I’m the only one in town without a gaming console! Which one should I choose?
This is possibly the best time ever to be in the market for a game console. Prices are down, capabilities are up and the PS3 has a lithe new look.
As to which console is the best choice, it depends on what you want. Wii seems to get most of the points when it comes to families. The choice of family friendly games and a huge peripherals market make it a real winner. According to The Nielsen Company, the Wii is big in opening up the market to women, no doubt aided by the Wii Fit system. Wii is also in a sweet spot in that a lot of people are buying one to put next to their Xbox 360 or PS3.
If you get off on cool technology and hot graphics, the PLAYSTATION 3 is the platform for you. Though the platform is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately in terms of games, recent releases have improved things nicely. Exclusives like Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, a generally healthier array of wicked titles and general improvements hoisted the console to the No. 2 spot, and the release of a lower-priced slim line is helping to keep sales brisk. And, honestly, LittleBigPlanet really is good enough to buy the console for -- that, and the fact that you won’t need a separate Blu-ray player.
No matter how many Halo sequels and prequels Microsoft whips Bungie into grinding out, the Xbox 360 is pretty solidly sitting in third place. The fact is that though it’s probably the best looking of the three, and offers great graphics, the machine doesn’t offer either Wii’s revolutionary controllers or the PS3’s Blu-ray drive. Also, bad press on everything from hardware failures to the banning of altered machines from the Xbox online community are just exacerbating things. That being said, we still think that the Halo franchise is a compelling reason to buy an Xbox.
Should I buy a photo printer or just keep bringing my SD cards to the local pharmacy?
This one’s actually pretty simple: The magic of digital photography is that it’s a lot more affordable to shoot a bazillion pictures than it was during the film era. You can spend your Tuscan vacation snapping away, then trash the crappier images later without spending good money on printing lousy pics.
Whether or not it’s worth your while to buy a photo printer depends on the next part of the equation: How many photos do you see yourself printing? If you’re the type who puts his pics online and only prints one every few months, don’t bother with the purchase. Even at the low cost of these printers, it won’t pay for itself any time soon. And since most of them are ink-jets, you’re likely to end up paying through the nose to replace dried-out ink cartridges. Just keep taking your card to the closest print center or drugstore.
If you like to distribute photos as atoms rather than bits, that changes things a little. For those who print out a ton of shots -- as in, enough to not waste half-tanks of ink a couple of times a year -- then the affordability of these devices can make them a good buy. Just do your research, as not all photo printers are created equal -- as our review of the Epson PictureMate Dash PM 260 shows.
What’s the best search engine?
Google is the undisputed king of the search engine mountain. The brand’s market penetration is so massive that the name’s become a verb. Aside from the usual basic and advanced search functions, Google.com offers filters for news, images, locations, shopping, books, video, and blogs, among others. Boolean searches are possible with "and," "or" and plus or minus terms. You can also run a search using wildcards or define which site suffix you want to use, as well as a whole lot more cool stuff.
Bing is Microsoft’s attempt to engage Google on its home turf. Bing looks fabulous and offers the kind of visual candy that gets people clicking. Under the hood, the site offers some cool touches, like dynamic content preview boxes and suggested tangents down the left side. The Boolean search functions aren’t quite as robust as Google’s, nor are the support for wildcards or search filters. Search results are sometimes a little better than Google’s, and sometimes not as good -- so it’s a crapshoot if you don’t regularly take advantage of Google’s more robust features. An interesting side note: No matter how much we define our country location using Bing’s drop-down menu, we still keep getting British Binged.
In July, Yahoo announced it was giving up on the search engine war and would run on Bing form then on, so it’s not clear just why anyone would use Yahoo! as a search engine anymore.
How things are going to come out in the near future is still unclear on the search engine front, but for now Google still comes out on top, though that’s partly due to the familiarity factor. Technically, the differences aren’t big enough to come down too clearly on any side. However, one nice choice is the Dogpile engine, which sources its results from Google, Bing and the Ask engine -- so you're getting the best of all worlds.
What am I getting overcharged for at a big box store?
The first thing you should know is that you’re spending too much on cables. That $100 HDMI cable you bought with your Blu-ray isn’t the best use of your folding cash. The big boxers try to flog high-priced cables because they represent big profit margins. However, you can buy a good-quality HDMI cable for $10 or $15 at online retailers like Amazon.com or Newegg.com. And the same is true for composite, S-Video or pretty much any other such cable.
You should also shop around before buying accessories at your local big box store. Last year’s news story about a customer being escorted out of a certain retailer by the cops for telling another customer that the headset in his hands was $30 less from Verizon points to the fact that “big box” does not always equal big savings. You’ll often spend less by shopping online, though online savings can get eaten up by shipping fees, so keep your eyes open.
However, the worst has to be those extended third-party warranties. Whereas getting an extended warranty for an expensive tech item might be worthwhile, you have to look at the cost versus the price of the item itself and how long you’re expecting to use it. If you’re the type who replaces his computer every three or four years, what’s the point of a five-year warranty? Also, look at what fails the most on, let's say, PCs: Would a $200 or $300 warranty make sense for a $100 hard drive replacement?
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