Picks are generally doubled up, with a “best” and a “budget alternative”. “Best HDTV” doesn’t necessarily mean the absolute best TV money can buy, it means it’s the best one for reasonable money. Then I’ll offer a low-cost alternative if you’re willing to sacrifice a few features to save some bucks.

Let’s dive in…

Quick jump to the best…

• HDTV
• Portable GPS
• Laptop
• Portable music player
• Point-and-shoot camera
• Consumer DSLR camera
• Blu-Ray Player
• Overall gadget under $100

Best HDTV

Samsung LN46B650 46″ 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV

This updated version of last year’s pick is still a great performer at an exceptional value. Although I’m still not wild about Samsung’s obsession with putting red gradients on the bottom of their TVs, the quality of their sets can’t be knocked. I’m a big fan of Samsung, and other techheads I speak with generally agree. Good connectivity, good user interfaces, solid build quality, and a great picture at a reasonable price.

You might be surprised that I didn’t pick one of the newfangled LED-backlit LCD televisions. As much as I like the promise that the technology holds, I feel it’s still too early. There’s a lot of change still to come with LED backlighting technology, and what’s out there now is a mixed bag. You could spend quite a lot on an LED television now and have a radically better one out in just a few months. That’s true to a certain extent of all technology of course, but it’s especially pronounced with young tech like LED backlighting.

You’ll generally find this 46″ Samsung set in the $1400-$1500 range, but right now Amazon has it for a stupidly low $1199. Not big enough? Grab the 55-inch version for just $1749. I don’t know if these are short-time sales or what, but they’re fantastic prices.

Budget alternative: Want a big screen under $1k? No problem. The Samsung LN46B550 46″ 1080p LCD HDTV is available for just $869. This very similar set has just one big difference: it only refreshes at 60Hz rather than 120Hz. It’s still a great TV, but be aware that high-speed scenes (like action movies or sports) may not be quite as smooth on this one as the LN46B650.

Best portable GPS

Garmin nuvi 765T 4.3″ GPS navigator with traffic

I’ve had a Garmin for awhile now and I still think they make the best overall GPS units around. The one thing I wish I would have sprung for when I got mine though was to have an included traffic system, so it could route me around traffic jams <em>before</em> I get into them. At the time though, that was only on the really pricey units.

Fortunately, that and much more can now be had on the Garmin nuvi 765T for just a little over $200. Along with built-in traffic and a large 4.3″ screen, it sports what appears to be a much friendlier use interface than what’s been on nuvis for the past few years. The 765T also features a Lane Assist system that tells you which lane you should be in as you approach those Medusa-like splits on large freeways. In metro areas, it will model some buildings in 3D to help you get your bearings. Finally, it can connect to your phone and operate as a hands-free Bluetooth speakerphone.

It also just happens to be an Amazon Editor’s Pick for their Best in GPS & Navigation for 2009. See, they agree with me.

Budget alternative: For about $100, the TomTom ONE 140 is a great inexpensive GPS. It has a smaller screen and doesn’t have all the convenience features like traffic or 3D buildings, but it should get you where you want to go.

Best laptop

Apple MacBook Pro

Probably no shock to anyone, my love affair with my MacBook Pro continues. My ravings are justified, however, every time I see a coworker or friend buy one of these and love it to death also. Yeah, you pay a bit more, but with every product update they get a little more affordable and you get a lot for your money. The 13″ starts at $1199 now and you can save a bit if you buy from Amazon; the 15″ starts at $1699. The build quality in particular of these unibody aluminum chassis is unbelievable. Everything else feels cheap and flimsy in comparison.

Of course, the performance and ease of use with OS X on the machine is nothing to sneeze at either. With a growing user base and record sales every year, the Mac universe is growing and there’s tons of great software available. I made the switch about 3 years ago, and I never have to boot Windows unless I want to test a web site design in Internet Explorer. Fortunately, with a Mac you can run any operating system you want — OS X, Windows, Linux — and even run them all at the same time.

Budget alternative: The non-aluminum 13″ MacBook can be had for a bit under $999. You lose a bit of expandability and the aluminum body of course, but still a great computer. If you want to spend less than that, the Apple Refurb Store is a great place to look and often has amazing deals. I’ve bought many Macs from there; they come with full warranties and are just like new. If you want a PC, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Best portable music player

Apple iPod touch/iPhone

Believe it or not, this isn’t as much of a slam-dunk as last year. Microsoft’s Zune HD has been impressing a lot of people with its gorgeous screen and beautiful user interface. However, while there are some applications for the Zune, it doesn’t have the enormous app ecosystem that’s available on Apple devices, which enables the iPhone/iPod touch to be so much more than a music player and web browser. For just $180, you can get an 8GB touchscreen portable computer that happens to have a fantastic iPod built into it.

Budget alternative: Looking for something a little more basic? Grab an 8GB iPod nano for $134. No apps, but has a nice screen, plays video, has an FM tuner, and is extremely thin and light. Really, though, it’s almost a sin to buy a nano when you can get the Touch for $45 more.

Best point and shoot camera

Canon PowerShot SD1200IS 10MP with 3x optical IS zoom

Point and shoots are practically appliances at this point — there’s so many to choose from, they all do nearly the same thing and have the same features. It’s mostly a matter of personal preference and how good their user interface is.

Fortunately, you can always rely on Canon PowerShots to be excellent appliances. Even though you can pick up decent cameras in the low $100s these days, it’s worth springing for the $150 SD1200IS to get Canon’s quality image sensor and solid build. Just watch the megapixel count: this 10MP is the absolute highest I would ever want to go in a point and shoot. It’s ludicrous that 10MP is now the “middle of the road” for point and shoot cameras; the more you cram on to that tiny sensor, the more difficult it gets to generate quality low-light images. Unless you’re printing life-sized posters of Chewbacca, 10MP should be more than you ever need. Resist the temptation to “upgrade” to 12MP or 14MP cameras. More MP is not better.

