PSA: Don’t overpay for cables

overpriced HDMI cables

Don't Buy Expensive Cables

Before buying HDMI or other cables locally, check the price on them at monoprice.com or Amazon.com. Both will have low prices. I buy almost exclusively at monoprice because of their cheap USPS shipping. For example, a 6′ HDMI cable is $4. A toslink female to mini male adapter is $0.66 (use this to connect a Mac to your receiver via optical).

touchscreen comparison

Have you had the chance to play with a Blackberry Storm? Or a Palm Pre? Did you get the feeling that the touch screen, the primary input device, just didn’t feel as good as the iPhone? I’m not talking about the ignored taps that the Google Android suffers from, but that, “darn, I’m sure I tapped the right spot, but I sure didn’t get what I wanted” feeling. It turns out there’s a quantifiable reason the iPhone touch screen seems to work better.

3M MPro120

Playing a HD movie against the snow white ceiling of a snow cave is unreasonably appealing. Thankfully, the 3M MPro120 is priced high enough that I can avoid the temptation.

lay down your card, walk away, and you won’t get hurt

It’s Banks vs. Families, Who Will Come Out on Top?

The short version is that I studied the economics of the middle class and I began to see that credit products were becoming increasingly dangerous. Families didn’t know how much they were spending on credit and comparison among the products was practically impossible…
….
The idea behind the current model is, “I will hold something shiny in front of your eye, 3.9% financing, and the way I’m going to make money is on tricks and traps that I’ve buried in the fine print: $29 there, $49 there, triple interest rate, double cycle billing, over and over and over … .”

…one of the issuers took me aside and said, “We get that our business model is unsustainable over the long haul, but no one of us can jump first.” On the plane home from the meeting with the issuer I realized how broken the market is….