From Cyber Monday To Sufferin’ Succotash Saturday: Coping Skills For Media-Induced Holiday Shopping Insanity
Are you as sick as I am of media jackasses braying every third week of November about how you need to man up and get full-on Grand Theft Auto on everyone’s ass now that there’s only A WHOLE MONTH left to shop for Christmanukawanzafestivus?
In a few weeks we’re finally putting a period on the War Against Terriers Decade, and that’s as good a time as any to finally shake loose the shackles of annually-recurring end-o’-the-year Media Induced Holiday Shopping Insanity. Let’s just all agree that it’s over. Done. Finished. Old news, lame, massive phail, pwned, whatever idiot slang you kids are twitting these days.
Because let’s face it, we’re always going to scramble the week before the holidays to buy gifts for everyone on our list. It’s in our DNA. Even the Pope says we are all imperfect, and while we’ve certainly had our differences over the years (sorry Your Eminence but you’re just plain wrong about Oliver bringing a much-needed breath of fresh air to the Brady Bunch, his addition was a desperate ploy to shore up ratings at the end of the ride and frankly the fact that you rush to his defense speaks volumes), in this case we’re on the same page.
Nothing wrong with the last-minute scramble for gifts. Use it to Reach your Potential! Adrenalized panic is what jerks you forward through the slog because you know you’ve got to deliver and it’s the 11th hour and all the stores are out of the Star Wars Clone Wars Banta Neuticals every kid on your list asked for nay drew a line in the sand and stated flatly that if those giant furry polypropylene ovoids didn’t appear under the Christmanukawanzafestivus tree/bush/pole you were dead to them.
So let’s cut to the chase here. No more nonsense about “last minute shopping” — leave that to the blow-dried walking dead anchoring local news lite. From now on, we’re all about smart, targeted, calmly-deployed strategies for drama-free holiday shopping as you float like an unruffled feather above the teeming masses on the ground waving their Li’l Wayne licensed Glocks sideways and screaming over who saw this or that Fisher-Price piece of BPA-laced crap first.
RULE #1: AVOID THE DROID
You’re going to hear a lot of jibber about the Motorola Droid in the next few weeks, calling it this season’s “It Phone”. Except that “It” isn’t. The Droid may be the best Android-based smartphone yet, but that’s like saying Steven Seagall’s the best blues singer of all the martial arts movie stars who ever released an album. The iPhone’s still the best phone you can buy, but that’s beside the point. Buying someone a phone as a holiday gift is a really dumb thing to do. Think about it. “Merry Christmas! Think of me when you’re hassling with switching over to a new provider and paying the $175 early termination fee of your existing contract! And goodwill to all men!” This kind of hell should always be self-inflicted, never given as a gift.
Instead, go for something everyone would love to get for Christmas: a new laptop. This holiday season happens to the big Windows 7 rollout, with the first wave of desktops and laptops shipping with Microsoft’s new operating system already pre-installed. Windows 7 really rocks, and this is coming from a Mac user who despised Vista and XP and would rather run a Chumby than any PC loaded with those OSes. But Win7’s a horse of a different color. I really like it a lot — it’s clean, quick, stable, and a joy to use. I consider it a must for anyone still trapped in Microsoft’s older versions of Windows.
Gateway wins my vote for the biggest bang for the laptop buck this holiday shopping season with its brand new NV5302u 15.6″ notebook (this particular model is a special one Gateway sells only through Best Buy’s site and retail stores). This notebook is a real screamer and tears through applications and games, as well as it should with AMD’s Athlon II M300 dual core processor, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics, and a superb widescreen 15.6″ LED-backlit screen. When you consider it also comes with Wireless-N 802.11n WiFi, webcam, dual-layer DVD burner, HDMI output, and a 320GB hard drive, it’s even harder to believe this laptop only costs $479. Really, I looked high and low, and nobody’s offering a better deal on a laptop this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Sufferin’ Succotash Saturday than this Gateway NV5302u for $479. You want to make someone ecstatic this Christmas? Get them this Gateway.
RULE #2: GIVE THE GIFT OF SAVING MONEY
Like I have to tell you money’s tight all over. So what if I told you you could give your friend (or yourself) the power to save over a thousand dollars in 2010 and every year after? Would that make you guys happy? I gave myself this gift years ago and I’ve been saving that much and more ever since. How? By getting the Starbucks monkey off my back, that’s how.
