© Sony

Top of my Christmas gift list this year is an e-book reader. The best way to describe this gadget, if you’ve not seen one, is like an iPod for books. You carry thousands of tunes round and listen to them on a tiny little iPod; so you carry thousands of books around and read them on an e-book reader smaller than a paperback book.

E-ink is what makes it all possible. Anybody who’s tried knows you can’t read for long on a PC monitor or other backlit device without some kind of eye strain. But an e-ink screen looks like real paper and relies on ambient light just like a normal book.

Amazon were among the pioneers with their Kindle device, still only available in the US, but the UK now has several to choose from as shown in this Wiki guide. The popular devices use the same 6 inch e-ink screen which is fine for most purposes, and my favourites are the Sony PRS-505 and the Bookeen Cybook Gen3 – both under £200.

On board memory can be increased with standard SD cards like those in digital cameras. And as your average novel takes up only one tenth of the space of a single on an iPod, it’s possible to carry well over 1000 books on your e-book reader.

You can buy e-books online (handy for gift ideas) and download them just like iTunes, or there’s a vast library of free works via a website called Project Gutenberg.

I’m a member of a great little forum called mobileread.com that anybody thinking of an e-book reader should visit. And if you read books at all, then you really should be putting one of these gadgets high on your Christmas gift list.
I’m using mine already.

Rob

Rated: from 1664 votes

© Sandisk

Electronic gadgets continue to get smaller and ever cheaper. This means that it is now possible to carry a whole 16 Gigabytes of information in a tiny device on your key ring. If you think that a music CD is well under a GB, and a DVD film is about 4GB, then that is a huge amount of data on such a small gadget.

A flash drive, also known as a USB stick, is a tiny storage device that plugs into a USB socket on your PC and allows you to transfer files to or from the PC. Capacities are increasing all the time and prices are falling just as fast. It means that you can carry information from one computer to another, or simply create a backup of important data in case the unthinkable happens and your hard disk crashes.

© Sony

While high capacity flash drives are available, the most cost effective ones are currently around the 4 Gigabyte mark, with a 4GB one costing as little as £10.

Sandisk is a noted brand name in this area, along with Sony, if you want the reassurance of a named brand to store your valuable data.  There are however many own-branded or unbranded models which tend to be much more economical. Either way, if you don’t yet have a flash drive, have a look and see what they can do for you.

Rob

Rated: from 1250 votes

© Casio

When it comes to cameras digital are the only ones to go for. I have a friend who still insists on 35mm film and processes it himself in his darkroom/bathroom, but then he remembers The Beatles too!

 Compact digital cameras are far more powerful and versatile than their name suggests. So in a very small package indeed you can expect automatic focus and exposure, a high quality lens with zoom of 3x or 4x, digital zoom (though if you see my other articles you will know not to bother with this), video recording and playback, and instant review of your pictures.

Casio, Canon, Sony, Fuji, Nikon – all the major manufacturers do a number of digital compacts with a huge array of features depending on your pocket, and what exactly you want from your camera.
The Casio Exilim range are well worth a look. They’re particularly small for digital cameras; with some models little wider or longer than a credit card and they all give stunning pictures.

But you’ll find that whatever you pay, a compact digital will give amazing value for money. It’s really down to personal taste and style, and what features you feel you need, which compact digital camera you finally go shopping for.

Rob

Rated: from 1889 votes

© Sony

With wide screen TVs, flats LCD screens are almost becoming the norm, and look like sending the big old cathode ray beasts the same way as the old computer monitors that took up the whole desk. Can you even buy those old TVs any more even if you wanted to?
Anyway, my best buy for a wide screen TV isn’t original or shocking, but it’s a brilliant big name TV – it’s the Sony Bravia, and believe it or not, this is one of the few occasions when a cool product is actually a good product.

You’ve seen the adverts – the bouncing balls in San Francisco, the paint exploding on tower blocks and most recently the colourful rabbits in New York. I always thought that this was going to be a triumph of advertising over quality – how wrong I was.

I bought my first Bravia in the 2007 and I was blown away by the colours - realistic black, lifelike depth and detail, and vibrant colours that have become synonymous with the Bravia brand. It’s a supercool and effective brand, but that’s when I discovered the drawback of the Sony Bravia – someone broke in pinched it – and it’s not light either!

Of course I replaced it with a new Bravia, but was interested to learn about the BRAVIA ZX1 that was in the press in early September. It’s stylish, it’s got the amazing colour of other Bravia wide screen TVs and it measures just 9.9mm at its slimmest section. They keep banging out new models, but they have the same great pictures. Once you’ve had a Bravia you won’t go back – unless someone steals it.

Rob

Rated: from 1675 votes

© BT

The range of digital cordless phones available on the high street is now quite astounding.

If you want a digital answering machine built in, no problem. Two or more handsets so you can answer the phone in any room in the house? No problem. Funky modern design, retro style or just plain and simple? The selection is yours, and any number of digital cordless phone manufacturers will be clamouring to serve you.

All the major names in electronics offer excellent digital cordless phones – Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Philips for example. And there’s a great range just out under the BT Synergy badge, headed up by the flagship BT Synergy 4500 Quad Digital Cordless Phone which boasts no less than four handsets linked to the one base station.

With a range of up to 300 metres, the BT 4500 is powerful enough to let you use your phone with ease anywhere in the largest house. It boasts 11.1/2 minutes message time on the integral answering machine, hands free operation and a 255 number phone book. It even has SMS text messaging.

The 4500 like all good modern digital cordless phones conforms to the DECT standard, meaning crystal clear speech for both sides of the conversation. And with its sleek stylish design, it’s sure to be an eye-pleaser as well.

So if you’re shopping for digital cordless phones, you need look no further.

Rob

Rated: from 1645 votes

© Panasonic

Practically every TV on sale these days is HD ready. With the switch-over to digital in progress and the BBC already transmitting programmes in stunning High Definition, it makes sense to buy an HD ready TV now.

The BBC is transmitting HD programmes via the Freesat satellite service, and Sky already has a number of HD channels available so HD is very much with us. Suitable in particular for the larger plasma and LCD television sets, I can foresee that HD will inevitably become more and more widespread until it replaces standard definition TV as the norm in a few short years time.

Even on a 32 inch set, an HD picture looks fantastic. But once you have seen an HD broadcast on a 42 inch HD ready TV set, you will appreciate the amazing difference in quality and clarity. And the larger the set the greater the benefit you will get from an HD picture.

All the major manufacturers offer HD ready plasma and LCD TVs as the norm, with Sony Bravia and Panasonic Viera being two of my favourite ranges. They offer stunning pictures, superb quality and reliability as you’d expect from the Sony and Panasonic brands, and all at a very competitive price.

Rob

Rated: from 1860 votes