Now, those who know me, know that I’m one of those no-financial-commitments-whatsoever bastards that go through gadgets like most people go through change of underwear. I’ll buy something – seemingly on the spur of the moment – play around with it for about two weeks of geek-bliss, and then suddenly it’ll be off to that mysterious graveyard of single socks, pens, lighters, and decade-long tea-parties of the soul.
In my defence I have to say that I’m not a tech-blog freak and usually don’t drool over GhZ, passive touchscreens, SSDs, or the newest fourth-dimension graphic chip. I pride myself at being slightly more practical than that. So unlike other epi-centres of homeless hardware, I actually start by figuring out what I need and only then start searching for it to see if somebody have had the same idea and gone through the trouble of creating it.
Whatever the excuse though, it allows me first-row view to both some pretty awesome inventions – along with some gaping holes in the worldwide gadget portfolio – so without further ado, here are my two favorite buys this year:
Jambox Jawbone
I don’t know how Jambox did this, but they managed to cram awesome sound, dead-simple set-up, AND 9 hrs of battery into one small and very portable package. It’s simply awesome. Only feature I haven’t gotten to work so well so far is the conference phone and the online updates and apps for it, but to be fair I haven’t tried that hard yet since I’m so satisfied with the basic functionality.
Nook Touch
Most of the reviews says it all. It doesn’t do a lot, but what it does it does exceedingly well and without me having to browse through a gazillion manuals to figure it out. I’ve only had it for two months and gone through 11 books, but the very responsive touch-display, the 6″ screen that actually fits a paperback (unlike my old Bokeen Opus), and the four different ways to flip pages (actually a problem on most ebook readers because you get sore arms) has made it a joy to use.
Now I wouldn’t be a gadget freak if I didn’t also have a slight Apple-fetish. And to be totally honest I do.
But maybe I’m “just not getting” the Steve-and-Ives awesomeness, because to me Lion is still a W7-with-less-features and iOS a locked-down version of something useful, so besides having been through almost all Apple products at one time or another (I never tried the TimeCapsule), I still find myself bootcamping all my Macs and unlocking all my iOS devices to give them the features that should have been there in the first place.
I acknowledge that maybe my brain is wired wrong or something. I did force-feed myself AppleOS on my iMac for six months to see if I could “get it”, and still found myself bootcamping back – doing the obligatory two-week iTunes-migration-dance that never works – and you therefore wont find me doing major investments in an AirPlay stereo speakers until MS, Google, Creative, and the others have made a go at it too.
Now speaking of speakers (hah!), let me finish by sharing the current top two on my why-on-Earth-haven’t-they-invented-this-yet list:
Functioning USBkey/Presenter
What I need is a presenter that will allow me to bring my presentations along so I only have to bring one gadget. Sounds simple right? Wrong!! After two years of perusing dark alleys of gadget R&D – and actually buying this horrific arm-waving-monster at one point – I’m still no closer to finding a solution that actually works. And I know that you can get a promotional presenter that does this, but after my embarassing arm-waving failure I no longer trust gadgets obviously made to be thrown away.
So please MS, Logitech, Creative, and whoever, stop adding lasers, mouses, and friggin’hand-coolers to your presenters, and give me something useful.
Decor-friendly wireless sound-system
Maybe this is like the holy grail of modern technology and I just missed the memo, but why on Earth do I have to choose between wireless music with no surround, wireless surround with no option of playing music in more than one room, or a monster of a receiver with carport-sized bass-pumpers and two-inch cables snaking across the floor throughout my apartment?
AirPlay would be a step in the right direction if Apple would just stop hogging my wifi-bandwidth, add surround, and figure out how to get sound from my actual TV and not just the AppleTV plastic box they want me to stick under my TV. So for now, I guess I’ll have to try out Sonos and convince myself that the charge in Two Towers will be JUST as impressive with two Play:5’s in front and me jingling house-keys at the back of my head trying to emulate the sound of ten thousand advancing Orcs.
I’ll let you know how THAT goes.
But I guess that’s it for me on the gadget front. I did buy a lot of other gadgets: Four different pens (and one brush) for my iPad, two RC helicopters, a totally hacked AppleTV, and a Ziiiro Mercury watch that unfortunately scratches pretty easily, but you’ll have to ask me about those if you’re interested.