Budget alternative: I don’t even know where to start. There’s so many cameras around the $100-$130 price point it’s impossible to choose. Go to the store and see which one feels right to you. My only point of guidance would be to make sure it uses SD memory cards, because they and their readers/adapters are so ubiquitous.

Best consumer DSLR camera

I did have a pick for this category last year, but this is such a personal choice and the market’s so competitive that I’m not sure it’s responsible to make a selection because the parameters are way beyond what we can get into here. I own a Nikon D90, which is a medium-level consumer DSLR, and I love it to death. Canon has improved their mid-entry-level offering with the T1i, while Nikon has gotten serious about the budget DSLR crowd with the D5000. If you’re interested in getting into this level of camera, there are tons of great choices out there and many more web sites that can help you. I’m a Nikon guy so I can talk all day about what Nikon might be best for you, but you might prefer the feel of a Canon. Try them out and see.

Best Blu-Ray player

LG BD270 Blu-Ray Player

Unlike last year, I do actually have a Blu-Ray pick this time! I think the technology has matured enough and prices have come down (way down) to the point where it totally makes sense to pick one of these up if you have an HDTV.

This LG model gets positive reviews and is quite affordable, available from Amazon now for just $125. The kicker is that it has Netflix integration, meaning that if you have a Netflix account this will connect to their servers and allow you to stream movies and TV shows without any additional cost — or waiting around for discs to be delivered in the mail. Not everything is available on Netflix streaming (yet), but it’s a fantastic feature to have and any Blu-Ray player that doesn’t include this should be instantly off your list. Generally you’ll find it on LG and Samsung players.

Best overall gadget under $100

Joby Gorillapod Flexible Tripod

This year, the best “gadget” under $100 isn’t really a gadget at all — it’s more of an accessory, but it’s just that awesome. The Gorillapod is a great tripod that has flexible legs which can be bent over and around anything you want to secure your camera to — the back of a chair, a tree branch, a fence, the edge of a table, pretty much anything. It’s fantastic for quick self-portraits at family gatherings without going through the hassle of carrying around and setting up a full-sized tripod, or for steadying your camera for long-exposure shots or positioning it at awkward angles. At just $20-$30 depending on the size (you’ll want a beefier one if you’re using it with your big DSLR), it’s one of the most budget-friendly and useful camera accessories out there.

I’m proud to announce that the first iPhone app I’ve worked on, TextTumble, is now available for sale in the App Store! TextTumble is a unique word game that challenges you to spell words using falling letter and picture tiles. Check out the web site for a video and a link to buy the game.

For quite some time, a business partner and I have been working on the first product for our new venture together. My Magellan Media business partner and developer Chris wrote a great post on his personal blog about all the gory details of the development process, so I’ll leave that to him (definitely read that, it’s a great article). I do need to offer my own perspective.

In late summer of 2008, shortly after the App Store first opened for business, several ideas for possible apps began germinating. A lot of my thoughts coalesced around a word game, because they’re both entertaining and ever-popular (at the time, the developer of a crossword app was making several thousand dollars a day), and because it wouldn’t require 3D graphics, a degree of difficulty that was higher than I wanted to get into for an initial effort. I wanted a game that was somewhat unique, and I started thinking of combining several classic gameplay mechanisms into something different. Combining ideas from Boggle, Tetris, and Scrabble, TextTumble was born. The basic idea is simple: spell words with falling letter tiles.

But I needed someone to develop it, because while I dabble in code and can handle building a web site, I’m really not an expert. I started bouncing ideas off Chris Zelenak, and he immediately saw the potential in my nascent concepts and began adding the perspective of a much more experienced gamer. One of the coolest parts of the game was all Chris — the pictowords. These are tiles that have pictures on them which represent various synonyms — a picture of a cat could represent cat (obviously), tom, tiger, or puss, for example. Combining that single tile with one or more letter tiles and you can spell much longer words — and score much higher point value.

Neither of us having much experience developing games, and no experience developing for the iPhone at all, our initial timeline of a few months was quickly shot. As I said, Chris goes into much more detail on his blog. But the long and short of it is…I was not prepared for how much iteration it takes and how much time processes can take when you’re trying to make something good enough to sell. I didn’t fully think through every single point of interaction with the game before we got into development, and as a consequence we had to rebuild some things. On top of the technical and user interface challenges, I was trying to deal with all the legal and financial issues you face when you establish a new business entity, and trying to organize all those ancillary things that you need for a business to function and define some processes for us to follow.

As I learned, all that will evolve no matter what practices, tools, or tactics you try to establish, because very rarely in business is the first answer the right one. The key lies in being able to look forward and predict other possible answers and evaluate which course to take before expending too much energy on one path, and staying flexible enough that if you need to change something…you can. In our own small effort here, I have learned a great deal. I know Chris has too, and if and when we make another effort I know we’ll be able to make it happen more efficiently than before.

As it stands, we’re very proud of TextTumble 1.0. It’s something we built and it’s actually out there on the App Store! We’re confident in saying that among the 65,000 other apps in the App Store, ours rises above a good many of them in quality and complexity. That said, this is a tough nut to crack…getting noticed among sixty-five thousand applications, even though 98 or 99% of them are crap, is no small feat. We’ve submitted review requests to a number of iPhone-loving sites out there, and we hope to get a bit of traction that way in addition to spreading the word via our blogs and Twitter.

But we know we have quite a battle ahead of us. If you have an iPhone, please consider giving TextTumble a shot — and if you like it, tell your friends! We have lots of ideas and enhancements to add to TextTumble for future versions, so keep an eye out on the Magellan Media blog and let us know what you think!

About six months ago I laid out my opinions on home-based backup solutions. As my some commenters quickly pointed out, you’re not really backed up until your data resides in more than one place, geographically speaking. That is to say: using scheduled nightly backups to an external hard drive or something like Time Machine is great, but if your house burns down, so does your data.

