hackintosh netbook movement is still alive and well, to the point that buying one of the more compatible netbooks listed above with the express purpose of turning it into an unofficial mini-MacBook is a great idea. Take your pick.

Here's the quote from the Google spokesperson to TechCrunch:

"We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users - for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers."

This news comes on the heels of Sean Kovacs' GV Mobile Google Voice app being pulled from the store for "duplicating features." Even though, TechCrunch relates, Phil Schiller himself personally approved GV Mobile and called Kovacs to apologize when its initial approval was delayed months ago.

TechCrunch suspects, probably correctly, that apps for Google Voice are being rejected at least in part through AT&T's influence, since Google Voice lets you send free text messages and delivers cut-rate international calls—on top of making phone numbers even more meaningless—making it scary to AT&T in way like Skype VoIP over 3G. Either way, it seems obvious the Google Voice service is being targeted for extinction, at least as a native app on the iPhone.

Google plans to take the same route it was forced to take with Latitude on the iPhone—web app land. It's an interesting switch for Google and Apple on the app front, actually. Google was noted for getting away with using private APIs in its Google Mobile app to make the voice search command work. Now Apple's rejected two of its major apps in a row, in a way validating Google's belief that web apps are the future anyway.

It seems somewhat silly, and a bit of a reach, to insinuate the rejections are signs of brewing hostilities between Apple and Google, but you have to figure if there weren't any behind the rejections, they've at least got to be causing some anxiety by now.

Whatever the reasons, it sucks, and as Jason Kincaid says, what's really troubling about this rejection is that it appears that "Apple is now actively stifling innovation." And the whole black box app approval process doesn't exactly alleviate that sinking feeling either. After all, if Google doesn't stand a chance, how does anybody else? [TechCrunch]

Obviously if you're a Pre user you should not update to the latest iTunes. Not, at least, until Palm strikes back with some kind of firmware update to enable syncing again. It's not like 8.2.1 has all that many new features either, so you don't really need to update. [Pre Thinking]

Update: Here's Palm's official statement:

Palm's media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.

Update 2: Here's Apple's official statement to Businessweek:

iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes. It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we've said before, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.

Step 1
Let's check to see if jailbreaking or unlocking an iPhone makes sense for you by explaining what they actually mean: Jailbreaking allows you to load non-iTunes, third-party apps like these onto the phone, at your own risk. Unlocking lets you use another company's SIM card (for T-Mobile or international travel). That's it. And if you don't like it, you can restore the original Apple software any time using iTunes' Restore button—we've done it plenty of times.

This guide is for the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch running the new iPhone 3.0 firmware. If you own a 3GS, you'll need to wait since it hasn't been hacked quite yet. But if you're ready to hack your iPhone, grab your Mac or PC, iPhone and the USB adapter cable. Let's do this. (Oh, and go to THIS LINK if you'd rather see all of the instructions on one big page.)


Step 2
Even if all you want to do is unlock the phone, you need to jailbreak it first, and that requires redsn0w, a Mac/PC jailbreaking program. Download the official redsnow torrent files HERE, then download redsn0w via your Bittorrent client of choice. Make sure you've backed up your iPhone to your computer before moving forward. That creates a data restore point in case you want to ditch the jailbreak apps. Done? OK. Last, if you're moving your phone to T-Mobile, disable 3G before going on to the next step.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 3
Redsn0w works by patching the iPhone firmware file on your computer, then loading it onto your iPhone without using iTunes. So open redsn0w. Follow its instructions to select your .ipsw (iPhone firmware) file. On Macs, you can find the file at Home Folder/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates. Or just download a new one from HERE. Once you've found your .ipsw, move on.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 4
Begin patching, but keep in mind this one setting: Redsn0w will ask if you want to install Cydia or Icy or Both. (These are apps that can load programs on jailbroken phones and will be needed to unlock the phone later.) JUST INSTALL CYDIA, NOT BOTH, OR ERRORS ARE PRONE TO ARISE LATER. TRUST ME. Once the .ipsw file is patched, make sure to plug in your iPhone then turn it off while still plugged. When you see the screen "Click NEXT when your iPhone is both OFF and plugged in..." go on to the next step.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 5
Now you need to put your phone into DFU mode to load the patched firmware. You'll hold the top power button for two seconds, then hold the Home button with it for 10. Then you'll release the top button and just hold Home for 30 or so. It's not as hard as it sounds, and if you mess up you can just try again, but you need to pay attention, so make sure you're holding your phone and watching the computer screen when you hit "next." Redsn0w will guide you through the pattern of holding the top and home buttons in timed succession. If you're successful, redsn0w will inform you that your phone is being jailbroken and you can stop holding the Home button. If you're not, redsn0w will reset the process and you'll probably need to manually restart your iPhone.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 6
Wait as the jailbroken firmware loads onto your iPhone. (You'll see a disk drive on the phone's screen, then this cute pineapple graphic as it installs.) After a few minutes, the phone will reboot just as it does with official firmware. Congratulations, your phone is jailbroken! Most of you are done—just load Cydia (which is now an app on your iPhone) and search for apps you'd like to install. Others need to continue this tutorial for the unlock.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 7
If you want to unlock your original or 3G iPhone so it can take a T-Mobile or international SIM, follow these next steps. You're done with your computer, so make sure your iPhone is on a Wi-Fi connection. We're going to use Cydia to download and install ultrasn0w, which unlocks your iPhone.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 8
Cydia will first ask what kind of interface you'd like. I'm no hacker, so I chose the graphical view. Then Cydia will want to download at least 2 Essential Upgrades. Let it by choosing "complete upgrade." If Cydia's successful, you'll see a bunch of install code and the option to "Close Cydia (Restart)." Hit that button. (Note: If you are getting errors in this step, it may be because you installed both Cydia and Icy. If you did that, restore your iPhone with official 3.0 firmware via iTunes and start the process over.)

