Twenty-one months after your humble narrator first opined on the admirable resilience of faux Discmen, the Reaper has come for Low End Theory: as of today, this column will (in the not-so-immortal words of Charles Manson) cease to exist. Its biodegraded carcass shall nourish the gazelles, who in turn nourish the lions, making it an integral part of the Circle of Life...uh, okay, scratch that. But hopefully y'all were occasionally entertained by LET's voyage through the Electro-Dreck Realms.

And what a grand voyage it was. After the jump, a rundown of lessons learned while bringing y'all—week in, week out—the very best in As Seen on TV specials, prison-approved radios, five-buck pagers, and oh-so-much-more.

&*$&!@ Best Buy True cheapskates look for their gadgets not at the local electronics shop, but rather at retailers who operate on the margins: pawn shops, government auctions, and, of course, dollar stores. There's no question that low-end electronics will continue to become more widely available through such non-traditional channels; I greatly anticipate the day when my local C-Town offers Nokia handsets alongside issues of Soap Opera Digest. (Note to Alltel: hooking up such a partnership would be yet another great way to compete with the big boys.)

The Lords of Guangdong It's obviously impossible to do a low-end column without frequently considering China's role. To that end, I've taken occasion to ruminate on how Shenzhen factories connect with American entrepreneurs, and how China's lax intellectual property enforcement has impacted the RC helicopters industry. I'd always hoped that Gizmodo would fly me out to Guangdong for some on-the-scene reporting. No dice, but perhaps that's for the best— China's time may already be passing, as the likes of Vietnam and Bangladesh try (with mixed success) to become the next Workshops to the World.

Nascent Giants Despite Gizmodo's paltry—okay, non-existent—travel budget, I did manage to scope out low-end items abroad: once in India (where it's all about the art of negotiation), and once in Brazil (where government over-regulation keeps prices high). Final verdict? God bless America's abundance of $4.99 "Walkmen" and $19.99 DVD players. We are truly, truly spoiled.

Low-End Needn't Equal Low-Qual I'm certainly not alone in noticing that the cheapest electronics can be surprisingly durable. We're conditioned to assume otherwise, of course, and the likes of Gizmodo are partly to blame: How often do blogs or magazines lay hands on a low-end demo unit? In the future, I'd like to see more Coby and jWIN products get a fair shake on CNet, etc. A cheapskate can dream, can't he?

Rip-Offs Abound The hazard of being a low-ender is that you can be mesmerized by price alone. But this is often to a consumer's detriment: take the case of layaway plans, which invariably end up being a far worse deal than even the most cynical cheapskates can imagine. And don't even think about cashing in your credit-card miles for some off-brand portable DVD player; the Man has the game fixed against you, natch.

Industry Rule #4,080#4,081 There's obviously a big crossover between music lovers and geeks—the same part of the brain that's responsible for obsessing over RAM must also play a role in appreciating organized sound. Good thing there's so many sweet deals out there for aspiring musicians who a) aren't yet ready to quit their IT day jobs, and b) barely have a nickel to their name. Tomorrow's Marc Bolans and Al Greens can record their songs for a song, rock some Danelectro guitar effects for a Jackson, or tickle the (fake) ivories on some choice Radio Shack keyboards.

ChipCorder vs. the Axis! Sorry, no real lesson or halfway clever observation in this column. Just wanted to namecheck it, 'cause it's one of my favorites—a meditation on whether the Allies would have won the war, had the Axis somehow built a time machine and gotten hold of a musical greeting-card chip.

And with that, Low End Theory shall go gently into that good night, raging against nothing save the high price of HDTVs. Thanks a million to everyone who commented, emailed, or simply read the columns. Y'all shall be in my heart every time I purchase a ludicrously cheap 4-gig USB drive from Newegg.com, or come across a $5 "Discman" displayed next to a package of irregular tube socks. Farewell, and keep it cheap.

STARTING JUNE 14th: The return of Hype Sheet!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Arkansas is certainly a land of wonders—how else to describe a place that features Hot Springs National Park, the annual Tri-Lakes Bass Tournament and the birthplace of Skeets McDonald? Yet until this week, I was completely unaware of the Razorback State's greatest attribute: a government surplus auction site that is a cheap geek's dream. An iPAQ Pocket PC for 50 bucks (pictured at right)? A Bio-Tek Instruments auto strip washer for a Jackson? Sign me up...oh, wait, maybe not; the fine print says "DOES NOT power up." But Arkansas at least gets points for honesty on that one.

The state that wrought both Joey Lauren Adams and Bill Clinton is not alone in dumping its electro-dreck, of course. From sea to shining sea, Maine to the Mexican border, the public sector is always trying to rid itself of PCs, telephones, and mimeograph machines that it no longer needs—or, perhaps, never really needed in the first place. After the jump, highlights from the latest government fire sales.

"Complete Computer Systems"
Seller Iowa Prison Industries
Price 10 cents per megahertz
At first glance, I thought the Hawkeye State was using inmates to assemble low-end PCs. But it turns out that Iowa Prison Industries is just responsible for managing the state's surplus, which means your cheap computer was probably once used to tabulate water purity statistics in Sioux City, by a guy whose sartorial tastes run towards Ban-Lon and chunky stain-resistant ties. Granted, 10 cents per megahertz isn't that sweet of a deal—not in the day and age of the refurbished HP a1610n. But for the month of May at least, IPI is offering some tasty inducements, such as a free 17-inch monitor. And if you run a non-profit organization, man, are you in luck—you're entitled to 50 free computers! (This deal also seems to extend to low-income families, as if a sudden influx of 50 PCs per household is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Think harder, policy wonks.)

Five BlackBerries, Plus Accessories
Seller State of New York, Office of General Services
Price $61 (as of right now)
Talk about a deal—the good folks up in Albany were even kind enough to preserve the instruction manuals, as well as a belt clip. The only catch to this eBay auction? You have to actually get your way to Albany to pick the BlackBerries up in person. No idea why they've included this stipulation, as it would seem to naturally limit their bidders to folks within a 50-mile radius or so. But then again, state government is not typically known for its rationality.

P133 Laptops ("Various Makes")
Seller Kansas Department of Administration
Price $5
If a lack of cash flow has prevented you from joining the portable computing era, here's your chance. Thrill to the majesty of Windows 98 as you wonder how a laptop could possibly still work with so many obvious coffee stains on the keyboard. Amazingly, Kansas is selling an assortment of 1970s Selectric typewriters at exactly the same per-unit price. (They're also letting go of an Alkota pressure washer for the low, low price of $250—just in case you have a surfeit of blood stains on your garage floor.)

General Mini-Rooter Power Drain Cleaner
Seller State of Michigan Surplus Department
Price $103.70 (from an opening bid of $25)
Not being intimately familiar with plumbing gadgetry, I was sorta shocked by the plus-$100 bid on this machine (pictured at right). But it retails in the neighborhood of $500, and the State of Michigan seems like a trustworthy seller, right? Plus, let's face it—outsourcing pressure in the IT sector has once again made plumbing a more lucrative profession than being a geek. Perhaps this is your chance to swap your cubicle for a van, and start raking in the dough.

2003 Ford E450 Ambulance
Seller North Carolina State Surplus
Price $16,100
Okay, granted, this item doesn't exactly qualify as low-end, and ambulances don't traditionally fall in Gizmodo's purview. But if you're all about driving a non-conformist vehicle, this is way more oddball than a hearse (which I guess is played out after Six Feet Under, anyway). You'll need your geek skills to get this puppy back in full working order, though—according to the description, the lights and sirens have been "temporarily disconnected for transport."

1970 Bell 206A Helicopter
Seller Indiana Department of Administration
Price $167,000 (minimum bid)
Forget this column's low-end moniker—just had to mention this one. At 37 years of age, this bird ain't exactly Airwolf. But slap some ball bearings in there, and she's good to go.

NEXT WEEK: Low End Theory sheds its mortal coil and bids farewell.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I can definitely see the wisdom in having excised negotiation from most of our daily commerce. Imagine if every time you had to buy a roll of toilet paper from CVS, the cashier tried to highball you: "That'll be $3.99, sir...What? You don't want to pay that much? Okay, gimme two bucks...Wait, don't walk out that door—special price for you! A buck fifty!" Not only would our economy grind to a halt, but working retail would become one of the nation's most dangerous jobs—when haggling reaches an impasse, too many folks still see fit to resort to fists, guns and machetes.

On the other hand, when dealing with your (ahem) less formal retail operations, there's often some wiggle room built into their pricing. That's certainly true for many purveyors of low-end technology, of the sort that sell three-packs of tube socks alongside their cordless phones and faux Discmen. As a general rule of thumb, if a store's prices are noted only by Magic Markered signs, and they're blasting Ne-Yo onto the sidewalk through coffin-sized speakers, you can probably negotiate a slightly better deal for yourself. Just wield your geek knowledge like a club, and exploit your opponent's weaknesses. Four tips after the jump. PLUS: The keys to plus-five commenting?