For the past several months I’ve been getting better acquainted with online (off-site) backup services, as I’ve prepared to reorganize how we store all our data at home. I looked at popular file syncing services like Windows Live Mesh and Dropbox, but those are limited in space (only a few GB) and not really intended for backup. I realized I needed something huge, because I have at least 50GB of must not lose files and something like a terabyte of really would prefer not to lose files. Here’s what our home setup looks like now:

• 1 TB primary everyday work drive (in my main machine…in this case, a 24″ iMac); stores all important documents, photos, etc
• 160GB mobile drive (in a MacBook Pro); contains about 80GB of critical work files which I do not trust our own IT department to properly back up
• 80GB drive in wife’s MacBook, which contains documents and photos important to her
• 1.5 TB D-Link NAS (two 750GB drives) storing non-critical archived media like TV shows, movies, software

So I at least would like to backup the drive in my iMac, the drive in my MacBook Pro, and the drive in my wife’s MacBook, which total around 300GB between them of used space. I’ve already got a 500GB external USB drive for nightly backups of the iMac’s critical files via Time Machine, OS X’s file preservation backup system, and I plan on using SuperDuper to periodically make smart backups of the MacBook and MacBook Pro onto the iMac. But what about getting all that data off-site? Enter the cadre of relatively recent and cheap backup services: Mozy, BackBlaze, Carbonite, and a few others all cost about $5 a month and all offer unlimited — or nearly unlimited — storage space.

I’ve decided on BackBlaze, and while this won’t be a full review because I’m not done backing everything up yet (that review will come later), I can tell you why I chose them. First and foremost, they have a great looking control panel for both Windows and Mac that gets you started really quick — it makes a couple assumptions about what you don’t want to back up, like system files that can just be reinstalled, and the rest is good to go. Despite this rapid setup, the control panel offers plenty of information and options for power users to tweak to their satisfaction. They also, like some of the other companies I looked at, offer a great service where you can (for a fee, of course) have your data overnighted to you on DVDs or a hard drive, in case things go boom and you don’t have time to redownload it all from the BackBlaze servers.

Ah yes, time…when backing up over 300GB via the Internet, it’s clearly going to take a long time. Fortunately, just the initial backup is so lengthy — after that, updates are incremental and (supposedly) nearly instantaneous. Based on my research, that was one big advantage of BackBlaze over a number of the other options — while most of the competitors will upload your changed files on a certain schedule, BackBlaze will do it in the background more or less as it detects changes happening. I’m still doing my initial backup, which will take an extremely long time, so we’ll see if that fact holds true during normal use.

What about security? Hopefully, most of you got some sort of nervous tick at the thought of transmitting so much of your data out into the “cloud”. Fear not…every one of the backup services I researched uses pretty high-strength encryption to encode your files on your computer before they’re ever sent out, and the data connection to the server itself is also encrypted. So you have encrypted files traveling via an encrypted server connection. BackBlaze has a blog post with the nitty-gritty details, but suffice to say the schemes they’re using are good enough for the government and good enough for me.

For years I’ve just been backing up my stuff to whatever extra drives I’ve had laying around at home — if I was doing it at all. I’m being proactive and have chosen to do two layers of backups — one local and one off-site — but I think at the very least everyone should consider trying out one of these online backup services. For only $5 a month (and most of them let you try the first month for free), how can you go wrong? Remember this maxim: your data doesn’t exist until it exists in at least two places.

Full review of BackBlaze to come.

Actual cause of Internet slowdowns

An extremely dangerous law has been passed in New Zealand and goes into effect on February 28, 2009. This law enables a person’s internet access to be permanently terminated if they are accused of copyright violation three times. No trial. No judge. No jury. No conviction. Just an accusation by a copyright holder.

We’ll get to the legal stupidity of this in just a moment. Let’s establish why this matters: because this is 2009, and the Internet is no more optional than power or water to a civilized society. Banned from the ‘net, you and your children will be at an increasing disadvantage in education, commerce, career advancement, and more.

There’s a long litany of lawmakers and judges who enact legislation, set precedent, and make policy decisions regarding the Internet that, at best, illustrates how uninformed they are and, at worst, encroaches upon fundamental freedoms that are supposed to be protected by the laws of the land in which they reside. This law, specifically Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act in New Zealand, may just take the cake for dangerous ignorance in the realm of legislation aimed at controlling the Internet. Well, ignorance in the case of the lawmakers at least, but the organization pushing for such laws can hardly claim ignorance. This is exactly what they want, and they’ve been pushing for something similar in the USA. What organization would that be? Wait for it…wait…

…Oh yes! Our old friends the Recording Industry Association of America/New Zealand/[insert country name here].

The RIAA and its international devil spawn have become notorious in the last few years for extorting thousands of dollars at a time out of mostly clueless individuals by threatening to sue them for copyright violations. Not suing — just threatening to sue. Basically, they would say “pay us $5,000 (or whatever) or we’ll take you to court, which we can afford to do and you can’t.” I’m not kidding, they did this to thousands of people and got away with it for awhile. Some of the accused, however, with the legal and financial backing of groups like the EFF, have called the RIAA’s bluff and in many cases won because the RIAA actually didn’t have any proof these people were knowingly infringing on copyrighted material. The RIAA had “logs” that simply were rarely concrete enough to a identify a specific individual. For example, people were sued because they had open wireless access points and neighbors shared music through it — OK, not a smart thing to leave your wireless AP open, but there’s nothing in our laws that makes it criminal, nor that makes you responsible since you weren’t “knowingly” sharing copyrighted material. Or more often, records and IP addresses got mixed up at the ISPs (some of whom just handed this stuff over to the RIAA, shame on them), and the wrong person was fingered. Most often, the accused simply didn’t know they were sharing music or movies, because their computer was just infected with some really nasty stuff (as unmaintained Windows machines can be) and was acting as a file-sharing hub for all the internet. Ignorant users? Yes. Criminal? Hardly. You want to slap them with something, slap them with a “how to properly use a computer” book, not a lawsuit where the payment goes to a huge media corporation.

