“You’re so hard to shop for,” the women in my life say to me about this time of year, every year.
My wife and my mom think I buy myself everything I want, particularly when it comes to technology.
This is only partially true. There are still a whole lot of new tech toys that came out this year that I haven’t purchased.
Thus, the tech I want and, for further clarification, don’t want this holiday season (feel free to borrow for your own list):
– An external hard drive. In the 1980s, I bought a 40 megabyte internal hard drive, doubling the amount of storage space on my 386 PC. That drive cost about $300. Today, you can buy a 250 gigabyte external drive for under $100. There’s nothing better for a growing digital music and photo collection than a nice, roomy portable hard drive that can be connected to any PC in the house.
– A new lens for my digital camera. My Nikon D50 digital single-lens reflex came with a basic lens that ranges between 28 millimeters and 80 millimeters. The thing is, the 28-mm wide-angle view is not very wide. In testing other lenses, I was surprised that a lens that can zoom out to 18 millimeters fits almost twice as much area into the frame. This is especially useful for indoor photography, where subjects are nearby. Thus, my perfect lens: A Tamron 18-200 millimeter. Wider angle, better zoom and, at about $400, it costs nearly as much as the camera body. Still, as camera experts say, it’s “good glass.”
– A second HDTV. My two-year quest for our first high-definition television has been well-chronicled in this space. Our home’s second HDTV won’t take nearly as long. Have you seen the remarkable prices for smaller HD sets? Last week, Circuit City had a 37-inch Sylvania LCD flat-panel HDTV on sale for $899, and Best Buy featured a 32-inch Magnavox HDTV for $699.
Honey, you pick.
– That hot new TiVo. Two tuners. A 300-hour hard drive (but only 32 hours if you’re recording high-definition content). Support for THX sound. What could be better? Actually, the price. At about $800, the high-definition TiVo Series3 (www.tivo.com) costs more than some HDTVs, plus it’ll run you another $200 for a year of service. Good thing the holidays are for receiving gifts you wouldn’t splurge on yourself.
– The clip-on iPod Shuffle. Apple claims this 1.62-inch, half-ounce MP3 player is the smallest ever made. With 1 gigabyte of storage space for up to 240 songs, this $79 unit is perfect for working out.
– Shure earphones. Listening to my iPod using Shure’s $500 E500PTH earphones, compared with the white earbuds Apple supplies, is like switching to HDTV immediately after a lifetime of black-and-white television. With “triple-high-definition drivers,” the sound is simply stunning. Many musicians use these earphones on stage to hear themselves perform, and it’s easy to understand why. Despite their world-beater quality, price will probably keep many people, myself included, from purchasing these. Shure’s $200 E3C earphones are also excellent and easier to justify.
– A Treo 680. Just released from Cingular, this Treo runs $200 with a service contract from Cingular, or about $400 for an unlocked version that can be used with any carrier (www.palm.com/treo680). Compared with my Treo 650, this unit is smaller, lighter and does not have a bulky antenna sticking out.
– Relief from laptop heat. The $20 Traveler Coolpad (www.roadtools.com) is just what the doctor ordered for my MacBook’s stovetop bottom. The Coolpad creates an air buffer between my laptop and lap, so that the former doesn’t burn the latter.
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Technology I don’t want:
– A new PC. There is nothing we do on a desktop computer that my 4-year-old iMac can’t handle. Sure, the old thing could use some additional storage space (see above), but for Web browsing and digital photo and music management it remains steady and reliable. There’s nobody who enjoys spending money on technology more than me, but even I have trouble justifying purchasing a new PC.
– Sony’s electronic book reader. Sony generated a lot of buzz recently with the release of its Portable Reader System (www.sony.com/reader). It looks like an enlarged hand-held device, with a 6-inch screen that uses what the company calls E Ink, which is different than liquid crystal. The device, which can be purchased at Connect eBooks (www.ebooks.connect.com), holds up to 80 electronic books on its internal memory, and more with a memory card. But I’m not ready to give up paper books any more than I’m ready to stop reading newspapers. This might be for some people; it’s just not for me.
– A Bluetooth headset. Because they scare me. Especially when people have them blinking in their ear while not having a conversion. The wire between a headset and my cell phone is just not that annoying to me.
So there’s my list. Please clip, save and go shopping.
I’m accepting gifts until the end of the year.
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Alex L. Goldfayn is host of “The Technology Tailor Show” on WGN-AM 720 on Saturdays from 6 to 8 p.m.