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Get Rid of that Pumpkin...
It’s Time to Shop for Holiday Gifts
 Once upon a time,
holiday decorations went up the day after Thanksgiving. But today,
we have lights and trees going up and holiday catalogs and circulars
arriving right after Halloween, or even before. These early reminders
of the upcoming holidays also signal that it’s time to start
shopping. And what better gifts to give than cutting-edge electronics?
So to help you decide
on cool gifts for your spouse, girlfriend, father, sister, mother,
brother, uncle, child, or grand-nephew, the next two issues of Home Electronics
Journal will be devoted to holiday gift ideas.
Happy shopping.
All the
best,
Steven
R. Mitchell
Editor — Home
Electronics Journal
The Coolest Gifts to Give
| Navman
GPS F20 — $349.00
The Navman
F20 is an affordable and feature-rich GPS that mounts in your
car. One-touch "Park" and "Fuel" buttons find
the closest gas station and parking lot. Plus, you can do
full ZIP code searches. Just take it out of the box and you
are ready to go with its preloaded U.S. maps.
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Specs
at a Glance:
• 3.5-inch touchscreen
• 7.1 ounces
• 3.13 x 4.57 x 0.95 inches
• 12V in-car power connector, plus
Li ION battery for 3.5 hours of use outside of car
• GPS accuracy to five meters 95%
of the time
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Specs
at a Glance:
• Holds 20,000 songs, 25,000 photos or 100 hours
of video
• 5.5 ounces
• 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.55 inches
• 2.5-inch screen
• Battery life of up to 6.5 hours
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Apple
iPod 80GB — $349.00
The 80GB
iPod, released in September, is generation 5.5 and includes
many improvements over its 60GB predecessor. You can search
for songs using an alphabet-style instant search feature, plus
it has a brighter screen, longer battery life, a gapless playback
option, and a refined games section with Bejeweled, Tetris,
Texas Hold ‘Em, and Pac-Man. And unless you own 2,000
CDs, this unit will hold your entire collection, plus plenty
of photos and a good sampling of videos. Several companies
make a docking unit shaped like a laptop, where you place your iPod
to access a larger screen and speakers for viewing videos (Memorex
iFlip is the largest with an 8.4-inch screen).
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Nintendo Wii Game Console — $250.00
The Nintendo
Wii (pronounced "wee"), to be released on November
19, sports a $250 price tag and a motion-sensitive controller,
both of which will set it apart from the more expensive Xbox
and PlayStation. Backward compatible with all Nintendo GameCube
games, the Wii system has a remote that looks like one for
a TV and uses a motion sensor so the movements of your hand
are translated to the screen, as you, for example, aim and
swing a sword or pass a football. There will be 30 classic
games available for the Wii at launch date. Through Wii Channels,
the online interface, you can even access weather, news,
and message channels.
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Specs
at a Glance:
• 8.5 x 6 x 2 inches
• Self-loading media bay plays single
or double-sided 12-cm optical disks
• Connects to the Internet wirelessly
using IEEE 802.11 or USB 2.0 LAN adaptor
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