Sunday, December 23, 2007

2008: Year of the LCD HDTV


My headline is certainly more accurate than this article in PC World.
In the above article, dated Jan. 2006, a Samsung rep brags that price of 40" LCD TVs dropped to "only" $3000; the insinuation being "go buy one now!".

Well, if you did, you were one of the lucky few...who had to prep their homes for "Cribs MTV", that is. Now nearly two years later, a brand-name 40" LCD HDTV can easily be had for $1300 (a 56% price drop). Admittedly, that's a long time to wait for prices to drop, so perhaps even more remarkably, the prices of name-brand 32" LCD HDTVs (720p) have dropped more than 20% in the past two months! Before Thanksgiving, Sony, Sharp, Philips and Samsung 32" LCD TVs were going for ~$900; anything under $850 would have been a steal. Now every mainstream retailer from Amazon to Circuit City to Best Buy has name-brand 32" LCD TV's for less than $750 and deals can be found for sub $700 units. If picture quality isn't critical for you, 32" off-brand (Westinghouse, Insignia, Olevia, etc.) sub-$600 prices are easy to find. Off-brand 19" and 26" HDTVs can be had for less than $400...matching the prices of CRT (tube) TVs from just a few years ago...

The widespread adoption of LCD TV's in the U.S. is now imminent. Up until recently, the 40"+ sized TVs were the big sellers...early adopters had money to burn and they didn't want "small" screens. But 2008 will be the year of the meat-and-potatoes buyer: those people that have an eight-year-old CRT (20"-30") TV in their living rooms and simply want an upgrade and don't want to empty their savings accounts. By next Christmas, that promises to be a given and average consumers should be happily carting away 32" HDTVs for $400.

Friday, December 21, 2007

I love the Kindle*


* If that seems like a strange sentiment from a thrifty techie, that's because it's not my sentiment. JL was kind enough to blow $400 of his own hard-earned cash and waste enough of his own precious time to provide the following review. Note that the following in no way represents the opinion or viewpoints or thrifty sensibilities of this blog.
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I love the Kindle. I'm an avid reader, and the fact that I can download a book as soon as I hear about it is pretty sweet. The price is pretty steep at $400, and could be a deal breaker for those on a budget or for anyone who has somebody in his or her life who nags over finances. However, as a single dude with disposable income, I don't really care. In fact, I ordered the Kindle as soon as it showed up on Amazon's website, before I had even done a shred of research.

Perhaps the most endearing feature of the Kindle is its standalone nature. Unlike my iphone, ipods, PDAs, and just about every other personal electronic device I've ever owned, I'll probably never, ever synch my Kindle to my computer. It comes with a USB connector for downloading audiobooks (seriously though, who the fuck listens to audiobooks?) and other miscellaneous media, but I don't intent to use it. I'm sure people will be hacking this thing in order to make it do all sorts of crazy stuff, but as an e-book reader, it's a standalone device, which I think is awesome. Thanks to its long battery life, I keep my Kindle in my backpack, and pull it out to read when I feel like it. It may seem insignificant, but the fact that I can treat my Kindle exactly like my paperback copy of Fight Club is priceless.

Amazon's in-device Kindle store is very good, and much like the main website, it compiles your previous online book purchases in order to make recommendations for you. The store features the usual search features that you would expect, and you can read book samples and reviews before purchasing a title. No surprises there. After you click buy, it takes about a minute or so for the book to download straight to the device. Think of it as itunes for print media, which I think is exactly what Amazon is aiming to create. Connectivity is through Sprint's wireless network, so coverage area and download speeds have been great. In order to conserve battery power, I only enable wireless connectivity when I want to browse the store or purchase something.

The interface isn't as intuitive as the iphone's, but it's still simple enough. It feels pretty good in your hands, although I have accidentally pushed buttons and turned the page on occasion. The QWERTY keypad is pretty easy to use, but the keys are skewed in a weird semi-swirl pattern for some inexplicable reason, which contributes to the Kindle’s already strange aesthetic. There's a small rollerwheel above the keypad that's used for selecting and clicking menu items. As far as the display, it actually does look pretty much like paper. The e-ink technology is pretty damn impressive, and I don’t strain my eyes after reading for hours. I would have loved a touch screen, but maybe I'm just spoiled by my iphone. And speaking of iphones…

In response to all of the negative reviews that the Kindle has received (mostly from people who have never even seen one in person, no less), I have this to say. This thing is not an iphone. It's not a blackberry. It's not a PDA. It's a fucking BOOK! And as a fucking book, it functions nearly flawlessly. I would rather stab my eyes out with wasabi-covered chopsticks than read an ebook on the tiny screen of my iphone. And I will never want to carry a Kindle-sized device around with me all day for use as a phone and PDA. For all those retards who say "I can't fit the Kindle in my Pocket! It's worthless!", I say "Fuck you, Dragonmaster! You're a freak who's never been laid, and that's because you carry a paperback fantasy novel in the back pocket of your size 47 stone-washed jeans!"

There are also people who fear that Amazon is trying to destroy our way of life (I'm not exaggerating here) by replacing bound books with electronic gadgetry of the devil. But if you think about it, the transition from paper books to portable electronic books is a relatively painless one. This is akin to the transition from the walkman/discman era to the ipod era. It’s replacing one device with another device of similar size and shape that serves the same purpose, only with more data than before. This is less revolutionary than the introduction of the walkman itself (which ushered in the era of portable music), yet more revolutionary than the advent of ebooks (because no one wants to read Atlas Shrugged on a fucking computer screen). It’s simply a logical progression in media technology, much like the progression from CDs to digital music downloads. Paper books will probably always exist, albeit in smaller numbers. So to all of the old fogies out there, Amazon isn’t trying to destroy your way of life. But things do change. Get over it.