I have always loved gadgets and technology. But instead of doing a post of my favorite top five gadgets of all time I decided to do a list with the current gadgets that I own (my favorite gadgets off all time will be posted somewhere down the road). This was a tough list because I had to exclude gadgets that I am quite fond of (external Iomega drive, 32” flat screen, Sony Vaio laptop etc).

#1. 120GB Grey Ipod Classic - I recently edited my music collection down to 8,000 songs from closer to 10,000. This Ipod holds all my music, a few movies and a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos. While that’s all well and good the best part is that I haven’t even used half of the allotted storage capacity. As a child, teenager and young man estimating that I’ve been through 50 different Walkmans and Disc man’s is a conservative estimate. Music is so important to me and being able to makemix tapes , Cd’s and now play-lists for friends and girlfriends or crushes is something I very much enjoy. Besides being able to show people that I don’t only listen to hip-hop (which is probably 1/3 of my collection) it’s nice to hav people come back to me and ask questions like “What artist is this?” or “Do you have more music like this?” I find that rewarding and putting people on to music that they might have otherwise never listened to is fulfilling. Walking around NYC or wherever it is that I am with high quality, comfortable headphones and putting my 8,000 songs on shuffle is one of my greatest pleasures in life, maybe that’s silly. What I do know is that having a jukebox that is smaller than any Walkman that I’ve ever had and a personalized soundtrack to my life is worth way more than the $200 my latest Ipod cost me.

#2. 16GB Black 3GS IPhone – I am willing to entertain the notion that there are Blackberry’s that might be better than the IPhone and if you want to throw the Palm Pre into the mix, I’d certainly listen to the argument but having had a Blackberry and a host of other Smart phones, I obviously think that the IPhone is not only the greatest phone of all time but also one of the greatest gadgets as well. AT&T sucks and I’m surprised that Apple made their Jesus phone exclusive to arguably the worst carrier. The coverage is awful, I still can’t send MMS messages and their customer service is poor. This is not the device’s fault. The strength in the IPhone is the app store which now buries the selection available to any other phone including the Blackberry. Forget about the fact that I have tons of very well made games on my phone, ranging from Madden 2010 to Assassin’s Creed to the games designed specifically for the device and it’s physics (Rag doll Blaster, Jelly Car, Up There etc) and forget about the fact that I can download movies, music and apps right from the Itunes application pre installed on my phone, if you jailbreak your phone, it is only then that you can fully tap into the awesomeness. This awesomeness includes being able to download movies still in the theater and then watch them on your television with a simple A/V cable. It includes being able to trick your phone out in one of the hundreds of themes floating around Cydia (as you can see I’ve gone with Leopard). If you lack the balls to jailbreak there are some ingenious sanctioned apps (a lot of them free) to take advantage of. One can watch MLB games live on their phone, or have their Duane Reade or Border’s discount card’s bar code and # on the screen so that the cashier can just scan the phone eliminating the need to carry around a bunch of cards and key chain tags. One can read the Wall Street Journal, update their blog, make changes to their Netflix queue, edit photos, listen to Pandora and use the compass and Google maps app to find the shortest route to anywhere in the world. You see where I’m going with this but let me add two final quick points.  I have owned the original Iphone and the 3G and I can say with full confidence that the speed on the 3GS is amazing and at least double that of the 3G (which is also a great phone). Finally, it was discovered about a month back that the 3GS is capable of displaying high definition video on it’s beautiful screen. Apple knew this but didn’t advertise it. Does anyone doubt that a future software update will allow users to download HD movies, television shows and videos right on their phone? Hulu will also be coming to the Iphone soon…….Enjoy your Blackberry and I’ll enjoy my Iphone.

#3. 20 Inch Aluminum Imac with 250 GB Hard Drive and 2GB Ram – I’m sure many of you have dismissed me as an Apple fan boy at this point but I do have to note that this is the first Mac that I have ever owned, I cannot see myself ever purchasing another desktop PC. I probably paid around $1100 for thus about a year ago with a 15% discount from a friend’s friend who worked at an Apple store in Staten Island. The 250 GB hard drive is a little small so I purchased a 500 GB external drive about a month back giving me 750 GB of total space. This thing is fast as hell, starts up and closes when I want it to and has not had a single bout with viruses, spy ware or ad ware (you know I’m getting one tonight, right?). I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and there have been a few kinks to work out but I love this computer, I watch a lot of movies on it as the display is gorgeous and it syncs my Ipod and IPhone perfectly.

#4. 80GB Sony Playstation 3 – My initial intention was not to purchase a PS3 but a good Blu-ray player instead. I did a good amount of research and found out that most of the players that I wanted ran about $299 and scored either on par with or below the player that the PS3 included. I decided to pony up the extra $100 and walk away with an 80GB hard drive and a new gaming system. I sold my Wii with all of the games for $200 to soften the blow a little bit. I bought it at Best Buy and purchased Assassin’s Creed and GTA 4 along with Goodfellas and The 40 Year Old Virgin on Blu-ray. I had to take it back one week later as the system stopped recognizing Blu ray discs which I’ve heard has happened to quite a few people. I’ve had the new unit for a year now and have been really happy with it. I have about ten games that I really like including, Madden 2010, Little Big Planet and Fight Night Round 4 and have started a decent collection of Blu-ray discs. I am upset that Sony has been unable to work out a deal with Netflix to allow me to stream movies on my flat screen through the PS3 (a la Xbox 360) and that I can no longer watch Hulu through my PS3 but this being the first PlayStation that I have ever owned I have to say that I’m pretty happy with it.

#5 – Sony DSC-H2O 10 Mega-pixel Digital Camera – When I started this blog I realized that the upgraded camera on the IPhone 3GS wouldn’t be sufficient and that I needed to step my game up a little. I recognize Last Night’s Dinner (operated by Jennifer Hess) as the finest food photography blog in the world. I decided that whatever camera Jennifer was using I would use as well. Lucky for me she told me she was using this and I didn’t have to splurge for DSLR as this cost me somewhere around $350 with an 8GB memory stick at Best Buy. It’s small enough, relatively quick and takes beautiful photos when the lighting is right.