Bamboozle With Wisdom Low-end salesman tend to be hilariously uninformed about specs; I'd wager that less than half can tell a bit from a byte, let alone explain the nuances of speaker wattage. Use this to your advantage—make it clear early on that you're not to be lied to. Bandy about the technical jargon, and make a point of dismissing their products as so-three-years-ago. Provided you're not dealing with a grump who'll simply toss you out of the store, your logorrheic ramblings should flummox the salesman to the point he gets his manager. And it's the manager who has the authority to cut on-the-spot deals. (Caveat: this technique works best with items in the clearance bin. It may also result in a physical altercation; not recommended with any salesman wearing a Stop Snitching T-shirt.)

Ask for the Stash Supply management isn't a strength of low-end stores. A lot of their goods have fallen off the proverbial truck, and they can have a hard time keeping up with the inflow (partly because they might track their stock in spiral-bound notebooks). As a result, there's often a backlog of superior merchandise languishing in the stockroom. So if you come across a last-gen product that's not quite up to your standards, ask if they have something better on hand; be specific about what you want, though, because there's a good chance the salesman won't know what constitutes "better." When he emerges with the superior product—say, a 256 MB MP3 player, as opposed to its 128MB predecssor—make a lowball offer. Since there's no set price for not-yet-displayed merch, there's a good chance you'll get what you want (or close to it).

Package Deals Turnover is the way low-end stores stay in business—they need to get rid of stuff fast, to make way for the next off-the-truck shipment. That opens up all sorts of opportunities for cheapskates to suggest package deals, along the lines of, "Throw in a four-pack of AAA batteries and a 900 MHz cordless phone, and I'll take this Coby radio off your hands." The more complicated you make the package, the more likely you are to save some loot; most fly-by-night stores don't spend much time calculating accurate break-even points. But this isn't easy on the customer's noggin', either—might be worth making a recon visit to the store ahead of time, then pricing out your package against an identical basket of goods on the Web. (Yes, I realize this sounds like a lot of effort to save a few bucks—please keep in mind that this column is called Low End Theory, not Time Savers.)

Take It Off the Floor Unlike big chains, which hold off on moving their floor models until they've sold through a product line, low-end retailers typically love selling demos. Odds are they were just going to end up giving them away to salesmen, anyway, or offering them to friends at ridiculously low prices. (Subhint: Befriend the manager of a low-end electronics store.) So offer to take that floor-model 13-inch Daewoo TV off their hands for half-price. They'll probably try and bargain you up a few bucks, but stick to your guns on this one. Maybe even engage in a little mendacity, by insisting that the warranty's been voided by virtue of the TV having been a demo unit. (As if you're really going to send in a $35 TV for repairs.)

More negotiation tips in comments, please. Just don't mention the one about trying to flatter the salesman—doesn't work, at least if you lack double Ds.

PLUS-FIVE COMMENTING: Let me abuse my position for a second here, and appeal to y'all for help. I'm working on an article about the keys to making much-admired comments at social-content sites. Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, of Slashdot fame, has been kind enough to offer some feedback, as have some veteran commenters. (Boo to Digg, though—per their flack, they were too busy to send me a two-sentence e-mail reply.)

Now it's time for Gizmodo Nation to chime in: what's the secret to making a plus-five Slashdot comment, or an enthusiastically Dugg comment on Digg? Being first and being funny obviously matter, but there's gotta be something beyond that, right? Fittingly, leave any ideas in comments, happy in the knowledge that you shall be the recipient of my eternal gratitude.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Ah, springtime, when our thoughts turn to lust—and, by extension, we get a wee bit self-conscious 'bout how our physiques are more Dom DeLuise than Ben Wallace. Unfortunately, spending countless hours transfixed by LCDs and the data contained thereon has a demonstrably deleterious effect on one's physiology (i.e. being a geek ain't necessarily good for your health).

But the twin stereotypes of geekdom—Comic Book Guy and the proverbial 97-pound weakling—needn't be your unavoidable fate, no matter how reluctant you are to part with your hard-earned dollars. There are plenty of low-end gadgets that'll help you deez up and slim down for the warm-weather months ahead. Why pay a king's random for a gym membership when you can skip away the pounds with all manner of electro-dreck? Let's start with the gem pictured to the upper right, shall we?

Calorie Counter Jump Rope
Price $9.95 from GadgetBrains.com
The Skinny I've been a fan of jumping rope since witnessing Mr. T's dexterous workout in Rocky III. It winds you pretty quickly, and is a lot less wussy than, say, Jazzercise. The beauty of this particular model, of course, is the calorie-counter feature; you can note the precise moment when you've finally worked off the morning's Boston Cream. Alas, that takes a lot longer than you might think—no, two quick sets of two minutes each ain't gonna cut it.
Odds It'll Help 3-to-1; once you get past the initial discouragement of realizing how long you have to jump in order to tone, the routine can actually become enjoyable—as long as you learn to do a crossover.

Talking Pedometer
Price $9.95 from (once again) GadgetBrains.com
The Skinny I personally like running on a treadmill—I like the feeling of slowly morphing into a leg-pumping robot. But I'm also two shades pastier than Casper the Friendly Ghost, a condition that could be solved by taking my running outdoors. The Talking Pedometer is an essential accessory to such a workout routine; as the name implies, it blurts out your mileage with all the warmth of a Nixon-era Vocoder. This model offers particularly nice bang-for-the-buck, in that it also plays seven ringtone-style melodies that ostensibly sync with your pace. Why invest in an iPod nano when you've got the chirp of the Talking Pedometer to accompany you?
Odds It'll Help 10-to-1; you've still got to motivate to engage in a very painful form of exercise, but everytime you look at this heart-shaped device, you'll be reminded of the damage that your Little Debbie habit has wrought on your aorta.

CycleChiser
Price $79.95 from Life Solutions Plus
The Skinny Don't be skeeved out by the apparent fact that this device has been designed for the old and infirm. If you're committed to spending 12 hours a day glued to your work terminal, why not get a little exercise while you're at it? It's certainly a lot cheaper than paying a gym month in, month out to use their stationary bikes. You can also wow your co-workers by pointing out the impressive number of calories you've burnt while coding, databasing, or just watching the immortal Keith Closs beatdown video. (If $79.95 sounds steep, you can check out this model for a mere $9.99. But without the LCD screen, it's a drab piece of equipment, indeed.
Odds It'll Help 2-to-1; at the very least, it'll compensate for that post-lunch grape soda you can no longer live without.

Talking Digital Hand Exerciser
Price $8.99 from Carol Wright Gifts
The Skinny Okay, yet another workout gadget meant for those who are in much worse shape than you and I. But come on, who doesn't want to improve their grip? No way you're gonna make it in the NFL with those weak hands, nerd. Slowly work up your grip force, and groove to the disembodied voice congratulating you on pressure well applied.
Odds It'll Help 50-to-1; won't affect your waistline or thicken your delts, but no one will ever again describe your handshake as a dead fish.

Sabre Jogger Unit
Price $18.41 from Underbid.com
The Skinny Taking up jogging requires courage, especially for those of you with not-so-fond memories of being lampooned for your non-athleticism in junior high. Unfortunately, some meaner members of our society still see fit to make fun of people whose flesh jiggles as they run, or whose jogging gaits are akin to those of wounded donkeys. Don't let these naysayers stop you from bettering your health! Instead, build your confidence by spraying their eyes, nose, and mouth areas with the Sabre Jogger Unit, which emits a liquid whose heat measures a scorching 2 million Scoville units. ("4 times hotter than average!" as the hype sheet so eloquently puts it.) Every geek, no matter how awkward, deserves to run free of bullying.
Odds It'll Help 999-to-1; please keep in mind that Low End Theory is not responsible for court costs associated with your use of this gadget. Oh, and enjoy your workout.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I'm by no means an audiophile, but I've never quite gotten the appeal of low-end iPod speakers. I mean, it's definitely a sign of mankind's genius that $8.99 can now buy you the means to pump audible music—cavemen would've no doubt killed for that sort of powersorcery. But the sound quality is invariably pretty abysmal, either annoyingly tinny or obscured under a soupy dither. Your typical cheapo iPod speaker system is really just one-and-a-half steps above the ChipCorder.

But I'm obviously in the minority here, because few low-end product categories have flourished like iPod speakers. I noted this $4.99 unit in last week's column, about the panoply of gadgets on display at Bed Bath & Beyond. But those speakers were only the iceberg's tip—the sector's current taxonomy is a wonder to behold, and a testament the creativity of low-end designers. If you thought the Lords of Guangdong Electronics were only good at knockoffs, you've got to reboot those brains of yours.

Granted, knockoffs is where the low-end product cycle tends to start. The model for a lot of the first-gen low-enders seems to have been the Logitech mm22, a rectangular speaker system I once reviewed for Wired (back when it's list price was a whopping $79.99). The Logitech's shape is a classic, in that it sorta resembles a conventional hi-fi system—speakers on the sides with visible woofers. The most popular knockoff seems to be the I.Sound Digipod-322, which can now be found for right around a tenner. (It also appears to be sold under the Airnet brand; perhaps a Shenzhen factory is playing all the angles?) The speakers don't swivel up, but the design concept is the same—lots of right angles, and everything more-or-less symmetrical.

