Top 5 Gadgets of 2006

Nintendo DS Lite
Even as heavy metal gaming consoles like the Xbox and the PS3 begin to smother our sense and sensibilities, the sleek and diminutive Nintendo's DS Lite stands out and stands tall. With its handheld portability, WiFi-enabled gameplay, touch screen interface, a wide array of games, Game Boy Advance backward compatibility, dual screens, and in-built microphone, the NDS is surely the coolest gaming doodad ever to ensconce in your pocket. And what with an Opera web browser in the offing, you will be whistling Dixie in cyber space soon as well with this one.

Logitech Wireless DJ Music System
This amazing little thingie allows you to stream (and control) the digital music squatting in your PC to your stereo, sitting virtually anywhere your house. MP3s, WMAs, iTunes, Internet radio waves, podcasts jabber-whatever. Its "longrange remote" abilities let you browse through your PC's entire music medley on its backlit LCD screen -- even see what is playing, or lined up for the ear drums. And no, it does not require a network snaking across your home to twiddle with the play, shuffle, volume or mute buttons on this one.

Creative's Zen Vision: M
With all ears and eyeballs trained solely on the iPod, it is but natural for most of us to play possum to the Zen Vision: M. But hark this, here is a very able MP3/video playing competitor to the Apple's zing thing. Cos the 2.5 inch screens plays almost any type of video to throw at it, it makes great sound, shows excellent video, squeezes out more life than the iPod from its juice pack, plus features an FM tuner. PDA functions, voice recording, big screen entertainment with a video out connection-yeah, it does all that too.

Nokia N95
It is very tough not to be intimidated by Nokia's current flagship. A unique two-way slide form factor, 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss optic, auto-focus cam, DVD-like quality video, WLAN, 3D stereo sound, 4GB hard drive of internal storage, TV out, 60 MB of RAM, a microSD card slot for expansion. The acronyn alphabet soup support includes: HSDPA, 3.5G, 3.6Mbps download speeds, UMTS, GPRS, DGE, SIP, GPS... Obviously there is Bluetooth, infrared, USB connectivity. Total KO. No adjectives required.

Sony PlayStation 3
The ultimate next-gen gadget for hi-def gaming. It plays Blu-ray movies alongwith standard DVDs, does WiFi, figures a 60GB hard drive, has a PSP-like user-friendly interface, no external power supply, HDTV support, built-in memory card readers, is backward-compatible with PS2 and PS1 games, online play is free, Bluetooth support for wireless controllers and accessories is acomin'. At almost Rs 50,000 you may need to break quite few piggy banks to own this. But look at it as just collateral damage.

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