OCW Readers' Award 2004 Results (4)
Bluetooth / Shadow 28 Dec 2004

Best Buy Mobile Phone

Year 2004 is a year when 3G is introduced in this region. As the technology is still new, users are still reluctant to switch to 3G. From our polls, we see that most of the nominated phones are 2.5G phones. Among the top brands include Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens etc.

From our polls, the top 3 choices are all camera phones and most comes with elegant design or functionalities. There is no doubt, the readers will pick those more gimmick type of phones that can playback MP3, large screens, good cameras etc.

Sony Ericsson K700i is the Best Buy mobile phone. It has a small form fact but large in features. It is really a classic. S700i on the other hand has a 1.3 mpixel CCD, 320x240 screen. It has good features but it is more expensive than the average phones out there. Nevertheless, having a megapixel CCD will be the trend for year 2005.

Our users have spoken and the Gold award goes to SE K700i, runner-ups are SE S700i and Samsung E800.

Best Buy PDA

PDA is a useful gadget for busy professionals but it comes at a high cost. There are also two different camps of users. The Palm based and the Windows based.

In our polls, our readers still prefer the proven PalmOS. The Zire 72 (Palm OS® 5.2.8) comes with a 1.2 mpixel camera and can playback MP3 and read winword documents etc.

Palm Tungsten T5 is another Palm product. It has the capability to hold up to 256M of memory which is quite a good amount of storage space. It supports SD, SDIO, MMC slots for expansion.

Dell X30 is the only PocketPC and uses a Intel Xscale processor with WMMX up to 624MHz. That is so far one of the fastest PDA around.

Best Buy Digital Camera

The best buy Digital Camera poll indicates that our readers are really camera freaks. The Best Buy voted in is the Canon PowerShot A75 which is an improved A70. This camera has manual controls and suitable for new camera users. The price is also quite affordable. Canon PowerShot A75 boasts a 3.2 Megapixel CCD and a host of advanced features. It has a 3x Optical/3.2x Digital/10x Combined Zoom and a larger, higher-resolution new 1.8" LCD monitor. This camera is more for the masses.

The Silver goes to Nikon D70 which is a SLR camera that has an effective 6.1 mpixels. It supports the new Nikon DX Format CCD imaging sensor for 3,008 x 2,000-pixel images. The new AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED zoom lens designed to deliver high performance and outstanding value as a perfect match for the D70. To date, it is one of the best SLR cameras out there. Compared to the E30D, it has more features and has a higher resolution.

The Bronze goes to the Canon G6 which is another SLR camera which has an effective 7.1 mpixel CCD. This 7.1 Megapixel CCD and Enhanced Optical Shooting System for Stunning Image Quality comes with a power 35-140mm (35mm equivalent) 4x Optical Zoom and a NEW Ergonomic SLR-style Grip and 2-inch LCD Monitor.

Best Buy Notebook

For the best buy notebook, Dell's inspiron 5160 appeals to the masses as it is one of the mid range products. it is more suitable for home user or small enterprises. It comes with a dual layer DVD writer. It is also customisable with a 3.2G intel mobile P4 processor and NVidia GeForce GO 5200 graphics chip with 64M RAM.

Silver goes to Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS M6000Ne. ASUS has been making in roads in all areas of IT products. With a choice of 16:10 15.4 wide screen, 15.1-inch or 14.1-inch displays, you can use workstation applications in a notebook casing device. United with the peerless 64MB VRAM graphics chipset, ATI Mobility™ Radeon™ 9600, the M6000N handles video and multimedia applications in a perfect compatible way and enables on-the-go use of data and graphics-intensive applications. The built-in optical drive, which carries the DVD Multi, DVD Dual or Combo, gives you more flexibility of entertainment choices in a click operation.

Bronze goes to Apple iBook G4 which is a non-PC notebook. As we know Apple notebooks are usually well designed. Equipped with a PowerPC G4 processor 256M DDR memory with ATi Mobility Radeon 9200 with standalone 32M DDR. It also comes with 54MBps wireless LAN (802.11G) and bluetooth. It comes with HD capacity of 30G, 40G or 60G. All models comes with a DVD/CDRW combo drive and preinstalled with MacOS v10.3 "Panther".

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