Like everyone I know, I was dropping $5 a day on Starbucks. Most days I probably spent more, especially during that phase when I just moved to LA and discovered Frappacinos which I drank four of every day not reading the calorie count and then pretty soon thereafter my ass got too big to fit inside my car and I stopped drinking four Frappacinos a day. If you’re spending $4 a day at Starbucks, you’re actually spending $1,400 a year at Starbucks. That’s right. $1,400. A year. At Starbucks.
So I decided Starbucks was Satan which in fact it is and then I researched how to make the best possible cup of coffee at home so I could stop overpaying sullen kids wearing green aprons to do it for me while Nora Jones CDs played in the background. I read all the coffee geek sites, tested every coffee maker under the sun, and finally settled on Jura-Capresso as the best overall brand of home coffee makers. I’ve been using them ever since and have saved thousands and thousands of dollars while enjoying far better coffee, espresso, and cappuccino than I ever did from Starbucks.
Capresso’s got a brand new machine out for the holidays and I got it in for testing recently. it’s called the CoffeeTeam GS and it sells for $179. Forget anything Braun, Krups, DeLonghi, et al are selling for $200, $500, $750. Forget them all. This one’s better. A lot better. One thing I’ve learned over the years is whatever $200 coffee maker Capresso’s selling is vastly better than anything else in its class. And this new CoffeeTeam GS is their best one yet, even though they’ve dropped the price $20.
It all begins with the stainless steel conical burr grinder. This is where the magic happens. Because if you don’t grind whole beans right before you brew like Capresso does, and if you don’t grind your beans with a burr grinder instead of a whirring blade grinder which burns the beans before you ever start brewing and gives your coffee that patented burnt Starbucks taste, you simply aren’t going to get the kind of smooth, full-bodied, dare I say fine wine-like coffee that Capresso machines are known for. It’s just not going to happen.
If you don’t like making coffee at home because you’ve got a ratty old Braun or Krups, the CoffeeTeam GS will be a revelation to you. Friends who come to our house can’t believe how good our coffee is, and all I feed my Capresso are CostCo’s house beans (cross my heart). That’s how good this machine is. The thousands of dollars I save every year is just the crema on the cake. Jura-Capresso.
Rule #3: SLEEP BEATS ROCK, PAPER, AND SCISSORS PUT TOGETHER
A good night’s sleep is the most important thing in life. Nobody and I mean nobody you know, including you, is getting one tonight. Why? Because your bed’s too hot. Keeps you tossing and turning. You stick your feet outside the covers to try to cool off, and then your feet get cold, and then you toss and turn some more, and then it’s morning and you feel like you’re 80 years old.
The answer lies in space. To get the space shuttle astronauts a better night’s sleep, NASA developed a special material that equalizes a body’s temperature during sleep by absorbing heat from the body to cool you off, and then releasing it back to your skin if you get too cold. By keeping its shuttle astronauts at just the right sleep temperature, NASA was able to ensure that they all got perfect night’s of sleep every night of their mission. It didn’t make having to pee into a mylar balloon any more pleasant, but it made everything else better because a well-rested astronaut is a happy astronaut.
I’m a huge fan of Select Comfort’s Sleep Number beds. Best beds in the world at any price. I’ve written about them for years, put them on TV segments, and we bought them for every member of the family including the guest room. Once you lie down on a Sleep Number bed and dial in your own personal Sleep Number, you understand why people get so attached to these amazing high-tech beds.
So of course it’s no surprise that Select Comfort has licensed NASA’s special sleep material technology and put it in their new line of bedding. They call it In Balance, and it brings the same temperature-optimizing magic to your bed that it does for the shuttle astronauts. Keeps you cool when you’re too hot, warms you up when it’s too cold. Sleep Number In Balance products include mattresses, mattress pads, mattress layers, blankets, sheet sets, pillow cases, pillow protectors and even slippers from $29.99-$299.99
I thought our Select Comfort beds couldn’t be improved upon. I was wrong. Select Comfort
Back To School Giveaway: Seagate 500GB FreeAgent Go Special Edition and Roxio PhotoShow
Update: We have a winner! Vickie Bartlett was the first to email Techspurt with the correct answer (Galaxy High) – Congratulations Vickie!
Techspurt’s giving away a new Seagate 500GB FreeAgent Go Special Edition USB2.0 portable hard drive plus a free year’s subscription to Roxio’s PhotoShow!
