When you look at the latest and greatest in tech gear all day long, it's the last thing you want to think about when you get home, right? Hardly. We here at PC World may be immersed in computer goodies at the office, but we're still hoping to find a few new products at home this holiday season.
After many hours debating the merits of digital cameras versus DVD recorders versus digital audio players, we've put together a list of our favorites. Santa, we know you're a PC World reader, so here's our annual holiday wish list.
Get the Picture
No Contest: What's on my list? That's easy--the Canon EOS Digital Rebel single-lens reflex camera. The drool factor: 6.3 megapixels. It sells for around $900; after much waiting, serious amateur photographers can now afford to go digital. Plus, I don't have to buy new lenses--my old Canon EOS lenses for my 35mm camera work with this model.
Eric Butterfield
Better Buy a Lotto Ticket: Given a lottery winner's bank balance, I'd love a Canon EOS-1Ds Digital SLR. But the $8000 price is a tad high for Santa, so I'd also be happy with the $900 Canon Digital Rebel.
Richard Baguley
Still Waiting: The Canon Digital Rebel takes great pictures and doesn't strain my back while I'm carrying it. But I'm holding out a little longer, hoping that the next round of digital SLRs to hit the market will include a successor to Nikon's D100, which is itself a great, if bulky (compared with the Rebel), camera. Why? I have a drawer full of Nikon lenses collecting dust, and it would be nice to put them to good use again.
Melissa Perenson
Photograph: Rick RiznerSince You Asked: Now that I'm equipped with the digital camera I put on last year's wish list, it's time for accessories. I'd like to start with about a zillion credits at a photo site so that I can get prints of my digital shots and then have them shipped directly to the various friends and relatives who want copies. To make prints myself, however, I'm eyeing Hewlett-Packard's Photosmart 7550, which produces 4800 by 1200 dpi and supports tabloid-size printouts. It costs about $300; a more generous Santa might deliver the newer $500 Canon i9100 Photo Printer, which offers the same resolution but five color cartridges instead of two. Let's put a lifetime supply of ink cartridges on the list while we're at it.
Peggy Watt
On Display: I've been interested in digital picture frames for several years, but have found them disappointingly small or requiring a subscription. The Vista Frame from Vialta overcomes both objections. It's fairly expensive ($300), but its 6.8-inch LCD is great, and it works with most media cards. Best of all, it's easy to use, which makes it ideal for technophobic grandparents who keep bugging for family photos. I bought one as a gift for my folks, and tested it for a week before shipping it off. I fell in love with it myself--and, yes, Santa has been informed.
Ramon G. McLeod
That's Entertainment
I Want My DLP TV: If anyone I knew could possibly afford it (and they can't), I'd ask for Samsung's HLN507W 50-inch DLP rear-projection TV. Not only does it provide a big, beautiful, wide-screen picture, but it doesn't compromise when you want an old-fashioned 4-by-3 image. Unlike a plasma display, DLP doesn't have burn-in issues when you use only part of the screen.
Lincoln Spector
Second Opinion: I'm not going to be greedy and ask for a big-screen LCD or plasma TV. But if anyone out there has a few grand to spend on me this holiday season (and reads this), I'd be eternally grateful for one of those big new digital rear-projection TVs--Samsung's HLN507W DLP RPTV, for example. If the $4000 price tag is too high, I'll settle for a PC game--maybe Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. It's the latest addition to the venerable Myst line, and a bargain at $50.
Yardena Arar
Linux in the Living Room?: Call me a geek, but the Linux-based Roku HD1000 High-Definition Digital Media Player would make a nice addition to my home theater setup. Though it's geared toward HDTV sets, the HD1000 connects to any television as well as to your home network (using ethernet or Wi-Fi), and it offers slots for CompactFlash, MMC, SD, Memory Stick, and SmartMedia cards. But the best part is that the $499 player can display photos, recorded TV shows, or other content on your television. Now, if only I could have a high-definition TV.
