I have to give Apple’s iPhone praise. After 5 months, it’s still my favorite toy. I wasn’t sure if the novelty would wear off, but so far it’s proven to be a fantastic piece of ingenious engineered gadgetry. The sturdiness, the look, the functionality, the coolness factor haven’t faded. Unfortunately, I bought the very first low-end model, the 4 gigabyte iPhone. The memory is already full of MP3s, which is about half of my music library. A device like this could have come with more base memory. Maybe it was Apple’s plan all along - get people hooked, then when they realize 4 gigabytes doesn’t suffice, introduce a 16 gigabyte model for the same price. I won’t buy a new iPhone until version 2.0 is released, however.

I do have a couple more gripes, now that I think about it. First, browsing is slow as molasses. Pages show well, but waiting for them to load is annoying. I suppose this may be due to the fact that the current iPhone uses the G2 network. In 2008, Apple will be releasing a version of the phone which uses the G3 network. Could this be the iPhone 2.0? I haven’t heard anything else about it, but the way Apple is spitting out quality gadgets, I expect the iJesus 2.0 to double as a fully functional GPS and eBook reader, control my garage door, work my home theater and walk my dog.

I’m also not very pleased with the fact that Apple is so adamant about restricting third party applications. I can understand disallowing their phone to work on other networks aside from AT&T, but I see no reason why vendors aren’t allowed to create applications for the iPhone. Aside from these inconveniences, however, I think the iPhone is the best gadget released in 2007 - hands down. It’s set the bar for future mobile phones. It’s a high bar, but with the speed by which mobile technology is advancing, I’m sure something comparable will hit the market in 2008. In fact, it might already have. The LG Voyager from Verizon looks like a iPhone clone with it’s own unique qualities. Expect a review of the Voyager shortly.

Popularity: 75% [?]

I decided to break down and buy one of the hottest items on the market in 2007, a portable GPS unit. After reviewing different brands, models and such I decided on the TomTom GO 720. I’m not much of a GPS guru - in fact I don’t know much about them other than what I researched. Given that, I’ll share with you my opinion on the TomTom GO 720.

This is quite a handy little gadget. It’s made well, with a rubberized casing that won’t easily slip from your fingers and a bright 4.3 inch LCD display. Text on the screen is easy to read. I didn’t realize how useful it would be until I set it up and stuck it to my windshield (with the included suction stand). I used it for the first time the following evening. The TomTom took me the same route I would have taken myself - it preferred the highway. When the voice is set to pre-recorded human, you won’t hear street names or highway numbers, just “turn so and so after so and so miles/feet”. When the unit is set to use the phonetic computerized voice, you’ll hear street names, road signs and highway numbers. The computer voice doesn’t sound obnoxiously computerized. In fact, it sounds somewhat normal - most of the time.

Other features include speeding alerts, FM-transmitter for your iPod, an anti-glare screen, points of interest, Bluetooth, additional voices and something I learned by researching this article - voice address input. You can speak the address of your destination to your Go 720. This would probably be the most useful basic feature, because admittedly inputing an address through the touch screen is not all that intuitive. The TomTom comes with decent software that lets you control just about every feature of the GPS through your computer. For a nominal fee, the TomTom will redirect you through traffic, point you to the cheapest gas station, give you the weather and even list where traffic cameras are located. Some of these “Plus Services” may be useful to certain owners.

All in all a fantastic little unit that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, with a number of cool features that make it a neat toy in addition to a sophisticated navigation device.

Popularity: 81% [?]

Good for you, Dell. Way-to sucker poor MMO addicts out of $4,450. The new Dell XPS M1730 WoW (World of Warcraft) laptop is a complete joke. The technical specs on this monstrosity are very high-end (at the time of this writing). It sports an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 Gigabytes of memory, dual NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GS video cards (that’s right, a laptop with SLI video), a 17 inch wide-aspect display, 5.1 channel audio, an option for two SATAII drives in a RAID 0 configuration or a 128 Gigabyte Solid State hard drive (seriously) and a Blue Ray Disc. For the non-technical, this laptop is about as high-end as you can get. Any geek would go into an orgasmic frenzy if they were presented with such a powerful PC – and in laptop form no-less.

What’s laughable, however, is the fact that the game this laptop is marketed for, World of Warcraft, can be played smoothly on a computer that’s 1/20th as powerful as the super, self-aware Dell XPSM1730 WoW edition notebook. On my previous AMD 5000+ based PC, with an 8800GTS and 2 Gigabytes of memory, World of Warcraft played flawlessly on the maximum graphic settings. It’s beyond me why anyone would need a Solid State hard drive for this 4 year old game, much less SLI video. This is a blatant gimmick on Dell and Blizzard’s (the company behind WoW) part to sucker unknowing and/or WoW addicted consumers out of almost $4,500. Shame on you Dell. Shame on you Blizzard.

You can read my totally biased (and slightly less agitated) review of the World of Warcraft HERE.

Popularity: 85% [?]