11. Power inverters over 150W
Many people are on the move all the time. They need their electronic devices in the car with them, such as a laptop computer or gaming console. It’s also convenient to be able to charge up your GPS, cell phone and iPod all from one device… the DC power inverter.
DC power inverters work by conditioning direct current (DC) from your car’s battery into alternating current (AC) with higher voltage that your standard appliances use. The funny thing about charging your cell phone or ipod through an inverter is that DC electricity is converted to AC, then the device’s power adapter converts it back DC… but I digress.
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The dirty trick about car inverters is that you can’t draw more than 150 watts through your typical cigarette lighter (or electrical port). To use any more than that, you must connect the inverter directly to the battery, which requires a lot of work if you want the leads inside the vehicle. For the average family, 150 watts is enough to power a game console and LCD screen or laptop computer. Charging up cell phones, iPods, GPSs and other devices don’t use much juice at all.
So, for the average person, an inverter over 150 watts is just a waste of money. You usually get more outlets with higher models, but you won’t be able to use the extra juice you’re paying for.
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10. iPod-enabled Alarm Clocks
There is a dark side of iPods being ubiqitous… there is so much crap flooding the market. There are a ton of boomboxes and alarm clocks that have iPod docks, but most of them have horrible sound, buzz, or otherwise suck. If you ever thought that an alarm clock was a lousy gift, then the iPod-enabled clocks aren’t any better. They seem like a good idea, but stay away.
9. CDs
Do people really buy CDs anymore? The purpose of a CD is to be played in a CD player, and they are almost as blassé as an 8-track recorder. Ten years ago, every car had a CD player and boomboxes supported CDs. The rules have changed: now cars are iPod compatible and boomboxes have iPod docks.
If you have the original CD then you can make your own MP3s, and with much higher quality than what’s available on the online stores. Unless your gift receiver is an audio purist and rips his own music, then consider buying an iTunes gift card instead.
8. Portable CD Players
Didn’t you read the paragraph above? Nobody uses portable CD players anymore. People who exercise now have flash-based MP3 players because they have no moving parts and are not prone to skipping. Portable CD players also eat batteries like candy. The only reason you should even consider a no-name MP3 player is if the only alternative would be a portable CD player.
7. Voice Recorders for the iPod
This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Your technology-loving nerd probably already has an iPod, and a voice recorder would help them with school lectures, business meetings, interviews, personal notes, and all sorts of things, right?… Well, not quite.
Voice recorders for the iPod vary in features, and most of them have pretty good sound quality. The major differences between them is if they have USB passthrough (for charging while recording), or can record in stereo.
The problem with these devices lay in the iPod itself. The iPod cannot compress audio in real time, so the audio format has to be unsompressed WAV (which take up quite a bit more space than MP3 files). During a long recording session, the iPod will eventually start thrashing its disk as it writes… which usually results in large portions of the recording being ruined. These voice recorders are fine for quick notes, grocery lists, or whatever, and for these look for one with an integrated speaker (so you can listen to your list while at the store). For the purposes of recording lectures or other long speeches, consider a dedicated voice recorder.
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6. No-name MP3 players
I’ll admit it… I was one of the last adopters of Apple’s iPod. I was originally a fan of other MP3 players from Creative and Archos, and hoped that they would gain as much ubiquity as Apple’s player. Microsoft came along and screwed that up real good with their “Plays for Sure” initiative, which essentially killed the market by not following up with their marketing promises.
The new players by Creative and Microsoft are pretty good, but the sheer fact of the matter is that there are sooooo many peripherals that work with the iPod. The iPod isn’t the best player in the world (Creative comes out with some awesome features that would blow the iPod away), but it’s the most ubiquitous. Apple’s marketing department has the world believing that unless it’s a true iPod then it’s not an MP3 player.
If this is a gift for someone else, go iPod. If this is a gift for yourself, then you can choose from several companies: I would stick with those from Samsung, Creative, Archos, Microsoft’s Zune of Apple’s iPod.
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5. Analog TV sets
You might be able to find some good deals on traditional “tube” TV sets, and there is a good reason for this… they will soon be worthless.
In February of 2009, all over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts will have to be digital. This really doesn’t mean anything for the average techie, as they probably already have cable or satellite TV. Hardly anyone in the US receives their television from an over-the-air antenna, and these people will either need to upgrade to HDTV or get a converter box. Let’s be honest: if you are fine with the quality of programming you can get with a rooftop antenna, then there’s no reason to go HDTV.
Analog TV sets might be fine for the kids room with a DVD player. Honestly, this is where many old sets usually end up when parents upgrade. Analog TVs have their place, but it’s just not something to give as a holiday gift… not even those DVD/VCR/TV combos.
4 comments
The reason I felt the HD-DVD thing needed to be said was because I know way too many people that know nothing about home theater that were enticed into these deals before I talked them out of it. Where you or I could find some use out of these drives, the average person will be completely throwing their money away.
I hope someone I know (or you know) read my article and is more informed… cuz I just get way too much crap from people guessing what a nerd might like )
Buying HD-DVDs are kinda like buying CDs in today's world. You might want to pick them up if you intend to rip them, but otherwise they are unusable. Honestly, the HD movies I'm interested in aren't on any format… I download them from Usenet (like Star Wars and other movies that aren't on HD yet). I then play these downloaded movies on the Xbox 360 (or PS3 or HTPC).
Even if you hook a non-HDMI XBOX360 to a large one of those analog TV systems for the kids, you're still getting movies for cheap. Although I suppose there's always Netflix for $9 a month.
If you've got an XBOX360, it might just not apply. The addon player is $40 and the movies $4 to $12 retail in a store here, and can probably be gotten for less I'd imagine, online, used etc. So for those who would like to add this on to the console, especially those with the versions or newer models with HDMI out, well. (Sadly, mine is an older normal model missing HDMI and it's not worth the money to me to move from the RGB composite video with optical sound.)
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