Here are some more seasonal shopping tips. But before I begin, this is an incident that happened to us that you would want to be aware of.
We recently bought a PC game for one of our grandsons from Amazon. But Amazon is not really one company - many small vendors sell through the Amazon umbrella. Although the vendor said the package was shipped, it never arrived. When pressed further, the vendor said that the package had been "returned". And, mysteriously, that was exactly the time when fraudulent billings appeared on our credit card and we were forced to get new cards. Hmmm. We were under the impression that Amazon did the actual credit card work and thus our card number would not be exposed to this small vendor. We are investigating, but as usual watch your step when ordering on the 'net.
Here are some tips for electronics buying this year.
New PC: Microsoft edicts what hardware goes into PCs these days to meet the minimum requirements for Vista. So any PC you see in the local stores will be fine for almost any use except video editing. Just make sure you get the Vista Home Premium version, not basic. It would be good to have 2GB of RAM or more. Hard drives are so humongous these days that any PC will probably have more storage than you can use. Spend your money on a good display (monitor) and it is usually a good idea to get the fastest processor speed you can afford. Because the price of the top of the line processor is often kept disproportionately high, find the sweet spot in price - usually one or two notches below the fastest.
Digital Cameras: These have become ubiquitous these days and all manufacturers now make very mature and capable cameras. Stick to a name brand (Canon, Nikon, etc.) and you should be fine. Beware of buying any bundled accessories with the camera - you can get lenses, memory cards, etc. much cheaper on the web after your initial purchase. Any sensor size 6 megapixels or more will give excellent quality. But decide the type of camera you really need. Consumer cameras are usually flat and have small lenses. They are fine for general use, but not for the person who wants to tinker with his shots. Prosumer cameras look like SLR cameras but are smaller and do not have interchangeable lenses. These cameras have all the features you would want, but are a bit more expensive. For a full featured camera get a digital SLR (DSLR) - you can get new bodies plus lens for well under $1,000 these days.
Camcorders: You have a couple of choices here in resolution and storage format. You first need to decide whether you want the older Standard Definition (SD) or High Definition (HD) format. But be aware that you can only play HD on an HD television, and even then only by connecting the camcorder directly to the TV. If you want to start video editing with HD you will need to spend a lot more money to upgrade your entire PC and DVD player to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. But if you can afford it, and want your camcorder to have a longer life, I recommend HD.
The only storage choice in older SD camcorders used to be MiniDV tapes. Tapes are still good and have the greatest storage. But now you can get camcorders that record to internal hard drives, or directly to mini-DVDs. There are advantages to each.
You will have to rewind and fast forward to position a tape, and copying the video to your PC or do a DVD requires running it at normal speed (i.e. 1 hour to transfer a 1 hour tape). Hard drive units can copy the files very quickly to the PC (just like any file copy), but the disadvantage of hard drive units is that storage (in terms of video time) is limited and the compression used is a bit too high resulting in loss of video quality.
The units that write mini-DVDs directly allow you to remove the DVD and immediately put it in your home player to view. If you put the DVD into your PC, you can also transfer the files very quickly. But the drawback of mini-DVDs is that the recording time is very limited - less than 30 minutes for a standard density DVD.
And always read the reviews online before you buy. If you go to a store "cold" without doing your homework you may not get the best unit or best buy. Happy shopping!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)