Holiday Gadgets

Some people live for the holiday decorations. Some people live for the holiday food. I live for and love the holiday gadgets. Gadgets, of course, are best described as grown up toys. While I appreciate the clothes, the candy, the books, and the games I received as gifts this year, it's the gadgets that I live for. Here's a brief review of the new gadgets we are playing with as we enter 2007.

	Recently we've had a serious case of Tivo envy, but the cost of the service is daunting. Tivo requires $19.95 a month or $300 if you pre-pay for three years. Further Tivo requires either an Internet or a telephone connection to operate. Santa spent just $400 to bring us the Panasonic DMR-EH75V, it has no service charge and just one cable connection. It a digital recorder (like Tivo), a DVD burner and a VHS player. Its one touch copying is, by far, its best feature. The 80GB hard drive seems even bigger when it takes just one click to copy your recording to DVD disk or VHS tape. It also gives us a great way to digitize our VHS and camcorder videos. On the downside, the manual required two complete readings and I feel like I understand only about 80% of the product. It's no where as easy as Tivo is to use, but helps me preserve my importance in the household (since I'm the only one who understands how to use it!).

	The de-Fib-ulator is advertised as a handy lie detector. We saw this as a requirement for any household with middle school boys. The product is well thought out. Record your voice in test mode to establish a baseline. Save up to three profiles using one of the three memory buttons and then start asking your pointed questions. This is a quality product and was great for a laugh, but unfortunately it didn't work and hasn't been used since Christmas Eve.

	The Nikon D80 promises to be a my favorite holiday gadget. No. No one was rich enough to buy this $1,000+ digital camera for me, but many contributed funds that allowed me to buy the camera this week. At one point I thought I would become a professional photographer only to give up that career for a business and marketing career. I all but gave up photography for almost 10 years and bought a point and shoot only when my son was born. I resisted digital photography and a serious camera but increasingly enjoyed digital manipulation (digital dark room) and craved a real camera.

	The Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine was a big hit in our house this year. This is halfway between toy and the real thing. It's got all the annoying sounds any kid (or kid at heart) could want, it was relatively easy to set up and has the durability required to play some aggressive pinball. The owner's manual (which was lacking) mentions that the goal of the game is to achieve different levels, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what I had to hit to progress. Further, some of the coolest shoots and action didn't seem to generate points by themselves. Nevertheless, even the worst player will earn millions of points and the longer the ball stays in play, the more points you score. I guess I don't need much more than that.