With its sleek aluminum finish, exclusive chrome trim, piano black desktop dock and large capacity, the FreeAgent Go™ Special Edition portable storage solution makes it easy to take your photos, music, videos and documents everywhere – in style. Included, easy-to-use software helps keep your information safe withautomatic data backup and encryption of your important files and folders. Plus, you can sync content so you’ll always have your most current versions while on the go.
Roxio’s PhotoShow.com site lets you share your favorite stories with friends and relatives. PhotoShow makes it simple to combine your favorite photos and video clips from birthdays, vacations, or any other occasion with fun stickers, animations, effects, and music to create one-of-a-kind online PhotoShows they’re sure to love. With just a click or two, the all new PhotoShow maker lets you add your choice of hundreds of music tracks, over 150 beautiful one-click styles, plus cool animated graphics and stickers. Add one of your own MP3s to your PhotoShow and give it the soundtrack you really want. A subscription to Roxio PhotoShow Service entitles you to the desktop version for Windows, too — now online or offline you can create captivating PhotoShows to burn to DVD for TV playback, export as MPEG2, WMV, or save as MPEG4 for viewing on mobile devices.
Techspurt has one (1) shiny new Seagate FreeAgent Go Special Edition drive and a one (1)-year subscription to Roxio PhotoShow ready to ship today to the first Techspurt reader to hit this email link with the correct answer to the following question:
What was the name of the high school which Keith and Laurie Partridge attended in the 1974 Hanna-Barbera animated series “Partridge Family 2200 A.D.”?
- You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified.
- Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older!
- Winner will be chosen by the first email containing the correct answer to the contest question. The winner will receive one Seagate Free Agent Special Edition 500GB portable drive, approximate value is $160, and a one-year subscription to Roxio PhotoShow, approximate value $40.
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
- Entries can be submitted until Monday, August 10th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
- Full rules can be found here.
The Best Back To School Laptop of 2009
The tiny, underpowered netbook (read: 10″ screen, Intel Atom processor, tiny footprint, weighs nothing, costs $2-400) was last year’s Little Laptop That Could — the diminutive saviour of an ailing PC industry that brought real Windows (and Linux) (and yes, even some heavily-hacked MacIntoshery) to the hinterlands for the price of dinner and show. But if you’re a parent sending your kid to high school or college and you’re looking for a new laptop to go with them, forget about a netbook. These little Atom-based jobs are fine for light duty web surfing and email, but the Achilles heel of all netbooks is video — they just don’t have the processing power and the graphics chips to deliver full-screen Flash video, much less HDTV. And that means that multimedia playback and especially media creation is not a pleasant experience on a netbook. Trust me. I’ve got two. Love them to death. But they’re not what I whip out when I want to make or watch video.
Enter the CULV. Intel’s Consumer Ultra Low Voltage CPU is the all-new, battery-friendly version of the company’s mighty Core2Duo processor, and it’s an order of magnitude more powerful and speedy than Intel’s Atom chips. That’s why Apple chose the CULV for the MacBook Air, which is still one of the most lusted-after notebooks on the market due to its extraordinarily thin size and astonishingly light weight. It also costs $1,500, which is more than you should spend on a student laptop.
But what if there was a Windows version of the MacBook Air that used the same Intel CULV processor, had the same startling thinness and feather weight, the same multi-touch trackpad, the same Wireless-N, even better battery life (I’ll get to that in a moment), except it costs about a third the price?
It’s a new ultra-thin called the Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T, and not only is the the perfect laptop for a student of any age, it’s one of the most impressive Windows notebooks I’ve tested in a long time.
For starters, it’s less than an inch thick. Like the MacBook Air, it fits right into an envelope with room to spare. And its 3-lb. weight means the Acer will weigh less and take up less room in a backpack than most textbooks. And since you definitely want to protect this Acer from the bumps and bruises of campus life, you should reward your student with a good protective laptop bags or backpack from Tom Bihn, who makes the best bags in the world.
The Aspire Timeline 3810T’s 13.3″ screen is LED-backlit, bright, and gorgeous, and the LEDs will keep it looking that way for years longer than a typical fluorescent-lit laptop screen. The keyboard is a delight, very Mac-like, as is the multi-touch gesture ALPS trackpad. But the real news here is battery life. Between the CULV’s positively anorexic approach to battery sippage and the generous (and user-swappable) lithium battery, I get nine hours of real-world use out of this 3810T running the 64-bit Windows 7 RC. That’s not a typo. Nine hours. I wouldn’t believe it either, except I’m seeing it with my own eyes. Nine hours. No other laptop I’ve tested, PC or Mac, comes close.
