SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technology is now an integral part of our everyday lives, and it’s fast becoming an integral part of our everyday conversations. These days, everyone is talking tech. Your five-year-old nephew wants an iPad, your 90-year-old grandmother is raving about her Nintendo Wii, and practically everyone in between wants the thinnest, fastest laptop or phone on the planet.
For the editors of PCWorld, daily conversations have centered around technology for 28 years. And once a year, those conversations reach a boiling point. It’s all part of the madness involved in producing PCWorld’s 100 Best Products of the Year feature.
It goes like this, annually: The PCWorld editorial staff huddles together in a room, makes a big list of the best tech they've seen in the past 12 months, and argues passionately about whether a great HDTV set should outrank a great e-reader. After the fur stops flying, they rank all the gear on the list from 1-100.
“It's not an easygoing process,” notes PCWorld Senior Editor, Tim Moynihan, who took lead editing duties on this year’s feature. “Two staffers are still not talking to each other due to a controversial wireless router ranking in 2007.”
Topping PCWorld’s list this year is the high-speed backbone for many of today’s hottest phones, tablets, and other connected devices: Verizon’s 4G LTE wireless network, which provides data speeds that rival wired broadband connections. The Top 10 also includes two of Apple’s latest devices: the MacBook Air at number two and the iPad 2 at number six. Intel’s powerful, energy-efficient Sandy Bridge CPUs, Samsung’s Galaxy S II Android smartphone, and Microsoft’s movement-controlled Kinect gaming system round out the top 5. See if your favorite product made the 100: http://www.pcworld.com/100best
There are also some futuristic products on the list that you probably haven’t heard of before. In at 85 is the Smartfish ErgoMotion Keyboard, which moves robotically under your typing fingers to guard against repetitive stress injuries. The number 98 Sony DEV-5 HD Video Binoculars look like something out of Star Wars, shooting high-definition 2D and 3D video and capturing your location via GPS. From top to bottom, the list is chock-full of products bound to fog up the glasses of any technology fanatic.
This year, the 100 Best Products story features a newly designed interactive grid on PCWorld.com, which showcases images for all 100 products at a glance. Mousing over each product brings up detailed information about why it was selected. Visitors will also be able to sort the list as they see fit, as they can reveal or hide specific product categories to highlight what interests them most.
“PCWorld’s 100 Best Products is our favorite project of the year,” commented Steve Fox, PCWorld VP/Editorial Director. “It gives us a chance to reflect on the year that was in tech, and realize how much cool stuff is out there for everyone to explore.”
The 100 Best Products of 2001 will be featured on PCWorld.com through early November and hit newsstands as the cover story of the December 2011 issue.
About PCWorld
PCWorld Communications publishes PCWorld.com, PCWorld Magazine, and is home to PCWorld Labs. PCWorld attracts more than 15 million unique website visitors (Comscore) and reaches more than 4.6 million magazine readers in an average month (IntelliQuest). PCWorld Communications is a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading technology media, events, and research company.
Additional information about PCWorld is available at http://www.pcworld.com
All product and company names are trademarks of PCWorld Communications.
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