Cool Tech Reviews

Ben Fritz at Variety reports that the Xbox 360 video download service announced in November may be a surprise hit:

In a topsy-turvy year for the digital download biz, a videogame service in just a few million homes is ending 2006 with more momentum than the world’s biggest e-tailer.

The relative success of video downloads on Microsoft’s Xbox Live and disappointment of Amazon.com’s Unbox point to two factors that differentiate Xbox from Amazon and its many other competitors — consumers who download a movie want a simple way to watch it on their TV, and those with high-def TVs want high-def content.

Thanks to the Xbox 360’s direct connection to a TV and the console’s focus on HD content, Microsoft can deliver both. Though exact sales figures aren’t available from any Web site or studio, insiders agree that it’s the most, and maybe only, positive story in digital movie downloads this year.

Many in Hollywood had high expectations that Amazon’s strength in DVD sales would spur the nascent Web download biz. But the Netco faces the same problems as competitors such as Movielink, CinemaNow, Guba and AOL that launched before it: It’s difficult for consumers to burn downloads onto DVD (save for a few titles on CinemaNow), and it’s tricky for all but the most tech-savvy to watch downloads on a TV.

Part of it is the tech savvy Xbox 360 demographic and part is the ease of watching a movie on a box already connected to a TV (which says something about where Windows XP Media Center systems are installed). There aren’t really any hard numbers, but the buzz is that despite the limited audience, Xbox 360 download numbers are equal to any of the PC download sites. While that’s certainly good news for Microsoft, it also illustrates the current sad state of Internet video downloads.

Since I’m fast approaching senior citizen status and find a lot to grouch about with cell phones, I was interested in Ed Oswald’s review at BetaNews of the Jitterbug phone (a product of Great Call) which is directed at senior citizens:

For many seniors, using a cell phone can be a challenging and intimidating experience. Thus, they opt to not carry a cell phone; or if they do, refrain from using it much. A company called Jitterbug aims to change that.

Every part of the Jitterbug phone — built by Samsung — is designed to take into account the needs of this group. From the design of the handset to the simplified user interface, and even features that attempt to make it as much like a regular phone as possible, the learning curve is much less steep than a traditional cellular handset.

But does this phone measure up with the consumer? BetaNews shared the Jitterbug with several people within the target demographic and what we found was a near universal positive response to the device.

Hit the link for the full review, but there’s a lot of goodness there:

• Larger size, easier to grip
• Larger keys and easier to read large screen fonts
• Ear cushion for comfort and ambient noise reduction
• High volume sound
• Simplified user interface
• Synthetic dial tone for customers who remember the good old days
• Live operator assistance as a standard feature including the ability for the operator to add names and numbers to the phone’s “phonebook”

The only thing they didn’t like was that it was offered for Sprint’s CDMA network only (coverage maps here), the screen could have been bigger, and that it was hard to find where to plug in the recharger.

I’m all for ergonomic improvements in cell phones since small size and small print are already an annoyance for me and my bifocals, but the latter three features take the Jitterbug into a wholly different territory specific to users who can’t handle the complexity of ordinary cellphones. Hitting the Jitterbug website shows much more of the this including a version of the phone called “Jitterbug OneTouch” that only has keys for Operator, Tow, and 911. I won’t need that for quite a while I hope, but it seems like a reasonable convenience for those that do.

Other reviews:

• Phone Scoop has a comprehensive review and a video review on YouTube that’s a good idea in and of itself.
• CNET likes it but says the volume rocker is annoying and the optional voice dialing is troublesome.
• PC Magazine also liked it but found the volume rocker and speakerphone function annoying.
• Splash Magazine actually has a senior citizen review the Jitterbug and that’s interesting too.

Finally, I haven’t mentioned the service plans and for that I’m afraid the Jitterbug isn’t much of an improvement over regular cell phones - you still need to be a bit of a lawyer to figure them out, particularly since the phone isn’t necessarily included with the service. If you can’t figure out a cell phone menu, you may not be able to figure out the offerings either.

To net it out: the Jitterbug has a few bugs, but it seems like a worthwhile offering for senior citizens who could use cell phone access and for their loved ones who would like to provide them with it.

Sometimes you just have to laugh - TV prices dropping too fast, Sony says:

Television prices are dropping faster than expected, and Sony’s not too happy about it.

Prices for liquid crystal display TVs should drop between 25 percent and 30 percent this year. That’s between 5 percent and 7 percent more than Sony anticipated, Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, said in a meeting with reporters in San Francisco last week.

And the problem is what exactly?

While this is good for consumers–and it would be hard to find a thrifty buyer sympathetic to Sony’s concerns–the quick plunge in prices could hurt the industry as a whole because it could leave consumer electronics manufacturers financially weakened and less able to invest in future technologies, Glasgow argued.

