Thursday, January 5, 2006
PCWorld's 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "THE COMPETITION" @ 06:00 PM
"We're living in the golden age of the gadget. Don't believe it? Check your pockets. Odds are you're carrying a portable music player, an electronic organizer, a keychain-size storage device, a digital camera, or a cell phone that combines some or all of these functions. And you'd probably be hard-pressed to live without them. . . . In honor of this raging gizmo infatuation, we polled our editors and asked them to name the top 50 gadgets of the last 50 years. The rules? The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the "cool factor." Then we tallied the results.
[Selected results for mobile devices] (4.) PalmPilot 1000, (6.) Motorola StarTAC, (12.) Motorola Razr V3, (13.) Motorola PageWriter, (14.) BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld, (20.) Handspring Treo 600, (28.) Apple Newton MessagePad, (30.) Sanyo SCP-5300, (35.) Motorola DynaTAC, 8000X, (48.) Sharp Wizard OZ-7000, (50.) Poqet PC Model PQ-0164"
There's certainly some interesting choices in the list. Oh, and a fair few dubious ones as well. Would you have put the Sony Walkman at nr 1? Hmmmm, obviously they complied the list before the Sony Rootkit debacle news broke. ;-) Moving on to more pertinent matters, I suppose I can see why the PalmPilot 1000 was at nr 4. Being first to the party (or at least properly sized and attired) certainly counts for something. There's a good reason why this is posted as "The Competition" btw. There is is not one Pocket PC in all the mobile devices! I was surprised not to see the Compaq iPAQ 3600 series listed. For me, it was the breakthrough Pocket PC that really opened my eyes to the possibility of mobile devices due to it's fun form & functionality. How about you guys? What do you think of the top 50 list as it stands and do you agree with the mobile devices listed and ranked?
[Selected results for mobile devices] (4.) PalmPilot 1000, (6.) Motorola StarTAC, (12.) Motorola Razr V3, (13.) Motorola PageWriter, (14.) BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld, (20.) Handspring Treo 600, (28.) Apple Newton MessagePad, (30.) Sanyo SCP-5300, (35.) Motorola DynaTAC, 8000X, (48.) Sharp Wizard OZ-7000, (50.) Poqet PC Model PQ-0164"
There's certainly some interesting choices in the list. Oh, and a fair few dubious ones as well. Would you have put the Sony Walkman at nr 1? Hmmmm, obviously they complied the list before the Sony Rootkit debacle news broke. ;-) Moving on to more pertinent matters, I suppose I can see why the PalmPilot 1000 was at nr 4. Being first to the party (or at least properly sized and attired) certainly counts for something. There's a good reason why this is posted as "The Competition" btw. There is is not one Pocket PC in all the mobile devices! I was surprised not to see the Compaq iPAQ 3600 series listed. For me, it was the breakthrough Pocket PC that really opened my eyes to the possibility of mobile devices due to it's fun form & functionality. How about you guys? What do you think of the top 50 list as it stands and do you agree with the mobile devices listed and ranked?
