Smarthome has some new holiday season offers just for our readers.
First up is 10% off of select Bose products including Bose headphones, the iPod SoundDock portable music system, and the Lifestyle home theater systems. Valid until 1/17/09.
Also, you’ll get $5 off if you spend over $30 and use Google Checkout (and that’s on any Smarthome order, not just the Bose products).
Happy shopping!
Buy Now!
This is kinda interesting, but only somewhat. Western Digital has entered the media player game, but in a limited fashion. This box, the TV HD Media Player, takes your USB stick/hard drive and outputs the content on those USB devices via HDMI to your TV @ 1080p.
The price is decent, but for the same or a bit more, you can get into the Media Center game in a bigger way. There is a plethora of media players you can get, including Mvix, Neuros, and quite a few other open source ones.
Price: $99.00
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Epson recently released their WorkForce line of ink jet printers and we took the flagship all-in-one WorkForce 600 for a test run. We discovered a very full-featured, high performing, affordable printer for home and/or small businesses, with the particularly attractive feature of being wireless.
Straight out of the box, the Epson WorkForce 600 printer immediately impressed with its sleek, all black design and curvy lines. Its base footprint is approximately 15% wider and longer than a legal sheet (11″ x 14″) which is about as small as they can squeeze it considering that it has an 11×14 flatbed scanner.
…
Review: Epson WorkForce 600 Multipurpose All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/CopierRead More »
Mvix has a new NAS box on the market. The MvixBOX WDN-2000 is a 2 drive box that can 2 1TB drives either in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration (either 1 or 2TB net storage). That’s a lot of storage.
But that’s barely the start of it. The MvixBOX sits on your network and offers up network storage via CIFS, AFP, NFS, & WebDev protocols over a GB NIC. You can drag and drop files to your MvixBOX using your computer, and access it in a myriad of ways.
The MvxiBOX comes with an Apache web server, as well as PHP and MySQL capabilities, so you can run a little home website if you wanted.
Price: $289.99 (without drives)
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
For all of you Home Automation junkies out there, Smarthome, the Home Automation Superstore, is offering free shipping on all orders over $200. That’s it. Get shopping now. No idea when this deal runs out.
If you’ve got gadgets that demand batteries, then chances are you’ve got batteries all over the house, and you just don’t know how much juice (aka charge) they’ve got left in them. So instead of prying open that gadget to stick a bunch of batteries in there to see if they work, which is a lot of time-consuming trial and error, not to mention not knowing which ones are really still charged, get your hands on the inexpensive IOGEAR JuiceMeter.
The JuiceMeter tests AA, AAA, C, D, N, and even 9 volt batteries. Portable enough to keep on your keychain and very simple to use.
Price: $13.62
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
In our time of higher energy and household costs, it’s a good idea to monitor those costs closely and see where we can cut back, not to mention that saving energy is just a good, green practice. For example, Kill-a-Watt has a number of products to directly monitor whatever is plugged into it, but how do you monitor usage in your entire house?
TED, The Energy Detective, is a real-time, electricity monitor. TED monitors your energy usage and displays the info in a simple, LCD display. It even jacks into your PC and lets you monitor historical usage with a custom software app (additional). It’s near real-time, with no more than a 2-second delay between events and reporting, and it updates every second.
So that your entire house is monitored, TED has to be installed directly into your home’s power circuits, so you’ll either need to be very familiar with electrical systems or hire an electrician for the 15 minute install. TED has a few different models. The base model (TED1000) is about $140 and the TED Model 1001 has a USB interface.
Price: TED 1000: $140, TED 1001: $145, TED Dynamics software: $45
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
A few years ago we ran an article about the future of 3D printing, and how it could eventually end up as a consumer-grade possibility. Price-wise, this may still be restricted to small businesses at best, but 3D printing is a reality today.
Enter the Alaris 30 by Objet, an Israeli company that specializes in photopolymer jetting. Quite a mouthful, but it’s the heart of what makes 3D printing possible. The Alaris 30 is geared towards creating highly accurate prototypes, at 600 x 600 dpi, 28u layer thicknesses, and up to 11.5 x 7.7 x 5.9 inches in size.
…
Objet’s Alaris 30 Printer – the latest in 3-D PrintingRead More »
This nice, compact device gives you multiple (3) surge-protected power outlets plus the ever needed USB power outlets (2). The Belkin mini surge protector is inexpensive and travels well. It rotates 360° with four lockable positions to fit any outlet.
The surge protector is good to 918 Joules with a max spike current of 36,000A. Not too shabby.
Price: $19.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Woot! Another alarm clock to add to our collection. This one appeals to the kid in us all. When the ‘alarm’ goes off, this clock pounds its fists and opens its mouth to wake your sleeping *#$ up right away.
It starts off timidly, but if you don’t get to the snooze button quickly enough, then the ‘tantrum’ gets into full swing. Love it.
Price: $49.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
