PS3 or XBOX 360, What Should A Guy Chose?

Whats up Guys?

Several friends and peeps that I know have been pondering the idea of getting back into video games the past few weeks. Most of the questions are geared towards one purchasing a PS3 or an Xbox 360. So I decided to do some useful research on this topic. I myself have experienced both systems and can appreciate each one for certain things.
The PS3 and the Xbox 360 have much to offer but on different levels. So far, the Xbox 360 has a much larger video game library, higher rated games, more add-on peripherals (HD-DVD) and definitely a huge online community and service. The Sony PS3 is unique that it already incorporates a Blu-Ray drive (High Definition Movie format) and does not require an add-on accessory such as the Xbox 360. Both systems integrate to ones home theater and home network seamlessly, but the Xbox 360 can also be used to transfer music, photos and video from any Microsoft XP or Vista PC in the household without much configuration. Both systems are unique but should be considered as a gaming system primarily, unless you are looking for a cheaper well preforming Blu-Ray Disc player.
Just because this topic can get very heated between fanboys supporting each platform, I am including a few other very detailed and awesome reviews comparing each system. Please read these, they will help you make a decision.

• Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360: A developers perspective
• Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360 - One Year Later
• Cnet Game Consoles Review List
  

In conclusion of this article, I do happen to have a favorite. I totally favor the Xbox 360 for game play purposes, but I also favor the PS3 for the sleek looks and its ability to play Blu-Ray format movies. So I leave it up to you to decide on what you really want a game system for. Do you want it for a solid all-around gaming experience? Then go with the Xbox 360. Or do you want one for an all-in-one system that plays Blu-Ray media right out of the box? If you have the money, just get both! :)

(Credit Links to: cnet.com and www.hardcoreware.net)

To Ipod Or Not To Ipod?

Hello All,

Its been a few days since my last post. Sorry about that. I've been pummeled with tons of work and holiday chores the past few days. I finally have a chance to make a few more suggestions for busy guys out there just like me. Many people have been coming to me and asking what kind of Ipod they should get themselves or some one they need to get a present for? Most of the time, I will reply with another question, such as, An MP3 player or an Apple Ipod? By this point I've totally confused that person. In this post, I will try my hardest to explain the difference and what I would recommend for a purchase.
I currently own 4 different Apple Ipods and 3 MP3 players from various manufacturers. After my experience, I understand why the word "Ipod" is synonymous with most portable electronic music players, Apple has been able to place over 100 million Ipods in the hands of users all over the world. They have stamped and marketed their product to become the idea and vision to the modern "Walkman".
As stated earlier, Ipods are a product of Apple Computers. They are manufactured in multiple colors, sizes, capacities and features. Apple has created a product that is simple and functional for the average user. They have also created a software program that integrates with Apple computers and Windows OS compatible computers for a one-stop-shop user friendly experience. The software allows for the average guy to either download music from the web or any cd collection to their Ipod. The Ipod can be purchased from $79 to $349 and ranging from 1GB to 160GB in storage. They are also manufactured on a flash drive storage based system (non moving parts, smaller capacity up to 16GB) or HDD system (up to 160GB). Most models can now play video, pictures and music. The music can be stored in an Apple proprietary format known as AAC, MP3 and other. Capacity of music is dependent on music format, encoding bitrate and song duration. Apple Ipods have a plethora of 3rd party accessories. I totally recomend the Apple Ipod platform players to any first time users and any one in the market for an mp3 player.
There are also other MP3 players out on the market besides Ipods. Manufactures such as Sony, Creative Labs, Microsoft, San Disk, and others make mp3 players also. they come in a variety of colors, shapes, sizes, capacity and features. For the most part, they tend to be compatible with both Apple OS and Microsoft OS. Though, not as familiar as Ipod, these brands tend to make mp3 players that are just as good or better than Apples Ipod and are sometimes reffered to as "Ipod Killers". I may recommend to the average guy, to take a look at the other MP3 players on the market besides Apples, there might be something you like better or features that are geared more towards your needs. As a warning, only Apple Ipods have the huge 3rd party accessory support.

Please check out these MP3 Player reviews and hit lists:

• Best 5 MP3 Players by CNET.com

• Budget MP3 Players by CNET.com

• Detailed MP3 Player Buyers Guide by CNET.com

At the end of the day, depending on who is asking me what they should or shouldn't buy, I will usually answer with the safest answer, GET AN IPOD. Why? Because they are easy to use, they are proven to last and be robust and the work for just about anyone who has little or much experience with computers and gadgets.

(Picture: Apple Ipod Shuffle)

How to Ebay, Get What You Want At The Price You Want!

