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I am old school and still play records on an old turntable with 30 years old JBL speakers. But recently, I have been thinking about getting some new toys.
Amazon Echo?
Nest?
That Google "box" advertised during the Super Bowl?
What electronic toys did you buy for your home in the last 12 months or will buy in the next 12 months?
Love being able to control a lot of aspects of my home through Alexa or apps. Pretty cool to be able to turn on or off lights when you are halfway around the world and see exactly what the animals are up to in the house.
I'm not too big on smart-home gadgetry (don't like the idea of tying my house too closely to tech that will be outdated in a year anyways), but I do have an Amazon Fire TV Stick on order. Looking forward to having a single device that can be used with Alexa for both Prime Music and Prime videos (and can also be used to play Youtube, etc).
Badly need to get some kind of wifi repeater - a couple corners of my house have very weak signal. Had bad experiences with these in the past, hopefully the technology has improved.
I did recently spend some $ to change nearly all of the lightbulbs in our house to LED. Price has finally plunged to a level where it made sense to never again (as long as I will likely own the house, at least) climb up a ladder to change a high-mounted floodlight bulb.
Love being able to control a lot of aspects of my home through Alexa or apps. Pretty cool to be able to turn on or off lights when you are halfway around the world and see exactly what the animals are up to in the house.
Thanks Haudi. I am leaning towards getting the Echo.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I see no need for either of those, the are not any more useful than Siri on the iPhone and iPad. We do have a wifi extender to use mobile devices outside and all over the house which is big and 2 story, and have replaced most of our lighting with LED.
The must have I really enjoy and use pretty much every day is my UE Boom Bluetooth speaker.
I got it originally to use in the yard (and we do), but it lived in my bathroom so I can listen to music/podcasts or hear the tv in the shower or while drying my hair.
This thing is truly worth the money and I never imagined that it would be. I had for years and I literally use it every day.
BenQ projector for my video watching. The price/performance ratio came to a point where I finally spent the money. Coupled with my old Onkyo and sound setup, when I watch an Imax DVD it is every bit as good as I experienced in Imax. (Better in that I always get to sit in the sweet spot and none of my speakers have blown cones.) Watching the space shuttle lift off in full glory on a floor to ceiling image in my living room makes me smile. Watching "Lawrence of Arabia" and seeing the scope and brilliance of Freddy's cinematography makes me happy.
Badly need to get some kind of wifi repeater - a couple corners of my house have very weak signal. Had bad experiences with these in the past, hopefully the technology has improved.
I set up a powerline networking link to my deadspot, then used a new point of presence there. Worked much, much better than any repeater. Very fast, too. With repeaters, you lose a lot of speed.
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