But somewhere along the line, the low-end manufacturers realized that when you're playing in the $8-to-$12 range, it's often novelty that attracts buyers; it's not like us low-enders really expect one iPod speaker to vastly outperform another in terms of sound quality, right? So about 18 months ago or so, you began to see a flood of ingeniously shaped speakers, featuring lots of curves and fold-up schemes. This off-brand model, shaped like an apple, is new enough to boast of compatibility with the Zune, though I guess that's sort of like a dog dish boasting of being compatible with all breeds. And these folding speakers kick out a monstrous one watt per channel—skimpy, but what more do you expect for a measly $6.58?

Low-end designers have also felt the Nature's tug toward miniaturization, coming up with such thumbnail-sized options as the Nino Portable Dual Speaker (pictured up top) and, from column favorite Coby, the CS-MP3. These strike me more as emergency devices, rather than something you'd rely on to serenade a picnic. If you ever really, really need to clear up one of Ghostface's hotly disputed lyrics ("Is he saying 'jewels' or 'juice'?"), the CS-MP3 could sure come in handy; otherwise, not so much.

The final phase in the low-ending of iPod speakers has been feature creep—that is, design attempts to integrate speakers into multi-functional products. Exhibit A is certainly the AquaPod (pictured at right), which is half speaker, half water-resistant case. Even loopier is the Princess Speaker Pillow; please click through to the link, as my limited descriptive powers cannot possibly do this frou-frou product justice.

I wonder, though, if the end of the inventiveness is in sight. You know the market is saturated when a Florida department store is marketing these cool-looking speakers as "women's accessories" (perhaps because they so obviously resemble earrings). Part of the problem may be that the novelty is wearing off; consumers are less wowed by the simple fact they can finally pump their music to the masses, and are perhaps starting to notice how truly dreadful the sound is. And in the end, all the design hooks in the world can't obscure poor specs, even when the fat part of your market is composed of non-geeks.

There is, I believe, just one more milestone for the low-end iPod speakers market to reach, after which we can consign the entire sector to history's dustbin—or, more accurately, the same utter unsexiness now endured by the cellphone earpiece industry. I'm still waiting for someone to come up with the sub-$10 inflatable speaker system; the current price champ, this relative old-timer from Ellula, still goes for $12.95 at the lowest, and often closer to $20. Can somebody over in Shenzhen get on this, please? I'll totally owe you a Coke if you do.

WHAT NEXT FOR VONAGE?: Vonage seems to have escaped the noose for now, though I stand by my not-so-bold prediction that they're toast over the long run. My question is, If Vonage goes under rather than sells out, what's gonna happen to its 2.4 million customers (including your humble narrator)? Anyone out there with a tech-law background know what the procedure is when a critical service goes into receivership? I know the airlines keep flying, but I'll venture that Vonage ranks a few notches less important than Delta.

Most importantly, if Vonage does go under, does that mean the new owner (if there is one) will finally fix my freakin' caller ID? Because I'd really, really like it back.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Totally against my will, the missus dragged me along to Bed Bath & Beyond a couple of weekends ago. (Insert whip-cracking sound effects, wise guys.) It was every bit as horrific as I'd feared—I must lack whatever gene enables some folks to swoon over Casabella all-purpose gloves. Oh, and I had to miss the Mavs-Suns game in the name of stocking up on overpriced cleaning supplies. Brutal, just brutal.

The day's one saving grace came as we trudged toward the checkout line. To the right of the cash registers was a rack of low-end gadgets, of the sort you'd ordinarily find at an exceptionally raggedy Radio Shack. There was a USB minifan for five bucks (brand name: "Cool Breeze"), a host of Bandai-style LCD games, and quite possibly the flimsiest iPod speakers known to man. The cake-taker, however, was the Zadro iSing Shower Radio (pictured at right), which hits all the low-end high points. Shameless attempt to leech off the iPod's celebrity? Check. Using the "wow" factor of water resistance to mask otherwise craptacular craftsmanship? Check. Under a Hamilton? Yep—a lovely $9.99.

Now, absolutely no one goes to Bed Bath & Beyond looking for electro-dreck. These products were rather impulse buys, to be tossed in a shopper's cart just before she pays for a bevy of pillows and spatulas. In other words, here was strong evidence that gadgets are quickly morphing into the new ChapStick.

And that strikes me as sort of a big deal.

This wasn't the first time I'd noticed low-end electronics being hawked in a store where you wouldn't expect to find 'em, and near the cashiers to boot. Last month, while shopping for irregular tube socks at T.J. Maxx, I came across a shelf stuffed with ear buds and, oddly, large-buttoned remote controls—items that had obviously fallen off the proverbial truck. I didn't notice any takers, but T.J. Maxx (I suspect) isn't run by cretins; I'm sure someone at corporate headquarters was tipped off that, after a long hour or two of trying on size XXXL sweatpants, your average shopper may be unusually open to the idea of replacing their iPod's ear buds.

The obvious moral here is that consumers have grown inured to the ever decreasing lifespans of gadgets. I don't want to dump on the iPod too much, but I shudder to think what Apple's done to the next generation's expectations regarding how long a $300 piece of hardware should last. If no one expects a fancy MP3 player to survive much beyond the warranty's expiration, then what are they supposed to expect out of a USB beverage warmer? Or a shower radio? You've got the admire the sinister genius at work among the tech industry's powers-that-be. We've been conditioned to assume that low-end means low-qual, an equation that needn't necessarily be true.

But you've also got to consider—and, perhaps, lament—how quickly the satisfaction of buying a new gadget tends to dissipate. The thing about impulse buys like ChapStick, nail clippers, and breath mints is that folks get them even when they haven't exhausted their previous supply. That's the beauty of impulse items, at least from the vendor's standpoint—I mean, how many tubes of ChapStick or tins of Altoids do you have lying around? Probably a lot more than you need at any given moment. But we keep snatching them off the checkout-line rack anyway, looking for that quick hit of pleasure—"Hey, new nail clippers! Life is worth living!"

For us geeks with deep pockets and short arms, new low-end gadgets tend to elicit the same joyful, albeit very brief, reaction. You take home your $4.99 football remote control, use it that night, then wake up the next morning feeling slightly okay—the same buzz you might feel the day after your team wins the Super Bowlwinning $5 on a lottery scratcher. But the ecstasy fades quickly, even if the remote control works as advertised. You'd learn your lesson if it cost more but, hey, $4.99? You can barely get a decent Long John Silver's value basket combo for that. And so the impulse buying continues.

Not that I'm grumbling too much—I'm all for the free market, and people are obviously voting with their wallets if a chain like Bed Bath & Beyond sees fit to hawk iBlaster Retractable Ear Buds for $9.99. But as a controversial, now-legendary Gizmodo Ombudsman column once opined, perhaps it's wise to resist the urge to buy everything on God's green Earth that contains a circuit board. This is precisely what The Man wants you to do, which is why the iSing is positioned, Siren-like, near the Bed Bath & Beyond cash register. He knows your baser geek instincts will take over once confronted with such a novelty.

I was thisclose to heeding the Siren's call at Bed Bath & Beyond, but I didn't give in. Not that I'm calling myself a hero or anything, but I did save five bucks by resisting the urge. And I'm thus that much closer to finally having enough to buy that Apple TV thingamajig that's been haunting my dreams. And when that happy day arrives, man, that'll be a hit of rapture that a zillion iSings couldn't equal.

And, no, I don't expect my Apple TV to last more than a few days beyond the warranty's expiration. I just can't help myself on this one, and I'll bet you can't, either.

(By the way, if you ever see a low-end gadget positioned as an impulse item, please snap a camphone pic and let me know. Or just take the easy way out and share your finds in comments.)

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Were I to ever become "unstuck in time" (hat tip: Vonnegut), I'd be quite horrified to revisit the mid-1980s—specifically the awkward years I spent in the fourth and fifth grades. True, I had few substantive worries back then—room and board were paid for, courtesy of my pops—but when you're eight or nine years old, the little humiliations sting. And few juvenile cataclysms stung more than bombing at my school science fairs. I mean, there'd be all these kids demonstrating the effects of radiation on algae and whatnot, and there I'd be in the corner, with a diorama purporting to explain the magic of gravity. Didn't take me long to realize that my brain was built for lesser tasks.

No way I'm ever gonna let my yet-to-be-born kids experience that kind of disappointment. Thankfully, there's plenty of low-end science-fair kits out there, so daddy can spare them embarrassment without spending a fortune. Perhaps I'll splurge on the Spider III (pictured at right) for my first-born. But if cash is extra-tight that month, there are certainly a lot of cheaper options.

Inventions in Land Vehicles
Price $15.18 from Funfinity
The Skinny Sort of a really, really lowbrow version of Lego Mindstorms. The kit claims to teach how a motor works, as well as provide some background on mankind's invention of the wheel. I'm a little dubious of that latter claim, but anything that lets you build a battery-powered vehicle for under 16 bucks can't be all bad.
The Judges Will Think... That someday Junior will make a fine grease monkey, fixing the BMWs of his more intellectually gifted classmates.

