The Gadgets Page

A local CompUSA had the iPod nano in stock last weekend, so I got my first look at one in person. A few first impressions:

• This thing is thin and small, much moreso than I imagined. It’s as thin as the iPod Shuffle, and only a bit wider. It would easily fit in a pocket.
• The black finish is beautiful, as is the tiny color screen—the screen is very sharp and readable, and the tiny thumbnails of album covers are recognizable.
• The clickwheel and buttons are easy to use. I personally prefer the moving wheel on my ancient iPod, but it’s hard to imagine a better interface for something this tiny.
• The headphone connector is on the bottom of the unit, which seems odd, but won’t be a major inconvenience.
• The dock connector on the bottom should work with many of the existing iPod accessories, but the nano’s size might make it fit poorly (or look silly) in some docks. Make Magazine tested a few accessories and reports on what works and what doesn’t.

We’ll have a full review when one of us gives into temptation and buys one. In the meantime, Time magazine has an interesting article on the development of the nano. Apple certainly made a bold decision to discontinue the iPod mini and focus on the new nano, but I’m sure it will pay off.

JVC is first out of the gate with a hard disk based camcorder that records in the MPEG-2 format of DVD. No tape, no mini-DVDs, and up to 24 hours of recording at a time. But as everyone who buys a camcorder finds out, the devil is always in the details: How fast and easy is it to export the video and create a DVD, and how much is it really going to cost in extra peripherals and software to do it? We put this camera to the test. (Continue Reading…)

Apple introduced the ipod nano today. It’s an updated version of the iPod mini with 2GB or 4GB of flash-memory storage. It’s basically a smaller, thinner version of the iPod mini, complete with a color screen. It goes for $199 or $249 depending on the size, and best of all, it comes in black.

No technical revolution here, but Apple’s iPods do tend to drive the rest of the MP3 player market, so expect to see lots of thin, white and black music players in a store near you soon.

They also announced an iTunes phone, for what that’s worth. My Treo 650 can play hundreds of songs already, so I’m not too excited about that one.

The stock stereo system in my car is probably the most proprietary system on earth. It was used for only a few years in only a few makes of German cars, and there are literally no 3rd party components or options that can be added to the system. It uses a fiber-optic loop, so there’s no way to adapt typical audio components to it without creating a custom fiber-optic bus adapter. This is exactly what Dension did when they came out with their ICELink Plus I2O adapter for the iPod.

I had an iPod (or rather, my wife had an iPod) and I am a geek, so I had to get it connected to my car.

(Continue Reading…)

Amazon is running a promotion saying that they’re offering the Apple 20GB iPod at “a price so low, we can’t show it to you.” I’m pretty sure their contract with Apple doesn’t apply to me, so I’ll tell you the price is $239, quite a bit less than my ancient 5GB model cost a few years back.

Considering that the 20GB model is still $299 at the Apple Store, this is a pretty good deal. Apparently all of the competition from other MP3 players is finally catching up with Apple’s prices.

DVDs have rapidly replaced videocassettes as the format of choice for home video. But making your own DVDs with video from a camcorder is far from easy. Understanding the process helps.

Ways to make a DVD

There are basically three methods you can use to create DVDs of your home movies. Each method has its advantages and drawbacks, and none of the methods has a clear lead in the market. The three methods are:

1. Using a component DVD recorder
2. Using a DVD Camcorder
3. Using a computer

(Continue Reading…)

While CDs can survive minor damage far better than the vinyl records they replaced, they are still vulnerable to scratches. DVDs are even more vulnerable, since they store more data in the same space.

Since the 1980s, various devices have been marketed to repair scratched CDs, many of them completely worthless. In this review, we’ll take a look at some modern contenders and see if they live up to their hype–and their price tags.

(Continue Reading…)

Sony wasn’t the first to market with a DVD camcorder–Both Panasonic and Hitachi have released camcorders that can burn to either DVD-R or DVD-RAM. But neither of those formats is perfect for home users, as DVD-R doesn’t allow editing and DVD-RAM can’t be played in a home DVD player. Sony is first out of the gate with a camcorder that allows standard DVD-RW media that can be both edited and played directly on a home player–a huge advantage for typical consumers.

(Continue Reading…)