There were so many great new gadgets this year, but here are my faves of the past year:
There are more powerful handhelds out there, but the e740 packs the most punch for its price. Toshiba’s flagship PDA comes with 64MB of RAM, a 400MHz processor, Secure Digital and Compact Flash slots, a 64,000 color screen, and best of all, integrated 802.11b.
vpr Matrix 200A5
Regular readers will know that I’ve been lusting after the widescreen vpr Matrix 200A5 laptop from Best Buy, and I finally got my hands on one a few weeks ago. The 200A5 does not disappoint. It’s designed by F.A. Porsche Design of Austria, has a 15.2-inch widescreen display (like the PowerBook G4), a 2.0GHz Pentium processor, 40GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM, DVD/CD-RW drive, 32MB video card, two FireWire and two USB 2.0 ports, and built-in 802.11b. It has a couple of unexpected features as well, like the ability to listen to CDs even when the notebook is powered off, and super-high fidelity sound technology called Sonopur.
Nomad Creative Zen
Everybody picks the iPod, and without a doubt it is the gold standard for MP3 players, but an excellent lower priced alternative is Creative’s Nomad Zen. The design isn’t as hot, but the price is great ($282.49 after rebate) and you don’t have to sacrifice storage space – the Nomad Zen has a full 20 gigabytes to spare.
Casio Exilim EX-S2
Gotta love the super-slim Exilm EX-S2 from Casio. Just 11.3mm thick, and it takes 2 megapixel pictures.
Gateway’s 42″ Plasma Television
$3000 is rarely considered cheap, but Gateway’s new 42″ widescreen plasma television is really, really inexpensive compared with every plasma TV on the market, and has pretty much sparked a price war.
Samsung SyncMaster 241MP 24″ Cinema Display
It doesn’t get any more droolworthy than this: the world’s largest TFT LCD monitor, Samsung’s widescreen 24-inch SyncMaster 241MP. Can also double as a display for DVD or TV, and is HDTV ready.
A new household robot from tmsuk and Sanyo called the Banryu, or “guard-dragon”, which is meant prowl around your house and keep an eye on things. The Banryu can travel up to 15 meters a minute and detect when a fire is about to break out. Comes out early next year.
Now this is a brilliant idea. Sharp’s new digital home projector, the XV-Z90S, connects to the rest of your home theater set-up using 802.11b, meaning that you can mount it up on a wall somewhere and not have to run cables everywhere. It’s already come out in Japan later this month, and with any luck should hit America sometime in 2003.
