New Game World

Your Holiday Shopping Guide Part One and Best Questions Answered

Your Holiday Shopping Guide Part One and Best Questions Answered

By Richard M. Sherwin

A Recession in CE Tech Support?

Even the best company’s product can go splooey; it’s how well their tech support solves the consumer’s crisis that separate great companies from the mere mediocre.

A: The Red Carpet and World Series video camera you saw was one or more of The Flip video camera series. Now the top selling palm-sized video camera in America, the tiny devices even come in HD models.

The main reason for its success over rivals is both the quality of the videos (you can use them for stills, too), and because Flip Video camcorders are pre-loaded with FlipShare software to enable easy organizing, editing, and one button uploading to YouTube, MySpace and other video sharing sites. You can even transfer videos and share them on your Blackberry and Phones with a new AP download. In addition, the founding company, Pure Digital, is now part and parcel of Cisco (purchased a while ago), and they are maintaining strict quality control and adding new features all the time. The recent FREE upgrade, called the FlipChannel, allows you to share both video and snapshots - with many different groups such as friends, family, classmates or teams. Once a user creates a Flip Channel, it can be viewed online at FlipShare.com. www.theflip.com

You don't have to buy an iPod

The other tiny device that many readers saw recently that has replaced the IPod in some family and celebrity circles is the SanDisk Clip+. The newest 4 and 8 Gigabyte models hold 1,000 to 2,000 songs, and include a built in FM radio and voice recorder. We found that SanDisk music players in general feature much better quality audio than many other more expensive MP3 players. Its’ best feature, unlike the IPod Nano, it Is more expansive than many other MP3 players. It comes with a Memory Slot to add even more tunes through cheaper priced micro SD cards, and it uses a much easier and better way to add music than ITunes …whether you use its own or most any other digital music system.

Maybe the most convenient feature, and why you are seeing the SanDisk Sansa Clip at airports, schools, trains and bus stations, is that you can add favorite tunes or whole albums without downloading anything. SanDisk now sells Billboard rated premium songs, playlists and whole albums on preloaded microdisks.

Dubbed Slotradio and Slotmusic cards, priced as low as $14 a unit, don’t require monthly subscriptions or downloading, work on many non SanDisk devices like certain model mobile phones and are now available at many convenient locations. www.sandisk.com

Q: Watching Black Friday and Cyber Monday consumer electronics sales prices come tumbling down, I saw a top rated Plasma TV from Panasonic with Internet access at nearly half the price from last year when I couldn’t quite afford it. I also saw a Toshiba 40 inch LCD at almost a third of last year’s price at BJs and a Vizio 55 inch LCD with terrific add-on features at such a ridiculous price, that I was temped to get all the units. However, is it true that Plasma has better viewing angles and much better sharpness than LCD? And is it true the former bargain basement Vizio is now the best selling TV maker in North America and is much more reliable than when they first reached the U.S.?

A: Plasma TVs now last longer than most people do and, while slightly more expensive, don’t have as much of a quality advantage than they used to compared to LCDs. Plasma, at the very top-of-the-line may produce a slightly better picture during high-speed chases or slightly less lag or blurring during sports and other active movie or live events.

Plasma (miniscule gas plasma cells charged by active computer like electrical charges) vs. LCD (Liquid Chrystal Displays are liquefied smart cells placed between two levels of glass):

Many of the new LCD TVs use a back lighting technique that makes LCD viewing as sharp and light during dark sequences. The main advantage for Plasma in a big room is that you get a better viewing angle from the sides of the room. Plasma TV screens tend to run in larger sizes and, in some super expensive smaller models. As far Vizio goes, their top of the line models (now available at Costco, Sams Club and BJs) are matching up well against Panasonic, Sony Toshiba and LG and will soon offer the best and easiest Internet access than the former industry leaders if you want Internet features. The key here is to make sure you are not comparing the prices of the Wal-Mart based Vizios, which often have half the refresh rates of the other brands.

Look for a minimum of 120 hz and, if you can find it, 240 hz. TVs using that speed processor will almost always be a better buy than 60 or 120hz. Models. And don’t forget, nearly every independent TV ratings expert still chooses the top of the line Samsung as the best all-around TV on the market.

Q: I purchased a Compaq Presario SR1475cl only a few years ago and it’s slowing down. Compaq-HP doesn’t support it any longer -- for any price -- and Costco, where I purchased it doesn’t support its PCs after the warrantee. Is there anything I can do?

A: Yes. We, along with many thousands of other consumers, purchased this under-powered budget priced family PC. If you’ve added many software programs and peripherals and also maintained your Windows XP operating system, or if you’ve upgraded to Vista, this PC will eventually not be able to handle the extra system requirements. But no need to buy a new PC, a simple hardware upgrade will save you. Rather than waste the $700 bucks we paid for ours, we added two gigs of ram by easily taking out the 512K one leg of ram in the slot under the fan. We purchased two one gig legs of ram from the very reliable Kingston Technology company. (We’ve been upgrading with them for more than 10 years.) At stores like Staples or Office Max or even Best Buy, the price for two gigs is about $99. Kingston also has a terrific online chart that makes it easy to pick the right amount of ram for your PC or laptop and even has terrific prices if you are upgrading your Mac.