Hello Guys,

Today I will touch up on a critical online tool that most guys use known as EBay. This can either be a life and money saver or a nightmare to the wallet and grief from the domestic partners. I will advise you guys of a few simple rules in order to get the best and most out of EBay. The first rule about EBay, is that its ok to talk about EBay! LOL, for real though, the best part about EBay is bragging about what you got and at what a ridiculous price you acquired at. Just recently I acquired a brand new sealed Toshiba HD A2 HD-DVD player for less than $45. Yeah! $45 after shipping. The retail value of this bad boy is of $199. It took time; patience and many desperate moments hopping that snipers would not ruin my EBay mojo. Which leads me to my first rule, PATIENCE. Patience is required to acquire what you want at the price you want. Even though I got the HD-DVD player at a great price, it took almost an entire week of bidding and placing multiple Toshiba A-2’s on my watch and bid lists, I will touch on this in just a moment. The second and third rules are research the cost and determine a price for which you want to purchase the selected item. You can skim through the completed listings of your item in question just to see what an average item is selling for. Research the cost of the item and what it would cost to acquire at another online store such as Walmart.com and other online and local retailers. Then you can set either a competitive bid or low ball until you get lucky. But be strict with yourself and what your expectations are and how much you want to spend on the item in question. Set a price at which you are willing to pay and do not go over it. Control your emotions and purchase logically and not emotionally. Emotional purchases can lead to mistakes which can lead to paying way too much for an item or bidding on something that is different than what you are looking for. There has been times which I’ve seen items bid much higher than what the local retailers can sale the same item for. Control your price and do not EXCEED IT! It is easy to make a mistake when battling some other guy for the same item. Most of the time there will be a similar listing, bidding at a lower price. This leads me to my fourth rule, Managing your watch and bidding lists. At one time, I think I had to manage almost 40different auctions containing the same product. It is important to be able to manage each list appropriately and make sure that you are not going to win multiples of the same items by accident. You can even make notes on your watched items, such as cost and reminders on what your spending limit is. Control your bid and watch list with a close eye. Hawk over the soonest closing bids and manage them with detail.The fifth and final rule, Brag about your victorious bid and how little you paid for it. That’s what makes EBay so much fun.

The Rules List:
1 - Be Patient
2 - Research Cost
3 - Set a price and stick to it
4 - Manage your bids and watch list
5 - Brag about your victorious bid win!

(Picture from Ebay.com)

HD Format War Results Per Googlefight.com

As some of you might now, there is a current battle for a final and sole High Defenition DVD format. You have the Blu-ray camp contending against the HD-DVD camp. Both formats offer similar technology and features. Unfortunately, both are backed by separate movie studios, manufacturers and related stakeholders, making it hard for a guy to make a decision at the time of purchase. To this date, both formats have been battling for supremacy over the other with in the HD media market. The only fun way to figure out who is on top is by using Googlefight.com. These are the latest results per googlefight.com:


(Googlefight.com results as of 11-25-2007)

So far, one can see that more people are placing HD-DVD inquiries within Googles search engine. Personally though, I root for HD-DVD, mainly due to the fact that the technology is cheaper to acquire for the same exact qualities, except for storage capacity, that Blu-ray has.
Hope this helps!

Television Purcahse Guides for Guys!

Hello Once Again,
For those in the market for a brand spankin'new HDTV, this is a simple yet complete guide to help assist the average guy in making a rational yet emotional decision when purchasing a new TV.
In this post I have several links that will get you to the best review and guides. These guides prove themselves to be thorough and to the point.
* CNET
* HDTV Info Port
* ABC NEWS Buyers Guide

I hope that you guys find these links to be helpful.

