Companies and products I actually like
March 2nd, 2010Since I (and many other people) spend a lot of time complaining about companies that I don’t like, I thought I might spend some time pointing out things I do like for once. Some of these will be completely unsprurising if you spend any time at resellerratings
Electronic items - I tend to use a lot of these
- The Dingoo A320 is just a fabulous piece of hardware if you like emulators and you’re cheap. For about $100 (from a known-good retailer in the US, slightly less on eBay) You get a device that without any special hacking will play the NES, SNES, Genesis, and other ROMs for all those games your parents bought for you instead of saving for your college fund because you nagged them to death. Also also plays MP3s and some movies and hs 4GB storage and reads (mini)SD cards. really just missing a camera and it might be perfect. Sure, it’s a legal grey area due to the stranglehold companies have over the legal systems (yes Nintendo, I really owe you ANOTHER $5 for that gave my parents bought me for $75 measured in today’s money) but in my opinion you have a right to those games if you owned them as a kid.
- I may have a couple gripes but my Sprint Hero is the first (well second after my T-mobile G1 met an untimely death in the toilet) smartphone I have been satisfied with. It can do almost anything a laptop can do, and once you get used to the haptic feedback for the on-screen keyboard you won’t know how you lived without it, as it has no hard QWERTY keyboard. Believe me you can get used to it. It might have something to do with the fact that Android is a polished Linux for phones, and that it’s owned by Google, but I just love android more than words. Since Sprint is only one of two companies that have service here (go to hell AT&T) I’m glad i actually like them as well.
- I really still like our Roku set top box, despite owning many game consoles and other devices which claim to offer a supset of functionality. Primarily because it’s pretty much ready to go out of the box, starts at $80, you can stream Netflix movies and Pandora ‘radio’ stations; if you’re into baseball you can get an MLB deal to watch all the games for some insanely low price (get with the program NFL!) and they have a fledgling apps store as well (yay TWiT podcast app). But for double the price you can get…
- The Aspire Revo is just an awesome set-top box. It’s $200 to start for one thing (admittedly you probably want the $330 faster version with built-in wifi) but you basically have a full computer sitting next to your TV, can play most Windows games (if you’re a hard core PC gamer stop reading, otherwise…) and can run nice software like XMBC or Boxee to try and consolidate all your media in this messy digital wasteland in which we live.
- VOIPo phone service - After Sunrocket did their best to try and ruin VOIP’s name by screwing thousands of customers, I thought I was done with Voice Over IP, but VOIPo is a great company, I have had no major outages for a year and counting. There are other services out there that are cheaper and a one-time cost (MagicJack and Ooma come to mind) but I have yet to see a cheap company who looks like they are not trying to fall into the same trap Sunrocket did by not actually creating an ongoing revenue stream, and for $18 with all fees included a month for unlimited service, I’m not complaining.
- SpiderOak online backup service. I really can’t say enough how important backups are, especially ‘offsite’ backups. If your computer and your backup disks get destroyed in a fire, flood or just a hard drive crash (like mine recently did) you want to make SURE you have those important pictures and documents backed up. They do a basic account for FREE, and once you’re loving it (and you will) you get 100 gigs of backup for $10/mo. You really cannot afford not to have this service if you have a digital camera and no backup solution today.
- Gamefly game rentals - There are a couple ways you can use Gamefly. One is to try out those new releases that people won’t shut up about, to see if you really need to go buy it or if you can wait until it hits the bargain bin; this will easily have the service paying for itself if you’re somewhere between a casual gamer and a psychotic addict. Secondly they have pretty decent prices on used games, and being member you get a $5/$10 discount every few months you can use toward used game purchases. I honestly didn’t want to love Gamefly; their service is one of the highest around (back when there used to be more rental services) and their shipipng is not nearly as fast as Netflix, but with the quantity of games they offer and their overall service which is just rock solid, I can’t really find anything else to really complain about, so they’re on this list.
Shopping sites (most of these are no brainers):
- Amazon.com and their Amazon Prime shipping. I really can’t say enough how much I LOVE Prime. For $80 you get free two day shipping, $5 one day shipping on ANY item that they sell themselves (which admittedly is not all the items you can buy on their site, but). I used Prime to get a 100+ pound elliptical exerciser shipped to me the next day, it probably paid for itself in that one purchase! Amazon also really empowers its customers and their ratings system is fabulous.
- Newegg for electronics. Their prices are amazing and often you can get free shipping on at least one item in a given set if you’re not being brand picky. Their ratings are also even more reliable than Amazon’s.
- Mwave.com isn’t as highly rated quite as highly as Newegg but they are sometimes a good cross check as I’ve found some deals that were even better than Newegg’s on there.