The votes have been counted and Engadget has published its Gadget Of The Year Awards. There are some interesting differences between the readers’ choice awards and Engadget’s own picks, which suggests the power of the online Mac community – typically if Apple makes something in any of the categories, the readers overwhelmingly voted for it while Engadget tended to go for non-Apple kit – but it’s nice to see Sony get a well-deserved kicking from readers and writers alike for its inept attempts to take on the iPod.

Don’t write off Sony just yet, though. The firm has now created a dedicated iPod-killer division that will grow to around 400 employees, and its aim is to return Sony to the top of the digital media tree. Elsewhere pundits are predicting that if 2004 was the year of the iPod, 2005 will be the year of the PlayStation Portable: half the price of an iPod, but with video and audio playback, wi-fi connectivity and of course, games.