Republica surfed through gadgets stores around town and has a list of some of the most inquired gadgets in demand this season.[break]
THE GAMING ZONE
Kinect for Xbox 360
Facial and voice recognition is what defines ‘Kinect’. It has a built-in recognition ID that remembers a person through a collection of physical data stored on your profile.
As a result every time you want to play your game, you can without logging on. Regarding voice recognition, Kinect uses four strategically placed microphones within the sensor that recognizes and separates your voice from other noise giving you the power to get a better hold over your game.
“Kinect is extremely popular and is a must-have for all gaming fans,” says Sita Pradhan, a staff at The Gadget Store, Durbar Marg.
Ps3
With a chic design and performance to match, the PS3 is another extremely popular must-have gadget among the gamers. The dream-like gadget has low operation noise and all the games are depicted in high-definition.
“It has a built-in Wi-fi and flash media reader,” says Pradhan. The other aspects of PS3 making it special is its user-friendly interface and that it plays high definition Blu-ray movies in addition to up scaling standard DVDs.
Being technically specific, it has a 60-GB hard drive, HDMI output with 1080-p support, no external power supply, and it plays PS2 and PS1 games as well.
iPhone 4
The iPhone 4 comes with a pair of glossy panels made of aluminosilicate glass, which is 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic leaving you no room to worry about scratches.
Within the ultra-durable glass is the A4 chip which makes multitasking, editing videos, and placing FaceTime calls to task.
This phone registers multiple touches at once to support advanced gestures such as pinch to zoom, two-finger tap, and more while the camera is a 5-megapixel with HD video capacity. “The built-in LED flash is the highlight of the phone for it works as a flash and as a light while shooting a video,” informs Pradhan.
Nokia X302
The Nokia X3 is both touch and type, the first in its category to offer both touch and keypad-based input.
The back of the phone is contoured for comfort in your palm while the top and the bottom front are curved so that the body doesn’t look too imposing while sharp lines are the order of the day here. “These phones especially because they are Wi-Fi enabled are quite popular among the teens,” says Balaram Sharma, staff at the iLife store, City Centre Kamalpokhari.
Nokia X501
This is a treat for the ladies. The Nokia X501 is a 3G mobile phone with a screen of just 2.36 inch.
However the dimensions are 4.3 x 66.4 x 16.9 mm, 76 cc making it wider than other normal phones.
It has a QWERTY keypad making it easier for the ladies to keep text as much as they want. “The phone is extremely popular among the young girls,” says Sikha Agrawal, Staff at the Paramount Electronics, Sherpa Mall, Durbar Marg.
Nokia C6
Another of Nokia’s delights! This phone comes with an attractive design, a touch screen enforced with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard with all the connectivity, including voice guided GPS navigation.
The screen is a 3.2 inch resistive touch screen, on either sides of the earpiece. “Although it is a bit highly priced, it is equally popular among the youth,” claimed Agrawal.
LAPTOPS
Dell 4030
Equipped with Intel’s latest processor Pentium P6000 running @ a speed of 1.86 GHz with higher L2 Cache, the Dell 4030 is more than just good looks.
It comes with a textured black design. The laptop brings good specifications and although still reasonable, it comes with or without the ATI Radeon HD530V Graphics, expandable up to 4GB of Memory, 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, and 320 GB of Fair hard disk space.
“We call it a student laptop,” says Sharma. The low price and high performance of the gadget are its highlights. In recent times ilife has seen a storm of youngsters come in to ask for the model.
HP G42
A 14-inch laptop, the G42 comes with 3 USB ports, Ethernet port, and video outputs (HDMI and VGA).
There’s also a multi-format card reader and a couple of audio jacks and the optical drive is a DVD+/-RW model while the 7,200 rpm hard drive provides 320 and 500GB of storage. The laptop has CDOS operating system pre-installed along with a handful of Cyberlink multimedia programs.
It has dozens of games within while MS Office and McAfee Security are provided along with the purchase,” claimed Sharma, adding, “The laptop comes with a black body and has two optional covers including red and green,” says Sharma reasoning its popularity.
SHUTTER BUG
Panasonic FT-1O
The FT10 from Panasonic is a shockproof camera from drops up to 1.5 meters. Also it is waterproof up to 3 meters and freeze proof up to10 degrees Celsius.
Around the camera body, at the base and the side, are two lockable flaps that house the battery and the memory card, plus an AV out and power input.
Another must mention feature of the camera is that you can actually decrease the number of mega pixels you are shooting at.
This operates on a sliding scale with a maximum of 8.4x zoom becoming available at 14.1 mega pixels.
The camera has a 2.7 inch LCD screen and an added special High Angle setting for the screen helping you get a better view of the scene if you need to hold the camera up above eye level. Shooting High Definition movies is an easy job with Lumix FT10.
“Apart from the cool features, the bright and colorful body of the camera is the attraction for youngsters,” observes Agrawal.
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