The stock market crashed yet again, global economies are tumbling over, thousands of jobs are on the line, but who cares, it's Diwali; in other words, it's time to shop. So for the tech junkies like us, we give you a list of circuitry that you would want to gift your dear ones on the dearest one (yourself) this festive season.
PMPs
Creative Zen 4GB
The Creative Zen sports catchy looks and comes in elegant black color. Popularly known as the "Credit Card" player as its footprint matches that of a credit card, it is pretty slim. The front has a large 2.5-inch TFT LCD sporting a 320x240 resolution at 16.5 million colors. Its ergonomics are good with a 5-way navigation key and four other function keys.
Weighing just 65 gm, you would probably not shy away from wearing this one while you jog. It has a standard 3.5 mm jack to accommodate any standard earphone and it connects to the PC by the USB port. It has a capacity of 4 GB, which can be augmented by means of an SD slot to up to 8 GB more. It has a nice-looking UI, which is also easy to use.
The audio formats supported are MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and Audible 2, 3, 4. As far as the videos are concerned, it boasts of being able to play MJPEG, WMV9, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4/5 and XviD (of course after converting the videos using the provided converter into the format required by the player).
The performance is good, but could be better if you pair it with a set of Creative EP-630 (the other gift article we have mentioned). This very capable PMP costs Rs. 5,900, though we highly recommend that you replace the earphones.
Apple iPod Touch 8 GB
Now here is a PMP that is a proven style statement worldwide touted as "Invention of the year" in 2007 by the Times Magazine. The ruggedly built iPod Touch 8 GB looks like a smooth tile and sports a large 3.5-inch touch-screen at the front and has just two physical buttons. The 480x320 pixel screen looks stunning with the modified Mac OS X-based user interface is smooth like we have never seen before.
Features such as the multi-touch are noteworthy. Instead of a micro drive, there is 8 GB of flash memory. While that does allow it to take bumps, it is not really light and weighs around 120 gm, which is a bit heavy when it comes to PMPs. It has a standard 3.5 mm earphone jack and connects to the PC via USB. It also supports Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) and the inbuilt Safari browser lets you surf the internet.
Music format support includes MP3, AAC, Protected AAC, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV. Video playback is taken care of with the MPEG-4 (H.264) format. Photos of the JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD, and PNG formats are supported. Cover flow of music albums is supported. Now available at a greatly reduced price of just Rs.13,500, the 8 GB iPod Touch is a steal of a gift.
Creative Zen Vision W 60 GB
For all you movie buffs out there, the Creative Zen Vision W 60 GB is a perfect companion and we shall tell you why. This is an absolute stunner as far as the looks are concerned and the large 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen with a 480x272 resolution, capable of displaying 262 K colors is the highlight of the Zen Vision W.
The player supports a wide selection of video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4-SP, MJPEG, and XviD for playback of video clips and movies downloaded from the Internet. It supports digitized home movies transferred from the PC. It comes with a convenient composite AV-out connection that enables stunning full color, 720 x 480 image output on any size NTSC TV screen, or 720 x 576 image output on any size PAL TV screen. In addition to the internal 60 GB memory, it also supports a variety of memory card formats.
This player can hold up to 15,000 songs, up to 240 hours of video, or tens of thousands of photos. The UI is brilliant and the buttons are very easy to use and it won't take long before you get comfortable with them. The performance is exceptionally good, and we mean the video as well as audio, with the bundled earphones perfectly complementing the player. The Creative Zen Vision W 60 GB is very gift-worthy although it costs an arm and a leg for Rs.19,900, but then there is a proverb about gifts: "the more expensive, the better".