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 9
Reopen Cydia. Go to Manage -> Sources -> Edit - > Add and then enter "repo666.ultrasn0w.com" in the text field. This should add ultrasn0w as a Cydia source so that you can download the ultrasn0w software. Choose to return to Cydia and then click "Done".

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Step 10
Click the repo666.ultrasn0w.com listing under your Sources. Click repo666.ultrasn0w.com again at the next screen (redundant, we know). Then click Install. You'll see a black screen with some text and, after a few seconds, it should read "Complete". Reboot your phone with your new SIM.

Congratulations, your iPhone is unlocked! But if you're having any type of problems (it's not our fault!!) check out the Dev Team blog. Chances are that if you've encountered a particular issue, so has someone else.

The guts of the machine are a 400MHz processor, 32MB RAM, and 8MB flash memory, plus two external antennas for wider coverage. You can also stream media from USB drives through the USB port to UPnP devices. It's 802.11n compliant, of course, and will retail for $120.

Main point? That it's Linux-based, so people can shove apps on there like BitTorrent downloaders and whatever else you can find that runs on Linux. [Linksys]

Both apps are essentially the same. They let you make calls and send SMS out from your Google Voice number to any other number in your contact list. You can check your voicemail and see your history, plus control which phones ring when someone calls into your Google Voice number (useful for using your landline to answer calls when you're at home). In general, they're the same.

But where VoiceCentral has GV Mobile beat is execution. The app may not be pretty (a lot of the buttons and icons look mis-matched, colorwise), but it rarely crashes, whereas GV Mobile crashes somewhat often when performing certain tasks. Also, VoiceCentral correctly matched up the history with my contact list.

They're both $3, but if we had to recommend one, we'd recommend VoiceCentral, despite it being somewhat ugly to look at. But GV Mobile also has a free version, if you only want to make calls. [VoiceCentral]

Stream Your Library Over the Internet With Windows Media Player
This is hot—it'd be hotter if it was easier to set up. Windows Media Player's Remote Media Sharing will let you access your media library from anywhere over the internet. You need a Windows Live ID that you associate with your Windows 7 user account using a tool you have to download. (This could grow to include other "online identities," like Facebook I'm guessing, but I wouldn't hold your breath for your Gmail account.) You also need the same version of Windows Media Player running on both computers. After everything's all associamated, then your home library you wanna stream from should show up just like a local library under the "Other Libraries" section in the side navigation pane. Can't do this in iTunes, buddy.

Windows XP Mode
To encourage enterprise people to let loose and rock Windows 7, it runs a full-fledged Windows XP virtual environment using Microsoft's Virtual PC. It requires an additional download (booo), but you won't have to worry about your applications breaking like with Vista. Update: Paul Thurrott has more info and a huge walkthrough on XP Mode, including the crushing revelation it's gonna be free for Windows 7 Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate, not Home Premium, which is the version regular people are going to be running.

