10. The Herman Miller Embody Chair
It may not have an accelerometer or an OLED or lasers or image-stabilization. You can't even plug it in to an electric socket, but the Herman Miller Embody chair has got its back covered with meticulous engineering.
The thing is adjustable to Asperger's levels of obsession; controls exist to cradle your lumbar, hips and neck. Plus the multilayered seat absorbs even the most microscopic shifts in weight, cupping your derriere no matter how much you move. It's the greatest breakthrough in ass-to-comfort technology.9. Monster Beats by Dre
When was the last time you strapped on a set of noise-canceling headphones, turned on some "Straight Outta Compton," and got smacked in the head by deep, resonant bass? Never? That's because (until recently) no set of noise-canceling cans could bring the low-end thump. Leave it to collaboration between the masters of sound at Monster Cable and the meticulous master of hip-hop, Dr. Dre, to produce a set of headphones like the Beats.
These black and red over-the-ear 'phones feature a customized 40mm driver and a souped-up digital amplifier that sends bass deeper than the Mariana Trench directly into your cabeza.8. 2010 Honda Insight
Honda's hybrid has pedigree — the Insight has been around since 1999 — but Toyota's goofy-looking Prius has been the go-to car for smug environmental apologists. That's about to change. The 2010 Insight will bring great mileage to the masses with an expected selling price of $18,500 — a full $3,500 less than the entry-level Prius.
But cheapness alone isn't enough to earn a car a place in our top 10 lineup. The 2010 Insight also features a dashboard display straight out of Battlestar Galactica, making heavy use of ambient cues to keep your right foot light on the go-pedal.In fact, the only thing we don't like is the shell. The Prius was a hit partly because it looked so different on the road. The Insight looks almost exactly the same as Toyota's green-mobile. But then, maybe that's the point.
7. Kodak Zi6
2008 saw a rash of cheap, YouTube-ready camcorders that could be had for less than a couple of hundred bucks. Mostly, these one-shot wonders were crap. Not the Zi6. Infused with Kodak imaging pedigree, this pleasantly plump handheld shoots with sharper detail and richer color than any other cam of its ilk. (The popular Flip Mino HD is prettier, but its videos look far worse.) Couple that with a dead-simple setup and you have to wonder why anyone would shell out thousands of dollars for a camcorder that will almost undoubtedly be used to upload vacation videos to the web.
6. Mitsubishi LaserVueAs with any tech involving lasers, you'll need to have a Bond-villain-size bank account to afford it. But once you've dropped your $7,000 and got it back to your underground lair, you'll see what all the fuss was about. The Mitsubishi LaserVue has twice as much color as any other TV due to the lasers providing the light. The size of the rear-projection TV is equally ambitious: Sizes start at a whopping 50 inches.
But unlike a real Bond villain, you won't be destroying the world; you'll be saving it. The LaserVue uses a third less power than rival sets and the lasers inside are long-lasting. Besides, what else do you need to know? It has freakkin' lasers!
5. Roku Netflix Set-Top Box
Back in May, we described the Roku Netflix box as "Just Shy of Totally Amazing," and it's easy to see why. The tiny, plain-looking box sits next to your TV and gives you on-demand access to thousands of movies. You have to be a Netflix subscriber, but if you are, you can watch as many Hollywood blockbusters as you can take.
The $100 box keeps getting better, too, with HD movies expected soon. In fact, with all the big players (Microsoft, Hulu) racing to get onto your TV via the internet, it seems the geek-friendly DVD-by-mail company was planning this right from the beginning.4. Chumby Internet Device
The Chumby brought the friendlier face of the internet into our homes, and it did it while disguised as a teddy bear for the 21st century. It took the concept of the widget and turned it into an easy-to-use hub for home entertainment.
The $180 touch screen and leather pet is a gateway to streaming-music services, weather reports, news and video. Better still, the soft little box is based on Linux, so you can bend Chumby to your will, serving up anything it can suck in via its Wi-Fi connection. As a bonus, you can even hook up an iPod. Time to nail shut the pet door and decommission the dog.3. Nokia E71
Manufacturers squeezed off a lot of cell phones in 2008. But all of them lacked something, but the E71 is different. The gorgeously designed handset also comes with a fully developed operating system (replete with a dedicated user community), two separate home screens, a QWERTY keyboard where touch typing was not some half-remembered fever dream, plus a battery life that could be measured in days, not hours. Any wonder why we ditched our iPhone and picked up one of these babies.
2. Nikon D90In 2008, Nikon staged a comeback worthy of Rocky Balboa. With the new flagship, full-frame D3, the see-in-the-dark D700 and the brand-new medium-format wannabe D3X, Nikon has been roundly kicking arch-rival Canon's butt.
The biggest surprise, though, was the D90, the first digital SLR to shoot video — and high-def, 720p video to boot. The advantage of relatively cheap, interchangeable SLR lenses together with a Hollywood-style shallow focus not available on even high-end consumer camcorders made the Nikon a must-have for budget movie makers. And that's before we even get to the 12.3-megapixel still images it takes. Sure, Canon answered back with its own hi-def, 1080p camera, the 5D MkII, but Canon's model costs almost three times as much.
1. MSI Wind
Netbooks: Was there a PC maker (with the exception of Apple) that resisted cultivating one of these tiny titans in 2008? For the most part, the netbook "revolution" has meant a tidal wave of underpowered, mediocre plastic boxes. But it was the MSI Wind that separated itself from the chaff. Sure, we tested other netbooks that performed faster, or had prettier chassis, or came loaded with more memory.
The Wind gets the top prize for two reasons: It's an incredibly balanced rig that also happens to be highly hackable. Prompted by a dedicated (and slightly rabid) Wind user community, our own Brian Chen and Charlie Sorrell both managed to supplant the Wind's Linux-based OS with Apple's OS X on their respective machines.
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