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[teg]

Also, I'm gonna' be in the market for a TV soon. I plan on finally making the jump to high-definition, but I want something that'll basically let me plug anything into it. I have consoles here that use RF input, if that's even still viable.*
I'm basically limited to what the stores have at the time, but I'd still appreciate recommendations if anyone has any.


*If not, does anyone know where I can get an original XBox RCA cable or a spare one of those RCA cables Nintendo's used for every system since the SNES?

[Joxam]

Here you go. (snes forward)
Xbox av cable.

[teg]

Actually, now that I think about it, if I get component cables for my Wii, I'll have that extra RCA cable. So that should be fine.

[Dooly]

You could also try an Xbox component cable.  I've got a similar cable (that also has plugs for the 360 and PS2/PS3) on my own Xbox, and while I've never tried it on a television that does better than 480p, it looks considerably sharper.

[TA]

Swung by a store, played with an Evo for 5 minutes.  Soon as I can figure out the finances, I'm fucking getting one.  Unless that takes long enough that something even better comes along, but I don't think it will.

I've always hated onscreen keyboards, for the difficulty of touch-typing and the loss of viewing area.  The Evo's screen is big enough though that the difficulty of typing mostly goes away, and loss of viewing area, while still a problem, is a manageable one.  If there exists a way to make the onscreen keyboard a transparent overlay that would be completely awesome.

Right now, the cost of getting an Evo for me would be X+Y-Z, where X is $199, Y is the early termination fee T-Mobile will charge me, and Z is what I can get flogging a used G1 on craigslist.  If I can make X+Y-Z get to 0, it's a done deal.

[Ziiro]

My friend at sprint tells me that Sprint has a buyback for certain phones based on age/condition, so take that into account over craigslist.

ETF for Tmobile I believe is somewhere around $150.

[teg]

You could also try an Xbox component cable.  I've got a similar cable (that also has plugs for the 360 and PS2/PS3) on my own Xbox, and while I've never tried it on a television that does better than 480p, it looks considerably sharper.

I almost exclusively use my XBox to play the Megaman Anniversary Collection. Would it make a huge difference in that case?

[Brentai]

It would probably be a detriment.  I keep a crappy TV and cable on hand for the express purpose of playing older games, because a lot of them were clearly not meant to be displayed on anything better than a composite CRT.

[Spaco]

So when the Nexus One came out, I was all excited about the new Google Maps real-time turn-by-turn navigation feature that seemed to basically turn it into a GPS alternative.  They even came out with car phone display mounts and such for using it this way and I can't really justify buying both at this time. With these new phones, I don't really see much hype around this, so is it just an assumed standard feature now that works equally well? Does the Nexus One do this better in any regard?

[Ziiro]

Google maps with voiced turn-by-turn navigation is actually a standard for android phones now. It's even on my first-gen G1 on android 1.6. (Highest version these days is 2.2)

[Disposable Ninja]

So, hey, the Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch seems like a pretty good investment so far. It works pretty well, seems to do what I want it to. Just... just don't bother downloading the driver off of the disc it comes with. Because it will stop working after one day. Download the driver off of the Wacom's website and save yourself some headache, instead.

[Joxam]

Mine was fine out of the box and I agree that its a great investment. Love it will draw a lot more when I get home.

[Rico]

I used the Nexus One GPS nav all the time when I first got it.  The directions have been pretty solid and it's fairly quick to recalculate when you're a dick to it and just keep driving your usual route.

[Kayma]

Android navigation app is wonderful. The car dock is useful for having the device at your fingertips, but is probably overpriced. When you pop the phone in, the "Car" application pops up, providing big buttons to phone, maps, etc. Also, the dock is its own speaker and microphone. I quite like it, but yeah, too expensive probably.

[TA]

I haven't used the turn-by-turn nav much.  I prefer the top-down map, even if it doesn't have GPS instructions.

[Spaco]

Went to the Sprint store today and played with an Evo for 30 minutes. I was overall very impressed with the phone and although I thought I might find it too bulky in the hand, it wasn't too bad. I could stand for it to be lighter, but it doesn't have the dense brick feeling that a Droid does, IMHO. Played around with apps and such and liked most of what I saw, although I couldn't seem to get the Google Maps navigation to show turn-by-turn instead of just satellite view.

Also, I remembered that I'm a big fan of Google Voice and one of the things I was excited about was getting an Android phone for the extra support the platform provides, which pretty much counts out getting a new iPhone unless it is just phenomenal.

So is there a Netflix app yet for Android? I know FroYo will support Java and thus probably embedded video, so that'll be a fix, but I thought I heard of it coming to either Android and/or iPhone soon. Also looking forward to Hulu, but I'm guessing it'll be a while before Sprint updates to 2.2 after it's release.

4G network was accessible and everything loaded with less than a second or two wait time, including downloading apps. On-screen keyboard was hit or miss, but I have no experience with smartphone virtual keyboards and I'm assuming I'll get better with practice.

So I'm really still pretty bothered about what I've been reading about the battery lives, but I've also heard it's somewhat acceptable with apps and smart energy consumption management. Still, if there was an Android alternative that had the features I'm looking for and had a decent battery life, I'd be all over that thing. Which leads me to my current stance- waiting a month and seeing how things pan out. The iPhone will start to have user reviews by then, the Evo should have been tested enough to get an accurate reading on the pros and cons, and Verizon seems to be coming out with possibly two! Droid models in July, with at least one running Android and including dual cameras and a slider keyboard. Downside to going with a Verizon phone would still be the lack of 4G. =(