Jcal!

John Callaham: FiringSquad News Editor

Microsoft Points and Wii Points cards ($20 each)
If your pals own an Xbox 360 or are even lucky enough to get a Nintendo Wii, this is the perfect gift to give them outside of getting games for those consoles. The cards can be bought at retail stores for $20 which gets you 1600 Microsoft points or 2000 Wii points. Currently you can only use Wii points to download some classic Nintendo, Sega and Hudson games from the Virtual Store but Microsoft points for the Xbox 360 console can be used for a lot more, including downloading themes, add-ons for games and most recently movie rentals and TV episode purchases.


Panasonic CF-W5 Toughbook $2,569
Ultra-portable notebooks may not be able to play a lot of high end PC games but if you are traveling a lot or just simply want a solid but light notebook to use at home while watching American Idol you can’t beat the ultra-portable notebooks that Panasonic has for sale. Our pick is the CF-W5 model which weighs less than 3 pounds with the battery, has a Intel Core Solo 1.2 Ghz processor, a built in DVD-RW drive, and an eight hour (estimated) battery life. If you buy the notebook direct from Panasonic’s web site you also get a free 2 GB SD Memory Card and a free upgrade to double the notebook’s memory from 512 MB to 1 GB. I’ve been using an older model and I have no complaints at all; it’s the notebook to get if you want to get a lot of attention from people at the airport.


Sprint Pantech PX-500 PC EVDO Card Free with Rebate; $60 A Month with Two Year Contract
Here’s another one for the frequent traveler. Do you hate going to a hotel that has poor WiFi access or you have to pay through the nose to use it? That problem is solved with Sprint’s EVDO wireless network which covers a large portion of the US, including most of the major metropolitan areas. Recently, Sprint has started their Rev A version of the service in a number of cities with plans to expand to the rest of their service area by the end of 2007. Basically the Rev A service offers download speeds of between 450 Kbps—850kbps and uploads of between 300 and 400 kbps. It’s still not as fast as WiFi but you are not stuck trying to find a hotspot either and that’s pretty nice. Sprint’s Pantech PX-500 PC Card is the one to get if you want to use the Rev A network; you can attack a separate booster antenna if you want to get better reception (although you will likely not need it). If you sign a 2 year contract with Sprint you get the card free with a $49.99 rebate deal and a flat price of just $60 a month for the service. Best of all, Sprint truly offers unlimited downloads regardless of how much you use the service; Verizon which has a similar EVDO network that cuts off their “unlimited” service after you download more than 5 GB a month.


Gamefly Gift Subscription For Six Months $131.70
With a lot of Xbox 360 and PS3 games costing $60 or more to buy and even new Nintendo Wii games costing $50 no matter how little content they might have (Excite Truck, I’m looking at you) buying games is an expensive proposition. Enter Gamefly which allows people to have new console games mailed to them for the subscription price of $21.95 a month for two games out at one time. There are no late fees with this service and you can even buy used games from Gamefly at prices that are usually much lower than the stardard retail price, giving you price breaks on both sides of the equation.

Absolute DC: The New Frontier Collection $75
I love comic books and with games using more and more super hero themes it seems fair to suggest a great new collection of what was in my humble opinion one of the best super hero mini-series to come around in a long time. The New Frontier was written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke and basically takes the DC Universe back to the late 1940’s and imagines how the world of DC’s super heroes would be like without all of the many, many revamps it has received over the years along with being a look back at the very real Cold War era of the 1950s. This new Absolute hardcover collection presents the series in an oversized format and includes new story pages, annotations, behind-the-scenes sketches and a whole lot more. This series got so much attention that a direct-to-DVD animated movie is being made based on The New Frontier. Maybe Warner Brothers Interactive can get a game version going as well.