My review unit came with Windows Vista, but you know how I feel about Vista. On this Acer it works fine, as well as it would on any other top-grade notebook, but after preliminary testing I ended up erasing the drive and installed the latest release candidate of Windows 7, Microsoft’s next-gen OS that’s set to hit stores later this year. The combination of the 3810T’s superior design and the vastly better Windows 7 OS is, for me, the very best PC experience I’ve managed to eke out of a laptop to date. Like other PC makers, Acer says it will ship Windows 7 upgrade discs when Microsoft makes them available toward the end of the year.
I’ve been living with the 3810T for a week now and I can’t believe how much notebook you can get for so little money. Mac or PC, nobody’s delivering this much power and style at this price point. As I type this, Amazon’s shipping it to you for $580. A year ago, $580 bought you a heavy, thick, Pentium-powered laptop with an iffy screen and a nickel metal hydride battery with no life whatsoever. Today you get a MacBook Air equivalent with 9 hours per charge.
Shopping for the perfect back-to-school notebook? This is it.
Greening Your Kitchen
In this Summer of Bummer ‘08, roof-busting gas and food prices have kept many of us at home, staring at the car we don’t drive unless absolutely necessary and the milk we dare not waste on such things as topping off coffee or helping the kids grow stronger bones and teeth.
Want to put some money in your pocket today? Start greening your kitchen. It’s the most energy-hungry room in the house, and odds are you’ve got a bunch of appliances that are bleeding you dry every month whether you use them every day or hardly ever. In fact, most kitchen appliances (as well as most gear that plugs into the wall like TVs, stereos, cable boxes, video game consoles, the list goes on and on till your throat is hoarse and only dry dust rolls off your tongue) consume a significant amount of energy even when turned off. That’s right. Put your hand on the appliance, especially near where the power cord attaches to the unit. Feel warm? Say hello to watts you’re paying for 24/7 that aren’t doing a @%#$ thing for you except fattening your utility bills.
The good news: appliance makers are finally starting to take energy efficiency seriously enough to rethink how they design their products. Here are some good examples of new kitchen appliances that pare their energy needs to the bone without sacrificing performance.
Whirlpool’s new GU2800XTV and GU3600XTV dishwashers use one-third less water and energy than the company’s models from seven years ago — 20 gallons less per load, which adds up to 4,300 gallons you’ll be saving per year. The trick is increased water pressure, which breaks up food more efficiently. This new wash system and a soft-start motor help reduce noise, providing for the quietest operation of any of the manufacturer’s dishwashers. The appliances are Energy Star qualified and have a yearly energy usage of 299 kWh (GU2800) and 301 kWh (GU3600). Other features include a new nozzle configuration that delivers a fan of water to clean from all angles and cleaning power that adjusts to soil levels. 800.253.3977. Available at national retailers this fall starting at $699. Whirlpool.
My favorite coffee maker brand Jura-Capresso just announced their new eco-friendly ENA line of super-automatic coffee centers that combine best-ever coffee taste with a new focus on energy efficiency. The three new ENA models offer a true bean-to-cup experience, with single button operation and environmentally friendly features to save energy. The Swiss-made collection also offers high style, exciting new color choices and advanced features at entry-level prices.
When turning the ENA off, the patent-pending Smart Zero Energy Button lets the machine finish any beverage already in progress and then completely disconnects from the electrical outlet, using no energy whatsoever. For additional energy savings, the machine can be switched to Energy Save Standby Mode in situations where it is used infrequently. This reduces power consumption up to 40 percent.
The ENA models are the first in the Jura-Capresso line to feature a see-through bean chamber visible on top of the machine, romancing the beauty of fresh coffee beans. A built-in five-level conical burr grinder grinds the beans right before brewing for optimal taste. This high-performance grinder can be adjusted for regular or oily beans from fine to coarse simply by turning the chrome adjustment ring while the grinder is running. ENA machines can also brew pre-ground coffee to cater to those who prefer decaffeinated or other specialty coffee blends.