Mr. Glasgow seems to be unfamiliar with the concept of the free market where efficient producers survive and inefficient ones get forced out. Either that or Sony is on the inefficient side.

“LCDs will continue to experience heavy price erosion, but not at this level,” he said. “It is hard to see that business model (of drastic price cuts) sustaining itself.”

It won’t unless the manufacturers can sustain it.

However, aside from beating up Sony for cluelessness, the point is that there are bargains out there:

“Prices have come down pretty aggressively,” said Steve Baker, an analyst at NPD Techworld. “We saw more big names on Black Friday come out with more aggressive prices than expected. The surprise was that the big guys got dragged into the muck.”

Vizio, for instance, a bargain plasma TV maker, sold a 42-inch plasma for $999 while Panasonic also touted 42-inch plasma deals for around $1,300.

A variety of factors have played a role in the dramatic drop. LCD and plasma TV makers are engaged in a turf war for the key 40-inch to 49-inch TV market, Baker said. Many manufacturers are also trying to get rid of excess supplies of TVs shipped to Europe in anticipation of a big selling binge before the summer’s World Cup soccer tournament. Not as many sets sold as expected.

Consumers are buying bigger, fancier TVs, but they expect to buy them at far lower prices than they did a year ago, which squeezes sales margins. Additionally, the number of companies hawking LCD TVs is putting pressure on big companies like Sony. IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell estimated that there might be close to 90 manufacturers.

“You and I can start an LCD company tomorrow. You buy some panels and circuits, get a Taiwanese (contract manufacturer) and, bam, you’re in business,” he said. “Given that environment, there are people fighting for survival.”

On the latter point, it means you just need to check the reviews of the model and manufacturer for quality, or stick to the big names like Sony as they get dragged kicking and screaming to lower their margins.

I’ve seen more gadgets than I would care to enumerate, but there’s always a new one. I got tipped off to Heelys by a post from Bill Tancer at Web measurement firm Hitwise:

Tomorrow we’ll be releasing our hot searched-for-products of this holiday season. As a little taste of whats coming, over the last several weeks, we’ve noticed a steady increase in searches for Heelys (the tennis shoes with wheels responsible for many mall near-collisions).
…
One of the best ways to gauge consumer interest in a product is to chart the volume of queries on that product or brand over time. Here’s the Heelys chart:

Click through for the chart, but Heelys really seem to be hot this holiday season.

I don’t know if you can see the details in this Amazon ad:

but basically Heelys are a pair of conventional shoes with a wide wheel in the heel. They come in various styles for men, women, and children and apparently the more agile wearers can perform the equivalent of roller skating or roller blading by rocking back on the heels. There are some fairly frenetic videos of Heelys wearers on YouTube like this one, but here’s one that’s more sedate and gives the idea:

You couldn’t get me in Heelys, but they look amusing for the younger crowd.

Matt Vella at Business Week points out the growing trend for affordable GPS systems and as a result, how they are showing up on gift lists this holiday season:

But consumers are no longer waiting for the devices to be offered by auto manufacturers. Indeed, the market for personal navigation devices has exploded over the last two years. Those systems, made by the likes of Garmin, TomTom, and Magellan, offer the same features as those available in cars, but they’re portable and cost anywhere from 50% to 80% less. The Consumer Electronics Assn. predicts that as many as 2.3 million such units will ship in the U.S. this year. Analysts say that would represent a growth of 100% from last year.

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Another catalyst of growth is the falling price and improving performance of the computer chips that run the devices. “That chip that a few years ago cost $30 is now just $10,” says Rich Valera, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New Jersey. “It’s the economics of silicon—price comes down, performance goes up. The inexorable trend is, then, a proliferation of GPS devices.”

Prices for popular portable navigation devices have dropped at the retail level as well, fueling demand. According to NDP Group, the average price of GPS systems dropped to $616 during the third quarter of this year. That’s a drop of more than 30%, from an average of $863, since the same time last year.

Actually, as you’ll see below, you can do much better than that on price. Also as a clear indicator of a maturing market, the article describes how more manufacturers are jumping on board and all of them seem to be bundling in more functions like MP3 playing and real-time traffic reports as well as building specialized devices with GPS functionality like the HP iPAQ rx5900 ”travel companion” palmtop and the Mio DigiWalker H610 which offers GPS for walkers.