The Guys Guide to Laptops

Welcome Back!
For the most part, shelling out some funds for a laptop can be a pretty exciting thing. Especially when you are doing it as a necessity rather than for fun. Most of the time its for both reasons which even more so justifies the purchase with out having to be yelled at by the wifey, girlfriend or even your wallet. Things don't have to be complicated when purchasing a laptop to fit the needs and wants of any guy.
When buying a laptop, one should be asking himself what he'll be doing with the laptop. Will he be just using it for word processing, email and surfing the web? Will he be using it for minor digital photo editing, beginner video editing and minor power use such as backing up data? Or will he be willing to shell out top dollar for a high end top of the line gaming and intense processing rig? These are the questions that one should ask himself before making an unsound decision and letting the unqualified goons at your local big chain electronics retail store make these decisions for you.
Many times I have desperate mothers asking me what they should do when their kids are asking for a laptop for school or whatever other activities they need or want one for. Usually I respond with a powerful question, what will your kid be doing with such a devise? Many times mom and dads have no clue. And more that often their kids have sold them on the idea that they are in dire need of an overly priced laptop exceeding $1,500 just to surf the web. This is not necessary!
For beginners and chronic web surfers, I recommend that most people start with a simple non expensive laptop. These laptops usually range between the $400-$700 with or without rebates. One can usually find a good deal on any Sunday Ads paper with such deals. These deals come in many different brands: HP, Everex, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Acer and more. These simple yet inexpensive laptops offer the basics such as Wifi, 60Gb+ HDDs, 14-17" Screens, DVD and CD writers (burners), beginner Intel or AMD processors (Intel Celeron's or Core Solo's, AMD Sempron's or Athlon 64's), 512MB Memory and enough software to keep anyone entertained for a while. These laptops often offer the basic software such as Internet Explorer (web-surfing), Outlook Express (email), bundled digital photography software, and trial versions of Microsoft Office (word processing). For those who do not want to shell out any additional monies, there is a really great and free office compatible suite known as OpenOffice. This price range is ideal for high school/college students and home users for email and researching stuff on the web. Matter of fact, this blog has been created on an inexpensive Compaq Presario laptop, which cost me $380 after a $50 rebate, which I bought 2 years ago.
For those in the market looking for something yet a little more powerful and expect to be spending between $800 to $1200, the choices are endless. This means that the buyer will be looking to use their laptop for more intense work such as digital photo and video editing with softwares such as Adobe Photoshop and Premier which require intense processing, beginner database programs, intense spreadsheet work flow demanding music conversions and archiving and minor gaming (expect to run games in the simplest game configurations).
Laptops in this price range offer more powerful hardware such as seperate video cards, higher performing processors (Intel Core Duo's and Core 2 Duo's, AMD X2 Turions and Athlons), larger hard drives (80GB+), Minimum memory specs of 1GB, Higher resolution Screens, DVD writer, Wifi, Built-in Webcams and more. Buyers can expect laptops from brands such as those mentioned above including Sony, Toshiba, Apple, Asus and more.
For those planning to be business power users or intense gamers and multimedia authors should expect to pay a premium price for premium technology, in the range of $1300 to $2500+. These users classify themselves and power needy and require the most out of their hardware. Such users rely on their laptops at home, work/school, on the road and anywhere else in between. Size and weight will dependent on the type of laptop needed. If the laptop will be used in a more business type setting, these laptops are usually thinner and lighter than the gamer type laptop. Their screen sizes usually stay with in the 14-15" size, while gamer and authoring laptops exceed the 15" categories.
For both the business and authoring user, these laptops will pack the best hardware might include minimum specifications of: 2GB or Memory, largest and fastest hard drives, Multimedia connectors (S-Video, HDMI, FireWire, S/PDIF), Wired or Wifi Connectivity, DVD writers, Advanced graphics card with 256MB or 512MB of its own memory or dual SLI graphics, Intel 2 Core Duo Extreme Processors, backup batteries and possibly even HD-DVD or Blu-Ray Drives. The system Operating Software (OS) will usually tend to be either Windows Vista Premium or Apple OS X. One can expect to purchase laptops in this arena with brands such as Sony, Fujitsu, HP, Dell, Alienware, Apple Macbook Pro and Lenovo.
I hope that this post will help some of the guys visiting this site. I've tried to take the grunt work out of looking and researching for a laptop. If you require more detail or plan on doing extensive research, I suggest heading off to CNET for further information. Just make sure that when you go out shopping, you know what you need and want, this way, the hounds at the retail shops don't make unnecessary decisions for you!
Thanks

Introduction

Hello All,

For those who do not know, my name is Juan Gentry. I'm 28 years old and have enjoyed technology ever since I can remember. Anything with buttons, bells and whistles are of my interest. My technology joy happens to be home theater audio and video goods. Although I'm not the owner of any glamorous uberly expensive high-end electronics, I do keep up to date with the latest and greatest through many sources and I have several years of experience and knowledge in this field. I do though own some gadget goodies of my own.
The intent of my blog is to gather as much knowledge and data about the latest in the consumer technology industry and report this information back in the simplest and quickest way, taking the majority of the work from the average reader. This will allow the average guy to just stop by this blog, see whats happening in the tech-world with out having to dig for it, and go on with the rest of the day!
By the way, my experience ranges from several years with TiVo as a Senior Tech and Quality analyst, consulting and assisting consumers with home theater and computer purchases, and dozens of home theater installations in the local Albuquerque area. My current list of gear includes: Sony LCD RPTV KDF 46E2000, Toshiba HD A2 HD-DVD player, Onkyo SR875 THX Certified Receiver, HD and Dual Tunner TiVo, Nintendo Wii, XBOX 360, 2000+ DVD collection, Pentax IST*DL DSLR camera, and much more stuff.