Because fresh, pure water is an essential element of great coffee taste, the new ENA models feature the CLEARYL Plus Water Filter that removes impurities and reduces scale deposits in heating elements. This filter can transform hard tap water into water that is pH-neutral balanced so it will not disrupt coffee flavor.
“ENA” means “number one” in Greek, for the number one choice for anyone who wants the ultimate in a compact model. The line includes the ENA 3 in Ristretto Black and Blossom White; the ENA 4 in rich metallic Platinum with Ristretto Black accents; and the ENA 5 with Chrome and rich metallic Platinum with either Ristretto Black, Blossom White or Coffee Cherry Red accents.
The Jura-Capresso ENA collection has an actual retail price range from $899 to $1,199 and will be sold at specialty and online retailers. Jura-Capresso.
Do you boil a lot of water to make tea and other hot drinks? Do yourself a favor and start saving money on every cup with Jura-Capresso’s cordless H2O Plus glass water kettle. Not only does it boil water ten times faster than a tea kettle on a stovetop, but it uses much less energy to boot. The H20 boils water fast, quietly and safe…then shuts off automatically. A gleaming stainless steel dome which is easy to clean covers the concealed heating element. The German-made SCHOTT heat resistant glass has ounce and cup markings for easy filling. $60. Jura-Capresso.
Google the Intertubes for “Going Green” and you’ll be swamped with articles extolling the miracle of eco-friendly illumination known as the compact fluorescent lamp, or CFL. “New Compact Fluorescents Finally Look As Good As Incandescent Light!” they’ll jibber. “Replacing Your Home Lighting With CFLs Will Make Dolphins Like You” they’ll jabber.
Bullshit, I say.
The “new” compact fluorescents are nothing but the same junk that’s been hurting our eyes and making us all look like the walking dead in offices for years. So they now make them shaped like a real light bulb — who gives a rat’s? They still throw the kind of harsh, flickering, unnatural light that makes everything look terrible. Like a gas station men’s room bathroom at 3AM. You ever look at yourself in a bathroom mirror lit with fluorescents? You want this in your HOME?! Hell no. You think Laurie David’s got CFLs at her house? Not a chance.
And you know what else? Forget vanity. I have a better reason for you to shun CFLs like lepers. Mercury. In every single serving of CFL, you get a heaping helping of MERCURY to do who the hell knows what to you and your family. Read the fine print on these so-called “eco-friendly” bulbs:
“Fluorescent lamps contain mercury. Mercury at atmospheric pressure is a silver colored liquid that tends to form balls. Mercury is a hazardous substance. When one lamp is broken, the best thing to do is to wear chemical resistant glove to clean it up. The gloves can be vinyl, rubber, PVC, or neoprene. The gloves you buy in the supermarket for household cleaning are sufficient. The gloves protect your skin from absorbing mercury and from getting cut by the glass. The remains of one lamp can be disposed as normal waste since the amount of mercury is small. However, for future reference, when large quantities of lamps are being disposed you must follow your state and the federal regulation for disposing of mercury-containing lamps.”
That’s from the web site of frickin’ GE, one of the biggest pushers of CFLs. And when your bulbs burn out, don’t even think about tossing them in the trash. The fine print says you need to take them back to where you bought them and they’ll recycle them for you. Uh-huh. I tested this by taking some CFLs back to Home Depot and told them I was returning them for safe recycling — you never saw a more slack-jawed, bewildered stare in your life. These people have no idea they’re supposed to take CFLs back and get them to the right (?) authorities who will somehow dispose of the mercury so it won’t leech back into the environment and poison even more kids. I asked the guy what he was going to do with the dead bulbs I gave him, and he said, “I don’t know, I guess throw them in the dumpster out back.” The less you know, the happier you are, especially if you wear a fucking orange smock all day.
If you told Kafka about this stuff, he’d laugh and say, “Naww, you’re makin’ this shit up. Not a chance. Nobody’s that stupid to push such a dangerous product as being good for the environment.”
So repeat after me: JUST SAY NO TO COMPACT FLUORESCENTS. Affordable LED bulbs will be here in a year or two, with excellent light and zero environmental baggage. The good old incandescent bulb can carry us a few more guilt-free years. You’re doing more for the planet by staying away from CFLs than you would be using the evil things. And the people who are pushing them are going straight to hell. Trust me. I know about such things.