But wait, we’re not done. I’m still not to the law passed in New Zealand. Just so you know how specious it is that the RIAA should be allowed to serve as judge, jury and executioner in this “three strikes you’re out,” “guilt upon accusation” law, consider their record with their traditional lawsuits. The RIAA has sued dead people, a woman who was getting a transplant (they won a default judgment against her when she didn’t respond to their request…hmm, wonder why?), and another woman who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life. In one instance, even after the court smacked down the RIAA because they were suing the wrong person in the household, the RIAA argued that the defendant could still be held liable because “the computer may well have been in a common area such that defendant heard music coming from the computer when [the] admitted infringer … was using it.” Yes, the RIAA was arguing that simply hearing music coming from a PC is copyright infringement. When they lost that court battle too and the court ordered the RIAA to pay the defendant’s attorney fees, the RIAA appealed the order to pay the fees so that other individuals might still be scared of going to court, and they could go back to their extortion scheme.

This, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg, just a tiny sampling of what the RIAA has done and how they have extorted people and abused the legal system over the past decade.

The law about to take effect in New Zealand, as I said, allows for any user to get banned from obtaining personal Internet access if they get accused of copyright violations three times. Accused, not convicted. By the copyright holder — often, the RIANZ. Somehow, either through bribery and kickbacks (probably — the RIAA et al spend hundreds of millions of dollars around the world on lobbyists and legal fees) or sheer, astounding ignorance (probably some of that too), the law was passed by the New Zealand government. In addition, it changes the definition of ISP to include anyone who runs a DHCP server — in layman’s terms, basically anyone who provides a shared internet connection. Have a home router? You’re now an ISP. From the Creative Freedom Foundation site:

ISPs now include businesses, schools, libraries, government departments and any organisation that provides internet services. Odds are, you’re an ISP.

Why is this important? Because under the new law, ISPs have to keep records of all internet activity through their network for a period of two years, just in case the police need to come sifting through in order to confirm future accusations. This could come at significant cost of both time, money, and manpower for everyone now identified as an ISP.

So let’s review: the Recoding Industry Association, which has been pushing for this type of law almost everywhere, including the United States, finally managed to get their baby passed in New Zealand. It will allow them to kick anyone off the Internet simply by accusing them three times of copyright infringement with no trial, no due process, no proof, nothing. This is a vile, horrible, dangerous law and of course has ignited the attention of a great deal of the ‘net in the hopes of getting the word out before it goes into effect.

But how did it get passed in the first place? Here we come to the really important part, at least for the rest of us. In our government, like in many, there’s a representative who is in charge of education plans and policy, of energy policy, of transportation policy — all people who spend their energies on one area of public infrastructure and who are responsible for making sound decisions for their field of influence. For the most part, this works. And that’s why scary laws like the one in NZ and other disturbing digital surveillance and anti-privacy laws here in the US have gotten passed — because there’s no one person in our government responsible for the Internet. Fortunately, President Obama has pledged to appoint an “Internet Czar” (terrible name) or “US CTO” (Chief Technology Officer) to do just that — and it’s quite evident that we need it. One tactic of the RIAA is to attach “but there could be child porn!” to any legislation to get it passed. For example, discreetly through lobby groups, the RIAA has tried at various times to make all P2P software illegal, to require ISPs to log all P2P traffic, and has encouraged legislation empowering the FBI and other federal agencies to have ridiculous power over the Internet because “P2P networks are rife with child pornography.” Few politicians with a hope of reelection are likely to vote “no” on a law billed as preventing child pornography, no matter how stupid or unjust it is, so combating these ridiculous proposals is quite the uphill battle for people who actually — how do I put this — “get” the Internet and…what was the other one…oh yeah, the Bill of Rights.

These battles and the RIAA’s idiocy have been going on for some time now, but I never want to miss the opportunity to make regular people — non tech-industry folks — aware of what’s going on. There are several salient points to be made here:

1. The Internet is not optional in our society, just like power is not optional, water is not optional, basic education is not optional.
2. Any lawmaker who allows an independent, for-profit organization to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a matter of law should be immediately removed from office, slapped in some way for egregious ignorance, and perhaps put on trial (if possible) for the civilian equivalent of dereliction of duty of a public officer and disregard for the Constitution of the United States.
3. The RIAA needs to have the tables turned on them. THEY should have a “three strikes” law levied against them, perhaps — three frivolous lawsuits and you’re done, you can’t file any more? Would be nice.
4. Be aware of this kind of thing and contact your representatives if you hear they’re on a committee that’s considering such a law. It’s less likely something scary will be passed with the Obama administration, which seems to have met the Internet, unlike the Bush administration, but it’s still possible. There’s at least as many idiots as smart people.

Let me make something clear before I conclude: I’m not saying copyright violation/piracy is OK. Not at all. Especially as a content creator myself (in the form of software and user interfaces), I understand that copyrighted content needs to be protected and the creator should received their due. What is not OK is the RIAA extorting people and then being handed the power to remove them from the Internet without the involvement of any legal or governing body whatsoever.

Everyone hope for the best for our friends in beautiful New Zealand. And send dark, evil thoughts the RIAA’s way.

A few more stories about the RIAA

• Academics warn of EU ‘three strikes’ back door plan
• RIAA ordered to shell out $100k for P2P witch hunt
• Judge approves public broadcast of RIAA lawsuit * I love this one

Yesterday, Google unveiled a new service called (simply) Sync that updates your contacts and calendars between your wireless phone and the Google servers instantly and over the air. And guess what: it works! Guess what else: it’s free!

