Crave

He's not just wearing it to be jolly. He always dresses like this.

(Credit: Matt Hickey)

If you'd have told me a year ago that late 2009 would see a new format war brewing, I would have said, "Great, I love a good format war!"

If you'd have told me it would be an e-book format war, though, I might have laughed at you and made fun of your stupid Christmas sweater. Because a year ago the Kindle was the only game in town, and by the looks of it you shop at the Mervyns outlet.

This week we got our hands on the Nook, the tight little e-book reader from Barnes & Noble that's aimed squarely at Amazon's popular Kindle. We also saw the first demo of the controversial JooJoo from TechCrunch Fusion Garage. It's not technically a dedicated e-book reader but that's one of the markets it's aimed for.

In addition, the iPhone and iPod remain popular entries in the category. Like the JooJoo, they're not dedicated devices, but their e-book functionality is available to millions already.

So we'd like to know which, if any, e-book reader you, Crave readers, like best. The Kindle? Nook? JooJoo? iPhone/iPod Touch? Or maybe you just prefer old-fashioned paper? Vote in our poll.

(Credit: ABC/Wikimedia)

This week we told you about a couple of breakthroughs in bionics, including a Luke Skywalker-like artificial hand controlled by the brain, and a bionic larynx that uses a speech synthesizer to let people who've had their voice boxes removed speak more realistically. Those are both awesome.

They also hint that we may be on the threshold of a new wave of bionic devices that will boost the quality of life for people around the world. But what's next? What bionic science will most wow us in coming years?

Vote in our poll, and be sure to leave a comment in our TalkBack section telling us what sort of bionic feats you'd like to see accomplished.

Will this be you the day after Thanksgiving?

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

Black Friday is my favorite day of the year--not just because retailers and manufacturers are falling over each other to try to nab my holiday dollars, but because the rush at the big-box stores is hilariously insane.

Working at a Best Buy-like store for several years, I made sure to take full advantage of my tryptophan-induced coma so I'd be ready to go for the 16-hour workday ahead. In the end I was always exhausted, but also happy, as I'd helped many people get the good deals they were looking for.

We've featured quite a few Black Friday deals in the last few days as they trickle out, and we're sure many of our Crave readers are gearing up for the Super Bowl of gadget buying. So we'd like to know: what, exactly, is your strategy for tackling Black Friday this year?

Vote in our poll, and if you're planning to mark the day in a way we didn't cover, be sure to let us know in the Talkback section below.

My dream evening circa 1999.

(Credit: Matt Hickey)

So we've all heard that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released Tuesday, broke all kinds of sales records this week and is being touted as the biggest video game release of all time. But that's coming at the same time that we get word of some less-than-good data from The NPD Group: the video game industry was down a staggering 19 percent in sales in October.

Some say the much-anticipated Modern Warfare 2 could give the industry a boost, but it might not be enough.

As a self-proclaimed influential tech journalist and longstanding pundit of the absolute highest caliber, I've come up with a list of ideas that gamemakers might want to use to prop up their sagging market. These are good ideas and I'm offering them to the industry for free. And that's because I'm a very nice guy.

What do you think, readers? How can the game industry make sure it doesn't see a repeat of October's performance? Vote in our poll.

A new option: the Eris.

(Credit: Verizon)

Verizon on Friday is getting the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris, a duo of high-end Android handsets. These are the first next-gen handsets the VZN has offered, and its subscribers are understandably happy about that.

And it's about time. AT&T has offered Apple's iPhone for more than two years. Sprint users have been enjoying the Palm Pre for a while and can also opt for the HTC Hero, a sibling of Verizon's Eris. T-Mobile users have had access to Android devices for more than a year.

So why is Verizon so far behind the other carriers in offering these awesome new phones? Vote in our poll. And if you think of a reason we didn't mention, be sure to share it in our TalkBack section below.

Is this camera EVIL?

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Words have always been considered powerful, mystical things--the story of the Golem is merely one example that pops into mind--but they take on more prosaic power when it comes to search engine optimization.

While there are lots of reasons why SEO is important from a content provider standpoint, as a writer/editor I really only care about one thing: will people be able to find a particular product review when they search for it?

There are just some categories that defy consensus; I still don't know what to call all those camcorders that compete with the pioneering Flip, ending up with unsatisfactory choices like "mini camcorders" or "budget camcorders" simply because they'll turn up the right models when people search.

