Tuesday, December 6, 2005
What Excites You This Holiday Season?
Posted by Jon Westfall in "THOUGHT" @ 05:30 AM
With the approaching holidays, we're all probably starting to get the itch for new technology. When Santa slides down your chimney / exhaust pipe / toilet vent in mere weeks, what device or gadget excites you enough to be having visions of dancing in your heads? Just to jog your memory, here is a quick rundown of what's been released these last few months (And a few we expect to be out soon, so those of you with birthdays early in the New Year have something to hope for). So whatever your religious affiliation, drop what you're doing, pretend to believe in Santa, pretend you've been a good little geek, and tell us what you want for Christmas this year...
For starters, you may want one of those shiny new HTC devices. Why not - the Jasjar is big enough and feature packed with WM 5 goodness, a laptop like design, VGA screen, and a fairly usable keyboard. The K-Jam is small and still stuffed with goodies like quad band GSM, WLAN, Bluetooth, and a keyboard. These devices don't come cheap, and availability is a limiting factor, but if you're a phone edition phanatic (to use the 'hip' spelling I just made up) it is about as much as you can ask for. A bit more attainable than these two devices would be Sprint & Verizon's versions of the HTC Apache, which are available soon (Verizon) or now (Sprint) and support those stuck on that "other" cellular network architecture.
But maybe HTC has scorned you or is just too unattainable. Perhaps the phoneophile in you is leaning toward the E-ten M600. Darius just finished his Comprehensive review of it, and while it lacks the USB host of its ancestor and Ed's beloved infrared, Darius seems happy with its performance and value. Still a bit pricey, but you can't expect a Phone Edition to be low price - although used I-Mate Pocket PCs are still floating around eBay for low cost, and they are only 2 years old! (That device still holds the record for Most Money Paid For A Device by yours truly).
For starters, you may want one of those shiny new HTC devices. Why not - the Jasjar is big enough and feature packed with WM 5 goodness, a laptop like design, VGA screen, and a fairly usable keyboard. The K-Jam is small and still stuffed with goodies like quad band GSM, WLAN, Bluetooth, and a keyboard. These devices don't come cheap, and availability is a limiting factor, but if you're a phone edition phanatic (to use the 'hip' spelling I just made up) it is about as much as you can ask for. A bit more attainable than these two devices would be Sprint & Verizon's versions of the HTC Apache, which are available soon (Verizon) or now (Sprint) and support those stuck on that "other" cellular network architecture.
But maybe HTC has scorned you or is just too unattainable. Perhaps the phoneophile in you is leaning toward the E-ten M600. Darius just finished his Comprehensive review of it, and while it lacks the USB host of its ancestor and Ed's beloved infrared, Darius seems happy with its performance and value. Still a bit pricey, but you can't expect a Phone Edition to be low price - although used I-Mate Pocket PCs are still floating around eBay for low cost, and they are only 2 years old! (That device still holds the record for Most Money Paid For A Device by yours truly).
