Sunday, November 28, 2010

All I want for Christmas

There are few things in the electronics realm that I find overly compelling from a Christmas present receiving sort of perspective. That is to say, there isn't much I want for Christmas. Part of the problem as I have gotten older is that my interests shift to larger and larger dollar purchases. In no particular order, here are the few things that I do sort of want:

  • 30" Dell Monitor: I've been wanting to replace my two 20" Dell monitors on my desktop for some time. My hope was always that the 30" monitors would be well below $1000 by now. Alas, they are not and I can't get myself to take the plunge yet. I'll have to look for refurbished and sales items from Dell.
  • A Sports Watch: Thinking something cheap or on the order of $35 and from Nike or some other such sport brand. Doesn't need to do anything but tell the time, just like they did 100 years ago, but digital, waterproof, sleek and durable would be nice.
  • Home Automation Gear: This is still on my list of things to do, but hardly seems like a Christmas present. Maybe there are some starter packages that work well. I've been advised by a friend who runs a home automation company that Control4 is a much better purchase than Insteon or X10. Therefore, I'm a little hesitant to buy any other as a result. I also think that I would find it useful to have the security system (that we haven't decided on buying yet) tied into the home automation system.
  • A New, Higher Quality Pocket Cam: I have a range of cameras available to me right now: a Canon 5D Mark II (high quality, but crazy bulky), a Canon Digital Rebel XT (still high quality in most cases, but still bulky), an Olympus Stylus 1030 SW (pocketable, waterproof, and virtually indestructible but optics and picture quality are mediocre). I have researched a bit and found two good candidates, but neither is sufficiently compelling to take the plunge. The first, the Canon S95, inspired this post from David Pogue from the NY Times. The S95 has a large sensor and great features to take great pictures. It does, however, still lack GPS tagging, one of the key features that I find compelling about the Panasonic Lumix DMZ-DS7. It not only has some good optical properties, including a 12x zoom, but it also has the GPS tagging.
  • Vehicle Port Logging: I ran across the concept in Popular Science (or Mechanics, not sure which) and am very much intrigued. There are at least two options: the Rev and the (less excitingly named) GL1. Both of these products combine information from your phone's GPS data stream with data from your vehicle's OBD-II data port output. That second stream of information will allow you to track instantaneous fuel consumption, engine revving, service codes, etc. I think that there would be a bit I could learn about how I drive and when I do or do not waste gas. Of course, in the end, I would want to be able to keep the data in my own database, just not sure that part is going to happen. UPDATE: After reading this review, I've decided that the GoPoint GL1 has a ways to go before I want to invest my time and effort into it. The software may have improved since the April review, but the fuel efficiency calculations were horrendous -- enough so as to mislead. I will wait for some maturity here.

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