Alexandra Krasne
Making Music: Two things top my techno-toy wish list this year. First is Rio's Cali 256 MP3 player. It fits in the palm of your hand and has an FM tuner and stopwatch. It also accepts an SD or MMC card as big as 512MB. Next I want a lifetime subscription to Musicmatch Platinum. This Internet radio service makes music recommendations based on what's already in my library, and a three-month subscription costs only about as much as one CD. So I don't have to blow $15 every time I want to check out a new band, and I can program my own station with just the artists I choose. All Buzzcocks, all the time? Yeah.
Rebecca Freed
Hit the Road: For long trips, the $360 IRiver IHP-120 is my portable music player of choice. It holds hundreds of hours of music and also has a built-in FM radio. Tie this in with a pair of $500 Shure E5c headphones, and I'll be happy on all of those flights to the strange and wonderful places I'll be visiting after I win the lottery.
Richard Baguley
High-Tech Radio: I've been on the fence about satellite radio since the services were announced in 2002. I've been an inveterate radio listener for years, and I haven't caught the MP3 habit (I still think they're the second coming of eight-tracks). What keeps me from signing on the dotted line for satellite broadcasts is the $10 to $13 monthly charge. But now I hear that the NFL is coming to Sirius airwaves next season. I've been a football fan longer than I've been a radiohead, and my favorite team plays on the other side of the country. "Hello, Sirius?"
Dennis O'Reilly
But Can It Play LPs?: I'd like a DVD changer with DVD-Audio and SACD. After my ten-year-old CD changer started trapping discs inside, I realized it was time to upgrade to a full-blown home theater system, starting with a better changer that supports the next-generation audio formats. Since only single-disc DVD players offer both DVD-Audio and SACD, I'm thinking along the lines of a changer with DVD-Audio (I'll worry later if SACD comes out the leader), such as Denon's $469 DVD-Audio DVM-2815.
Melissa Perenson
On the Run: I like to jog, but in the winter it gets icy in Boston, and I'm forced to run inside. Since nothing's more boring than running on a treadmill, I need tunes and a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I'd like to try the Plane Quiet pair from the Outside The Box Group. These $80 headphones provide active noise cancellation powered by one AAA battery.
Randy Ross
Holiday Wish List: Back to Business
Easy on the Eyes: Okay, I admit it. I'm using a nearly nine-year-old 15-inch CRT. It's blurry, the color is off, and it works intermittently. I'm long overdue for an upgrade, and my new monitor of choice is the Dell UltraSharp 1901FP 19-inch Flat Panel Monitor. I ordered this often-on-sale (for less than its $679 list price) monitor, and now I'm just waiting for it to be delivered.
Melissa Perenson
Trading Spaces: My PC looms large on top of my desk, where I can change its peripherals. Sure, I could set it on the linty carpet, but that's not always a good idea. If I had a wee little USB 2.0 hub like Belkin's Hi-Speed USB 2.0 4-Port Hub, I could stow my PC inside the desk without having to excavate it every time I needed to add a peripheral. This hub looks to be about the size of a soap dish. That would free up a great deal of valuable desk space.
Laura Blackwell
Santa, Take Your Pick: A ThinkPad T41 would be nice, but since I spend all my free cash on guitars, I would (and did recently) settle for a Toshiba Satellite M35. A Motorola MPx200 smart phone would be nice, too, though I'm waiting for the MPx220 to show up.
Scott Spanbauer
In Need of an Assistant: I want an intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) robot to write my column once a month--kind of a literate, wise-cracking Aibo who types fast and doesn't expect to get paid. That's not likely to work out, so I'll go for a Treo 600, now marketed by PalmOne. Of course, it needs to be a gift (hint, hint), since I'd rather not fork over $500 myself. Why a Treo? I want my e-mail and phone to flow through one device, and the Treo is the smartest smart phone to date--a solid cell phone mated with a decent keyboard, plus a camera and all those Palm apps.
Steve Fox
A Digital Assistant Will Do: I'd also like that Treo 600. Finally, a PDA with wireless data and a keyboard. And, oh yeah, as a cell phone it has great battery life, too.
Melissa Perenson
Going Mobile
Does This Sound Familiar?: I want a 2-pound notebook that runs for days on battery, starts up immediately in the exact place it was at when I turned it off, has Wi-Fi and Internet access built in, and uses some operating system--any operating system--that isn't Windows. Oh wait, I have one: the AlphaSmart Dana Wireless. Okay, what I really want is a Dana that's a clamshell with a bigger (and color) screen.
