Xmas Shopping List

So Black Friday is about 8 days away and I still haven't started my shopping. But I've already started brainstorming gift ideas and here's a rundown of what's on my shopping list. Not sure how many of these I'll buy on Black Friday (if any), but here's what I'll be keeping my radar on. I'm sure it'll change depending on what I see online.


1)Samsung SMX-F34 Flash Memory Camcorder
2)Canon S90
3)Xbox 360 Arcade Console
4)Acer Aspire One 10" Netbook (only if it hits the rumored $150)
5)HTC Eris (not sure if this is a good kid-friendly phone)
6)Samsung Color Laser Printer (no model in particular, just need a printer for home)
7)Flip or Kodak HD Camcorder
8)Samsung 52" LED 120Hz LCD HDTV w/ Internet@TV (don't plan on buying one, but I'll be eyeing this like a hawk)
9)Apple 27" iMac (curious if Apple will do their 5% off deal again and yes, I'm being a total guy and shopping for myself)
10)Xbox Live Gold Membership (need to renew my Xbox Live membership)

Cheap Wine Sites: Part II

So back in October I mentioned two discount wine sites I wanted to check out. And while I've checked the sites every day since, I haven't bought anything. Why? Well, lots of reasons. Partially because the deals I've liked have sold out in minutes, but also because a lot of the deals have been meh. Here's my initial impression on each site:

Cinderella Wine: When it first launched, I felt like every wine on this site would sell out 10 minutes after making its debut. (Wines were announced at midnight, but now they're announced at 9pm ET.) Lately, the wines haven't been selling out, but the deals have been aimed more at the wine collector as opposed to the wine newbie who just wants to try stuff out. Nothing wrong with that, but I personally don't like paying over $30 for wine (especially if I've never tried it) and it feels like most wines here are priced $30 and up. The few that have been under $30, don't really grab my attention. I like that the site lets customers comment and that it provides ratings for each wine, but sometimes the ratings can blind you and what Wine Enthusiast gives a 92, might be a 62 when you try it. So I've been hesitant.

Wines Till Sold Out: This site has only had one deal I've liked and that deal sold out rapidly. The other wines it's listed have been obscure to me. I don't claim to know every wine out there, but I like South American, Portuguese, and Spanish wines and there haven't been many listed in the past month. The site lacks diversity in my opinion.

One thing I dislike about both sites, you must buy a minimum of 3 bottles (sometimes 4) to get free shipping. I have no problem buying 2, but 3? This makes me feel like I'm being sold wine they're overstocked with. (Which is probably the case, but when that's actually noticeable, that's not good.)

I'll continue eyeing both sites and hopefully will jump on something this week – whether or not it's something I know or have never tried before.

$150 netbook

So in this week's podcast we talked about the Black Friday ads that have leaked over the past few weeks. For the most part, I feel pretty meh on what I've seen. I think the one deal (which is rumored) that I'm most psyched about is the $150 Acer netbook from OfficeMax. I've been waiting for the right netbook to come along and if this deal happens, I'm sold. Even if our laptop BF prediction of $249 hits, I'd still take the netbook for $150.

Another sale I'm waiting on is Apple's Black Friday Sale, which if past sales are any indication, will be 10% off all iPods and 5% off all Macs. That 27" iMac is tempting me.

Other than that, I've felt meh about most of the TV ads I've seen. I'm not planning on buying a new TV, but if I see a 120Hz Samsung LCD with Internet@TV, I might workout the old credit card.

XP vs Windows 7

Looks like bad news for Windows 7. Both Laptop mag and the folks at Liliputing are reporting that running Windows 7 on select netbooks kills battery life by about an hour when compared to Windows XP. That's pretty shocking considering that MS said Windows 7 would improve battery life. The positive side is that it's something that can probably be fixed with driver updates. Plus, this was only tested on certain netbooks — the Toshiba mini NB205, ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, and HP Mini 311. Still, you may want to stick with XP till the problem is resolved.

Objectified: Ive on MacBook Air

I was so close to Netflixing this documentary (Objectified) over the weekend, but ended up watching Oldboy instead. (Stupid me.) Anyways, stumbled upon this clip here where Apple's lead designer, Jonathan Ive, talks about the unibody design of the MacBook Air. Pretty interesting stuff.

A weekend with Roku

So I streamed a few movies on the Roku XR over the weekend. I watched Audition and Oldboy (my mini reviews of the movies below). I'm pleased to say that the XR works just as well as the previous Roku box (now called the Roku HD Player). Movies buffered up in under a minute on my 802.11n network, there was no hiccuping or dropped scenes, and picture quality was solid.

Now the bad news. The Roku XR costs $29 more than the Roku HD, and yet they both perform the same. Seriously. Ok, so you get 802.11n and a USB port on the XR. But otherwise, it's all the same. For what it's worth, I tried plugging in a USB drive to see if the XR would read my media files, but I got nada. This makes me wonder, what exactly is Roku planning here? What's the point of the XR?

We already know Revision3 is coming to Roku. Leo Laporte's TWiT network is also supposedly coming. But, what else?

The folks at Roku told me they'd have some "new announcements" in the next coming weeks. (They told me this two weeks ago.) But all has been quiet on the Roku front. So for now I'd hold off on buying a Roku XR. There's no need for it. But let's see what Roku has up their sleeves. Something tells me I might be changing my mind very soon. At least I hope.

As for the movies — Audition: Creepy as hell. Loved the first half of the movie. The scenes of Asami sitting by the phone with the large, mysterious bag on the floor freaked the crap outta me and are still burned in my mind (more so than any other scene). I was disappointed in the ending though. It kinda fell apart for me. Oldboy: Why does this movie have such high ratings?? A waste of 2 hours. The plot is all over the place, it tries too hard to be "artsy/shocking," and the soundtrack annoyed me.

Roku Netflix Player now with 802.11n

At the start of the year I did a feature on home-movie streamers reviewing everything from the Roku Netflix Player to the Vudu box. Since then, there have been tons of firmware updates to the players I reviewed and even a few new players.

I've been working on a follow up to that piece, and this afternoon I got the new Roku XR Player from the folks at Roku. The main difference between the XR Player and the previous player (now called the HD Player) is that the XR comes with 802.11n, whereas the previous player had 802.11g.

I never had any streaming issues with the older player, so I'm curious if the XR is worth the $29 upgrade. (They look exactly the same, minus the "XR" label.) I have some HD and non-HD movies queued up for the weekend so I'll give the XR a little test and have some feedback next week.