Latest in Home Theater, Cool Homes and Home Electronics

Remember when floppy disk storage was a lot? Or CD-RW? Now you can walk around with 64 gigs in your pocket—not bad capacity for an entire PC at the start of this decade—with the latest to Kingston’s lineup of Data Traveler USB flash drives. The DT150 comes in two beefy flavors—a 32-GB version and 64-GB version. Both are compatible with… View this story

Constantly charging your cell? Best Buy and Renewable Choice Energy want to provide an environmentally friendly alternative. It’s not pixie dust; they’re selling wind power. According to Renewable Choice Energy, the electricity needed to manufacture and use two typical mobile phones for two years is 500 kilowatt hours (kWh). The product, also known as Green Your Phone, is actually “certified… View this story

The electronic trappings alone stand out—a basement home theater, a pop-up plasma in the bedroom, a TV over the fireplace, multiroom audio, climate and lighting control systems, and more. However, this stylish Lincoln Park–area Chicago home isn’t merely about fancy audio/video and automation. They’re big brush strokes in an overall green picture that’s been carefully crafted by everyone from the… View this story

Instead of dreaming about a big screen at small prices, you could be watching your post-turkey TV via this tasty little morsel. Dell is currently selling Sharp’s 42-inch LC-42SB45U for $799. That includes free shipping. It’s also a 1080p, baby, and beautiful to boot. The set typically runs for over a grand. Dell offered the same deal earlier in the… View this story

I feel really, really bad both professionally and personally that satellite radio is going away. What? You say the merger will preserve the longest running alternative to the slowly dying, little choice over-commercialized terrestrial radio? I don’t think so! No matter how this transition pans out, satellite radio will never be the same. Last week’s morphing of music and other… View this story

That added heat from your laptop might be nice in the winter months, but during the summer, it has you reaching for an extra Freeze Pop. Arbella wants you to think ahead, and possibly stuff a stocking or two with its Laptop Cool Table. The unit is actually a little laptop table with two built-in USB fans. It even has… View this story

The archiving of history on the Internet has been well underway for years, but multimedia fans (and history buffs) just scored another nugget thanks to Google and Life magazine. Google will help archive Life’s massive image library that users will be able to surf through, using Google Image Search. Life magazine has served as a tremendous documentation of culture and… View this story

Just last month, we reported that HP could put its TouchSmart technology into a laptop before the end of the year. Well, those busy beavers have been working harder than Santa’s elves, and today we have the HP TouchSmart tx2 notebook. Like the desktop, the tx2 features a touchscreen right on the 12.1-inch display.  In case you don’t like smudges,… View this story

We’re not sure if it’s because Black Friday is coming up, or just because it had to accelerate its liquidation, but Tweeter’s website homepage changed this week to make a big splash about the clearance sales going on. “Store Closing Prices Slashed Again, Everything 20 to 50% off!” now greets you when you click on Tweeter.com. The ad reminds us… View this story

Do not adjust that dial or set-top box. You can also stop banging the remote against your coffee table and/or head. There is nothing wrong with your Xbox 360 setup. Apparently, Sony doesn’t want to play nice with Xbox’s newfound abilities to stream Netflix. MTV Multiplayer says they have pulled all Sony content from the service’s lineup. The company still… View this story

Is 3D television and movies really the next big thing? Are consumers ready for 3D, glasses and all? A new study by market research firm Quixel Research says that 3D is gaining support out there, and that many expect the content and anticipate content arriving to their TVs in the next couple of years. In a survey of more than… View this story

Forget the old stereotypes about gamers being overweight slobs whose waistlines rival the circumference of the new Yankee stadium. So-called “exer-games,” or titles which get players up off the couch and sweating, are one of interactive entertainment’s current hottest trends.  The verdict is in from parents as well as educators and the scientific community, and results are highly promising. According… View this story