Sound Reversing Car
Price $18.95 from ScienceKits.com
The Skinny The lovechild of a popped-open slot car and the infamous Clapper. The car keeps surging forward, like one of Batu Khan's relentless armies, until you make a noise; then it stops and backs up a few inches. And thus the mightiness of soundwaves is demonstrated for all to behold.
The Judges Will Think... That your child is far smarter than he or she really is—which, of course, is the entire point of getting a store-bought kit in the first place.

Line Tracking Mouse
Price $18.95 from MakeBelieve.com
The Skinny A wondrously simple object lesson in the power of photo interrupters. Just lay down some black tape on white construction paper and watch it trace the route. The downside here is that you'll have to help Junior a lot—unless, that is, you trust your sixth-grader to use a soldering iron sans supervision.
The Judges Will Think... That your child is suspiciously adept with a soldering iron. They'll probably also wonder how he/she managed to create those little plastic bumps that serve as the mouse's ears. Best to use this kit only in school districts with hopelessly disinterested teachers, who won't mind Junior's lack of initiative.

Young Scientists: Electricity, Mirrors, Circuits
Price $22.95 from LiveScience Store
The Skinny Several potential projects in one, all of them decidedly boring (teetering on lame). But in a pinch, building an electromagnet should be enough to earn a solid C-plus. Hilariously, the hype sheet claims that the kit's ultimate project is the construction of (I kid you not) "a one-eyed monster." Oh, and there's an important caveat: "Ability to finish kits does not guarantee that children will turn in projects on time." I wonder what sort of lawsuit forced them to include that clause.
The Judges Will Think... "This kid's parents don't love him/her very much. I think a pity B-minus may be in order, or his/her self-esteem will be forever crushed."

Simply Science Levitation Set
Price $22.95 from Fat Brain Toys
The Skinny Far less impressive than the name suggests, this kit lets you build your own Maglev train. Comes complete with rails and a compass, as well as a 44-page instructional booklet. On the downside, as the hype sheet warns, swallowing multiple magnets can be seriously deleterious to a child's health: "If more than one magnet is swallowed, magnets can attract to each other and cause intestinal perforation or blockage, which can be fatal." I bet the folks who believe in magnet therapy can't be too thrilled to hear that.
The Judges Will Think... "Haven't Maglev trains been the 'transportation of the future' for a quarter-century now? If only this lousy job paid me enough to visit China, I could check out that Shanghai route. *Sigh* What happened to my youthful hopes and dreams? Where did the time go? Why did I marry the first girl that let me get to third base? Oh, wait—gotta halt the self-pity and grade this kid. I dunno, a C? Sounds about right. Now, when's happy hour?"

You'll notice that none of the above kits cost less than a tenner. I tried and tried to locate one, but the closest I could come was this voltaic cell for $12.95. I guess if you're really a low-ender, though, you can just give your kid an old clock radio and have him/her take it apart. They can title their project "Mystery of the Snooze Function, Revealed!" It'll get 'em a solid D/D-plus, but that's better than an F. And it's certainly better than anything I ever managed to gin up.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I imagine that being a cordless-phone designer is pretty similar to playing for the Atlanta Hawks, minus the big money, groupies, and VIP strip-club privileges. I mean, you're technically in the gadgets game, which is nirvana for a geek—certainly beats working a Store 24 cash register. But you've also got to realize that you're rarely going to get props from consumers, let alone the media. That's because, let's face it, cordless phones have pretty much topped out in terms of technological sophistication—just as the Hawks seem to perennially top out at, oh, a dozen or so games under .500.

The difference between the Hawks and the cordless-phone industry? The Hawks can be—and probably should be—avoided. But millions of Americans, including your humble narrator, still have landlines in this otherwise Unstrung Era. And having a landline means basically means having a cordless phone.

But which phone to choose if you're a low-ender loath to spend over $50? Specs aren't much of an issue here—those 5.8 GHz phones aren't demonstrably better than the 2.4 GHz models, and caller ID is ubiquitous even on the most ludicrously cheap Unidens. So it's best to go for the aesthetic frills. After the jump, a rundown of four gimmicky cordless phones I'm considering, and an appeal for your advice. PLUS: Best Chinese manufacturer names!

Motorola MA357 (pictured above)
Pros In a word, camouflage. I can imagine few better ways to demonstrate one's inherent machismo than with a hunting-ready cordless phone. On top of that, it offers a veritable Wild Kingdom of ringtones: bear, duck, elk, "couger" [sic], coyote, loon, and a few others. Includes belt clip.
Cons I wonder if camo is sort of impractical for a handset. Seems like it would easily get lost amid the piles of clothes and whatnot that litter my cramped apartment. Also, the base station's girth seems excessive.
Bottom Line The front-runner, though a little pricey at around $40. (Remember, I'm cheap as all get-out.)

Spectra KT2015 (a.k.a. the Hello Kitty Phone
Pros Will make my wife happy. The most innovative design in this price range—I dig the curves. 40-number speed dial, which is a lot for $40. Handset will stand out amid piles of junk. Affordable relative to other notable Hello Kitty products.
Cons Pink. Potentially emasculating.
Bottom Line Highly unlikely for my household, though I appreciate the designers' efforts—the Josh Smiths of their industry, so to speak. Wish the Tony Stewart NASCAR phone was cheap enough for consideration.

GE Cordless Bedroom Phone
Pros Transformers-like multifunctionality. Unobtrusive design. Programmable snooze, which is a feature I've been yearning for on my antiquated Sony Dream Machine.
Cons Do I really, truly need another low-end clock radio? Does anyone? Also, the handset is a throwback to the pre-mobile era—very rigid lines, not the elegant curves of today's more Razr-inspired numbers.
Bottom Line Another valiant attempt to make the cordless phone halfway interesting, but not sure an AM/FM radio really does it for me.

Uniden Submersible Cordless Phone
Pros Ostensibly waterproof, though I'm sure that "water-resistant" would be the more accurate description. Handset is yellow, the international color for ruggedized gadgets. Handset is also described as "floating," which can only be a good thing. Oh, and "Rubber Side Grips"? Yes, please!
Cons Ugh, an antiquated model operating at 900 MHz, which means you can expect lots of interference issues. Weird upright base station that'll probably tip over if placed on the floor instead of screwed into the wall. A low-end Uniden, a brand not known for its reliability (in my personal experience, at least).
Bottom Line I'd be enchanted if this were a 2.4 GHz phone, and the price was 10 bucks less. But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts...

As you can tell, I'm definitely leaning toward buying myself the Motorola camo phone. But I'm going to put my telephonic fate in your hands, comrades—am I making a mistake by bringing ursine ringtones into my life? Am I letting machismo cloud my judgment of the Hello Kitty phone's technological charms? Please, I beg of you—shower upon me your bountiful wisdom.

BRILLIANT SUCCESS: Engrish has always been a topic of great fascination 'round these parts. So, too, should its entertaining corollary—the hyper-optimism of Chinese corporate names.

I'm compiling a list of the sunniest-sounding Guangdong firms, inspired in part by a recent spam I received from one Ms. Dong Happy (who, unfortunately, is employed by the comparatively bland-sounding Qingdao Univer Import & Export Co., Ltd.). So far, my best catch is Brilliant Success Electronics Technology, based in the delightful gadgets mecca of Shenzhen. Anyone got something even more positive? Please share with the group in comments. The sunnier, the better—having an awful week over here, what with a slow leak causing my century-old hardwood floors to buckle, and my corner bodega no longer stocking Sapporo tall boys. Definitely could use the psychological boost of, say, a Wonderful Amazing Happy Smile Electronics Co, Ltd.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Every so often, I come across a product that inspires a thicket of hard-to-reconcile emotions. In the case of the $199 QuickPAD IR, my first reaction was straightforward enough—namely, bafflement at how such a seemingly archaic machine, best described as a Smith Corona word processor mated with a Psion Series 3, can possibly exist in this day and age. I mean, haven't the good folks at QuickPAD Technologies heard of refurbished and off-lease Dell Latitudes? Or AbiWord? Tough to see how they can carve themselves out a niche, given the competition from "real" laptops (i.e. those that can be used for more than just creating text).

But my initial flippancy was soon tempered by a mixture of nostalgia, understanding, and, finally, an inkling of respect. The QuickPAD is by no means the wave of the low-end future, but there's something to be said for stripped-down products with limited aspirations. After the jump, why I can't help but lovelike this grandpa-worthy technology. PLUS: A response from the ultrasonic pest control industry!

If the QuickPAD IR seems like a throwback to yesteryear, that's because, well, it's from yesteryear. As far as I can determine, the machine has changed little since 1997, when it was marketed by H45 Technologies as a laptop alternative. This, of course, was back in the day when the Apple PowerBook 1400 was considered unusually affordable at the low, low price of $2,500. The QuickPAD, on the other hand, was priced at the same $199 it goes for today, and you could beam your work to a desktop via infrared or PS/2 cable. The one major downside, however, was that the transferring didn't (and still doesn't) work both ways—you couldn't download data from your desktop to your QuickPAD.