The Most Insane Default Backgrounds Ever
Look at these. Yes, these are just a handful of the ridiculously awesome backgrounds packed inside Windows 7. Some are the products of acid trips through a nightmare land of anime hell that I would never wish on anybody, and some are simply stunning. Just wow. Click to make bigger, obvs. Update: Okay, the backgrounds were in some of the builds between the Public Beta and the upcoming RC, but they weren't, you know, public. UPDATE: You can download all of them here. Or you can find them in the Gizmodo Flickr pool.

These are simply in addition to all of the new things we already knew about, like tweaks to Aero Peek, better shortcuts, UI improvements and of course, lots of bug squishing. We'll be testing everything in depth soon! [Windows 7 Coverage at Giz]

30 Rock, Dollhouse, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Arrested Development, oh yes. Any hope AT&T has of charging people a monthly fee for mobile TV dies with a Hulu app, especially once ABC jumps onboard and it hits other mobile platforms (which it surely will). If it truly delivers the full Hulu experience—every video with a great UI—the potential awesomeness literally blows my mind. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said one year ago that mobile is "ripe for the Hulu experience" but it "may not be identical" on every platform. I'd hope the iPhone is as close to the real thing as it can get, though that obviously depends on NBC and Fox to allow it, as well. And Apple has to approve it, obviously.

But still, mobile TV was not very exciting to me until this moment. [Alley Insider]

The short story is that in most cases, Parallels runs a solid 14-20 percent faster than Fusion, except in the rather limited scenario of running Windows XP 32-bit on two virtual processors.

Overall, running 32-bit Windows OSes with a single virtual processor, Parallels is 14 percent faster; with two virtual processors, Parallels is 20 percent faster with Vista, while Fusion is 10 percent faster with XP; and for 64-bit Vista, Parallels is 15 percent speedier. Depending on the task, the numbers vary—like transcoding MP3s can be up to 30 percent faster on Parallels.

MacTech's tests are ridiculously comprehensive, spanning multiple machines with tons of different applications—the whole them took a couple months—so if you want the full, chart-heavy breakdown, head over there: [MacTech]

Faster syncing with Mac and PC. Changes you make to contacts and calendars on your Mac (Address Book and iCal) or PC (Microsoft Outlook) are now automatically pushed up to the cloud every time you make an update. Likewise, changes you make on me.com, iPhone, or iPod touch are automatically pushed to your Mac or PC. As a result, your contacts and calendars update faster across all your devices. To take advantage of faster syncing, be sure you're running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 (Mac) or MobileMe Control Panel 1.3 (Windows).

After a lousy launch in 2008, Apple decided to avoid associating the word "push" with Mobile Me until they could get synchronization between computers and mobile devices (iPhones, iPod touch) down to acceptable times. Looks like it's close enough now to bring the term back.

Another new feature, iDisk file sharing, has been around since the 13th. Improved iPhone notification and syncing and better web app performance round out the improvements.

Dear MobileMe member:

Over the past few months, we have been working hard to make MobileMe the best service it can be. Here is a summary of the improvements and performance enhancements that have recently been completed.
Easy file sharing. iDisk now makes it even easier to share files that are too big to email. Simply select a file in the iDisk web app and click the Share File button to generate an email with a download link. You can also optionally add password protection and set an expiration date for the link. For more details, view this tutorial.

Faster syncing with Mac and PC. Changes you make to contacts and calendars on your Mac (Address Book and iCal) or PC (Microsoft Outlook) are now automatically pushed up to the cloud every time you make an update. Likewise, changes you make on me.com, iPhone, or iPod touch are automatically pushed to your Mac or PC. As a result, your contacts and calendars update faster across all your devices. To take advantage of faster syncing, be sure you're running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 (Mac) or MobileMe Control Panel 1.3 (Windows).

Improved notifications and sync on iPhone. Reliability of new email notifications and syncing of contacts and calendar with MobileMe have both been improved. To get the best MobileMe experience on your iPhone or iPod touch, you should be running iPhone Software 2.2 or later.

Better web app performance. We have also improved the overall performance of the web apps at me.com including faster start time in Calendar and searching in Contacts. For more details, see this support article.
Remember, to take advantage of these improvements, your computers and devices must be running the latest software versions indicated above.

The lens is, after all, your camera's eyeball—the image sensor or film can only record what comes in through the lens. It's what defines the picture's perspective, clarity and way more.

Lenses are actually a really complicated thing to talk about—if your job was to steer photons through tunnels of stretched glass, people would call you complicated too—so we're gonna try to keep it to field basics, you should know to get around, rather than dive into the crazy physics and mathematical ratios and stuff.

