November 26, 2010

Black Friday 2010

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Today is Black Friday in the U.S., the last Friday of the month, the Friday right after our Thanksgiving. Traditionally, it’s the launch of the Christmas holiday shopping season.

It’s called “black Friday” because it’s the first day of the entire year that retailers actually turn a profit. Christmas isn’t really a religious holiday, it’s a celebration of our ability to spend money and buy stuff. It’s emotional. It’s guilt-driven. But it’s good for the economy, so most folks generally forget about why Christmas is celebrated, and shop, shop, shop!

Caving into the shopping tradition, I’m going to cough up some Wambooli Shopping Ideas for your high tech holiday season. These are all things that I’ve bought myself. Not one thing is a wanna-have or something that a manufacturer has given me in return for an endorsement. I’ve paid for all this stuff.

Gamecom Headset

This is the gaming headset I use. It’s comfy because it has big cans. (No “big cans” jokes here.) It also has a nice, long cord so I’m not always up so close to the monitor.

Logitech G35 Gaming Headset

I bought this gaming headset for my son Jeremiah. He is an ace at games, I mean he really plays well. (He’s often accused of being a hacker. He’s that good.) Unlike my gaming headset, this one features 7.1 surround sound. It pulls off that feat by having three (yes, three), speakers in each can. The effect is very realistic.

The microphone also has voice distortion and other effects, which means you can sound like a robot, an elf, or even Satan when you’re gaming. Quick-set buttons on the left can help you adjust the headset’s features. It’s really solid, but if you’re serious about gaming it’s worth the high price.

Logitech G500 Programmable Gaming Mouse

Like the Logitech headset, I bought this gaming mouse for Jeremiah. It’s programmable, comes with little weighs so that you can balance the mouse, plus it has lots of handy buttons. Jeremiah uses the controls in-game often as he switches between different configurations. He’s very pleased and, once again, he’s really good at gaming so he would know.

HP 1TB External USB Backup Drive

This is my new, favorite external hard drive. I’ve purchased one for each of my computers. I prefer the HP model over the Western Digital because HP doesn’t junk up the hard drive firmware with non-removeable software. Sure, HP does add it’s own junk to the drive, but you don’t have to install it and it’s easily erased.

IO Gear Bluetooth USB Adapter

It suddenly dawned on me that I had too many external, wireless gizmos for my laptop. Each had its own adapter, and I was running out of USB ports. The solution was to throw all of them out and go Bluetooth.

I was amazed that this Bluetooth adapter cost about $12. It opens up a whole universe of peripheral devices: keypads, mice, printers, and other gizmos, none of which now need any extra adapters on my limited (only 3 USB ports) laptop.

Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000

My first Bluetooth purchase for my laptop was this Microsoft Bluetooth mouse. Where they get the number “5000” is beyond me. What is it with the computer industry and numbers anyway? Why not call the mouse “Little Blue” or something sexy? Anyway.

The nice thing about this mouse is that it has two tiny buttons on its bottom. One turns the thing on. The other button activates the “find me” feature in Bluetooth. That feature is really important for connecting Bluetooth peripherals.

The only drawback to the Microsoft Mouse 5000 Whatever is that it has a sleep mode. That’s good for saving battery life, but it also means that after a period of inactivity the mouse is useless. So you have to click the mouse button to wake it up and use it again. That costs a mere two seconds, but such delays do seem like an eternity in the computer world.

Beyond these gizmos, I could recommend a slew of phones! But those tend to be more expensive than even the most-price item here. Again, I’m not out to be an online computer store; I’m just sharing those techy things I’ve purchased in the last year that I’ve really enjoyed and don’t mind recommending.

3 Comments

  1. I’ve spent basically every penny I own on Steam the last couple of days. Completely ridiculous deals every day since last Friday through this Monday.

    Comment by gamerguy473 — November 26, 2010 @ 10:48 am

  2. I don’t want to look.

    Comment by admin — November 26, 2010 @ 10:52 am

  3. I bought 70$ worth of games for 8$
    HELP ME I CAN’T STOP BUYING THINGS

    Comment by gamerguy473 — November 26, 2010 @ 6:42 pm

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