That’s more than can be said for Apple’s $99 per year MobileMe service. I tried MobileMe for three months, and it just never worked. I don’t care about the 10GB of web space (have my own servers, or something like DropBox), I don’t care about the email account (uh, GMail), and I don’t care about the fancy photo galleries (I’ve got Flickr and my own gallery). The biggest thing I need is my contacts and calendar data everywhere, on every computer I use, and on my iPhone. MobileMe failed spectacularly in that respect — syncs were inconsistent, would sometimes replicate data, and just could never be depended upon to replicate data reliably from one device to another.

Google Sync works on the iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, S60, and a handful of other devices. It utilizes the broadly adapted Microsoft Exchange wireless sync protocols (thank you, Microsoft) and is relatively easy to setup (Google has basic instructions for all devices). And after more than 24 hours on my iPhone, I’m quite happy with it.

I did have to go through an additional step to tell Google I have multiple calendars I want to sync (otherwise it defaults to just your primary one), but it works fine — even for my account, which is not regular GMail but Google Apps for Your Domain. Now, for example, my wife can add an event to her calendar and I’ll see it instantly on my iPhone, no matter where I am, without having to plug into a computer.

OK, so your mobile device syncs up to the Google “cloud,” but what about keeping all your desktop apps up to date? If you’re on a Mac, you can also now sync iCal with Google Calendar (real two-way sync, not just the one-way subscription that’s been around forever), and Leopard’s Address Book has built-in syncing with your Google account too. That last one isn’t working perfectly for me on one my machines, but it works well enough most of the time.

I remember when the iPhone first came out and Apple made a big deal out of their collaboration with Google. At the time, I made a pie-in-the-sky wish that Google would somehow make wireless syncing work for calendars and contacts, but never really believed it would happen because of Apple’s MobileMe service. However, since Apple included Exchange capability in the iPhone for corporate users, that opened up the door for Google (and others) to use their own tools that piggyback on that protocol. One more nail in MobileMe’s coffin.

I’m going to take a little intermission before Part 3 of the Navigating the Financiapocalypse series, since I need a little more time to get my thoughts down on investment advice. Instead of saving money, today we’re going to talk about what you should buy if you want to spend some money: gadgets! That’s right, get out there and stimulate our crappy economy any way you can. And yes, you’ll stimulate my personal economy if you buy through the links I’ve provided — which just happen to be great deals!

I’ve thought about doing this for awhile because if there’s one type of question I get more than any other, it’s “What ____ (TV/MP3 player/camera/monitor/laptop/etc) should I buy?” I keep up on most of this stuff, so allow me to point out my favorites for this season. My criteria is really just one thing: what gets you the most for your money?

I’m going to hit the big categories first and probably come back later to make more obscure picks. Do you want a recommendation? Hit up the comments!

JUMP TO MY PICKS FOR THE BEST…

• HDTV
• Portable GPS
• Laptop
• Portable music player
• Point-and-shoot camera
• Consumer DSLR
• Blu-Ray player
• Overall gadget under $100

Best HDTV

Samsung LN46A550 46 Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

Few companies make televisions that converge in quality, beauty, and price like Samsung does. I’ve got one of last year’s models and I love it. They just usually seem to hit the sweet spot between those attributes. For a little over $1200 (including Amazon’s excellent white-glove delivery service; trust me, you don’t want Bob, the guy who helped move your couch, moving your new HDTV), you can pick up the LN46A550 — which I know just rolls right off the tongue — and you get a beautiful picture, plenty of inputs, an elegant frame, and a very palatable 46 inches of HD goodness. There’s smaller and larger versions of this, of course, but 46 inches plenty big for most family rooms and offers the best bang for the buck right now.

Bargain hunter runner-up: If you’re looking to keep it under $1k, the Sharp Aquos LC42D64U 42 Inch 1080p LCD HDTV would be my choice. If you’re all about style and don’t care how much money you waste, buy one of the Sony TVs.

Best portable GPS

Garmin nüvi 360 3.5 Inch Portable GPS Navigator

You can pretty much spend as much as you want to on GPS devices, but there’s so many good ones for under $200 these days. One key feature is text-to-speech, where it reads the road names to you. This ~$150 Garmin wins out over the slightly cheaper competitors in this price range because most of them will only say “In 500 feet, turn left” whereas the Garmin will say “In 500 feet, turn left on Jackson Road.” I find that to be very valuable. It comes with both dashboard and windshield mounts, and car and wall chargers. Garmin also won a GPS comparison test for having the most efficient routing (an article which I can’t find right now, but I read it before I bought my GPS earlier this year).

Bargain hunter runner-up: It’s hard to recommend any devices cheaper than this because I don’t think any of them have text-to-speech, but if you really don’t think you’ll care about that feature you can pick up the TomTom ONE 125 3.5 Inch Portable GPS Navigator for $120 (or $99 sometimes on sale).

NOTE: Changed recommendation from the 350 to the 360 since the 350 was discontinued. The 360 is nearly identical, it just adds Bluetooth.

Best laptop

Apple MacBook

Yes, obviously I’m an Apple lover, and yes, there’s still a bit of an “Apple tax,” but the new MacBooks are hard to ignore. It’s got an extremely solid aluminum chassis, is really thin, has a gorgeous screen, a trick trackpad, and a glut of great creative software already installed when it comes out of the box. Not to mention being able to run both OS X and Windows at the same time with something like VMware Fusion — it’s like having two machines in one. And few people’s lives wouldn’t be improved by running Mac OS X instead of Windows.

Bargain hunter runner-up: If you want a Mac laptop but $1300 is a little steep, check out Apple’s refurb store. You can sometimes find previous-gen (still plenty fast) MacBooks in there for $899 or even $799. These are 100% perfect machines that carry a full Apple warranty — I’ve bought a few from there myself and they’ve been great. If you have absolutely no interest in a Mac, then after you get your head checked (I kid, I kid!) I would recommend the Dell Inspiron 1420 that starts at $599. I’ve found those to be pretty solid machines, and with a coupon they can get even cheaper.

