'When I do my holiday tech shopping, I'm looking for:
a) the coolest, most luxurious, over-the-top, jaw-droppingly futuristic items money can buy; or b) the cheapest geegaw that does the job...'
Christmas is a time of fantasy. Throughout the land, merchants fantasize about hitting their fourth-quarter numbers, with the aid of gift-givers with starry eyes and platinum credit cards.
Some of these optimistic souls may be found in elite consumer electronics stores. You'll see them flicking dust from the giant flat-panel TVs or arranging a display of costly digital music players. But there are retailing realists as well, those who sadly acknowledge that people will have to eat and pay mortgages after Dec. 25. These toil at the Circuit Citys and Best Buys, though they're often hard to spot. They're constantly hustling to the back of the shop in search of one more cheap videogame console, or the last economy MP3 player.
Most of us will do our shopping at the humbler stores, but wealthy consumers are not to be despised, and the rest of us can dream of someday sharing their prosperity. As for the affluent, it's time they learned how the rest of us live. In this spirit, we offer a guide to holiday tech shopping, as it might be pursued by those of modest means, and those for whom price tags mean nothing.
Gaming computers
How bad do you want to win? Say, $7,100 worth? Then Falcon Northwest has the computer for you, totally tricked out for digital victory. It has a top-line AMD Athlon64 FX-55 processor, two gigabytes of memory, two graphics processors, even two 300-gigabyte hard drives. Why all the firepower? To run the most advanced PC games, like Doom 3 and FarCry, with smooth, glitch-free performance. When you're competing over the Internet, victory often goes to the gamer with the fastest rig. If you and your buds lug your PCs to the local American Legion, and hook them up for a "LAN party," then victory in the games isn't enough. You also need to look cool. Hence Falcon Northwest's custom paint shop, which will slap on the design of your choice. That costs extra, by the way. But once you've gone this far, it's a bit late to start cutting corners.
A quarter-century ago, we walked three miles to school through blizzards, and a gaming computer was something that was wired into the back of your spare TV set. It was the era of the Atari home gaming consoles, and odd as it seems, some people think these were the good old days. In a bid to make money off these geezers before they come to their senses, Atari offers the $59.95 Flashback, an instant blast from the past. Forget those old plug-in cartridges. The Flashback's memory chips hold 20 of the grand old titles, including Asteroids, Battlezone and Centipede. Just plug into a standard TV's gaming jacks, turn on the Flashback box, and open fire.
TVs
A $9,000 television will knock quite a hole in the kids' college fund. But just think how great the Patriots' third Super Bowl win will look on a 50-inch Panasonic plasma TV. Its high-definition screen will let you see the autopsies on "CSI" as they were meant to be seen. And with its Hollywood-style width-to-height ratio, you'll finally learn to enjoy movies broadcast in "letterbox" format. There's even a memory card slot, so you can display pictures from your digital camera. Sure, the purchase may preclude your kids attending the college of their choice, but they'll learn to make do with the Discovery Channel.
But why settle for a 50-inch screen? A good video projector can turn any wall into a TV set. High-quality projectors used to sell for $5,000 or more. Today, good ones can be had for around a grand, with the result that consumers are buying them for their home theaters. You'll still need to invest in a good screen, the projector's light bulb will need replacement every year or so, and the light from an open window washes out the vibrant colors. But what do you want for $1,000? Plasma?
Noise-canceling headphones
You can buy a lot of silence for $300. That's the price for a set of Bose QuietComfort 2 Noise-Cancelling headphones. Powered by a standard AAA battery, these headphones detect the sound waves in your environment. Then a built-in amplifier generates sounds of the exact opposite frequency. The two sounds cancel each other out, like matter meeting anti-matter in a "Star Trek" rerun. Only instead of a huge explosion, the result is an eerie hush, as if sounds were being vacuumed out of your ears. You can replace the unwelcome din with your favorite tunes. The headphones plug into all kinds of music players, from a Walkman to an airplane seat. These pricey headphones are just the thing for a long road trip, like bringing along a package of peace and quiet.
