Patrick de Laive

After the first FIVE services (in Dutch) this is a list of the top FIVE gadgets I need to have. Do with it whatever you want, if you have one of these things yourself, let me know if you like it or not. So in 2007 I need to save a lot of money to fulfill my gadget needs.
There we go:
Number 1. No doubt about it is the Blackberry Pearl. Right now I have a Treo 650 with crashing software, poor synchronization (let me rephrase that: No synchronization) a battery time of less then a day, lousy interface and usability and I can go on for a while. The Blackberry Pearl is THE email and photo phone I need to have with all features I need: great email handling, great synchronization, long lasting battery time, photo camera oh and don’t forget it fits my style .
Everyday, I hope someone grabs my Treo and smashed it into the ground (or throw it in the Amstel river) and replaces it with a Pearl! (Yes you can film it and publish it on YouTube)
Price: 399 euros

Number 2. I’d like to do some entrepreneurial podcasts this year, so I need to have an audio recording device. According to my acquaintance Neville Hobson the M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 is the best device out there for recording podcasts.
Price: 499 dollars (Oops… I have to save more and drink less coffee, I guess…)

Number 3. A pocket beamer! Not only to give presentations, but also to watch a movie in bed or to watch an important soccer game with friends. The Samsung SP-P300ME is very stylish, but also pretty expensive. There seem to be only a couple pocket beamers out on the market and the quality of the light isn’t that impressive (that will be a matter of time though). So my choice is still the samsung (it fits neatly with my mac ).
Price: 550 euros

Number 4. Wifi Voip phone. There are a lot of new phones coming to the market with wireless voip connections and build in skype software. I haven’t figured out yet what the best phone is to buy when you’re having a Mac, but the BCM WLAN800 seems to me the best choice, because it supports multiple protocals (Skype, but also SIP and MSN Talk). The Netgear and Belkin Skype phones are most popular, but they both have a lot of negative reviews.
I only have a mobile phone and I believe a lot of people threw away their landlines. But I think we will go back to landlines, but then with a local SkypeIn number (or from another provider) that is attached to our wifi phone at home. Basically this means you have a local number (at about 25 euros a year) where you can receive inbound calls and for outgoing calls you’ll pay internet prices (between zero and up to 10 cents a minute for international calls). Probably your better of waiting a while for the next generation wifi enabled voip phones, but if your an innovator, you got to have one, right?
(minor detail: Skype doesn’t sell Dutch local numbers yet…)

Price: No idea, nobody seem to sell it , but probably around 200 euros.

Number 5. The Wii.

need I say more…. (I’m not a gamer, but this one is so hot it cannot not be included in this list)
Price: Does it matter? ok, 250 euros (In Europe we always pay a kind of a premium… it’s less than 250 dollars in the US)