Portable music player

Apple iPhone/iPod touch

OK, no shock here…my iPhone is without a doubt the best MP3 player I’ve ever used. If you don’t want to switch to AT&T or just don’t want to pay the monthly fees, the iPod touch 8GB for $215 will get you all the same iPod and gaming goodness. Yes, gaming…some of the stuff in the app store is fantastic. If 8GB is a little too paltry, step it up to the 16 GB for $285. Those prices are for the second-gen Touch; if you don’t mind the slightly thicker (but still really thin) form factor of the first-gen, you can get 16 GB for just $220.

Bargain hunter runner-up: Grab a super-slim 8 GB iPod nano for just $135.

Best point-and-shoot camera

Canon PowerShot SD770IS

Talk about a saturated market…frankly, it’s hard to go really wrong these days when you buy a point-and-shoot camera, but I’d go with the Canon 770IS because for just $160 it has image stabilization, great image quality, face recognition, and a good screen.

Big spender runner-up: The Canon SD880IS is even better, with more zoom range and a larger LCD. However, it’s nearly $100 more. Worth it? Up to you.

Consumer DSLR camera

Nikon D90

The consumer DSLR market is getting crowded (I’m focusing on the low end of the DSLR market because I doubt pros ask for their gear for Christmas — or care what I say ), but one recent standout is the Nikon D90. This sits at the top of their consumer line, and for under $1200 you get quite a lot. 12.3 MP, a self-cleaning sensor, a gorgeous on-camera LCD, live view, a pretty darn good 18-105mm stabilized kit lens, the first DSLR with movie mode (and 720p HD at that — although you do have to focus manually), 11-area autofocus, an HDMI port for displaying your shots/movies on TVs, some really good dynamic lighting enhancements, and of course what Nikons are well known for — great performance in low light. If you (or a loved one) are a budding photographer and you’ve got the coin, this is a great kit for the money.

Bargain hunter runner-up: Both Nikon and Canon offer great low-price DSLRs at the bottom of the consumer line in the Nikon D40 (what I own) and the Canon Rebel XS. The Canon is about $465 and the Nikon can be had for just $410!

Blu-Ray player

None

Ah-ha! Gotcha! OK, in my opinion it’s still too early for most people to get a Blu-Ray player. Prices are still falling fast, there’s too few models, and too many of the ones that are available have their own “gotchas.” But if you’re really dying to get some of that Blu goodness right now, I’d recommend the Samsung BD-P1500. It’s only about $200, performs pretty well, and is getting in on the Netflix streaming movie action just like the pricier LG Blu-Ray players and the Xbox 360. Personally, though, I would still wait. I think middle/late next year will be the point to get in on Blu-Ray.

Best overall gadget under $100

Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote

Few gadgets have simplified our home as much as the Harmony 550. Logitech revolutionized the concept of universal remotes with the Harmony line — they don’t just control multiple devices, they set up your intended activity with a single button press. This used to be the realm only of very expensive custom home theater installations. Now, it can be yours for $68. Anyone who does more than just watch TV with their TV can benefit from one of these. They’re especially handy for the non-technical ones…my wife doesn’t have to remember to set the TV to HDMI input 2, the receiver to Digital 1, power on the Xbox, and set the HDMI switcher box to input 2 to watch a movie — she just presses “Watch DVD” on the remote. I even have it controlling the lights in my family room via an X10 adapter!

See? Way under $100. I like the 550′s layout a lot, but if you prefer the peanut shape there’s the Harmony 670 for $75. There’s ones with color screens for more $$, but they’re not worth it.

The long-awaited (for Xbox fans, anyway) system overhaul for the Xbox 360, known as the New Xbox Experience, was rolled out this morning. The NXE is a completely new interface for the 360, and along with the eye candy brings some cool new features to Microsoft’s venerable gaming platform. More significant than the changes themselves, I think, is the fact that such a complete system upgrade is possible — it’s almost like getting a new system without paying a dime or lifting a finger. No one has ever done such a complete revamp of a large installed base of “set top boxes”, which are generally considered static devices once they roll off the factory.

Let’s take a look at the major improvements in the NXE.

Interface

I’ve always felt that the previous Xbox 360 “blade” interface, while visually interesting in certain respects, lacked quite a bit in the user interface department. It was kind of clunky feeling, and there were times I wasn’t sure what I could click on (or how to get the cursor there) and what I couldn’t. So the first and most obvious improvement in the NXE is the look and feel. It’s slicker, more open feeling, and more modern, bringing it in line with the PS3 interface. It also seems a bit snappier when transitioning from screen to screen — although some interface niggles remain. For example, it takes way too many clicks to delete a game (and I download a lot of trial games, so I am frequently deleting things). However, on the whole it is a very welcome improvement, and makes navigating the dashboard a much more pleasant experience.

Avatars

The other biggest visual change in the NXE is the introduction of Xbox Avatars, which resemble the Nintendo Miis. Rather than a boring, static gamer icon (of which there was an extremely limited selection), you now can customize a virtual person to your liking with a vast array of chins, eyes, body shapes, hair styles, clothing, glasses, makeup, earrings, and more. A snapshot of your avatar can then be your gamer icon. I thought avatars would be a stupid gimmick, but they’re actually kind of fun. More significant is the utilization of the avatars in the NXE interface to form gamer parties.

Party system

The party system abstracts the group gaming management away from the games themselves. In the old system if you and some friends were all playing Halo, for example, and then wanted to play Gears of War, you’d have to all find each other again in Gears — maybe send out invitations and all that. But with the NXE’s party system, you group up once in the dashboard area and then the party leader can take everyone around to different games. If some members of the party want to play different games, though, they can still all chat through their headsets, even though they’re not in the same game.

