Techie Recomendations

David Pogue is the technology writer for the New York Times. in his circuits column, he tests approximately 200 gadgets a year in order to do his reviews. he recently wrote about what he felt good enough to buy with his own money. thought some of you might be interested in what he had to say

From today's mailbag:

"I have a suggestion that seems so obvious, I was sure you
must have already done it: I would love to see a feature,
somewhere in your vast publishing empire, where you list what
you personally use. Call it Pogue's List or something like
that.

"I like what's new and cool, but there is a threshold that
any new device will have to cross before I go out and drop
hard-earned money on it. It would be great to see what
someone as plugged in as you uses personally. Everything tech
-- watch, laptop, TV, car, digital camera, film camera, like
that."

OK, man, you're on. (Gotta love a topic that requires no
research whatsoever.)

The Pogue house is a veritable Circuit City, with something
like 200 high-tech products passing through every year. I
don't get to keep any of it--everything must be shipped back
when the review is over. But when something comes along
that's truly fantastic, I fire up my Web browser, pull up
Shopping.com to find the best price, and buy one for myself.

Camera. When the baby's doing something adorable, I grab our
Nikon D50. It's a small digital S.L.R.--one of those black,
heavyish, not-pocketable semi-pro cameras that can
accommodate all kinds of lenses--and it takes jaw-droppingly
beautiful pictures. Like magazine-quality.

For months, I just used the standard lens it came with. My
wife gave me a second one (telephoto) for Christmas, and now
I'm rockin'.

These days, Shopping.com tells me that the D50 can be had for
$625, lens included.

Second camera. Trouble with an S.L.R., of course, is that
it's bulky and it doesn't take movies. So we also have a
Canon PowerShot SD550.

The SD550 is small, slim, easily pants-pocketable. But it has
a big screen, good flash, good battery life and--here's the
main point--it takes phenomenal pictures. (At the end of
every year, I order one of those custom hardbound photo books
containing the best pictures of the year--about $30 through
Apple's iPhoto or at mypublisher.com). And sometimes I can't
tell the difference between the SD550's shots and the Nikon
D50's.

Shutter lag is a problem, as it is on every compact camera.
But the 550 has goodies like an orientation sensor that
instantly rotates a photo, during playback, when you
physically turn the camera. (No menus, no buttons are
involved.) And the movies are just incredible. We've got a 2-
gigabyte memory card inside (about $90) that gives us 20
minutes of full-TV-quality movies. Trust me on this: Our
kids' lives are better documented than Olympics.

The only thing that could possibly be better than the 550 is
its successor, the SD700, just unveiled by Canon. It's the
same idea but with an image stabilizer (yeah!) and a 4X zoom
instead of 3X. I think my credit card is about to get another
workout. Our beloved SD550 has a date with eBay.

Cellphone. Despite my grumbling about Verizon's customer
service, greed and lame phone selection, I remain a steadfast
Verizon Wireless customer for one simple reason: I've got
coverage just about everywhere I go.

After much research, I bought the LG 8100. It's a sweet,
compact flip phone with screens on the inside and outside,
very good camera/camcorder and what's probably the best phone
operating system yet. (I always ask people to play software
designer and answer this question: "After you take a picture
with your phone, what are the three options you'd want
staring you in the face?" The answer, of course, is Save,
Delete and Send. If your phone doesn't have these three
options, on the screen without any menu-burrowing, then it's
not as good as the LG.)

Computer. I have a Power Mac G4, a 12-inch PowerBook G4, a
Dell Dimension 4550 tower and a tiny Fujitsu Lifebook, all
circa 2003 and 2004. That's two Macs and two Windows
machines, one each laptop and desktop--the minimum you really
need for testing things like networking gear and both flavors
of software.

Watch. I like a watch with numbers (not notches), day/date
readout, glow-in-the-dark dots, and a sweep second hand.
That's what I found in a Seiko when my old watch died. $40 at
Costco. (But surely nobody really cares about my watch!?)

Camcorder. As I wrote last year in this column: "I went for
the the Sony PC350. Man, I am thrilled. It was my main
shooter for spring break with my family, and it just didn't
let us down. External mike input? Check. Battery-size
limitations? None. Picture quality? Fantastic, even in low
light, thanks to the relatively huge sensor (1/3 inch, vs.
1/6 inch for most $400-range digital camcorders).

"...I can slip this lightweight thing into a coat pocket and
head out of the house without tipping over like a side-
mounted Quasimodo. Looks like even DV quality divas can find
happiness with a matchbox camcorder."

This 2004 model is hard to find these days. That's a real
shame, since Sony's master plan ever since is to strip down,
strip down, strip down. The PC350's successor, for example,
doesn't have a microphone input--and I need one for my weekly
Times videos. I don't know what I'll do when this puppy gives
up the ghost.

Car. Toyota Prius. Wow, what a great car. But I've written
quite enough about that here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/technolo...OGUE-EMAIL.html
and here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/technolo...OGUE-EMAIL.html

TiVo. Still on our original 1998 Series 1 TiVo, although we
upgraded it to some insane amount of recording capacity (via
the weaknees.com upgrade service).

Last week, TiVo stopped offering the one-time, lifetime-
subscription offer to new TiVo buyers; now it's monthly-fee
only. And people like me prompted that change. I broke even
on that one-time fee deal in about 2000, and have been
coasting on free service ever since.

VCR/DVD burner. Our sole high-tech purchase of 2006 so far
was a Panasonic DMR-ES40 ($250). It's a combination VCR, DVD
player and DVD recorder, which we use to offload movies from
the TiVo onto DVD's. So far, we're really happy with it. (Our
18-month-old baby had destroyed its predecessor, our VCR, by
shoving in random objects. This time, I've installed a clear
acrylic protector called a VCR Guard.)

The gear I've described here is not flashy, top-of-the-line
or even recent. But it's gear that works well, is well
designed and makes me happier about the money spent with
every additional month of service.