Fast forward a decade and the QuickPAD has barely changed, despite the fact that QuickPAD Technologies was spun off H45. In terms of specs, the only discernible upgrade seems to have been a slight memory bump, as well as the addition of a program called Typing Tutor. This latter tweak was obviously made in order to heighten the QuickPAD's appeal to its new target demographic: kids, or, more specifically, the schools that educate them.

To his credit, QuickPAD Technologies CEO Henryk Szejnwald realized somewhere along the line that the low-ending of laptops would be the death of his business, if he continued to insist on marketing the QuickPAD to mainstream consumers. So he made like a Cretaceous Period mammal and adapted: QuickPAD refocused on selling to cash-strapped schools, with the promise that kids could write out their assignments, then beam them to a classroom's sole desktop.

But y'know what? I don't think kids are who QuickPAD should be going after. That's in part because, honestly, I don't think we're doing the young'uns any favors by training them to use machines that feature four-line, 40-character LCD displays. Assuming a class has 30 kids, and each one is given a $193 QuickPAD (there's a price break for bulk purchases), that's $5,790. Wouldn't that money be better spent on some new desktops or—and I may be crazy here—some group laptops? It's nice for each kid to have their own machine, but the QuickPAD's technological limitations in turn limit the knowledge it can impart.

A more promising market, to my mind, is folks who need to write on the fly—journalists, police detectives, surveyors, safety inspectors, etc., etc. The QuickPAD is great for such field operators because it boots up in less than three seconds, weighs just a pound, and can go 100 hours on four AA batteries.

Maybe QuickPAD should go back to playing itself off high-end laptops—in this case, ruggedized numbers like the Panasonic Toughbooks. Lord knows I could have used a QuickPAD on my trip to the Indo-Burmese jungle this past winter; I had to spend countless hours deciphering my chicken-scratch notes upon returning home.

The other nice thing about the QuickPAD, of course, is that it's not going to get gunked up with spyware, faulty drivers, aborted updates, and the million other headaches that make Windows such a pain. So though the price may not be that much better than a refurbbed, low-end laptop, you've got to factor in the tech-support angle. You're just not going to have much downtime due to sluggish performance.

My one gripe: the price. I realize that it's lower in real terms than a decade ago, thanks to inflation, but $199 still seems dear in this age of the Balance CN4949 and its low-end brethren. Think you can do it for $99, Henryk? That might also give you more of a leg up on your fellow portable throwback, the Alphasmart Neo. The Neo's got you on battery life (700 hours!) and screen size (six lines!), and for just an extra $50. How about a price war, to show 'em who's boss?

ULTRASONIC PUSHBACK: To my great surprise, I heard from a vendor of ultrasonic pest repellers in response to last week's column. A very nice man from Woodstream Professional Pest Management wrote in to say that, yes, they had scientific data to support the efficacy of its PestChaser. The man added that the PestChaser is registered for sale in Canada, having been approved by Health Canada in accordance with the Pest Control Product Act. (Any Canadians care to chime in about whether or not this is an admirable seal of approval?)

A FedEx package of scientific data is now apparently wending its way to my world headquarters here on 122nd Street. I'm still dubious, especially since the primary test alluded to by Woodstream seems to be this one from 1989. (And, according to this site, that study's author was later reluctant to discuss his research.)

But I'm going to keep an open mind, review Woodstream's data, and get back to y'all next week. Who knows—perhaps Woodstream is the Copernicus of rodent control, and all us naysayers are the equivalent of 16th-century ignoramuses going, "No, Nicolaus, the Sun obviously revolves around the Earth."

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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The animal lover in me so wants ultrasonic pest repellers to work. It's probably slightly speciesist of me to kill mice for periodically invading my kitchen, right? All they're doing is being mice, chasing after scraps of food as nature intended.

The cheapskate in me is pro-ultrasonic, too. A pack of low-end glue traps is five bucks; the Viatek model pictured at right can be had for under $10. Over the long haul, 'tis cheaper to go with the gadget than with the epoxy.

Pity, then, that that ultrasonic pest repellers work about as well as voodoo dolls. This fact is well-documented, and the debunkings stretch back to at least the 1970s. And yet the repellers remain on the market, presumably making a mint off sensitive, geeky skinflints like your humble narrator. The success of such an obviously deficient product provides a textbook example of how to market a dubious gadget.

Identify Consumer Unease Glue and spring traps work all right—I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of using peanut butter M&M's as bait. But people still hate dealing with dead or, worse, struggling rodents—not everyone has the cojones necessary to toss a still-living mouse down the incinerator chute. (No hate mail, please!) The obvious solution is a trap that doesn't just snap a rodent's neck or bog it down in glue, but rather vaporizes the body into nothingness. This being outside the realm of technological feasibility, someone had the bright idea for the ultrasonic repeller, which is all about limiting your cleanup duties. Note that the hype sheets for ultrasonic repellers don't necessarily claim they work better than traditional traps; they just stress that you won't have to touch or see any rodents. In other words, they promise you a neat-freak Fantasyland. Too bad real life is a messy affair, one which rodents have been a part of since the dawn of time.

Use Mumbo-Jumbo We all grow up learning that dogs can hear noises that humans can't. From this tidbit of trivia, we naturally extrapolate that rodents' ears act the same, and that they're obviously averse to constant, high-pitched noise. The hype sheets reinforce this assumption by invoking specs that seem impressive: "Ultrasonic energy with a range of 32-65 kHz is emitted from this unit on a random frequency." Kilohertz? Wow, that's fancy science-speak! Or at least that's the reaction the manufacturers are trying to elicit. But all the sonic terminology in the world can't cover up the fact that there's scarcely a shred of scientific evidence to support the repellers' efficacy.

Go Into Opposition Whenever a manufacturer of ultrasonic repellers is challenged on their product's usefulness, the response is usually along the lines of, "Of course The Man is saying that—he's in the pocket of the pest-control industry!" Okay, maybe not those precise words, but the gist of their typical defense is pretty clear—the main opponents of ultrasonic technology are the trap-makers and exterminators who have much to gain by eliminating their competition. It helps the ultrasonic folks that the general public generally doesn't have a high opinion of professional rat killers and their ilk—the most famous exterminator in pop culture might well be Dale Gribble from King of the Hill, and he's sort of a freak. (For the record, I have the utmost respect for rodent-control specialists after reading Robert Sullivan's Rats while in India.)

Milk the Placebo Effect I bet there's at least a few folks among today's column readers who are saying to themselves, "This writer doesn't know jack-all about rodent control! I used an ultrasonic controllers some years back, and I never saw another mouse." Let me respond by saying this: We human beings are poor judges of cause and effect. Or, in more eloquent lingo, correlation does not imply causation. The ultrasonic industry relies on people who've enjoyed the happy coincidence of installing their repeller just as their mice decided to skedaddle for better feeding grounds. It's natural to feel giddy once your house is no longer overrun by furry, nibbling vermin, and one way people express this joy is by frequenting the Internets and writing testimonials about their ultrasonic repellers. And so a vicious cycle continues...

Look Smart This may seem like a minor point, but the repeller industry deserves credit for its product-design chops. The Viatek model, for example, looks like a high-tech night-light, complete with ethereal aquamarine glow. If guests come by, you can explain it away as a radon sensor, an air freshener, or something less embarrassing than a way to rid your home of critters commonly associated with hantavirus or (in the case of rats) the Black Death. Glue traps? Not so easy to lie about those—you can try the air-freshener line, but no guarantees that it'll work. Ultrasonic repellers thus prey upon on our inborn need to make it appear as if everything's hunky-dory—sort of like control-top pantyhose, I guess.

Let me close by saying that, if you work for a manufacturer of ultrasonic repellers, I'm willing to hear your side of the story. I've certainly been wrong about some things in my life—Lord knows I botched my March Madness bracket this year. (Damn you, Texas Longhorns!) Drop me a line and I'll run your defense in next week's column. But if I don't hear anything, I'll continue to assume the worst.

Oh, and a last word for anyone horrified by my apparent lack of empathy for rodents: No, I've yet to try those live mice traps, but I'm willing to give 'em a go—especially since they've now reached low-end status. But do they work? Opinions in comments or directly to me, please.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Ordinarily there'd be no good reason to get worked up about the new Motorola VT2542 router, which Vonage is now selling for $59.99. Voice-over-data prioritization? VPN pass-through support? Puh-leez. Wake me when it can make cinnamon toast.

But these are by no means ordinary times at Vonage. America's most visible VoIPer announced the new router mere days after suffering a serious gutpunch: Verizon won a longstanding patent infringement suit against Vonage, to the tune of $58 million. A second suit brought by Sprint Nextel is winding its way through the courts, as well. As much as Vonage is trying to spin these legal woes as no big whoop, and continue on with its innovation as if all was cool, you've got to think the company's executives are none too thrilled about the situation.

The most obvious question to arise from all these suits, as well as Vonage's other troubles, is whether the company will survive. But the bigger issue for us cheapskates is what all this hullabaloo portends for the future of VoIP, the technology that rescued us from the Baby Bells' cold, brutal grip. After the jump, ruminations on who you'll be paying for phone service in 2010. PLUS: Prizes en route to my beloved beta testers.