Lens Terminology
Before we get into the basic lens types, you should know the two major numbers you're looking at you when you talk about lenses: Focal length and aperture.

Focal length is the distance between the optical center of the lens and the point where it focuses the light coming into the lens (when a shot is in focus, that's the image sensor or film). The diagram above, from Cambridge In Colour shows, very simply, what focal length refers to, and how it affects your pitchas. Here's another pretty excellent, easy to understand explanation, with pictures showing the results of using different focal lengths on the same shot.

Practically, what you need to know is that focal length measured in millimeters, and that's where you get, say, an 18-55mm lens, a 400mm telephoto or a 28-560mm lens found in a super-zoom camera. (You probably know this, but when you see "20x zoom lens," the spec refers to the ratio of the longest focal length to the shortest—so 560 divided by 28.) Basically, the longer the focal length, the more magnified or "zoomed in" your photo can be.

Aperture is the other major spec on a lens, and something you deal with most on DSLRS. The aperture is the hole that actually lets the light into the camera, and you make can make it bigger or smaller. The size of the hole is expressed in terms of F-stops, or as you might see a lot F/2.8 or F2.8 or F8 or F11 or whatever.

The bigger the F number, the smaller the aperture, or hole. The smaller the number, the bigger the hole, which means the more light it lets in. The reason that's good is that means you can shoot with a faster shutter speed, so you don't get blurry photos, or when you're shooting in low light, since more light can get through, which means you're not forced to choose between shooting dark, blurry things or excessively grainy photos as you crank up the ISO (light sensitivity) to compensate for the lack of light. So, when someone's talking about a "fast" lens, they're talking about one with a big aperture, like F/1.8—easy to remember, you can shoot with faster shutter speeds with less light.

With a big aperture, you also have a shallower depth of field—subjects in focus are sharp, but everything around it is soft and blurry. A tighter aperture (higher F-stop number) lets you focus more at once, as you can see in the diagram above combined from Wikipedia. There's more on depth of field here. Overall, we're staying on the easy-to-swallow side, but if you've really got a hankering for F-stop knowledge, here's a crazy detailed explanation.

Lens Types
Having fun yet? There are a few basic types of lenses, and of course, a whole bunch of specialized ones beyond that, like macro or tilt lenses. But here are the basics.

A normal lens is one with a perspective that looks a lot the perspective of the human eye. With a 35mm or full-frame camera, that's about a 50mm lens, though it varies depending on the size of the film or image sensor. For instance, this 35mm Nikon lens is for their DX cameras, DX meaning it has a sensor that's not "full" (equal to 35mm film). When that lens is attached to a DX camera, it's the equivalent to a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera—making it normal.

A wide-angle lens is, most basically, one with a focal length that's way shorter than a normal lens (which, again, varies depending on the size of the film or sensor). Wide angles are useful for take wide shots—-panoramas, or just trying to squeeze a huge group of people in a single picture without being 10 light years away. You can also do neato distortion tricks—a fisheye is just a crazy kind of wide-angle lens. Example Image: Ekilby/Flickr

A telephoto lens is one with a really long focal length (like 400mm). Since they're designed like telescopes, they are physically more compact than their focal lengths, but they can still get pretty damn massive. They're good for shooting stuff far, far away. Example Image Shiny Things/Flickr

A prime lens is just one with a fixed focal length—you can't zoom in or out—and typically they produce sharper pictures than all-but-the-priciest zoom lenses. Any of the above lens types can be prime lenses, or zoom, below. This fisheye is a prime lens.

A zoom lens is one you can adjust the focal length on—zoom in and out—so you can shoot a variety of stuff with a single lens. The aperture tends to vary based on the focal length, unless you get a really pricey zoom lens that's also "fast."

Lens Brands and Compatibility
But, even looking at one company at a time, lenses are complicated and sticky. Take Canon, for instance. They've got a million different kinds of lens mounts (where the camera and lens fit together) for their single-lens reflex cameras, depending on how far back in time you go. Currently they've got two major kinds of lens mounts: EF (electro-focus because the focusing motor action is built into the lens) and and EF-S. The latter is for their entry-level to mid-range DSLRs only, because it's made for their smaller (not full-frame, i.e., not 35mm equivalent) image sensors. Standard EF lenses will work on cameras with an EF-S mount, but EF-S lenses won't work on cameras with a regular EF mount. And before that, there was the FD mount, which totally doesn't work on DSLRs without an adapter.

