School Daze!

Proud.

Like my ‘cum laude’ little brother before her (Okay. He stopped being my ‘little’ brother once he turned 18 but I still prefer to see it that way.) And me before him. My baby sister.. the last of the lot was headed away to college... In Upstate New York to be exact.

We all made the trip in different legs, Pops 2 weeks before, Moms a week before and me and the misses a couple of weekends ago, I suppose because we just had a hard time letting her go. All the while she not the least bit worried or scared (not outwardly anyway) of the journey that lay ahead of her.

We helped her moved into her dorm room which it turns out is quite different technologically of course than what I found had in my dorm room 2 decades ago.

Free internet, free cable, free phone service (what the deuce?!). Wow. The idea of a personal computer in my day believe it or not at most was an Apple Macintosh or a IIc. I had a Commodore 64 (which was never used in lieu of the computer clusters) and an early form of a shelf stereo with a tape deck… A Tape Deck!. Now kids have mini-notebooks, a variety of mp3 players, wireless networking… The works.. We didn’t even have cell phones back then. Jeez.

So, (of course), I took it upon myself to try to equip my little sister with some of the technology would help her time away at school.

My bro did her a solid and provided her with a solid laptop. An Inspiron 1501 from Dell. Cost? He wouldn’t disclose his sources, but he assured me it was cheap. *I’ve found Inspiron 1501 refurbished from $400 via Google Products.

While notebookreview.com & laptopmag.com (3 out of 5 stars) panned it for not being as capable as the more updated Inspiron 1505 or of course they’re latest line of laptops (1525 and above). Most owners appeared to love it (6 users at Cnet.com rated the 1501 an average of 9.3 out of 10).. A great basic laptop.

Moving on.

My sister.. loves to sleep. So the one order my father gave before he left was that I buy her a cheap and simple alarm clock. And he ordered me not to spend more than $10 bucks.

Now I couldn’t just do that, could I?. Would good would such a simple device be? My sister needed convergence!

To be honest. My mind was on the new iPod Nano we had just bought her a few months prior. If I could find some kind of combination, alarm clock, stereo, iPod dock thingy which are abundant on the market today, she’d be good to go. Right?

I searched up and down all the websites. When the misses literally d r a g g e d me to a home goods store near a rest stop on the way up to visit her. She found a wok @@. But I found what I thought would make a great alarm clock.

The iHome iH12BR Clock Radio for iPod. ‘Perfect!’ I thought. But my mind tugged at me to look up the reviews first. So I waited. When I arrived at her school, I whipped out the trusty laptop and looked up the reviews. I found that they were so, so. While the iH12BR worked well, reviewers reported that the sound was not so great (an average of 3 out of 5 stars).

Cnet’s bottom line is that, “While its sound isn't so impressive, the iHome iH12's simple and attractive design gives it an appeal as a budget iPod clock radio.”

Appealing? Yes. Was I happy? No.

I wanted something that would tell time, wake her up, look and sound great. I wasn’t satisfied. The thing is the more and more I looked, the more I found that I would have to spend a lot more than $80 to find a great looking, more than decent sounding device. In addition to that there were other electronics that I needed to buy as well, (a headset and camera so that she could Skype our parents whenever she got home sick and a voice recorder for her to take notes in class). I set wanted to set my budget at under $150 for everything. The other problem was that I had get back home to NY, so whatever I bought, I would have to ship it.

After spending hours perusing the internet and reading reviews, I found that I came a across varying degrees of usability. Many of these products had good looks, but so so sound or poor alarm clock capabilities, like the XtremeMac Tango Studio…
Or the iLive IC618B.

I didn't love it.

Pretty + Useless = Pretty Useless.

Sigh.

I had a dilemma. After researching this for a couple of days, I tripped across a couple of items that I did really dig but wouldn’t fit the bill.

Solution: I split the bill.

While looking at Amazon.com I happened to come across this item..
The Oregon Scientific Wireless Weather Forecaster with Temperature Display and Self-Setting Atomic Clock.. Heh, heh, heh. I’m such a dork.

This thing is kewl. I really dig the idea of looking at one device and getting a whole lot of information necessary to start my day. $43.95 (at purchase time).

Being that my sister is going to be attending college waaaaaaay upstate New York (virtually Canada), she will no doubt see more than her fair share of winter weather. So I figure, what better way to help her out, but to buy her an all-in-one device that can give her an alarm, a clock and the weather.

and

A really great sounding speaker...
The iHome IH10B AM / FM Table Radio with iPod Dock ($40).

This thing got 13 great reviews (an average of 4.9 out of 5) from others that had purchased this item on Amazon. The one thing they especially noted was it’s great sound.

That was a total 80 bones so far. Well below my spending limit.

The rest was a breeze.
The Plantronics PC Headset (Monaural) $13.99
average of 4.2 out of 5 (13 reviewers)
The Microsoft LifeCam NX-3000 for Notebooks $26.99
And a Olympus VN-4100PC Digital Voice Recorder $40 (an Amazon users average of 4 out of 5 stars). The misses actually found her a great deal as well. As noted via The Cheapskate here. While perusing the local Target we picked up a Epson Stylus CX7450 multifunction printer for $29 (plus tax). It prints, copies, and scans.

That purchase took me over budget by a few dollars, but it was a great buy.

I was happy.

And once she received all of her boxes, she was as well. Really happy.

Now if only Amazon sold GPA’s.