It is Russia. That is right – the same Russia that was in economic ruins for the entirety of the 90′s and most of the new millennium. For contrast, in the US flat panel TV sales are stagnant in terms of numbers, and plummeting in terms of dollars according to recent reports: In terms of dollars, U.S. sales plunged 15.4 percent from the same month a year ago. That reflects the sharp price declines that are pushing prices of some low-end models below $200. October also saw the number of LCD TVs sold in the United States decline by 7 percent over October 2009. It was the sixth Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Okay, so it is not the most sylin’ notebook you will find these days. Still, the Lenovo ThinkPad X201 gets the job done and, unlike some other small notebooks that have been getting a lot of attention lately, it offers the powerful Core i5 or i7 processors and a total of four USB ports. The x201 weights in at less than 3 lb, has a 12″ LED display and can gt up to 12 hours of runtime with the optional 9-cell battery. The base model comes with 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. Unlike ThinkPads of the past, the 201X includes a small multi-touch trackpad in addition to the traditional Lenovo pointer stick… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy micgadget) Are you stuck for ideas for the ultimate Apple fan in your life? Can’t buy them anything Apple branded, since they already stood in line for 4 hours for it…iTunes cards are too impersonal…what to do…. Well now you can get them their very own Steve Jobs! Complete with wee iPhone and wee turtleneck! Who doesn’t want their Apple-god staring at them creepily day after day? Of course, just like a real Apple product, this one comes with a hefty premium. But what’s $79.90 among Apple fans? Get your Mini-Jobs here! Via CNN Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Barnes and Noble does not believe in a Thanksgiving break! First the NOOKcolor starts hitting stores, and now they’re pushing out an update to the Famous Original NOOK and the WiFi NOOK, PLUS a big Android update! The Android update is very intriguing. B&N has added the ability to take notes and highlight in the app, plus those highlights and changes will sync across all NOOK apps and devices! With the number of high-end Android tablets (hopefully) appearing soon, this could make NOOK books a powerful study tool. eBook readers and ebooks have had a very hard time in academics, but if note-taking is simple and syncs easily across multiple devices that could be a tipping point!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We have a winner in our Beam N Read light giveaway! Congratulations to Bruce L Brown, who will be giving the light to his brother! Congratulations to Bruce’s brother as well! Bruce, please check your Facebook friend requests or email carly (at) geardiary (dot) com for details on claiming your prize. If you didn’t win, you can always buy a loved one a Beam N Read Light from their website, or try some of the other sites also participating in this great giveaway!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was pretty excited when Blue Microphones announced the new version of their iPod microphone, the Mikey, at CES 2010. Unfortunately the product faced some considerable delays but as with many things good things come to those who wait. The all new Mikey 2 was released last week and I was lucky enough to receive one to review. Blue touts the Mikey 2 as the “perfect tool for mobile recording.” It features a 230-degree rotating design, two custom tuned Blue capsules which enable you to record in stereo and USB pass through. Perhaps most impressive is the Mikey’s three gain settings which allow for recording in a wide range of situations. From lectures, to personal… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My family dropped our $15 Netflix plan early this spring due to lack of use, but when offered a free month to come back, we jumped at the lowest-priced plan. Since then, the only thing we got in the mail from Netflix was a Wii disk … and even that is of no use anymore! So when I heard that Netflix was bringing a ‘streaming only’ plan to the US, I knew I’d sign up immediately. Today that plan arrived, with a $7.99 monthly rate (same as Hulu+). I got an added incentive to change plans quickly – Netflix simultaneously raised prices on everything else! As noted in the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have given up any pretense of really keeping up with all of the gaming deals that come and go within 24 hours – apparently Microsoft had Age of Empires III Complete for $0.10 on Sunday, and I found out late at night and before I could post about it, it was gone! As Dan mentioned here, we will try to keep up with the onslaught of deals via our Twitter feed at @geardiarysite. But for now, I wanted to try to provide as complete a list of video game related Black Friday deals as I could find. I have been adding stuff to my list for the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you are a Mac fan and a hardcore gamer, like I am … chances are you also have a PC (or a BootCamp partition) to allow you to play games. That is for a couple of reasons: availability of games and performance. I remember when Jedi Knight II came to the Mac back in Fall of 2002, the OpenGL performance of the Quake III engine was so well done that it actually ran better on my Powerbook than on my top-end Dell Inspiron! Those days are long gone, and in recent years we have had to deal with two types of games: ‘native’ ports such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Steam is a great gaming service, with all of the best new PC games, loads of great sales, tons of connectivity and other features. One thing that has been missing was some sort of ‘you might also like’ service such as you find on Amazon or iTunes! Well, now Steam has Recommendations. Functioning similarly to iTunes Genius, Recommendations analyzes your game library and also the purchases of those with similar content and suggests things you might be missing. You can even recommend games for others. This is a great way for lesser known or non-sale games to get some notice. Here is what my initial page looked like: Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Like any good admitted fanboy, I often find myself looking for Apple products on TV. Lately I’ve been spotting more and more iDevices popping up on many of the shows I watch. So I’ve decided to start a new weekly segment entitled “Apple On TV.” The premise is simple. Whenever I spot an Apple product in one of the shows I watch (and I watch a lot of TV), I’ll take a screen shot of it and post it here, in a weekly recap, with a short description. But I need your help too! Although I watch a lot of TV I don’t watch everything. So if you come across an Apple product in one of the shows… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have long admired people who could nap anywhere, even when they weren’t sick and half-doped up on cough syrup. My problem is that if the room is too lighted, too noisy, too cold or too hot, or if I am thinking about all the other things I need to be doing, it doesn’t matter how sleepy I am, a nap isn’t happening. But let’s say that I am able to overcome all of that, perhaps because I’m the passenger on the world’s longest car ride … there is no comfortable position to get into, because no matter how far I can lean the seat back, my head is either… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There days we seem to be seeing Christmas decorations BEFORE Thanksgiving and Black Friday Deal on the Monday five days prior to the biggest shopping days of the year. It is annoying, but if it saves you money who case about a little in-your-face advertising. Amazon, among others has some great deals going. Many times they are only available for a few hours. As a result, traditional blog-posting isn’t the best means to get you word. SO… Watch our Twitter feed at @geardiarysite. We’ll post the deals that catch our eye there so we can all save. And to get us started… Jump over to this link on Amazon Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We start the week with a great Gear Deal on a 23.6″ Samsung LCD Monitor. This monitor features 50,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio, an ultra-slim design and a 5ms response time. And did we mention… this is not some off-label monitor. This is from Samsung! The Samsung 2494LW 1080p LCD Monitor has an MSRP of $229.99. Our Gear Sponsor has found a deal that will knock $60 off the price AND an additional 10% off. That brings the price down to just $152.99 and it will even ship for free. Samsung 2494LW 23.6-inch 1080p LCD Monitor via LogicBUY Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve had a chance to check out more than a few Internet radios in the past year or so and I am impressed with the growing feature-set and fidelity we are beginning to see. I have been checking out Aluratek’s current offering and can safely say that while it doesn’t stand out from an increasingly competitive market it does have some compelling features and a price point that make it a worthy contender. Here’s a closer look… From Aluratek: Aluratek’s new Internet Radio Alarm Clock with Built in WiFi allows you to easily access more than 11,000 radio stations Continue reading on Gear Diary …