Leo Laporte's 2005 Gadget Guide (Leo Laporte's Gadget Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Independent recommendations
Review: 2005 is coming up fast, so Laporte and Miller have brought out this book, just before the holiday season. Some of you will certainly enjoy just thumbing through these pages, and trusting to serendipity to be your guide. All the pages are in full colour, and the product photos and textual descriptions are very attractively laid out.

In some ways, the book reminds me of a Sharper Image catalog. But the authors are independent of the vendors. So the product descriptions should be more reliable than in a typical vendor's catalog.

There may be biases in the choices of products. But as Laporte says in the Introduction, the biases are strictly what caught his fancy, and not some vendor's promptings.

Rating:
Summary: More Stuff Than I Could Imagine
Review: A Big Question: First, what does this fellow consider gadgets to be.

Answer, there are hundreds of gadgets here, far too many to mention, but they fall into seven categories:

Computer Gadgets -everything from speakers, to mice, to a little fan that plugs into your USB port.
Portable Gadgets - mostly stuff like PDA's and things to plug into them, but also portable players (music and video), GPS Devices, a robot vacuum cleaner and a robot dog - no, the robot vacuum cleaner does not clean up after the dog.
Digital Photography Gadgets - Cameras, sure, but lots and lots of other stuff from 3-D attachments to filters, cleaning kits and viewers.
Home Movie Gadgets - More cameras, and then more cool stuff like video mixer, software, video capture devices.
Home Audio/Video Gadgets - No cameras this time, but media hubs, jukebox, recorders, home theater, satellite radio systems.
Telephone Gadgets - Some really neat new phones, headsets, hand cranked power adapter. Game Gadgets - controllers of course, but also adapters, switches, even a specially designed game chair.
Automotive Gadgets - GPS, sound, rear view TV, and a data logger that will talk to your cars computer.

I wonder where he could have found all this stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Great Additon to my Leo Laporte Collection
Review: I've been an avid Leo fan since I first saw him on the Screen Savers back when TechTV used to be useful. I was actually flipping through the channels on my best friend's TV and stopped on TTV because I didn't get the channel at my house. Leo draws people in by coming off extremely personable in any media he produces. I watched TSS and Call For Help because of him, listen to his KFI radio show, and own every book he's produced and there is a reason for this: Leo Laporte makes technology fun. It's not dry, never bland, and there's always something for everyone, which makes this book a particularly good read.

Each chapter has something for everyone:
1 Computer Gadgets
2 Portable Gadgets
3 Digital Photography Gadgets
4 Home Movie Gadgets
5 Home Audio/Video Gadgets
6 Telephone Gadgets
7 Game Gadgets
8 Automotive Gadgets

What makes this book really stand out from his Almanac line is the page after page after page of beautiful color photos. This is a full color book with eight chapters. Each chapter is divided into subcategories and each subcategory has a one page introduction. Then Leo writes a one page review of his favorite in each subcategory, followed by half a page on between two to eight other subcategorical recommendations. Each product is photographed in color. Model, manufacturer (complete with relevant website), price, and any other relevant info (say megapixels for digital cameras) are documented in a little yellow bubble.

My favorite part (after the color, layout, and general feel-good tone of the book are considered) is the actual content--the reason I bought the book! You will find at least one product you must have (I found 15 and chronicled them on my website). The content ranges from novice to expert, high tech to low tech, and cheap to super expensive. You'll notice that Leo writes about products you may have heard of before but never considered until his recommendation (the Logitech io Digital Pen or the iRobot's Roomba--both on my Amazon wishlist).

I'm looking forward to Leo's other releases, including a gadget guide for Macs, a TiVo guide, and, of course, the 2005 Almanac. Enjoy the read!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Leo Laporte knows so much about Technology and doesn't use all the "technical talk" when he describes it to people therefore enabling us to understand what Technology can do for all of us these Days. In this book Leo has several different catergories of "gadgets" (he doesn't like that word lol) and reviews a few from each category then makes his pick on what is the best value in that particular section. Due to the fact that Leo is not as of now on TV in the US his books and his weekend Radio Show are the only ways that I'm able to get to listen to him and read about the products that he likes. So Go Buy this Book and I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Great Job on this book Leo!
- Ryan_Ly (KFI Chat)