Daniel Tynan
Fully Loaded: Since this is a wish list, I wish for a Fujitsu LifeBook P5020D. With all the bells and whistles added, this 3-pound notebook costs $1900. But that price includes a lot. The smallish 10.6-inch screen is a wide-format XGA TFT display--great for watching DVDs. And with the 5-hour standard battery, it's easy to watch a movie without a recharge. The DVD drive is a modular combination model with CD-RW, and the notebook also has built-in 802.11g wireless, a generous 60GB hard drive, two USB 2.0 slots, FireWire, an SD/Memory Stick slot, a CompactFlash slot, and a PC Card slot. It is true: The best things come in little packages. It's my wishes that are big.
Michael Lasky
Artwork: Rick Rizner, John GoddardSlimming Down: I love my laptop, but I don't love having to lug 10 pounds of equipment wherever I go. In hindsight, I should have spent a couple hundred extra dollars on an ultralight such as Toshiba's $1700 Portege M100. At 5.3 pounds it's about half the weight of my current machine, but it has a removable 40GB hard drive, 256MB of RAM, and a 1-GHz Pentium III-M processor. My chiropractor will appreciate the lighter weight, but my ophthalmologist may not like the effect the small 12.1-inch TFT LCD has on my eyes. The Portege also gives me twice the battery life (4 hours instead of 2), and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive to replace my current notebook's DVD/CD reader.
On second thought, even the 5-pound Portege could start to weigh me down before long (I'm not getting any younger). Maybe I'd better ask Santa for Fujitsu's 3.2-pound Stylistic ST5000 Tablet PC instead. It's a slate-style machine with a 40GB hard drive, a 1-GHz Pentium III-M processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 12-inch TFT LCD (up from the 10.4-inch screen used in its predecessor, the ST4000). Who knows? Maybe I'll start a weight-reduction trend that will have me ready for the beach by summertime.
Dennis O'Reilly
A BlackBerry Smoothie, Please: If there's one thing I'd like to (miraculously) show up in my stocking, it's the $400 color BlackBerry by Research In Motion. I'll take any of the three siblings in the 7200 family--the 7210, the 7230, or the 7280. Handheld devices can be cumbersome, but not this PDA/phone combo. Navigating applications with the BlackBerry 7230's jog dial was a breeze, and the angled buttons on its built-in keyboard made typing less of a hassle, even for one with chubby thumbs. When I made a call without using the bundled headset, the BlackBerry felt like a knobbly calculator against my cheek, but I got used to it quickly. (And while you're at it, Santa, sign me up for a voice and data plan with T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, or Cingular Wireless.)
Aoife M. McEvoy
In a Perfect World
Is This Part of the Next Windows?: I'll take a true plug-and-play system in which there is no need for drivers, period. You plug a printer/graphics board/network card/whatever into your computer, and the operating system would know what to do with it. And you could simply move your hard drive (which would be external, of course) to another computer, and it would work just fine.
Lincoln Spector
Homer Would Love It: How about a multimedia laptop based on the TiVo operating system? (No such thing exists--yet). Hook it up to a phone line, and it downloads your favorite programs, season passes, or whatever, using TiVo software. Then you can watch the programs on a plane, train, bus, or boat, or even in the car (while someone else is driving, preferably). It would also have a DVD writer so that you could archive your favorite TiVo-captured programs at high quality. As a concession to reality, this laptop would also let you work in Windows XP programs. But after an hour of work, XP would be overtaken by TiVo, and you wouldn't be allowed to work again until you've watched at least one episode of The Simpsons.
James A. Martin
Does That Count as Enhancement?: I'd like a device that detects spam and sends 10,000 volts back down the wire to the person who sent it to me. I'd also like to have the electrodes attached to whatever body part his/her spam is claiming to "improve." Is that too much to ask?
Dan Tynan
And While We're at It: In the realm of the fantastic, I'd like a bugless, crashless Windows; applications and hardware devices that never, ever disable one another's features; and the same fate that Dan wishes on spammers dealt to virus writers. No, wait--maybe they could get a Twilight Zone-ish comeuppance of a real virus that covers their bodies in boils.
Carla Thornton
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