If you prefer the peace that comes from saving money, consider a set of Koss QZ Pro headphones. They work on the same principles as the Bose system, but cost a mere $60. Slap on these headphones and throw the switch. Quiet descends once more, but you can hear the sound of standards being lowered. Actually, it's the hum and hiss of the real world. Sounds that the Bose phones erase are merely attenuated this time. Besides, the Koss phones are heavy, bulky things that would likely wear out their welcome on a coast-to-coast air jaunt. Still, they do muffle the incessant buzz of modern life, and at a modest price.
Computer monitors
For eye-catching visuals at a breathtaking price, you can always count on Apple Computer. The company's line of flat-panel monitors are the best computer screens on earth, and the bigger they are, the better they get. The new 30-inch Cinema HD display works with Windows-based PCs as well as Mac computers. It's so mercilessly sharp, it'll show up every flaw in your digital snapshots. But for professional photographers, artists, film editors, or just computer gamers, the monitor's rich, precise images and its sheer size will make you resent having to use anything less. Which means there'll be a lot of resentful people out there, because the Cinema HD monitor costs far more than most computers -- $3,300.
Look on the bright side: Old-fashioned cathode-ray tube monitors are now amazingly cheap. Consider a good 19-incher from companies like ViewSonic or Samsung. Not long ago, a monitor this size would have run you $500 or more. You can easily find them for $200 these days. Sure, they're bulky and decidedly uncool. But for some purposes, like gaming, CRTs are still better than many flat-panel displays. That's because cheaper flat screens have slow response times, so they don't do a good job of displaying the rapid motions of, say, an online gun battle. So if your kid looks sour because his computer doesn't have a flat-panel monitor, just tell him CRTs are better for playing Counter-Strike. He'll forgive you.
Music players
Maybe the Apple iPod doesn't really count as a luxury item anymore. Sure, iPods sell for no less than $249. That's a lot of money just to carry tunes in your pocket. But millions of people worldwide have happily paid up. They can't all be rich. For those who are, Apple has just introduced the iPod Photo, a $599 model with a bright color screen. It will not only hold your songs, it will also display thousands of photographs -- up to 25,000 of them. There's even a cable to let you plug the iPod into a TV set or projector and share your 500 pictures of the Grand Canyon with your enraptured friends.
The Creative Nomad MuVo sells for $50 and is about the size of a cigarette lighter. Forget about storing your photographs, or your entire CD collection; this music player packs a mere 128 megabytes of storage, only enough for about three CDs worth of listening. On the other hand, because it uses flash memory instead of an expensive and power-hungry mini-hard drive, the MuVo will run for hours on one AAA battery. And it doubles as a thumb drive. Just plug into a computer's USB port as an easy way to copy a few files. No, it's not nearly as hip as an iPod Photo, but we really didn't want to see your baby pictures anyway.
Cellphones
When Cingular Wireless LLC and AT&T Wireless Services Inc. hitched up earlier this month in a $41 billion marriage, Motorola Inc., the big cellphone maker, showed up with a wedding gift: first crack at selling Motorola's sexy new Razr V3 phone. For an eye-popping $500 list price -- and that binds you to a two-year service contract -- the ultra-slim nickel-plated flip phone features a digital zoom camera and the ability to play back MPEG 4 videos. It also has a so-called quad-band antenna, which means it can work on four different kinds of wireless calling networks, including the GSM (Global System for Mobile) service that dominates in Europe.
On the other hand, for what you'd pay for one Razr phone and a year's worth of 1,000-minutes-per-month service, you could buy 20 of these phones: the reconditioned Nokia 1221 from TracFone. With "reconditioned," think "certified pre-owned" by someone else, with the ear wax dug out and the Big Mac residue buffed off the keypad. Not only that, the $49.99 purchase price includes 200 minutes that are good for 60 days; for $95 more you get 150 minutes that don't expire for a full year. (Peter J. Howe)
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 