If you are thinking of upgrading to Windows 7, which is a more efficient way to run most PCs, we also suggest once the ram is installed running the Windows 7 system tester, which will then tell you what graphics board or sound card you have and whether you must upgrade those. In almost 100% of the cases, a Nvidia graphics board for under $90 will make your old Compaq a brand new fast running PC again. www.shopkingston.com

Q: Whether I am buying a home theater component system, a TV, or even an entry level home theater in a box , I am seeing logos declaring that this device has SRS, DTS, Dolby, Surround Sound, 5.1 channel, 7.1 channel, 2.1 channel and other audio platforms. Which is the best one and how come audio and videos system don’t have all these buzzword technologies built-in? The salesman said that SRS reduces that offending rise in volume that many commercials produce and many cable channels have. Is she correct?

A: For many years, most audio product manufactures and many TV makers have been looking for a way to improve sound quality without adding too much additional hardware or are using micro-chips that contain everything from Internet Access to special audio enhancers. Dolby, was the first company to produce a technology that reduced noise in the background of recordings, theatrical releases when that content was played on high-end equipment. Dolby was first developed for the movie business and then migrated to the home and even to mobile technologies. Dolby was the first to control the sounds to make audio coming from receivers able to stretch the music in a coordinated fashion to more than just two speakers...which became Surround Sound.

Many audio product makers also produced their own version of Surround Sound so that music could be experienced in a whole room...making your den sound like a movie theater.

In the last few years, Dolby has been challenged by companies like DTS, SRS, and other audio synthesized technologies. Dolby’s own decoding, heard on most audio and high end TVs, is the technology that not only cleans up noises behind sounds and music, it enables all of your speakers and subwoofer to produce individual and separated voices and sounds.

SRS has several formats for different audio hardware platforms. One, in particular, Tru-Surround has the ability to take other audio formats like Dolby and reproduce 5.1 channel multi speaker audio systems into systems that just have two speakers. We found this a great way to get whole room, whole theater sound out of only two speakers, saving space, money and connections.

The SRS sound balancer does a decent job of lowering offensive commercial up-clicks in sound and a good job of making the harshness of loud sounds coming from a TV movie or DVD so that you can hear the voice tracks better. But we were not blown away by SRS’ ability to make the overall music experience better.

DTS Surround Sensation, on many of my audio components, is provides an immediate immersive experience for me and my family. DTS technology can be appreciated almost immediately. It enables you to hear specific sounds and music separation from all of your speakers whether you’re using five or seven speakers in a room.

DTS seems to do this without distorting sounds, no matter what the content source. Dolby, DTS and SRS produce these audio technologies for computers, headphones, mobile phones and MP3 players, too.

Q: I recently purchased my second Casio G-Shock watch in 15 years because I gave my original one to my son. My wife and daughter also have designer style versions of this watch. The watch has been through storms, skiing, boating, skating and oceans. I also own a terrific music keyboard from Casio that has lasted through two hard driving kids. Why doesn’t someone make a camera with this same kind of long lasting shock proof reliability?

A: While several manufacturers make water proof, shock proof, high level digital cameras, Casio makes a digital camera based on its award winning G-Shock technology. Despite its many features and hardware capabilities, it is also the thinnest of these rugged cameras.

What we really liked about the Casio Ex G1 ($299) was just holding it in our hands. It has great ergonomics and the fact that Casio’s name is on it DOES mean a lot should you need advice or tech support.. Our only beef about this camera, is that many other digital camera makers bundle some entry level content management and editing software.

We tried the DXG or shall be say a few of them and that was the problem. The budget priced DXG was just not reliable, sometimes taking picture perfect images in harsh conditions and the other times not working at all…. and it was an awkward feel. Our Panasonic all weather camera, which we talked about last spring, has apparently been upgraded, but we haven’t used the new version and the Canon, with a world-class lens, had the worst battery life. www.casio.com

Q: I recently switch to FIOS TV, Internet and telephone service in Pennsylvania. The TV has been awesome making some of my first generation HDTVs look brilliant; the telephone has a better clarity than my Comcast phone reception. I have two big issues: 1. Verizon’s web site and email and web mail features are so confusing. I never know if I am being handled by Yahoo email or Verizon’s webmail….and synching with my Blackberry with the Verizon software is impossible… So I am not getting all my email. I also paid (because I have a small business from my home) the extra money for the premium support and never get any. OH, I also forgot that Verizon billing system alternately charges me too much or too little. Advise please.

A: You are not alone with your dislike of Verizon’s email system and web site operation. It now ranks among the worst of all service providers in benefits and features and general customer experience. This is surprising since the rest of the FIOS experience is rated by several consumer-rating services as the best in the nation. For your business, you should be relying on Microsoft Outlook, or the stand-alone version of Yahoo Mail or Google Mail. We found the biggest issue with Verizon’s email is that it doesn’t synch well or you can’t import or export important content safely with other email services that you might need to operate a business or even a busy personal life. Our solution has been to use the Blackberry Desktop software (free from RIM) to coordinate your personal and business data from PC to PC or to PC to Mac. As far as premium tech support goes, you need to tell Verizon that you want your money back from the lack of special support. They have several “secret” premium toll free numbers that bypass first and second level support personnel and go right to crisis management third level experts. As far as your bill goes, maybe only pay it when it’s under the right amount.

(Next Week: The best and worst products in their categories).