Friends! Enemies! Frienemies! Unless you have been living under a rock, or a similarly sized object of great girth and weight, you may have noticed that THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS NIGH. Specifically, Christmas, the day upon which we worship presents in mangers, wrapped in swaddling clothes. I believe this is how the story is told, but correct me if I am wrong.

Today’s episode is a lot like our Back-to-school Consumer Spectacular from all those weeks ago. It means that we at the Not So Horrible podcast embrace this culture of rampant spending, and explore the holiday season’s hottest gadgets — all for you, dear listener. While we obviously can’t cover everything, we’ve picked a few of our favourite gadgets, and a few of our favourite products, and aim to clear up the FUD surrounding them all. Things in this week’s super special, not-at-all blasphemous holiday special include…

• The Amazon Kindle, baby. The undoubted king of eBook readers these days has finally made its way to our igloos, and we give you the rundown on what to expect from this slick e-reading device.
• The Sony Reader. To balance things out, we discuss the most formidable challenger to King Kindle this holiday season, and whether the device is worth a few Benjamins.
• Televisions, people. We talk LCDs, Plasmas, and everything in between, giving you the lowdown on what contrast ratio means, and whether 240 really hertz.
• Microphones. You want to record your own podcast? We’ve got you covered, with some basic tips. Also, we give you a few pointers on what we’re using at home each week.
• Speakers. I’m in the market for a new set of speakers. The ‘cast looks at Logitech’s current offerings and what I think of each.
• And finally, What We Did This Week returns once again, with Anand rubbing his grubby paws all over Rim’s new Blackberry Storm 2, while I tap my way through the Legend of Zelda, Spirit Tracks.

It’s a heck of a podcast, and we sure hope you enjoy it as much as we did. We can’t promise any advice of biblical proportions, but we do offer just enough tips to make your trip into the electronics section that much easier. Without all that north star business, too.

Listen here, or at the Not So Much News!

Length: 39:34
Close: Kalimba – Mr. Scruff
Download: 38.0 MB
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Today we’re going to do things a little differently; add some paint, maybe some candles, and a nice dress to top it all off. Anand’s wearing the dress, by the way.

But seriously, today marks a small shift in the way we do things on the Not-So Horrible Podcast, beginning with our very first consumer report episode. It all sounds very business-like, and as much as we love wearing suits during our casual time, it’s a fun episode – we promise.

This is the time of year when both manufacturers and retailers bring out the latest and greatest in their technological arsenals. Everything from notebooks to cameras, first introduced at the expos and conventions of this past spring, finally begin trickling out to consumers en masse. With it comes the realization that the iPod you bought but a few weeks previous is now obsolete. But if you’re anything like us, this is the time of year when us geeks scoff in the face of obsolescence, and both drool and fawn over the press leaks and releases that flood the tech blogs.

If you’re looking to buy new tech in the coming months, we’ve got your back. We’ve sifted through some of the latest releases from manufacturers across the board to give you an idea how to buy smart for the back to school and the months beyond. Some of the things we touch upon this episode include…

Netbooks, Laptops and Desktops

• Dell’s Mini 10v and the HP Mini 10
• The Acer Aspire 10″ and 8.9″
• Toshiba has some new budget laptops, as well as multimedia-centric machines as well
• Dell is always a great bet for highly customizable desktops and laptops
• For the accident prone amongst you, Lenovo, as always, offers a great line of indestructible laptops

Phones

• Two new cheap and eco-friendly phones, including the Samsung Reclaim and Fido’s Motorola Renew
• Other cheap phones include the LG Masterpiece on Telus, and similar models on Rogers
• For smartphone users, Bell is getting the Palm Pre on August 28th

Storage, Mp3 Players, Cameras

• Anand swears by his rugged LaCie external hard drive
• I’m a fan of the 2.5″ variety, including Western Digital’s Passport
• Enclosures are also a great way to take hard drives you already own, and make them portable
• Creative has their own iPod Touch equivalent that should be launching soon
• Sandisk has some surprisingly cheap and capacious MP3 players on the market
• Archos has some very nice media/internet players, while Apple continues to sell it’s iPod classic
• Nikon has a great new entry level DSLR, the Nikon D3000
• Pentax, and other manufacturers often have cheap Point-and-shoot cameras nowadays, with reasonable quality, and added features like this model’s water-proofing

And there you have it! We should probably note that this episode weighs in at a whopping 50 minutes of witty banter and discussion, so you may want to save this one for a lazy evening on the couch. Assuming that our listeners have lazy evenings. Or couches. Nevertheless, leave us comments, questions, and conspiracy theories below!

Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled as well for iTunes/proper RSS integration as well! Both are in the works, and should be good to go an episode or two from now.

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