First off, journalistic ethics mandate that I should lay bare my ties: I am a Vonage customer, though not a particularly enthusiastic one. I use their VoIP service for my home office; if number portability hadn't been a priority, I would have been happy enough sticking with my mobile and Skype (of which I'm a fan). That said, my complaints about Vonage's service mostly boil down to little things—hiccups in the connection, long stretches where I can't surf and talk at the same time. I'm by no means a member of this disgruntled clique, and Vonage has surely saved me hundreds of dollars over the last two-plus years. I was previously with Talk America (now Cavalier Telephone), and those copper-wire taxes were killing me.

The lawsuit loss to Verizon is just the latest inkling that all's not going swimmingly for Vonage. My first tip-off came last year, when I got a recorded phone call inviting me to buy into the company's IPO. When you're asking the folks who use your service to prop up your Wall Street offering, yikes, that ain't good. Then came an e-mail offer, declaring that I could save $60 by pre-paying for a year's worth of service—again, a classic sign of, if not desperation, at least distress.

It's not hard to see why Vonage is struggling: they're a classic victim of the first-mover disadvantage. When they rolled out wide, they way undercut the copper-wire alternatives. But the traditional providers have caught up, especially with those bundled phone-cable-Internet packages. Yeah, those deals still rip you off on phone service a bit, but they're easy—no worries about number portability, and a service guy will actually come to your house and install the router(s). Installation may be easy for those of us who frequent Gizmodo, but a lot of people are still freaked out by Ethernet cables, as well as by the prospect of having to deal with yet another monthly bill. Never underestimate the prevalence of both technophobia and financial anxiety.

If Vonage goes—and, in fairness, they seem pretty insistent that they're gonna fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive—I can see the VoIP market splitting one of two ways. You could see cable-based VoIP services like AT&T CallVantage win out, even going so far as buying Vonage's entire customer list. Or Vonage's rebellious mantle could be seized by a bunch of now-miniscule upstarts like Packet8 and Jajah—assuming the Baby Bells won't slap them around with patent infringement suits, too. (Since it's based abroad, Skype might be a tougher legal target. But until they can introduce number portability in the U.S., I don't think they can step it up to that next level—remember, Joe Q. Consumer still loves his phone number! It's part of his identity.)

As a low-ender, all I really care about is paying as little as possible for phone service. (I confess to once being a client of a long-distance service that made you listen to ads in exchange for free talk time.) And I'm cautiously optimistic that the broadband wars will keep pressing fees down, as phone service becomes more of an inducement than anything else. In 2002, I wrote a Wired piece about Japan's Softbank, which was then offering 12-Mbps DSL plus VoIP for around $21 per month. (They were also spending roughly $250 to acquire each new customer, but let's shove that fact aside for now.) The VoIP was the deal's most alluring bait, but I also discovered that it cost Softbank next-to-nothing—I believe it was Joi Ito who first opened up my eyes to the fact that voice really should be free.

The future cash cow for broadband providers has to be more pipe-hungry content, especially video. Voice? A drop in the bucket, a throw-in on the deal. But getting the providers to acknowledge that will require competition—between each other, of course, but also from the VoIP indies like Skype, Jajah and myriad others. I encourage our pals in Washington D.C. to make sure that competition continues, by making number portability simpler (mandating a 48-hour turnaround time?) and guarding against Big Telco shenanigans. Meanwhile, the VoIP upstarts might need to rethink their ease-of-use—Americans may be getting more comfortable with technology, but they still need their hands held from time to time. (One ad idea: rip off Geico's ingenious tagline, stating something akin to, "10 minutes could save you $200 a year. Call us to find out how." No more Vonage yodeling, please!)

The most important thing is that skinflints like me should someday enjoy haypenny-an-hour calls to mobiles in Ouagadougou. Anything short of that will be a travesty against Man and Nature.

WINNING FEELS GOOD: Two weeks ago, I appealed for y'all to help me beta test my new site. As a little carrot, I offered two copies of Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited by your humble narrator.

Happy to report that I drew for the books last night (supervised by my wife in lieu of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and we have two winners—David Hunt and Kris LeMoine, your books will be in the mail next week. For the rest of y'all, thanks and don't fret—you can read the book's contents (for free!) here.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I harbor no illusions regarding my future career path. Having already entered my fourth decade on Spaceship Earth, I'm pretty much stuck with writing at this point. And it's not just my advanced age that limits my options—I doubt the NBA is looking for any 154-pound power forwards, nor is there much call for monolingual secret agents. So journalistic serfdom it is, a profession that ranks somewhere between commercial fisherman and rodeo clown.

Yet a small flame of hope flickers in my heart: maybe, just maybe, I can still make it as a musician. Never mind that I've got an atrocious ear and less-than-nimble fingers; a man can still dream of being an Iommi-like guitar hero, can't he? And part of that dream means surrounding myself with the gadgetry required to sound halfway decent, rather than like a nine-year-old hacking out "Rock Around the Clock" on his Harmony Jr.

Thankfully, putting on rock-deity airs can be done on the cheap. After the jump, how to gadgetize your wannabe self for under $50. PLUS: Another entry for the Low-End Hall of Fame!

Digital Tuner
Yes, I realize that the cheaper way to tune your guitar is with a traditional pitch pipe—or, if you're really a skinflint, with an online pitch pipe. But the sad reality is that many of us musical aspirants lack the biological talent to sync up two sounds. That means we're forced to rely on electronic tuners, which used to feature analog needles. But those have largely been dinosaured in favor of digital versions. Some, like the Musician's Friend DT220, replicate the needle effect on an LCD screen; others, notably the Dean Markley 6007, simply light up when you've reached the appropriate note. I'm actually a fan of the former approach, but that's probably just because I grew up with the needle gauges. The bottom line is that, no matter what the Guitar Center salesman tells you, you needn't spend more than $10 on a tuner. (Additional caveat: at last check, those Guitar Center folks work on commission, so be wary of upselling.)

Metronome
There are numerous free online metronomes; this one is my favorite, due to the familiar and easily adjustable user interface. But if your practice room is a dank basement, perhaps your wireless connection won't reach. In that case, you can employ the omnipresent Qwik Time QT-3, which features 200 speed settings (or roughly 184 more than you'll probably ever need, you amateur you). Even more key is the headphone jack; no way you can hear this thing click when your amp is cranked up to 11ear-splitting levels.

Effects Pedal
The high price of effects pedals has always baffled me. I remember buying a used Turbo Rat in 1996, and being utterly shocked that my musical friends considered it a "good deal" at $100. There are certainly plenty of budget options around nowadays, most notably those sold under the revived Danelectro brand (purchased by the Evets Corporation in the mid-'90s). They've got a line of highly stylized effects pedals, such as the "BLT" Slap Echo and the Fab Series D-3 Metal, all for under $20. I've tried this one, and it's decent enough—a nice substitute for my lack of vibrato skills. But I'm somewhat more enamored of such Behringer pedals as the AM100. If nothing else, they seem more sturdily built. Plus they'll attract fewer hoots of derision from real musicians; I appreciate where Danelectro is coming from with the retro colors and Cadillac-fin contours, but their pedals can seem a little toylike as a result.

As I said up top, I'm by no means a good musician, and by extension I'm no great judge of guitar gadgets. My one musical accomplishment of note has been selling a Les Paul to Phil Manley, guitarist for Trans Am. Given my lackluster skills and tin ear, then, I'd encourage my more rock-inclined readers to leave some low-end tips in comments. Anyone got a clue on a sub-$20 swirl effect? I've recently been gunning for a more My Bloody Valentine-like sound, but I just keep ending up sounding like Yngwie Malmsteen on a Robitussin bender. Decidedly unpleasant.

THE EMERSON THAT WOULDN'T QUIT: In response to my appeal from a few weeks back, yet another reader has submitted a nominee for the Low-End Hall of Fame, a shrine dedicated to those cheap gadgets that have withstood the test of time. Take it away, Alex Raddas:

I have had this TV (pictured at right—ed.) since I was about 8, many hours of Nintendo/Genesis/PBS on this baby. The picture of the power cord is when my dog decided it tasted good and drug it off the TV stand. The hole in the top and the missing plastic feet on the bottom corners are from a moving accident. I was helping my sister move home from college and I had a canopy on my 1985 Toyota pickup, a gust of wind blew the canopy off of the truck, this tv along with a dresser and a Singer sewing machine flew out onto the freeway at 60+ MPH. The TV was the only thing we were able to salvage and it still works great.

Wow. Anyone have intel on whether today's Emersons are this tough?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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As previously discussed in this space, I tend to hold onto my electronics 'til they're pretty outmoded—why shell out $430 for the latest LG handset when my dinky Samsung is still kicking, albeit only barely? I'd rather spend the cash on a couple of these, and still have enough left over for a case of Ommegang.

