If you're on the fence about any of these, well, you're just missing out on the future
LOSE TEN kg in 10 days; 10 ways to know if your partner is cheating on you;
Wonderful headers for columns they're eye-catching and warrant immediate attention. 10 best, Top 10, 10 myths... it's called the rule of 10 and is my inspiration for today's column.
Most of these cost nothing, while a few can severely dent your bank balance. To all those who will fry me for conjuring up this virtual shopping cart, this isn't about what you can or cannot afford; this isn't about budgets and their destruction. This is a dream list, a list to aspire to, a checklist to save up for a list that will literally change your life.
# 1 DIGITAL WIRELESS HEADPHONES
Chuck them! Most of you must be having big, clunky infrared ones that need line of sight to work, lose sound when you turn your head and sound ghastly. Others may be having RF cans that give you more range but also spit, hiss and crackle at you from all angles. This is all old hat. Digital Wireless headphones can give you audiophile sound, rival top of the line wired headphones, do virtual surround sound, use your digital audio output, work 300 feet away and never hiss. Sennheiser RS 180 and RS 220 (pictured right) and Sony MDR-DS6500 are some of the best in the field. Watch a movie late at night without disturbing your spouse (they're not called marriage-savers for nothing) or stroll in the garden while listening to your entire music collection. Your ears will thank you for it.
# 2 MOBILE WIRELESS SYNC
If you own a fairly recent Apple mobile product and haven't upgraded to iOS 5 then you're a bit of a dufus. Just one thing (there are 200 but some of them are just plain silly) warrants that upgrade right now: wireless sync. There's something deeply satisfying in plugging in your iPhone or iPad at night and finding a movie, a book and new music appear magically on your device when you wake up in the morning. Yes, iOS finally breaks from its iTunes USB umbilical cord and does it with a vengeance. Your device and your computer on the same WiFi network will perfectly sync whatever new items have been added to either of them. Wireless sync can be achieved on almost any other mobile OS with some add-ons like SugarSync (automated to the point that as soon as you take a picture on your phone, it's already on your computer), Live Mesh and Livedrive. Give it a shot you'll never believe how you ever lived with the ugliness of cables, setting up devices and manual syncing.
# 3 A BIG A*S TV
I'm not talking 32, 42, 47 or even 55 inches. I'm talking about 60+ inches of pure visual madness. Yes, they are here, huge beasts, a mad array of pixels and your greatest dream. India was never taken to be a big TV screen market and thus, even when companies had big screen TVs abroad, they wouldn't bring them here. I'm glad they didn't. Very large screen TVs suffer from brightness and colour issues as well as uneven backlighting. Current technology has finally made sure that all that is now an old wives' tale. The latest crop are stunning, vivid, crystal clear and picture perfect. You can even put these in your bedroom as the pixel density is dense enough to give a stunning image at a 10 foot distance. LG's new 65-inch LED Cinema Display and Samsungs 64-inch plasma lead from the front. Despite what you've been told, size matters! Big is good and HUGE is always better :)
# 4 HD ON DTH
If you've been on the fence on this one, you're missing out on one of the greatest pleasures in life. The upgrade is cheap and the result is jaw-dropping. Moving from standard definition broadcast to high definition, to use an old cliché, is like acquiring a brand new set of eyes.
Watching cricket in its full HD glory, a movie in 1080i resolution, a wildlife documentary where you can see each hair bristle on a red nosed baboon sends a shiver down your spine. If you've got an HDTV, you owe yourself HD DTH.
# 5 GO 3G
Ignore the naysayer and forgive the pessimists. Yes, coverage can sometimes be spotty and yes it's expensive This is all just a smokescreen you're just being lazy and depriving yourself of a true game changer. 3G on your mobile is the greatest high-octane boost you can give to almost everything you do.
From your apps to opening web pages to sending a large image on email to streaming a song to watching YouTube on the move 3G changes everything! A video call really does work, TV on demand becomes a reality, using your phone as a 3G hotspot can save you megabucks and save your skin mega-times. I'm surprised to see power users who upgrade their phones every six months proclaim that they don't really `need' 3G. That's like saying you don't really need a billion bucks! You can never have too much money and you can never have a data connection fast enough. Get your mind and your mobile out from the rutty, broken roads of 2G and hit the super speedy F1 tracks of 3G.
