Circuits, the NY Times tech blog, recently published A Look Back at the Buzz of 2006
For Palm Addicts (and those chronically carping about the superiority of the Motorola Q), Editor David Pogue's summation is telling:
"...There’s no awards show for the best and the worst tech products of the year, but there should be. Think of how good all that brushed aluminum would look on TV!
But you’re entitled to some kind of declarative wrap-up, so here it is.
The turkeys of the year: Microsoft’s Ultra Mobile PC computers (too big to be palmtops and too stripped-down to be PCs — and no keyboard); Verizon’s balky Chocolate cellphone; and, thanks to its idiotically inefficient software, the Motorola Q phone.
And now, the bright spots of the year, the best of the new. Small camera: the image-stabilized Canon SD800 IS. Digital S.L.R. camera: Nikon D80. Camcorder: the tiny, astonishingly high-quality, high-def Canon HV10. Music player: Apple’s new, much less easily scratched iPod Nano. Smartphone: Tie between the Treo 700p and BlackBerry Pearl.
Sure, all this gear will look hilariously antiquated by the time the 2007 year-in-review column comes out. But they’ll bring you a lot of happiness in the meantime."