But even for the most tight-fisted among us, there comes a day when the smart move is to bid auf Wiedersehen to the products that have served us so long, so well. In my case, I've finally realized that my Mesozoic Era iMac G3 (700 Mhz processor, 256 megs of RAM) can no longer hold its own. It was fun while it lasted, for sure, but the handwriting's on the wall—with some tasty MacBook Pros about to hit the sales bin (or so I've heard), the time seems right for an upgrade.

So now I'm facing that most inescapable of geek quandaries: what to do with the heavy-as-sin, dinosaured desktop that's now cluttering my office. Yes, I realize that the right thing to do is donate the behemoth. But us cheapskates, our first thought is always, Can I squeeze a little cash out of this? And so I've lately been weighing the pros and cons of selling a past-its-prime hunk of electronic goodness. The big calculation that needs to be made (with your help): Is it really worth the trouble? PLUS: Beta test my new site, win a prize!

The first step in any gadget-selling exercise is to determine the product's value. But that's harder than it sounds—comp prices are all over the price, and you've also got to factor in the role played by software. (For example, my iMac's got Photoshop and Illustrator on it.) After much mulling, however, I determined that I wouldn't be out of the ballpark to ask $125 for the iMac—perhaps a little high, given that the 700 MHz model was discontinued about five years ago, but the Adobe software should be valuable to a budding artist or designer, right? (I won't tell them that it runs slow-as-molasses on that creaky processor.)

Now comes the really tricky part: determining the best sales venue. When you're dealing with margins this thin, eBay is sorta out of the question—the iMac weighs nearly 35 pounds, making it prohibitively expensive to ship. That limits my potential customer base to locals—good thing I live in New York City. And good thing my current hometown has such an active Craigslist community—that seems like the natural place to start.

I sold my now-wife's craptacular Dell desktop via Craigslist a few years ago. There are basically two types of customers who haunt Craigslist in search of such electronic dreck: moms looking for baby's first computer, and the sorts of rabid geeks whose basements are cluttered with dismembered motherboards. As long as they're paying in cash, I'm happy to deal with either stereotype.

The downside to Craigslist, however, are the undercutters—sellers who don't do their homework, quote ridiculously low prices, and then nab your customers. As of this writing, for example, there's a $30 G3 on sale from a dude who lives in my exact neighborhood. I have to compete with that? Also, there's always the threat of meeting a creep: I once sold a disk drive to a guy who later e-mailed me to ask (how do I put this gently?) whether I was interested in purchasing some R. Kelly-themed videos from him. Ewwww—talk about violating the seller-buyer relationship.

Aside from Craigslist, then, I can only see two other options: posting fliers at a coffeehouse, or going the yard sale route. Don't scoff at the latter—at a stoop sale I held last August, I sold an analog four-track recorder for $25. But, honestly, my odds of getting an off-the-street customer to shell out $100-plus for an iMac are pretty thin.

Which brings me back to the charity option. I'm no accountant, but the IRS rules seem to allow you to deduct the "fair market value" of your computer. I'd assume&mdash:assume!—that means I could write-off more than the $125 value I initially estimated, given the presence of Photoshop and Illustrator on the iMac's hard drive. (You can actually pay $3.99 to get your machine's Orion Blue Book value, in case you're really neurotic about being 100 percent honest with the tax man.)

Oh, yeah, and by donating the iMac to charity, I could also give myself a nice, long pat on the back for finally living up to my saintly namesake in some small way.

But to paraphrase an oft-repeated line from the underrated Idiocracy, I like money. So I'm still up in the air on this one—is it worth the hassle to squeeze a last $100 out of my fading iMac, or should I be happy with a teensy tax write-off and some minor psychic rewards? Ball's in your court, oh brothers and only friends. Please leave your advice in comments, or connect one-on-one.

TEST FOR PRIZES: I'd like to use this column's last throes to formally announce the launch of my personal site: Youthrobber.com. It's pretty basic at the moment, with updates on my other writing endeavors, links to past stories, and pictures from my book research trip to the Indo-Burmese border.

It also has some bugs—including some thorny caching issues—which I'd appreciate some feedback on. Let me know what's wrong and you can win a free copy of Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited by yours truly. Come on, how can you resist?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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As hopeless gearheads, we're naturally prone to assuming that today's gadgets invariably trump their low-tech forebears. And for the most part that's true—how many of y'all would honestly prefer a rotary phone to your Treo 700wx, except for the purposes of eliciting ironic laughter?

But the quality gap narrows considerably when dealing with low-end gadgets, particularly those that are merely electronic upgrades on everyday tools. While I'm sure the $70 Cuisinart Electric Knife does a mean job of eviscerating ham, I know from harsh experience that the $9.99 Procter-Silex Easy Slice (pictured at right) is vastly inferior to the $3.99 chef's knife I bought at the local A&P years ago. The sad reality that us gizmo aficionados must accept is that just because something's battery-powered or souped-up with an LCD screen doesn't mean it's superior to what grandpa used.

For this week's column, then, I considered some head-to-head matchups between low-end electronic gadgets (all sub-$12) and the austere devices they're meant to replace. Be forewarned: I have very mixed feelings about the razor issue. PLUS: A first-ever reader's nomination for the Low-End Hall of Fame!

Ordinary Chef's Knife vs. Electric Knife
Low-End Entrant The Procter-Silex Easy Slice (see above for link)
Points for the Plain First and foremost, easy to clean. After carving apart a luscious roast, the last thing you want to worry about are the potential consequences of submerging a 100-watt knife in a watery sink. Procter-Silex is a budget brand owned by Hamilton Beach; like many a budget brand, it's notorious for churning out products that are aesthetically pleasing but prone to breaking.
Points for the Elaborate In theory, electric knives are better at such culinary tasks as meat carving. But the Procter-Silex couldn't cut cleanly through a tin can; I think I used mine once before realizing that I'd been scammed. Very shaky operation and, oh yeah, it's corded—makes you feel like a disobedient dog who's been tethered to a backyard stake.
The Winner The plain-jane chef's knife in a walkover. Though I'm open to the idea that an electric knife sharpener might be a nice addition to my kitchen; sharpening stones take forever, despite the nice bonus of feeling like a blacksmith circa 984 A.D.

Toothbrush vs. Electric Toothbrush
Low-End Entrant Tony Stewart Electric Toothbrush from 3D Marketing, $9.99 from Sports Authority
Points for the Plain Another case of me being nervous bringing electricity near water—although in this case, at least, we're just talking about measly AA batteries. Also, I like the occasional ritual of picking out a new brush at the local CVS—so many choices! Really makes me appreciate the genius of the free market, more so than reading the Finance and Economics section of The Economist.
Points for the Elaborate In a word, results. Scoff if you will, but these low-end electric toothbrushes definitely make your mouth feel cleaner, especially those hard-to-reach back teeth. As a gearhead, I also love the fact that the hype sheet claims that the head rotates at 6,800 RPMs.
The Winner A close one, but the electric entrant is the victor. Might be different if the price were closer to $25 than $10, or I lived in a city with more expensive batteries—God bless the dudes who walk through the subways selling two-for-a-dollars packs of Duracells.

Razor vs. Electric Razor
Low-End Entrant Braun 370 Pocket Twist Plus, $11.45 from eTronics4Less
Points for the Plain Having experimented with several electric razors over the years, I've yet to find one that provides as close a shave as the mid-range Gillette Mach 3. (No, I haven't tried the five-bladed Fusion.) And the travel-sized Pocket Twist Plus is obviously not cream of the electric crop. Off-brand blade clones (such as those peddled under the CVS private label) cut the expense of manual shaving in half.
Points for the Elaborate Off-brand clones or not, avoiding facial hirsuteness the manual way is still pretty pricey. The Braun mini has good battery life, is easy to clean, and can survive rough treatment. If only it did a better job on several day's worth of growth; it has problems with whiskers as opposed to stubble.
The Winner I'm gonna have to go with the analog option here, though that's in large part due to my general un-hairiness; I get long-term whiskers, as opposed to short-term stubble that requires immediate attention. My real question is why more effective electric razors have yet to enter the low-end price range—in this day and age of the $19.99 DVD player, how come a decent Norelco is still 80 bucks? I smell conspiracy.

Screwdriver vs. Electric Screwdriver
Low-End Entrant Igo Grip and Drive, $10.70 at Ace Hardware
Points for the Plain Not many, save for the fact that it makes you look macho to have lots of screwdrivers lying around. And they're cheap enough so that, when you invariably destroy a Phillips Head trying to tackle a too-tough job, you can just gather up some spare change and buy a replacement.
Points for the Elaborate As with the electric toothbrush, I'm a late convert to the benefits of electric screwdrivers. They save you a lot of wrist strain, and apply necessary torque on those hard-to-reach screws. I know my low-end electric 'driver pretty much saved my ass on a recent home-improvement project—building some storage cubes in our home office. I think I'd still be fiddling with one last, pesky screw if not for the electric option.
The Winner Tough call, but I'm going with the electric screwdriver. Yes, you can use a power drill for the same purpose, but the simpler electric gadget allows for one-handed operation, and is small enough to wedge into tight spaces. My only gripe on the low-end units? The magnetic bits can jar loose if not properly inserted.

