Gadgets and why I love them

I’m a gadget person. Not the Innovations catalogue type of gadget – a small plastic thing which allows you to keep wine fresh for up to a month or lets you wear shirts whose collars are half a notch too tight – I’m into the techno gadget. Lovely shinny pieces of joy with eye brow raising prices and built in obsolescence.

Firstly a caveat. I hate mobile phones. I don’t have one, I’ve never wanted one and I don’t see the use of them. Don’t email me to say “What if I break down late at night?” because I’m sure you also use it to send vowel-free messages to your friends and ring up to have conversations like “Whatcha doin?” / “Nothing. You?” / “Nuffin.” So my gadget-philia does not extend to SMS, picture messaging, built in cameras or any of that over priced junk. I don’t know a list of Nokia model numbers and I do not judge people on how many polyphonic ring tones their pockets are capable of emitting.

The newest addition to my collection is an Apple iPod. The size and shape of a small pocket calculator, smoother than silk and more intuitive to operate than a penis, this little marvel can store my entire CD collection and still have room left over. With 20GB of storage space, it can only be a musical Tardis. Open one up and there will be a huge room filled with supercomputers. It’s the only possible explanation.

The iPod is, of course, made by Apple Computers. Makers of my favourite operating system, my favourite MP3 software, my favourite computer hardware and the bods who give me the kind of minority cool in the computer world that vegetarianism gives me in the real world. I power up my eMac, pop the iPod into the supplied firewire-ready dock and the two talk to each other like best friends. The first time I introduced them the iPod hungrily copied two songs per second until 1600 of them had been uploaded. All in less time than it took my old PC to transfer an album down the Stone Age USB cable.

The iPod’s control system is based around a touch sensitive wheel. You simply run your finger around it to move up and down. Even with a long list of song you can navigate from top to bottom in a second or two. Assuming your songs are properly labelled (and internet-ready Macs will connect to the CDDB automatically to download song information), you can find anything instantly. Sound quality is very good, the back light system is glow-in-the-dark cool, and you can read text files, play games and store a calendar. It is, in short, seriously cool AND seriously functional. Apple are the best.

But I’ve only had my beloved iPod for three days so it would be unfair to call it my favourite gadget of all. That honour goes to something that I talk about as if it were my girlfriend. I even refer to it as “her”. That is TiVo. We are in the midst of a massive advertising campaign for Sky+ that all experts would agree is a blatant rip off of TiVo. Lacking many of TiVo’s patented software features, Sky+ is definitely the inferior system. But thanks to the passage of time and greater investment, in the UK Sky+ has the better hardware. The USA has numerous models of TiVo and the hardware matches the software in kicking the ass of anyone dumb enough to challenge them. We can only hope that a Sony or a Samsung decide to manufacture TiVo mark II boxes and let the fight commence over here. Looking at the TiVo.com website makes me jealous in the extreme. Seethe.

Why do I love TiVo so much? Let me count the ways…

1. Season passes take all the pesky remembering out of television. If a show is on, she records it for me. Simple as that.

2. If there is something I’ve always wanted to see, I tell TiVo and she watches the schedules and records it if ever it appears. So if any bugger ever does the decent thing and repeats the Imogen Stubbs series “Anna Lee”, my partner TiVo will record it for me.

3. She is clever enough to spot conflicts and, where possible, record repeats of programmes either from the same channel on a different night or from the new wave of +1 channels.

4. No scrabbling for tapes at the last minute. TiVo records things for me and if I want them on VHS I can archive them at a later date.

5. TiVo’s suggestions. If I like something I can give it a thumbs up, if I don’t I can thumbs down and TiVo has built a profile of me and records things she thinks I might like. Most of them aren’t things I would watch but occasionally she strikes gold.

6. The remote is so damn comfy to hold. It must’ve been designed by someone who was in love at the time.

Sadly it looks as if TiVo is a dying product over here. I don’t think I’ve actually met anyone I know who knew what a TiVo was until I told them. With 30,000 subscribers in the UK it’s too big a market for TiVo to pull out of (£3m a month for EPG data is pretty good) but too small to see it as a priority for new investment.

Other gadgets that enrich my life include the Swiss Army Knife (my main one was so expensive – it’s genuine rather than a copy – that I’ve got a couple of cheap ones that I actually carry around with me. It’s safer) and the combination printer/scanner. The latter is a godsend, as I could never find space for a scanner. I used it so infrequently that it could justify neither the shelf space nor a valuable USB port. Now both problems are solved in a unit that is the same size as my discarded printer and which works a lot better.

Could I live without these pieces of kit? Very probably. Do I want to? Nope. And not a gibberish text message in sight.