Tag archive: buying guide

The month of December is a haze of coupons, flash deals, and wish lists. And somewhere in the flurry, you’re supposed to pick a meaningful gift for everyone near and dear to you. You could go the gift card route, but you run the risk of seeming rather impersonal. There's got to be a solution. Enter: the Internet.  If you’ve racked your brain and perused every buying guide only to come up empty, you’re in luck. Gift curation sites let you… Read More

If you have one or more Apple fanatics on your holiday shopping list, then this post is just for you. Not everyone is an Apple fan, but those who are tend to end up with more than one iDevice and an unbridled love for the Cupertino, CA company. If the fanboy on your list already has a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad, we have narrowed down our favorite accessories and gifts so that you don’t have to resort to buying an iTunes gift card (although… Read More

The Internet is helpful for a million different everyday tasks, but one of the most helpful (particularly for those who hate malls) is online shopping. No matter what you want or need, with just a few clicks and a credit card you can have almost anything arrive on your doorstep within a day or two. This can be particularly helpful around the holidays when actual stores get crazy, or any time of the year should you never want to step into a mall… Read More

While skiers flock to Aspen in January, and fly fisherman can’t wait to plant their waders in icy Montana rivers come April, it’s November and December that holds special significance for that special breed known as bargain hunters. Between manufacturers eager to bolster their numbers with strong holiday sales and retailers competing for your hard-earned dollars, the deals don’t get much better. And Black Friday represents the first day of open… Read More

It’s not necessary to spend a fortune for a nice laptop. While luxurious models with metal surfaces and lightning-quick processors will set you back as much as $1,000, they’re also far from required to have an enjoyable computer experience. Even the slowest laptops available today offer enough performance for web browsing and basic productivity, and some of them even have impressive battery endurance. There are so many options available for… Read More

A wallet is one of those essentials that you have to have to function in daily life, but one that you probably don't want to waste time thinking about or spending a lot of money on. It's kind of like buying socks: practical and completely necessary, but not nearly as fun as buying new shoes or a new jacket. We know the feeling well, but having a wallet that suits your lifestyle can make daily transactions that much easier. Some… Read More

There are a number of reasons it may be time to purchase a new audio receiver. Did you buy the receiver you currently own when Bill Clinton was still in the oval office? Did you recently pick up a Blu-ray disc player capable of supporting some cool sounding high-resolution audio formats? Did you just get the green light to build that man cave you've been dreaming about? If you answered yes to any of those questions, picking up a new… Read More

When you have to jiggle the power connector just right to get your seven-year-old ThinkPad to wheeze to life, only to take 20 minutes to load a YouTube video, it’s time to put the old beast out to pasture and start anew. But where do you begin in today’s notebook market, which has expanded so much that portables now outsell desktops? With a buying guide, of course. Use this comprehensive buying guide to examine some of the key factors and specs… Read More

Of all the holidays, Father’s Day is the one when Dad expects to get something he actually wants. And let’s face it: What he wants is some sweet new tech. But with all the great gadgets out there, narrowing down the possibilities to a solid short list can prove daunting, even for the most prepared gift givers amongst us. Luckily for you, we’ve already done most of the work. Here, the 10 best tech-centric gifts for every type of dad.

Sponsored by Whether you’ve participated in fantasy leagues, filled in brackets, and laid a week’s salary on your team, or just plan to make snarky comments about the commercials to your friends on Twitter, watching the Super Bowl come February 6 is a necessity. But no mortal should have to soldier through it perched on an La-Z-Boy plastered in cat hair, with a wooden spool for a tablet, picking it up through bunny ears on a 1987… Read More

It never fails. This time of year brings a month-long, manic search for the perfect gifts. All the browsing and coupons in the world won't help if you don’t know what you’re looking for, and asking for a gift list is a futile effort. Say you do actually get one: half of the items don’t mention a brand name, and the rest fail to include important specifications, like color or size, where to buy them, or you know, price. “What do you want… Read More

AMD had a press event earlier this week in San Francisco, where it showed off its new consumer laptop and desktop PCs from vendors like HP, Dell, Acer and Sony. Traditionally, at an AMD event, you see a bunch of inexpensive desktop computers, maybe one nice Acer Ferrari laptop, and a bunch of relatively ugly products. This clearly wasn’t a traditional event. Acer showed off three desktop computers, two all-in-ones, and around 14 laptops, none… Read More

You’ve worn the glasses. Seen the demos. Winced at objects flying out the screen. And you’re ready to buy a 3D TV. Congratulations, brave early adopter. Although the 3DTV maelstrom at CES 2010 generated a fair bit of skepticism, the technology also managed to floor many people, and if the commercial success of Avatar is any indication, 3D movies aren’t going to disappear any time soon. Ready to get in on the ground floor? Watch out, it’s still… Read More

Whether you’re looking for a high-performance gaming rig or a humble business machine to type up expense reports, buying a new desktop PC can be one of the most confusing purchases you’ll have to make. Between processors, hard drives, memory, and video cards – not to mention choosing what it should look like – computing buying can often seem like an endless set of compromises. In some ways, it is, but finding the middle ground that’s right for… Read More

Owning a 1080p HDTV without a Blu-ray player is a lot like owning a Camaro without ever getting past half throttle. You’ll never really know what it’s capable of until you put the pedal to the metal (or connect the HDMI cable, as the case may be). With Blu-ray players now as cheap as $100, you don’t have much of an excuse not to see what she can do. But not all Blu-ray players are created equal. Before you go out and grab the cheapest you can… Read More