The pending five; plus a few bonus points thrown in
Phones with ginormous screens, wireless printing and more Get. These. NOW YOU NEED A DEDICATED GPS DEVICE IN YOUR CAR THAT GETS YOU RIGHT TO
THE DOOR EVERYWHERE
TIME FOR me to tell you about the other five tech upgrades that can change your life. In fact, as most people tore me apart last week for saying ten and coming up with only five, I'm going to throw in some more as a bonus. Lots of ground to cover, no time for chit chat, let's get this puppy on the road.
#6 THE CLOUD
No it isn't impossible to understand, you don't need a rocket science degree to get going and it absolutely won't rain and wipe out your data. The cloud, for most of us, is only going to be about choosing one or two services that deliver an idiot-proof experience. Think of the cloud as this magical space somewhere out there that holds all that you need data, documents, music, videos, pictures and delivers it to you irrespective of where you are and what device you're on. DropBox, Tonido, Sparkleshare, Spideroak, Box.net are all fantastic. Just google them, get started with the one that makes sense (most are free and you can upgrade if you need more space) and then realise just how electrifying the cloud is.
#7 DEDICATED GPS
Okay, entering super controversial territory. GPS is now omnipresent everywhere. It comes on your phone, on your camera and even on your Tablet. But I'm going out on a limb and stating this: you need a dedicated GPS device in your car that does just that voice-guided navigation that gets you to a numerical address you feed in and gets you right to the door. Mapping in most of urban India is now truly stateof-the-art and can really help you in a pinch. The GPS on your phone just doesn't cut it. Battery life takes a huge hit; the screen isn't big enough to truly follow; you will anyway pay extra for a really good map and voice guidance software; the GPS unit in a phone isn't that good; and the level of sophistication and extra features on a dedicated GPS device beat the pants off what your phone will ever do.
#8 LARGE SCREEN PHONE
The Samsung Galaxy Note has truly set the cat among the pigeons. A high-resolution, vivid, humongous screen that can really do double duty as a Tablet. What you can achieve with a screen that size has to be experienced to be understood. Efficiency goes up; Web pages open fully with no need for any horizontal scrolling; the text is large enough to read with no pinch-to-zoom; YouTube videos are gorgeous and full HD movies are breathtaking; gaming is way better; apps have more space to breathe in. For those that think it's just way too big, consider phones at around the 4.3+ inch screen size. It's a big world out there, you spend hours on your phone doing much more than talking stop doing it through a dinky little screen.
#9 NAS DRIVE
This may sound like overkill but it can change your world. A NAS drive plugs into your WiFi device through an Ethernet port and shows up as a wireless hard drive on EVERY single device that accesses your WiFi network (yes, even the iPad). It can work as your media hub, it can stream movies and music, it can be your picture and images depository. You can set it to be accessed from anywhere in the world and share a common password for a folder that all your friends and relatives can have access to. It can backup data from all your devices automatically and on a preset schedule. Once you go NAS, you can never go back
#10 WIRELESS EMAIL PRINTER
This is another must-have. In the world of portable devices, the idea of a fixed, wiredthrough-USB-and-needing-dedicated-drivers-on-each-device printer is as outdated as me typing this on a typewriter. Printers today can print wirelessly off a phone, a Tablet or Notebook, can install without a CD, have dedicated apps that run on them and on many devices and most importantly, have an email ID built into the printer itself. All you do is mail a document or picture to that email and the printer prints it like magic. It's the best way of printing off a mobile phone that doesn't have any way of printing all the amazing things that you carry on it
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There are many other tech upgrades that can make your life go through a radical transformation. A media streamer will unlock the hidden potential of all your digital media, a multi-room music setup will make you rediscover the magic of music,
an in-car bluetooth audio system can be a lifesaver for that all important call (while parked, of course),
a wireless mobile charging system can unclutter your room and your life,
a GPS and movement-tracking fitness watch can be your guide and mentor to a more healthy you yes, is a lot out there.
Arthur C Clarke said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.“ It's time for you to let that magic transform your life.
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