Dads and Grads Gift Ideas
Char-Broil Red BBQ Grills: What Dad Wants
The secret to superior grilling, once found only in fine steakhouses and professional-grade grills retailing for thousands of dollars, is now available to dads everywhere thanks to the Char-Broil RED™ infrared grill. This brand new type of gas grill features the Char-Broil U™- a new U- shaped emitter that evenly distributes 100% infrared heat, top to bottom, side to side – eliminating hot or cold spots on the grill for mouthwatering dishes in a flash.
The Char-Broil RED™ infrared grill has exclusive porcelain coated cast iron cooking grates on a large grilling surface. Wood chips can easily be dropped between them to add a wood flavor. An integrated indoor-range style ignition is the latest innovation in grills, making it easier to rotisserie, barbecue, grill, sear, and even clean. Available exclusively at The Home Depot for $599. Charbroil
Gateway M-Series: High-End Gaming Laptops For Grads
The Gateway M-Series features a gorgeous Garnet Red or Pacific Blue color with high-quality metallic finish, metal trim and Razr-like multimedia control panel, starting at just $699. Cutting-edge technology features – integrated web cam, high-speed wireless, powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processors, etc. HDMI interface means you can show content from the notebook on a huge HD display. The M-Series is available direct from Gateway or through major retailers nationwide, and Gateway customers enjoy 100% US-based telephone tech support. Gateway
Clickfree Backup Drives and DVDs: No-Brainer Backup For Everyone
With the Clickfree Portable Backup, protecting valuable information on a computer has never been easier. Existing backup drives, including those from the leading “single-touch” device manufacturers, require complex setup even before the first backup can be completed. This means software installation, system reboots, hardware set up and software configuration. In addition to taking a long time to set up, these products require the user to learn new, confusing terminology. With Clickfree, all of these complexities are removed. To run the backup, simply remove the device from the box and connect it to a computer – that’s it. The backup automatically starts by itself and backs up files without any user interaction. Hard drive version $149, 5-pack of backup DVDs $15 Clickfree
Smart Pen
Just slightly larger than a Montblanc, Livescribe’s smartpen is designed to replace the everyday pen as a user’s primary writing instrument. Leveraging recent breakthroughs in memory, storage, microprocessors, connectivity and component size, the smartpen is an advanced paper-based computer, with both audio and visual feedback, powerful processing capabilities and substantial built-in storage.
Pulse’s core application enables users to record and sync audio with whatever they write, so they never miss a word. With Paper Replay, users can tap on their notes written on paper to hear exactly what was said. They can also fast forward, rewind, jump ahead, pause, and even speed up or slow down their audio recordings using controls printed on the bottom of each page.
The Pulse smartpen is a sophisticated mobile computer that includes: a high speed infrared camera with a Dot Positioning System (DPS); rechargeable lithium battery; high contrast display for easy indoor/outdoor viewing; dual microphones for clear recording and noise cancellation; an embedded speaker and an audio jack for Livescribe’s 3D Recording Headset.
Every registered Pulse user receives 250MB of online storage to upload and share notes and audio as interactive Flash movies or PDF files. Users can choose to share with the Livescribe community, selected contacts, or other sites like Facebook. Text and audio transcription services will also be available online.
With a sleek, ergonomic design and charcoal blue anodized aluminum housing, the smartpen weighs in at just 1.3 ounces. Pulse is available in two models. Priced at $149, the 1GB model provides storage for recorded audio (over 100 hours), digital notes (over 16,000 pages), or add-on applications. At $199, the 2GB model doubles the storage capacity and provides more flexibility for downloading future applications.
For more info, go to Livescribe’s site.
Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1TB
I’m going to spare you my usual Grandpa Simpson “when I was a boy, dang nabbit” jibber about how my first PC had no hard drive at all, just a pair of floppy disk drives, and DAMMIT THAT WAS ENOUGH cough cough hack hack. I pitch this rant at any young ‘un within earshot whenever hard drive storage hits a new milestone, which it has yet again with the latest terabyte drives.
Think about that for a moment. A freakin’ terabyte. That’s a thousand gigabytes, sonny. Fine, so five years from now we’ll read this back and laugh ourselves silly because AT&T’s giving away free 1TB iPhones with a 2-year contract. But circa Q1 ‘08, a terabyte hard drive is pure, hardcore geektastic. The biggest hard drive you can buy.