Netflix

At long last, you can tie your Xbox 360 to your Netflix account and watch streaming movies (in HD, no less!) at no additional charge (provided you have the Xbox Live Gold membership and a Netflix membership). I watched part of The Sum of All Fears while writing this, and the quality is pretty good. I’m on a 10MB cable connection (it will adjust automatically for the highest video quality you can handle), and it’s definitely at least standard DVD quality. I’m disappointed that there’s only stereo sound (no 5.1), and you can spot some compression artifacts in certain scenes if you look really hard, but for us the experience should suffice for all but the most intense action movies.

One big wrinkle in the Xbox/Netflix streaming system is that Sony, in typical petulant Sony fashion, has blocked the streaming of all Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony) movies to the Xbox 360. All those movies can still be viewed on your computer or any other Netflix streaming device, just not the 360. Once again, Sony…great work.

Installing games to the hard drive

With the NXE, you can now install games to the Xbox’s hard drive. Sadly, you still have to insert the disk to play — in order to prevent piracy — but in many cases load times will be reduced. However, I’m more annoyed by having to swap discs than I am by a few seconds of load time. I wish there was a way for them to take care of that — maybe ask for the disk once every two weeks? Or once every 10 plays? Or randomly?

Conclusion

The NXE is definitely an exciting update for Xbox users, and it’s very cool that Microsoft can practically give you a new console with just a software update. Microsoft popularized the concept of a dashboard for gaming consoles, and is now blazing a new path with this mid-life overhaul. TiVo looks like it may do something similar sometime next year with a total replacement of its operating system. Hopefully this trend of major product improvements via software updates continues to expand through the consumer electronics industry. It’s nothing but good news for the consumer.

• Joystiq: NXE overview, feature tour videos

See that? That’s the stack of dead hard drives I found when cleaning out my office closet. They’re all from within the last 7 years.

You hear this all the time, but it still seems to never sink in: back up your data. Most people are, in some fashion, very dependent on the data in their computers, yet less than 10% regularly back it up. Not backing up your data is like not wearing a seat belt — sure, you probably won’t get in an accident, but do you really want to take that chance when prevention is so easy?

My stack of dead drives looks extreme to most people, but I have always had a lot of data, so I’ve owned a lot of hard drives. As such, this has given me more than enough opportunities to be exposed to the pain of data loss. Fortunately, I only actually lost important files one time. How can you protect yourself?

Most people don’t back up regularly because it’s too inconvenient or time consuming. I’m going to offer some recommendations that aim to cut down those barriers so that backing up can be easy for everyone. We’ll start with the cheapest and work our way up.

The manual way

OK, so this method isn’t really all that convenient, but we had to start somewhere so you can see how much better the other methods are. The manual method is exactly what it sounds like — you manually copy files from your drive to another piece of media. In the “old days,” this often meant a burnable CD or DVD, but since external hard drives are so dang cheap (500GB for under $80 if you look), not to mention a heck of a lot faster, I’d just go with one of those. But you’ve got to make yourself do it regularly, and always manually picking out what you want to save is slow going.

PROS: Simple, inexpensive.
CONS: Time consuming, slow.

The scheduled way

Basically we’re taking the same principles from the manual method — copy a set of files to different media — but taking a “set it and forget it” approach so you don’t have to think about it. You really should at least adopt this method. You’ll need an external hard drive again, and a piece of software to make the magic happen. I can’t speak to the Windows side, but on Mac OS X, there’s a couple different ways to do this.

OS X 10.5 has the built-in Time Machine feature, which can utilize an external drive to make hourly backups of your files. It uses a smart algorithm each hour to only back up the files that have been changed, and then provides a slick interface for you to “go back in time” to retrieve a file from any point in the timeline that it still maintains on the drive (depending on the size of the drive, it will start deleting the oldest stuff at some point). This will work for restoring your files after a catastrophic drive crash, and is also great for people who might be afraid of screwing up a file and wanting to go back to an older version at any time.

The other way is to do a full drive image. While Time Machine (and other targeted backup software) will only back up your personal files, a full drive image is a snapshot of your entire hard drive — the operating system, the applications, the boot sector, everything. If your main drive dies, you simply re-image it with the backup and you’re ready to boot back up in a matter of minutes. With the selective copy method (like Time Machine), you would have to reinstall the operating system first. I personally use a great piece of software called SuperDuper to do a full drive image of my main computer every night at 3:00 am. This doesn’t store multiple copies of every file, like Time Machine does; I can’t go back to an older version other than what was most recently backed up, but that’s not a concern for me. It does a smart delta backup (only copying things that have changed) and allows for excluding folders that you don’t care about (my Downloads folder, for example). SuperDuper is a bargain at just $28.

PROS: Automatic; full-drive images can speed up system recovery time
CONS: Might have to spend a bit for software

The totally transparent way

What if you could just always keep your files on something that (statistically) was nearly failure-proof? Old hats would say “use a RAID 5 array,” but getting your hand crushed in a car door is generally a lot more fun than setting up and maintaining a RAID array, so allow me to introduce you to the 21st century backup solution for the masses: the Drobo.

The Drobo is a box that you stick four hard drives into and then attach to your computer via USB or FireWire. Your computer sees it as one big hard drive; the Drobo is performing some RAID-like magic (but better) and turns those four drives into one huge redundant array of disks, without any configuration or hoop-jumping on your part. Any one of the drives can fail, and none of your data is lost. Should a drive fail, the light next to it on the front of the Drobo will turn red, and you just order a new one and pop it in — the Drobo will automatically rebuild the redundancy system, and you don’t have to do a thing. Unlike RAID, the drives don’t even have to be the same size — any four drives will do, and when you’re ready to upgrade you can do it one at a time — just pop one out and slide the new one in, growing your storage one drive at a time. It couldn’t possibly be any easier.

