The Gadget Wishlist (Christmas List 2/12)

I was in the mall recently and noticed that Christmas carols were indeed piping through the sound systems. Yes, it's not just me anymore, Christmas is coming!!!

No matter how old we all get, I think the excitement of Christmas eve (or morning, whenever it is you open presents) still lives on. While getting Christmas presents may not seem as important as it was when I was a child, seeing my name in the gift tags of presents stirs up that excitement.

Twenty years ago, my letters to Santa were filled with toys, bicycles, and so on and so forth. Even as a young child, however, I always had an affinity towards electronic gadgets. I remember how Nintendo was always a fixture on those Christmas lists. Now that I am older, I may not write letters to Santa anymore, but if I were to do so, this is what would be in it...


1. An Apple iMac. Being a Mac convert since my friend Sandy introduced her MacBook to me, my mac has become a constant companion. Since I got it almost two years ago, I have been repeatedly wowed by the uniqueness and greatness of the mac. Sure, there are some quirks that can be annoying (i.e. some websites not working with Safari, file transfers and conversions (such as in .ppt) failing, and the like, but overall, it's been great. Let's not even go to the virus discussion!
So, since I don't have a desktop (and even though arguably one might not necessarily need a desktop nowadays) I want an iMac. It's sleek design and system power is way beyond one's expectations. Not to mention, as my cousin Kat says of another Apple product being a status symbol, there's a prestige to having a Mac. Down side to it, not being able to have many of the programs standard Microsoft computers have, particularly because everything in Mac has to be original (ergo, no piracy hehe). I also don't like the fact that I can't play the yahoo games, such as Diner Dash, Chuzzle and the like. Plus, the downside of it all: Price tag, approximately Php 65,000.

2. Speaking of Apple computers, a MacBook Air is also at the tops of my wishlist. While my MacBook is still fabulous, it would be great to have this light-weight counterpart. I haven't heard much raves (nor rants for that matter), but I've seen a few of these on campus (yes, my students have them!). Shempre naglalaway ako sa inggit diba?!? (Of course, this makes me drool with envy). I may give in to getting myself an iMac, but I don't think imagine myself dropping Php 106,000.00 for this. And this, unlike my Havianas fall-out, is something I cannot give in to!!!

3. I will not doubt that the hottest gadget for Christmas this year in the Philippines will be the iPhone. Exclusively serviced by Globe as of now, I can foresee a significant number of new subscribers to this uber cool gadget. My cousin Kat has one, and I try (successfully at that) not to sit too close to her so I don't admire it too much :-) As she describes it, it's sleek, beautiful and with a super large touch screen that's perfect to keep you entertained any time of the day, especially since there are a lot of games and applications available for downloading. Not only are the games fun, it's kinda interactive too, especially since rather than just simply pushing buttons, you can tilt, shake and move the gadget to make the game work (that's the best way I could put it!!!) She also loves the Internet functions. Being a blogger, I think this is what I would love best about it too. However, this wifi capability also appears to be a liability at this time, as it constantly searches for a signal. If no wifi signal is detected, it automatically goes on 3G or other cellular data networks which end up being charged to the subscriber, even though you didn't actually surf the net then. Another liability to this is the lack of a message forwarding function, which can be a hassle, but I think there are applications for this. A friend of mine also commented though about its tendency to suddenly hang. Whatever the case is, I still love it! But Globe's present price tag (which is almost 40k) is a little too much to swallow. I'll take the iMac nalang! Plus the biggest drawback: it's too hard to text while driving, tense or, as Kat says: drunk!!! hehe. Then again, maybe that is a good thing. Whatchathink?!? :-)

4. Since the iPhone is too expensive, I can settle for an iTouch :-)

5. Here's my first none Apple gadget: a Sony Cybershot camera. I haven't really decided which model, but I like the one with a stylus. I don't know if it has anything to do with it, but my friend Summer's camera is a Cybershot and her Davao pictures were so beautiful! Maybe it's the smile shutter feature or what not, or maybe it was her artistic eye, but whatever it is, her pictures were great. Maybe it was a confluence of factors hehe! Even though I love my Olympus underwater camera, a Sony Cybershot is still a Sony Cybershot. Plus it comes in red :-) Downside is it's not waterproof, which is why I chose Olympus when I got a camera earlier this year.

6. Wii Fitness. This summer my brothers brought home a Wii from the States. I've enjoyed the Wii Sports a lot, especially the tennis game, but I think the Wii fitness would be a great way to lose weight...again. Haha. I remember when I first tried to get in shape, I used the Dance, Dance Revolution game of the Playstation, the one with a dance pad. My challenge then was to get the Butterfly song perfect!

7. A wireless phone for my room :-) A good, decent one for that matter. As basic as it is, I would love to have one even though I don't use the phone so much because the one I have right now is so frustratingly inaudible!

8. A digital reader. I saw this recently on the news and it seems to be a great gadget. It holds .pdf files and has a great memory. Although I don't see myself using this for reading journal articles hehe.

9. A flatscreen, digital LCD television. For all couch potatoes, this is self-explanatory :-)

10. A Sony HD digital video camera, those being featured in the Amazing Race Asia. So small, compact and powerful. I've never had a video cam before, and this would absolutely be a winner. To be fair, my digital cam can take videos as well.

11. I don't know if one of these gadgets actually exist as of now, but my dream gadget is a voice recorder that automatically transfers audio files to a computer, not only as .wav or .mp3 file, but transcribed into a .txt or .doc file!

12. A magic wand. Well, I can't think of anything else, but I bet there are so many more gadgets out there that I would love. So the magic wand will allow me to conjure these up!

What about you, what's on your gadget wish list?