Nikon isn't quite as bad as here—they've had the same F-mount for over 40 years, so all their lenses with physically fit on the camera, but with their DSLRs, you've gotta watch out for their FX lenses (full-frame lenses like for the D700) vs. their DX lenses (like Canon, meant for their cameras with smaller APS-C sensors). When used on full-frame cameras, DX lenses will block out the corners of the picture since they're supposed to cover a smaller image area. But overall, with Nikon you have the advantage of being able to use older lenses in a way you can't with Canon gear. Ken Rockwell has a comprehensive tome about Nikon lenses and types for more.

The High Cost of Optics
Okay, great. Here's a real question: Why are lenses so goddamned expensive? Well, as Steve Heiner, Nikon SLR-division technical marketing manager, told us, "You're paying for materials and the process of creating the lens," which, as you might guess, improves image quality. Faster apertures—which require larger glass elements in pro zoom lenses—heavier materials like metal, for durability, and touches like a nano-crystal coating that minimizes reflections for low-light shooting are things that make lenses cost hundreds or thousands or dollars. As a rep from Canon told us, there's no real getting cheaper over time, like most other mechanical components. Precision optical glass just doesn't work that way.

Materials are also what separate crummy lenses from good ones, which is why cheap lenses in cellphones suck—they've gotta be cheap, really tiny and really light and well, you can't change physics—and why even cheap DSLR lenses aren't as good as expensive-as-hell ones. Update: Daniel pointed out this pretty excellent video showing how lenses are made, which shines more light on why they're so damn pricey:

At the same time, there is a lot of progress in lens tech happening—look at all the ultra wide-angle lenses popping up in point-and-shoots now. Canon says that's cause you've got smaller image sensors (which as we noted above, changes the relation of the focal length), more aspherical lens elements (which are cheaper to make), a new kind of ultra high refractive index aspherical optical glass (uhhhh, don't ask me) and the miniaturization of mechanical parts like AF motors.

There's a lot we had to leave out, like chromatic aberration and lens flare, but we hope we gave you a pretty good starting point to learn about lenses. Real camera pros, feel free to leave more in the comments.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about lenses, upskirts, or crazy weird Japanese photographers who swarm cosplayers to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line. Also, thanks to Nikon for the lens diagrams!

HDTV
Alright, first thing's first—we need to talk HDTVs again. With the game looming, you may be thinking about an upgrade or, in some cases, your first HDTV set. In this economy, spending money is always an issue, but at this point, waiting for even cheaper HDTVs will probably keep you on the sidelines for a good long while. In the meantime, you are missing out on all the crystal-clear action. I mean, even The Simpsons are going high-def this year.

No worries though—retailers are busting out some great deals on HDTVs in anticipation of the Super Bowl crowd. Here are some examples:

• Westinghouse 32'' 1080p LCD HDTV for $364.99 (normally $564.99—use this rebate form).
• Samsung 40'' 1080p LCD HDTV for $1,108.83 plus free shipping and a $200 gift certificate to NFLShop.com (normally $1,699.99—use this gift certificate claim form. Valid through 1/31).
• Vizio 42'' 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV (factory refurbished) for $589.97 (normally $999.99).
• Toshiba 42" 1080p LCD HDTV for $749 plus free shipping (normally $1,399. Use coupon code "MMCHTV50").
• Toshiba Regza 46'' 1080p LCD HDTV for $999.99 plus free shipping (normally $1,499.99).
• Sharp Aquos 52" 1080p LCD HDTV for $1,449.99 plus free shipping (normally $2,099.99. Use coupon code "MMCHTV50").
• Walmart's Super Bowl HDTV sale—$100 off/$100 Walmart gift card included (for example: 32'' Samsung for $498, 46'' Sony for $1,298).

If you decide to take advantage of these sales or any others you may have found through shopping comparison sites like PriceGrabber.com and Shopping.com, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. Most importantly, you need to know which HDTV is going to work for you and your budget. Our guide How to Choose and HDTV Like a Pro and the followup How To Buy and HDTV Today (Or Any Day) will give you all the information you need to make smart decisions.

It's a good idea to carry around a web-enabled cellphone to comparison shop in the store, or have a friend at a computer standing by. If they have an in-store pickup service, that could lead to even bigger savings—not to mention a guarantee to have your TV before the game on Sunday.

What To Watch Out For
As always, it's almost always a good idea to avoid pricey warranties, profit-heavy accessories like HDMI cables and unnecessary services offered in the store. There is a 99% chance you are getting screwed.

