Leo LaPorte’s 2005 Gadget Guide
Review

Leo LaPorte’s 2005 Gadget Guide
Leo LaPorte and Michael Miller
Que Publishing
www.quepublishing.com
US $24.99

MyMac book reviewers receive a steady stream of Mac-related books for review; the local UPS driver could find the way to my house in in the most Stygian gloom.

Most publishers generally do a creditable job of of publishing books that have at least a fighting chance of selling enough copies to recoup their publishing costs, even if the author gets little for his toil. Accordingly, most books that I review are at least good; very few deserve bad notices.

Well, it’s time to add another mark to the “Bad Notices™” list.

Leo LaPorte’s 2005 Gadget Guide is an ill-disguised attempt to separate you from $24.99 ($35.00 for you north of the border residents). Don’t let Leo’s smiling mug on the cover fool you; the 2005 Gadget Guide appears to be little more than a collection of warmed-over press releases and glossy photos of new and improved gadgets that’s targeted at wannabe geeks.

The book does cover a wide range of gadgets; computer gadgets, portable gadgets, digital photography gadgets, home movie gadgets, telephone gadgets, etc. Sorry, no kitchen or garden gadgets in this edition. But each category has several subcategories, with each subcategory discussing four to six gadgets over the same number of pages. Some gadgets costing as much as several hundred dollars get one or two short paragraphs.

I have to wonder why some of the products mentioned were included. No sane person would buy a 3 kilobuck Sony DCR-VX2100 digital videocam after reading a favorable 3/4 page review that says little more than some quoting some specs.

If you are in the market for a gadget, take the $25 you save from not buying this book, and add it to your gadget budget. You’ll get more for your dollar.

MyMac rating 2 out of 5