As useful as these specialized devices might be, I thought I’d check to see what was available in ordinary GPS units for the car. Frankly, there are so many of them that I used Amazon Electronics Top Seller list as a guide to pick two hot units and see what they had to offer. I’ll start with the Garmin StreetPilot c330 GPS Vehicle Navigator which is currently number 5 on the Top Seller list and is going for $300 (list price $964.99):

This unit was introduced in 2005  and does exactly what you need for auto navigation for what is now a bargain price. Features:

• Touch screen (3.5-inch diagonal, 16-bit color) interface. The only buttons are a rotary volume knob and an on/off switch
• Dual integrated speakers for high-quality voice prompts
• Automatic route calculation to any destination
• Three-dimensional navigation view or the more traditional “bird’s eye” overhead view
• Pre-loaded with highly detailed MapSource City Select street data of the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The database features five million-plus points of interest including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and attractions. (There’s a slightly cheaper ($15) c320 version where you can download the data for a specific region to a memory card and put it in the unit, but why bother?)
• Keeps track of places that you find and stores the fifty most recent
• Mounts in a suction-mount cradle that fastens to the windshield for easy portability between vehicles. Internal lithium-ion battery for out-of-car route planning.

Reviews ([1], [2], [3]) are uniformly good except that all the reviewers complain that the screen washes out and is hard to read in bright sunlight. This doesn’t seem to be a huge problem for the purchasers who have reviewed it on Amazon, however.

If you are willing to take a step up in price there is the Garmin Nuvi 350 Pocket or Vehicle GPS Navigator with Integrated MP3 Player and Photo Viewer which as the name indicates adds other features to the GPS function, is #17 on the Amazon list, and is going for $484 (list $969):

The most obvious attraction of the Nuvi 350 is its compact size which allows you to easily carry it in a purse or pocket. That, of course, fits in with the ability to also use it as an MP3 player. More importantly for GPS use, it has all the expected features plus a new more sensitive GPS chipset (SiRFstar III) which gives better reception. Also, unlike the C330, the Nuvi 350 actually speaks the names of streets where you should turn. Reviews ([4], [5], [6]) are universally favorable including a PC Magazine Editor’s Choice, with the caveat that the list price was viewed as rather steep.  That doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

I don’t think you will go wrong with either of these units, but if you can afford the extra, the Nuvi 350 seems like the way to go.

I’m a long time AMD fan, but they seem to be having difficulties making a case for their new Quad FX CPU platform. George Ou explains in AMD Quad FX slaughtered by a single Intel CPU:

All the reviews are in for AMD’s new “4×4″ Quad FX dual CPU platform and it loses nearly every single real world benchmark to a single Intel CPU while consuming more than twice the electricity.  We basically see two FX-74 3.0 GHz processors getting slaughtered by a single Intel QX6700 2.66 GHz quad core processor!  Ironically, three of the four benchmark sites I link to give such contradictory glowing conclusions for the Quad FX in spite of their own data showing AMD being slaughter that Baghdad Bob would be proud.  Here are the four reviews of which only TomsHardware had a realistic conclusion that matched their actual data.

• FiringSquad
• [H] Enthusiast
• TomsHardware
• Hot Hardware

From highly optimized multi-core applications like 3D rendering and Video encoding to single threaded applications like games the AMD Quad FX either lost by a little or it lost by a lot. 

…

The bottom line is that AMD has delivered a Frankenstein of a solution that guzzles a ton of power while delivering inferior performance.  I just don’t know of any other way to describe the AMD Quad FX platform.  While AMD has superficially (not on a clock-for-clock or overclocking potential basis) closed some of the performance gap, there is just no way for any sensible person other than diehard AMD fans to love the Quad FX.

For a dissenting opinion, refer to Charlie Demerjian’s article at the Inquirer:

AMD Quad FX is finally here, and the easy questions about what it is have been answered. The tricky questions are why you would want one, and what for.

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If your application plays to the strengths of Intel, well Kentsfield will absolutely clobber AMD. Games and older single threaded apps are good examples of this, and they will be the predominant type of software for much of 2007. If you have things that need heavy memory access, FP laden work is a good example, or your games actually utilize multiple cores effectively, well AMD will trounce Intel. It all boils down to what software do you use and how do you use it?

Most people compare the QFX machines to Kentsfield as simple gaming boxes, and this is wrong. You can do it, and there is nothing technically incorrect, but that is not what AMD has been promising for this machine. People have been assuming since it was first announced that it would be the killer gaming rig, but that is simply not the case.

Having been at the initial coming out party over the summer, AMD was very clear that QFX was about doing more at the same time on a single box, they use the term megatasking. Basically, the AMD architecture is much better suited to doing many different tasks at once. There is no single bottleneck to force all the data through, so one core can utilize many more parts of the system without interfering with the other cores.

The down side to all of this is they lack the peak single threaded horsepower of a Kentsfield core, and will lag on apps that don’t need all that bandwidth. Basically take your pick of what you are going to run, a single game, or a few instances of an MMO, MP3s in the background, and maybe a game server. That more than anything will determine what you should buy.

Fair enough, but that market seems rather esoteric, at least today. I guess the bottom line is that you shouldn’t be buying a Quad FX unless you know exactly why it’s a good choice.