Don't fall for liquidation sales. You may feel that the demise of Circuit City presents an ideal opportunity to score some new gear for the game. The reality is, if you're not constantly cross-checking those supposedly slashed prices, quite the opposite may be true.

It Isn't All About the TV
The Super Bowl isn't just about a big HDTV. It's about people getting together, getting drunk and yelling at that HDTV. It's also a good time to pick up some of the extras you are going to need like cool remotes, cooking equipment, and other football-related gear. Here are some of the best deals going:

Remotes:
• Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote Control for $59.97 plus free shipping (normally $99.97)
• Logitech Harmony 610 Universal Remote Control for $49.99 (normally $79.99)

Other Home Entertainment Gadgets:
• Sling Media Slingbox Pro-HD for $259.99 (normally $299.99)
• Cambridge Soundworks Surround Speakers for $99.99 (normally $299.99)
• Polk Audio Two-way Floorstanding Loudspeaker for $99.99 plus free shipping (normally $199.99)
• Pioneer HTP-2920 5.1 Surround-Sound System for $199.99 plus free shipping (normally $329.99)

Gaming:
• Madden 2009 on PS3 for $36.99 plus free shipping (normally $56.99 / Great for exacting revenge on a blown season. Damn you Giants!)

DVDs:
• NFL History of the Pittsburgh Steelers on DVD for $13.99 (normally $26.98)
• Pittsburgh Steelers: Super Bowl Champions on DVD for $8.86 (normally $19.98)
• Any Given Sunday on DVD for $4.86 (normally $14.96, and Wilson's favorite Oliver Stone film)
• Friday Night Lights for $3.15 (normally $12.98)
• Remember the Titans for $5.73 (normally $14.99)
• The Comebacks on DVD for $4.99 (normally $14.98)
• Jerry McGuire on DVD for $8.99 plus free shipping (normally $19.95)
• Little Giants on DVD for $6.99 (normally $14.97)
• The Waterboy on DVD for $8.26 plus free shipping (normally $19.99)
• We Are Marshall for $4.99 (normally $14.98)

Grills:
• Tool Box Jumbo Grill with Stand for $24.97 (normally $99.99)
• Coleman Outdoor Grill and Stove for $32.36 (normally $82.99, in Target stores only)
• Hamilton Beach HealthSmart Grill for $18.99 (normally $36.11)
• George Foreman Champ Grill for $19.99 (normally $39.99)

Beer and Popcorn:
• A handful of deals and rebates on beer (This is what it is all about)
• Nostalgia Movietime Popcorn Maker for $22.54 (normally $36.23)
• Presto PopLite Hot Air Popcorn Popper for $14.99 (normally $29.99)
• Orville Redenbacher's Original Popping Corn Kernels for $6.95 (normally $26.95)

For the Ladies:
• Football for Dummies for $7.99 (normally $19.99)
• Arizona Cardinals earrings for $5.99 (normally $21.95)
• Arizona Cardinals apron for $12.95 (normally $14.95)
• Pittsburg Steelers earrings for $3.99 (normally $13.95)
• Pittsburg Steelers apron for $12.95 (normally $14.95)
• 5 lbs. of Holiday Chocolate for $1.49 (normally $24.99 - use coupon code "AVA910")

Hobomodo:
• Mini Football for $0 (use fake e-mail address, could possibly be spam)
• 1,200 Digital Photo Prints for $0 (use coupon code "FREE800")
• Diet Dr. Pepper for $0
• Orville Redenbacher Natural Gourmet Popcorn for $0
• Bruce Springsteen Songs for Guitar Hero World Tour for $0 (valid until 2/04)
•3D glasses for Super Bowl commercials for $0 You may want to hold on to these.

Now get out there and enjoy the game. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that the last six weeks or so of the Giant's season made me want to puke. If I wanted to see a team look like crap, I would go back to a standard-def TV.

Prof. Dealzmodo is a regular section dedicated to helping budget-minded consumers learn how to shop smarter and get the best deals on their favorite gadgets. If you have any topics you would like to see covered, send your idea to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Professor Dealzmodo" in the subject line.

The OnPar features a 3.5-inch screen and a reasonable thickness of .63 inches, making it just a tad stubbier than an iPhone. It stores up to 300 courses in its memory and operates without subscription fees. But beyond mere yardage to the pin, it seems that the OnPar's touchscreen is put to good use in that it allows you to track yardage to anywhere on the hole, like a water hazard or sand trap, with a simple touch of the screen.

The OnPar will be available next month. No word on price. [OnPar via Navigadget]