Extra Extra: Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide is on sale

(Click to enlarge.)

It may be a tad early to start your holiday shopping, but there’s a good chance you’ve at least been thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a big-ticket gift—like a new TV or home theater—in mind for a while now, but are putting off the purchase till November or December. If it’s sales you’re waiting for, you probably know what you want and how much you’re willing to pay. On the other hand, you might just a teeny bit leery of throwing so much cash at something you know very little about. Which is better: a plasma or LCD TV? Should you upgrade to a Blu-ray player or stick with standard-def DVDs?

If you find yourself in need of expert advice, consider the newest edition of the Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide. Inside you’ll find a wealth of information on everything from televisions and computers to smart phones, GPS units, and much more. For each product, the Consumer Reports editors walk you through the basics, explaining what’s available, which features matter, brand profiles, and offering tried-and-true shopping tips.

In addition to product information, the guide offers advice on how to shop smarter, including:

• Netting the best deals online, and protecting yourself when you shop on the Web


• When to repair and when to replace a broken item


• How to haggle effectively


• Finding the best electronics retailer based on our comprehensive annual survey


• How to save—and what to be wary of—with refurbished or open-box products on store shelves


• Where to get free office software, free computer security programs, and more useful freeware

Ratings: Laptops, Desktops, and Netbooks

If you're in the market for a computer (desktop or portable), check out our latest Ratings of desktop computers, laptops and netbooks. We've got recommendations for 13 laptops, three netbooks, and 12 desktops. (Ratings and Recommendations are available to subscibers.)

Both major commercial operating systems are slated for a change this fall. Apple plans to release its OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, in September. Current Leopard users will be able to upgrade for $29. There will also be also a five-license family version for $49.

Snow Leopard will use 6GB less hard drive space than the previous version, the company said.

Microsoft will release the new Windows 7 on October 22. The company says it's still working on upgrade programs with computer manufacturers and retailers. If you're on the fence about when to buy a new PC, it might be worth holding off until we learn more about upgrade options. —Donna Tapellini

Vizio: The new top-selling LCD TV brand—and a fairly reliable one, too

Looking for further evidence that the economy has even big-screen TV buyers pinching their pennies? According to market research firm iSuppli,  budget-conscious consumers have made Vizio the top-selling brand of LCD TV in North America for the first quarter of 2009.

Vizio made its mark selling sets typically priced well below comparable sets from major brands such as Samsung and Sony. More recently, the company has offered step-up models with features such as 120Hz refresh rates and sophisticated video-processing circuitry, also at prices well below its major-brand competitors. For example, iSuppli says, a 40/42-inch Vizio with 120Hz technology costs about $1,000; that’s about $400 less than a similar model from Samsung or Sony.

Vizios, sold at mass-market retailers such as Walmart and Costco, often do well in our Ratings of LCD sets (available to subscribers).

However, comments to a 2008 blog on the brand, as well as our discussion board on LCD TVs, include many complaints about the reliability of the brand’s sets, particularly after its one-year in-house repair warranty has expired. Some also complained about Vizio’s customer service.

Apple's bloating batteries

With all those highly-publicized recalls of laptop batteries, we had yet to have an incident with any of the hundreds of laptops passing through our labs. Until now.

One of our engineers noticed that the two-year-old Apple MacBook Pro, which had been sitting unused and disconnected for a few months appeared to be lifting itself off the shelf! Sure enough, an inspection showed that its normally-flat-sided battery had gotten "fat" due to the expansion of one or more cells in its lithium-ion battery pack. (Click on the picture at right for a closer look.) There was no evidence of overheating or electrical trauma, just the plumping. Even the battery-condition meter on the side still indicated a partial charge.

We checked online, and this battery was NOT within the range of serial numbers included in the official Apple "battery exchange program" (now closed) of a couple years ago. But we also found other MacBook Pro owners' online complaints about expanding batteries; some hinted at a "silent recall" by Apple. We finally found this battery update notice (http://www.apple.com/support/macbook_macbookpro/batteryupdate) recommending a software update and offering a free replacement battery to MacBook and MacBook Pro owners whose batteries had "visibly deformed."

Extended warranties: Trade group predicts a drop in sales

A smaller proportion of consumers are expected to buy extended warranties for electronics items in the months to come compared with the recent past.

That's not wishful thinking from Consumer Reports, which has long recommended against these add-on warranties as typically unnecessary and overpriced. It's a prediction from the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade group that represents electronics manufacturers and a number of retailers, too.

In a keynote address to the Retail Vision conference, Tim Herbert, the CEA's senior director for market research, said the association predicts that 16 percent of U.S. households will buy or consider buying an extended warranty when purchasing electronics items in the coming 12 months. That's less than half the 36 percent that bought or considered such warranties for electronics items in the year prior to the study's release.

In an interview with Channel Web, a business website, Herbert is quoted as saying the drop is "a testimony to the durability of electronic devices. For the price, these products last a very long time and in the majority of cases they will operate with little or no problems for their useful life." In general, Consumer Reports' repair histories for major electronics goods support that view, showing failure rates in the first few years of life that are typically quite modest; for example, only about 3 percent of flat-panel TV sets fail within the first three years.