I personally don’t have one (yet), but I’ve heard enough talk about them and seen one in action to know that this is the ultimate low-maintenance data backup system you can possibly buy. I do plan on picking one up at some point. The downside? Cost. The Drobo itself is around $500, plus the four drives. If you don’t need FireWire, you can find the first-gen Drobo (USB only) for around $350; that’s the one I plan on getting. Then you grab, say, four 750GB drives for $90 each (current price at NewEgg), plug it into your computer, and keep your files on it. Now you’ve got a 2.0 TB totally redundant storage system. I plan on sharing out the Drobo on my network and having all my machines back up to it.

PROS: Totally transparent, easy to upgrade
CONS: Relatively expensive

I hope you all back up your data! If you want to be really safe, of course, you should move your backups to a different physical location (in case of a flood/fire). But just getting into one of the basic backup methods above and save you a lot of heartache when you eventually lose a hard drive — and I can almost guarantee you that at some point, you will.

Have any other backup tips or software recommendations? Post in the comments.

Toward the end of last March, I wrote about how I had ditched my iMac for a self-built Hackintosh. Given the huge cost savings and flexibility you get from a Hackintosh, I field a lot of questions about how well it works and if I’m still glad I did it. I thought after six months, it was time for a follow-up.

Am I glad I did it? Mostly yes, but a few niggles remain. On the whole, the machine runs brilliantly. It’s never kernel panicked or crashed, and with the Core 2 Duo at 2.8 GHz and 4GB of RAM, I can keep all the apps I regularly use open all the time with very little slowdown. I can pack a whole bunch of hard drives into the case, and have the connections necessary for up to two 30″ monitors should I want to connect them — all things that you can normally only do on the $2500+ Mac Pro. For $600, I can’t complain too much.

But I can complain a little. For one thing, the card reader in my Dell monitor has never worked right. This is solved with a separate USB card reader, but it’s another thing to have to hook up. The Line In/Microphone don’t work…which would be a significant problem if I didn’t also have a MacBook Pro for the times I need to Skype or something. And finally, system updates can be a pain. The small updates aren’t a problem, but the big ones (10.5.4, 10.5.5, next up is 10.5.6, etc) will hose your Hackintosh if you just run them straight from Software Update. They require varying degrees of handholding and third-party packages provided by the Hackintosh community, along with some dedication and patience.

So I am glad I tried this project, and it’s working out great for the most part. Will I do it again? Probably not. Ultimately, I’d like to buy a Mac Pro. Another option I’m considering is seeing if I can consolidate my life down to one machine — a MacBook Pro — for simplicity’s sake, which I would just dock at my desk when I needed a larger monitor. The home-based massive file store (2.5+ TB) would return to either a basic Linux server or a Drobo. I could use the home theater Mac Mini to run any secondary tasks (like long downloads) that I can’t leave my MacBook Pro behind for.

That’s very pie-in-the-sky stuff at the moment though, because I’ve never been without a desktop computer to fall back on. And while the simplicity of a single computer appeals to me, insofar as I would no longer have to be constantly moving files around and maintaining two primary machines, the lack of redundancy scares me a bit. So for now, the Hackintosh stays and continues to chug along. I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth, and if you’re a bit of a computer tinkerer a Hackintosh might work well for you too.

Just yesterday, GM finally revealed the production version of one of the most anticipated cars of the decade, perhaps several decades — the Chevy Volt. Some information about the Volt has been available for a long time, but yesterday was the first time anyone outside of GM’s iron curtain laid eyes on what many hope will be the auto giant’s messiah.

The Volt will be different from popular hybrids available today (like the Prius) in that it will be a series hybrid instead of a parallel hybrid (read more about that distinction at Wikipedia, if you care). It’s quite simple: in parallel hybrids like the Prius, Civic hybrid, Camry hybrid, etc, a small electric motor and the traditional gas motor can both drive the wheels. In a series hybrid, only the electric motor can drive the wheels, and the gas engine is there purely as a backup generator to charge the batteries that drive the electric motor. This gives the series hybrid the ability to go a decent distance without burning a single drop of gasoline — in the Volt’s case, GM claims it will be 40 miles.

So 40 miles on just electricity, and since you can plug it into any electrical outlet to charge it (with a cost estimated at around $0.80 for a full charge) this thing will no doubt be very cheap to operate. Imagine how great it would be, if you live less than 20 miles from where you work, to be able to go to and from work all week without ever using any gas. Good for your wallet, good for the environment, everybody wins, right? This thing will be a revolution, won’t it? Ah, but you must be wondering what the Volt will cost.

GM hasn’t unveiled specific pricing yet, but the latest rumblings hint that it will be higher than the $30k GM originally wanted — closer to $40k. Yikes. That’s well above the average car buyer’s means, and is getting into real luxury car territory. And at $40k, you’re starting to get out of the price range where the buyer cares much about fuel economy.

Looking purely at fuel costs, let’s compare. Say in two years, you’re comparing Honda’s new 60 mpg Insight hybrid that costs about $20k (which is supposed to go on sale in 2009) against the Chevy Volt that’s pushing $40k. Here’s where the problem comes in — what’s the Volt’s MPG rating? If you drive less than 40 miles between charges all the time, it consumes no gas at all. Even in that ideal scenario, driving 12,000 miles per year, you’d have to drive the Volt for 25 years before making up the $20k difference from the Honda — and of course by then we’ll finally have our flying cars that we’ve been promised for the past half century or so.

So it’s not really for those looking to save money. But that’s not what this version is about. This car is the tip of the iceberg, the herald of a new way of building automobiles. The shape is pretty conventional, but underneath it is completely different from everything else on the road today. The LED lamps, fastback rear with no traditional exhaust outlets, and high-tech interior with its dual LCD displays and slick touch-sensitive center stack — which looks like the lovechild of a Malibu and an iPod — makes it clear that the Volt is special.

So, will Chevy finally live up to their advertising tagline, “An American revolution?” I absolutely think so. Is it a novelty? At $40k and just 40 electric miles, this first iteration will be. But it’s paving the way for a new generation of automobiles which will be much more impressive — and eventually less expensive — than the Volt.