Internet for Your Bacon and Eggs
It had to happen: LG Appliances merged a refrigerator with a PC, gave it an LCD touch screen and camera, slapped an $8000 price tag on it, and labeled it the Internet Refrigerator--a swanky, roomy, moderately energy-efficient refrigerator with a date book, photo album, electronic whiteboard, Web browser, music jukebox, and TV. To make the TV or Internet functions work, you'll need a cable TV and ethernet port convenient to the back of the fridge. The computer, which inexplicably runs Windows 98, isn't tied in with the refrigerator's
temperature controls (a separate panel above the ice and water dispenser
handles that), so your ice won't melt if Windows freezes. The included
food-tracking program could have been engineered a little better--as it is,
entering each grocery item into the database is a tedious data entry chore
involving the touch screen's keyboard. Another missed opportunity: You can't
set the built-in, door-front camera to snap a photo of the late-night
Haagen-Dazs thief who invades your kitchen.
Bigger Than Some Big Screens
Power on the NEC Showcase HT1000 projector, fire up a DVD movie, and the home theater experience is so complete you might catch a whiff of popcorn in the air. The first in NEC's series of home-oriented projectors, the 7.1-pound HT1000 delivers superior image quality compared with other projectors. While pricier than most models, this unit offers a home user several features that are more important in the living room than in the boardroom: the entire
spectrum of high-end video input options, from composite to HDTV; support for
console video games as well as for PCs; an automatic setup mode that
compensates for the projection angle to display a rectangle even if you can't
aim dead-center at a screen or wall; and a mode in which the fan runs
whisper-quiet--an important consideration when you'd rather hear the alien
sneaking up on the hero than the fan droning inside the projector. If you have
the cash to spend on a 60-inch plasma-display television, you should seriously
consider this projector and a good-quality screen as a lighter, sturdier
alternative. For more on the benefits and drawbacks of large display
technologies, see Really Big Shows.
A PDA That Knows Where You're Going
A sleek and powerful, high-resolution color Palm OS PDA, Garmin's IQue 3600 also delivers a built-in Global Positioning System receiver. With the included mapping software, it can show you (within 120 feet) where you are and tell you how to get where you want to go. Ah, the promise of never having to ask a gas station attendant for directions again! It's also loaded with a voice recorder, an SD memory card expansion slot, office software, an MP3 player, and a
headphone jack. An optional $80 Auto Navigation Kit is, in reality, necessary:
The kit provides juice from the car's cigarette lighter to supplement the
IQue's painfully short battery life. We like that you can set an array of
preferences--from showing wayside stops to suggesting alternate roads that
avoid tolls--but best of all is the versatility of the IQue, which happens to
be a handy PDA when it's not guiding you to your next destination.
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