I’ve been rolling my own DIY external drives for awhile now using Vantec external drive enclosures from Newegg, which have worked flawlessly in my various computer systems over the years. You can usually save a few bucks by going this route but not everyone’s a geek like that. And quite frankly, I’d much rather be able to buy a ready-built external from the big boys if it was just as rock-solid and good looking as the DIY drives I’ve put together.
Seagate’s FreeAgent Pros have been the high-end external drives of choice since they hit the market. Visually, they’re way cooler than anything you or I can build. The enclosure design blows away anything else out there, hands down — the black aluminum FreeAgent Pro has a 2001: A Space Odyssey upright monolith thing going on that all but makes a silent mockery of whatever other external drives you’re currently hiding under your desk.
And now you can get this sucker with a 1TB Seagate drive inside. Really, just get one. It’s that simple. This is not a hand-wringer, a data-miner, a decision you need to obsessively research. Just get one, plug it into your PC or Mac, and be done with it. You’re not going to do better than this Seagate, I don’t care who you are and what parts you manage to scrounge together. At the end of the day it will cost the same or more, it will waste your time slapping it together, and it will look like, well, like a generic external drive instead of a FreeAgent Pro. Been there, done that. Now I use FAPs.
PC users will enjoy the easy-to-set-up backup software Seagate includes with the FreeAgent Pro — it works well, and is a good choice for someone new to the concept of external backup storage. Mac users like me don’t get any software freebies from Seagate — we just format the drive for OSX and use it with Time Machine, where it will sit there silently henceforth and free us up from ever having to worry about backing up our data again.
The FreeAgent Pro comes with three connection options, in ascending order of data speed — USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and eSATA. I’m guessing most of you don’t have an eSATA connection on your laptop or desktop computer, so use FireWire to connect the Seagate to your system — USB 2.0 is okay in pinch, but I find it inconsistent from system to system, and it’s definitely not recommended for any sustained throughput duty like video capture, etc. For straight backup drive duty USB 2.0 is more than adequate, but if you’ve got a free FireWire port on your computer, I recommend going that route instead. You’ll get faster data movement and a more reliable connection.
I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of unpacking photo porn (seriously, nothing creeps me out more than three dozen badly-lit Flickr pics of a gadget in the various stages of unboxing — what is WRONG WITH YOU STUPID KIDS?! 40 unboxing shots isn’t a substitute for actual hands-on expertise when reviewing a consumer electronics product. Or maybe I’m being Grandpa Simpson here.) Nor am I going to waste your time with a bunch of artificial hard drive benchmark tests that have zero real-world relevance beyond making you feel psychologically better about buying that Hitachi drive instead of the WD because someone you never met and whose expertise you haven’t a clue about set up both drives to perform a particular task that bears no relation to anything you or I will ever ask our hard drives to do. But we both know you’re above all that.
Interestingly, Seagate sells the same drive for the same price (though minus the eSATA option) as the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus. Makes sense since Seagate now owns Maxtor. The OneTouch is an upright slab too but not heavy black aluminum like the FreeAgent Pro, more of a brushed aluminum and black plastic offset wedge. Inside is exactly the same Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drive that’s inside the FreeAgent Pro. I know because I cracked them both open and eyeballed the drives myself. Call me Cyber Columbo. Oh, and just one more thing — the AC adapters that come with these two external drives are identical as well, as is power draw. So if for some reason the black slab isn’t your thing and you’d rather have a more conventional looking 1TB external drive, you can have the same burger in a different bag with the OneTouch 4 Plus.
Some products are right for most people, and some products are only right for a select few, so I usually target my recommendations and couch them with caveats. But rarely is a product a must-have for anyone who’s reading these words on a computer screen, which means you own a computer, which most likely means you have no backup drive, just your main drive slowly running down the sand grains in the hourglass until it decides one day, when you need it the most, to crash and die and instantly delete all your photos, documents, and music. So listen to me here: buy this Seagate 1TB external drive. Don’t argue with me, just do it. Right now. Right this second. Here’s the link where I buy all my stuff. It’s the best money you’ll ever spend on your computer, and you won’t have to worry about your data for many, many years. Do you know how many people — good, honest, innocent people who’ve been good and supportive to me — I would’ve gladly killed with my bare hands to have a 1TB backup drive of this quality just a year ago? Didn’t exist yet. Now it does. I can’t tell you how much better I feel about everything in my life now, with a terabyte monster drive watching my back 365/24/7. Nothing bad will ever happen to me again, nor to you.
Copyright © 2008 CG Productions LLC. All rights reserved