Down the Dumper: Plucky TomTom and Sky+HD crushed under Apple and Microsoft's jackboots
Tune up your sympathetic violin and get your Super Tear-Soaking Tissues at the ready, because it's time to wave farewell to the tech that didn't make it through to the Greatest Gadget final.
Tune up your sympathetic violin and whip out your Super Tear-Soaking Tissues: the poor little TomTom and Sky+HD have been splatted, ground into dust and otherwise traduced by the monolithic might of the iPhone and the Xbox 360.
The Greatest Gadget semi-finals saw none of the nail-biting drama of previous rounds. These were two sound thrashings, brutally administered by proven winners.
We never expected the TomTom to travel so far, but the British tech public have taken the little sat-nav to their hearts (and cars), guiding it past two cornerstones of Apple design -- the MacBook Pro and the iMac -- before crashing out, swept off the road to glory by Apple's juggernaut.
The TomTom earned a hugely respectable 38 per cent, and we weep for the plucky little fella.
While Sky+HD is perhaps a more muscular contender, with more than 10 million UK households having Sky, nevertheless it did well to fend off two world-famous Apple products itself, the hot new iPad and the battle-scarred iPod classic.
Its contribution to the nation's telly-watching wasn't quite enough to see it past a gaming giant though, with the Xbox 360 outcoring it 68 per cent to 32 in the vote.
The iPhone and 360 advance to the final, two vast titans smashing moon-sized chunks off each other in a galactic contest for gadget supremacy. Vote for your favourite here.
- Remember, every time you vote, you'll be entered into a draw to win an Arcam rCube, a BlackBerry Bold 9700, a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and a MiFi from Three, or one of ten Idapt i4 multi-gadget chargers.