So I'm taking a different approach for cameras like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1, Olympus E-P1 and their ilk.

Frankly, I hate all the possible category descriptions. While "EVIL" (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) is the catchiest, it seems to have some Sony-related roots (pause here to appreciate that a search on "Sony" and "evil" brings up rootkit memories), not all of these cameras have or will have EVFs.

They started their lives referred to as "hybrid" cameras, but they're not really hybrids--they don't really mix different species of products. And at this point "hybrid" has really become associated with cars.

I kind of like Mirrorless Interchangeable-Lens Camera, and think it most accurately reflects the category, but "MILC" is too precious for me. Interchangeable-lens camera seems to be the most popular, and I've tentatively settled on that. But is it too hard to search on?

Some simply refer to them as Micro Four Thirds (MFT) cameras, which works for now since all of the current models adhere to the MFT standard. But that won't be true forever--or even for the near future, unless Samsung surprises us. And while "system cameras" may accurately reflect what they are, it doesn't really distinguish them from SLRs, which are the original system cameras

So I ask you: please vote on what we should call them. And if you have any better ideas, leave 'em in the comments.

Over the weekend, CNET ran an unscientific poll inquiring about the level of difficulty in your Windows 7 upgrade experience, and the response we received was undoubtedly strong. Nearly 11,000 people voted, and more than 50 percent of you said your Windows 7 upgrade experience was as easy as pie. (And who doesn't love pie?)

We asked people to rate their upgrade experience from one to five, with one being the easiest and five being the hardest. A total of 5,492 people evaluated the upgrade experience as a one, but the second-most popular answer, at 16 percent, was five, indicating an unnecessarily hard upgrade. Sticking with the pie analogy, that's basically having to do all the cleaning up without getting to eat any.

The third-most popular answer was two, indicating a fairly easy but not flawless upgrade process for 14 percent of voters. The three answer garnered 8 percent of the vote, with 927 votes, and four scored 809 votes, for 7 percent.

Combining the two extremes, then, we can see that more than two-thirds of voters said upgrading was easy or fairly easy, while less than a quarter said the process was hard or unnecessarily difficult. Compared to what most people remember from their Vista experience, that's a dramatic, if anecdotal, change.

If you're planning on upgrading but haven't yet, there are several tools and links that Microsoft has provided to make the change easier. Microsoft has published guides to upgrading from XP to Windows 7 and from Vista to Windows 7, and it has also rounded up its upgrade and installation FAQs onto one convenient page.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is a useful tool for evaluating your current hardware situation, and it gives you a "Windows experience" rating so you can decide whether it can handle Windows 7 before you buy. Windows Easy Transfer will help most users migrate their files and settings, though there have been reports of not all settings getting moved smoothly. It won't migrate programs.

Last weekend we ran a casual, unscientific poll asking what your plans were for Windows 7. It closed Monday morning, but because of the overwhelming response, we decided to reopen it until today. Out of the 13,108 readers who voted, 59 percent (7,669) of you said that you were going to upgrade from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7.

So, for those of you who are upgrading an older version of Windows to Windows 7 this weekend, we'd like you to rank your experience for us in a new poll posted below. Please share both your horror stories and your tales of easy installation in the comments. The new poll will close Monday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time.

The remaining results from previous poll were mostly unsurprising. Fourteen percent, or 1,856 voters, said that they were planning on buying a new computer with Windows 7 already installed. Slightly more of you, 2,146 respondents (16 percent), said they had no plans to change computers or upgrade at the moment. A small but not insignificant percentage, 865 voters, said that they were going to switch to a Mac or a Linux computer.

After we reopened the poll on Monday afternoon, we added two questions by popular demand. Less than one percent of voters said they were going to switch from a Mac or Linux computer to Windows 7, while 454 people (3 percent) said that they already had a Mac or Linux computer and were planning on also using Windows 7.

What these numbers confirmed is that a majority of current Windows users will be upgrading current systems, meaning that most people not only believe that their hardware can adequately run Windows 7, but also that they can comfortably perform the upgrade themselves. However, sizable minorities will either be buying Windows 7 fresh or ignoring it entirely, while a tiny group will be using it as an excuse to abandon ship.