Last year was a bit lighter on gadgets than previous years, but there were still some crackers. Here are my top 5:
#5: Homedics 9126 MiBody USB Scales 
We’re using this nearly every day and haven’t yet had to change the batteries. It’s still logging our weight and working out our BMI, fatness level, etc…. and saving it to the same Access database with no problems. I’m still not crazy on the interface – and if you check the comments on the blog post I have linked to above you’ll find a link to an alternative piece of software. I haven’t checked this out personally because I like to open the access database directly and export to Excel (or just read the database tables).
#4: PC Upgrade 2010 
This was the most powerful upgrade (comparatively) that I’ve ever bolted together. Usually I go for mid-range components but this time I pushed it a little further. It’s not top of the range, but the best price-performance compromise and this machine is likely to last me a lot longer than previous incarnations as a consequence. Yeah, it’s not one gadget, but a collection of components: Intel Core i5-750 quad-core processor, Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L motherboard, 8GB of DDR3 Crucial ‘Ballistix’ 1333MHz memory and an Arctic Cooling heatpipe heatsink. I’ve struggled to max it out – video encoding hits the processor and I can encode HD video in real-time on MPEG2. I have also been able to run two virtual machines without any noticeable degradation in the host’s performance.
#3: Server rack / Compucase 
I’m still working on this one and shall be for many months to come. The Server rack has obviously been installed, and inside the rack is a rack-mountable 24-port Belkin gigabit switch which I managed to get off ebay for a bargainous £20. The Compucase is now partially operational as a server, if only in a test capacity. It houses a new power supply, my old Core 2 Duo processor, motherboard and 4GB RAM. I’ve also stuck a RAID5 controller card in there and two 2TB hard drives. Eventually I plan to put a few more drives in there giving me around 10TB of storage (less will actually be usable). It should be ready by the release of the next version of Windows Home Server later this year.
#2: Panasonic HDC-TM700 Full HD Camcorder
So totally awesome and stuff! It should be at number one, but hasn’t quite made it for reasons which will become obvious (or maybe not) when you read #1. I’ve used the camera loads – the results are on my Facebook video page for those of you who can see that, and the footage is consistently impressive. In low light, it can appear at times to output low resolution, but if there are some well lit objects in shot then everything becomes very vivid. I have some amazing footage shot at Disneyland Paris during the evening parade and fireworks display. I only shoot at 1080i resolution – even my PC can’t quite cope with editing 1080p footage and my PS3 won’t play it back either unless I reduce the bitrate.
#1: shingler.co.uk
My 30th Birthday present…… and now the crucial component of my email address. I finally dropped the superfluous ‘o’. I don’t need to add any more to this paragraph because the significance of this entry is obvious… obviously 
What didn’t make the top 5: A USB->Midi adapter which lets my keyboard plug in to my computer like the good old days – I just haven’t used it! There was also the PS3-IR500, a little Infra Red to Bluetooth adapter which sits next to the Playstation 3 and convert Infra Red signals from my remote in to Bluetooth signals to control my PS3. I use it daily and it sits there reliably and faithfully, but it’s not exciting. It’s also been replaced by a OneForAll device you can buy from most electronics shops now for a lot less money. It was good when I bought it, but there are better and cheaper solutions which don’t have to be imported from the States. Well, that’s it for this mega-post. Well done for sticking with it – check back in 12 months time for another gadget round-up post.