As always, leave your takes in comments, or hit me directly and I'll do my best to respond ASAP. I'll also try to wade into comments, but probably not until tonight—got jury duty tomorrow, where I'll likely be using the Homer Simpson approach to eludingdelaying my civic duty.

DREAM MACHINE REDUX: A few weeks back, I asked y'all to send along pics of your favorite low-end gadget, ones that have survived the test of time despite years of abuse. Our first nomination for the Low-End Hall of Fame comes from Moshe Krakowski, who wrote in to lavish praise upon his ancient Sony Dream Machine clock radio (pictured at right):

This bad boy was a Bar Mitzvah gift way back in 1991 and has managed to survive being battered, spilled on (hot and cold drinks), spit up on, among other things. Occasionally, when spilled on, the radio won't work for a few days or some of the LED number segments might disappear, but they always come back. (I only know this because I was too lazy to unplug it the first time this happened).

I don't know how much it cost back then, but it couldn't have been much, and it has lasted me 16 years. Not too shabby.

No, not too shabby at all. Congrats on living the low-end dream, Moshe.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Given the frighteningly low pay in my chosen line of work, I often fantasize about dropping writing in favor of something far, far more lucrative. Alas, I lack the hops necessary to make it in the world of professional basketball (even on the Minot Skyrockets), and my brain's too feeble to handle the likes of arbitrage, bond trading, or high-stakes pai gow. The one thing I might be cut out for? Importing low-end Chinese electronics.

Sounds difficult, I realize, especially since my Cantonese is little better than my Xhosa. But in the era of quick-and-easy sales leads via Tootoo and Alibaba, as well as Guangdong factories that really, really want to be your friend, low-end moguldom is hardly the impossible dream.

Case in point: the man behind Sundial, which sells MP4 players like the Nanoish knock-off pictured at right. After the jump—and in partial honor of the impending Year of the Pig—an anatomy of how a gadget gets from Southern China to Norfolk, Virginia. PLUS: Commodore in Argentina!

Our story starts in one of Shenzhen's myriad industrial parks, located in the factory-clogged Bao'an District. This is the headquarters for MJN Technologies, an erstwhile hi-fi manufacturer that now focuses on making portable audio/video players "built with latest controllers from Actions, Samsung, and Sigmatel." MJN also wants you to know that 30 percent of their labor is done with human hands, making this precisely the sort of company that Edward Burtynsky would certainly love to document.

Among MJN's hottest products (at least according to them) is the FY-910. The aesthetics are obviously cribbed from the Nano, but it's a different beast—it'll play MP4 files and has a built-in FM receiver, but the memory tops out at a gig.

Obviously, this isn't the sort of thing that's gonna end up at Best Buy. MJN instead hooked up with Jhansene Lopez, a college student in Norfolk, Virginia who's also the chief executive of Sundial. And what's Sundial? As far as I can tell, it's a one-man electronics importers with a kiosk in Norfolk's Military Circle Mall. It also has a thriving eBay store that, strangely, goes under the name Garment Liquidator. (The eBay prices are actually better than the kiosk's, it seems, with one-gig MP4 players going for c. $36.)

Sundial seems to have solicited its MJN connection through both Alibaba and this site. What's amazing about connecting with factories in this manner is how little you're required to order nowadays; shipping costs have come down to the point that you can get steep price breaks on buying a few hundred units, as opposed to a few thousand. Heck, one MP4 manufacturer I came across would do wholesale deals on as few as 25 players.

You can quibble with the quality of MJN's merchandise, but I gotta say, much respect to Lopez for bringing low-end Guangdong gadgets to the American mall. I'm blessed in that, as a New Yorker, I'm within a quick subway ride of not one, but three fabulous Chinatowns where such electronics are easy to find. Not everyone's so lucky, but they may be if Sundial makes good on its stated intention to franchise its kiosks.

So should I gather some start-up cash, purchase a bunch of MP4 players via Tootoo, and become a low-end tycoon? Or is this business a lot less lucrative than I'm imagining it to be? One potential stumbling block I foresee is direct sales from factories. Take this Nano knockoff, which lists at a ridiculously low $29.99—where they get you is on the $25 shipping cost, which is a pretty sure tipoff that they're boxing the player up in China and sending it right to your doorstep.

If the shipping rates come down appreciably—which may largely be a matter of cutting red tape on the Chinese side—the likes of MJN may no longer need the likes of Sundial. But for the moment, my low-end hat off to Lopez and his efforts to bring off-brand electronics to the masses. Perhaps I'll join you in that line of work soon.

Or maybe not. On second thought, wiring money to some dude in Shenzhen I've never met sounds a bit risky, and cheapskates like myself don't like taking such risks. In my quest for a better payday, perhaps I'll stick with something safer.

COMMODORE LIVES!: I'm pretty sure that a good three-quarters of this column's readers owned a Commodore at some point in their geeked-out lives. I certainly remember unwrapping a VIC-20 one glorious Christmas, and spending the next six months coding a ski-racing game onto a frickin' cassette. (Yes, I'm old.)

Y'all will be glad to learn, then, that Commodore's comeback effort seems to be working...in Argentina. An Argentinean reader snapped the cellphone pic at the right while computer shopping. The hard-to-read prices for the Commodore SP-3600 LX are 1620 pesos (c. $523) for the CPUbox alone, and 1949 pesos (c. $629) complete with a 15-inch monitor. The specs? Straining my eyes, it looks like an Athlon 64 3800 processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 120-gig hard drive, and a Linux OS.

Oh, and a Samsung DVD combo drive. Though I'm sure you can figure out how to attach a cassette drive if you really, really want to. (Thanks, Jose Luis!)

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Look, I'm not going to lie to you: a lot of low-end gadgets aren't exactly built to last. I'm sure everyone out there in Gizmodoland has a tale to share about the $9 faux Discman that shattered within 48 hours, or the drugstore digicam with the exploding flash. As I've written before, you're always gambling when you go the discount route—with shoddy warranties and non-existent support the rule among low-end purveyors, today's $15 MP3 player is tomorrow's paperweight.

But far be it from me to add to your blues in the dark, frigid depths of February. This week's column isn't about those myriad times the Lords of Guangdong have given me the scroogie, but rather about the low-end products that have proven stunningly resilient over the years—starting with my beloved Apex AT1302 (pictured at right). Call this my own personal Low-End Hall of Fame, a pantheon of electronics that provided me with far more bang for the buck than I ever thought possible. Read on for four favorites, and start thinking about some of your own to share.

Apex AT1302 13-inch Color TV
Date of Purchase Fall of 1999
Price $79
Backgrounder My second TV in New York, replacing an antiquated Emerson that I'd found on the street (and that only showed hues of green, rather than a full color palette). Bought it at the Circuit City on Union Square, and distinctly remember the salesman's crestfallen expression when I told him where he could shove his extended warranty (though in much nicer language, I assure you). It's been with me every since.
Bound to Happen The remote control was made out of the cheapest plastic I've encountered in all my years on Spaceship Earth; it cracked badly within a few months, and is currently occupying a few square inches worth of space at Fresh Kills Landfill. The paint's worn off the channel buttons as a result.
Why It Deserves Adulation By far the most solid 13-inch TV I've ever encountered. Yes, it weighs only slightly less than Aaron Gibson, but that means it's been great at taking punishment. It's currently wedged between my stove and my toaster, a position in which it gets spattered with grease, broiled with waves of heat, and pounded by crashing plates (though only when I'm high off the Special Brew). Still displays the same craptacular picture as back in '99; just wipe a little Windex on the screen 'round Christmastime, and this puppy should be part of the inheritance I leave the grandkids.

RCA Lyra Headphones
Date of Purchase Sometime in 2002
Price Free (see below; list price surely <$5, though)
Backgrounder Given to me by a pal who'd just purchased an ultra-cheap 64MB RCA Lyra MP3 player—can't remember how much he paid for it, but I'm willing to bet he had money left over from his $20 bill. He assumed that any headphones that would accompany such a cheap digimusic player were bound to be awful, so he bestowed them upon me, knowing that I lap up freebies like a dog just returned from the Mojave Desert.
Bound to Happen The logo paint is gone, but otherwise these earpad-style 'phones are in excellent shape—which is a lot more than I can say for the five or so Apple earbuds I've blown out listening to Raekwon with the bass kicked way the hellheck up.
Why It Deserves Adulation As indicated above, the mere fact that these headphones haven't blown is a testament to their superior craftsmanship. Also, the little plastic hooks that latch 'em onto your ears are still going strong, despite getting drenched in sweat, frozen in the New York cold, and otherwise abused over the past four-plus years. Oh, and they provide surprisingly rich sound, given that they came packaged with a decidedly low-end MP3 player in the first place.

Acomdata 80GB External Hard Drive (Firewire Compatible)
Date of Purchase April 2003
Price $49.95 (a bargain then, a possible rip-off now)
Backgrounder Bought this drive after a previous backup drive whirred, screeched, then gave up the ghost at one of the worst times possible (i.e. just as I was experiencing a rather nasty laptop meltdown). I remember being a bit skeeved out by the Acomdata brand, which has its share of haters on various e-commerce sites. But the low-end gods were looking out for me on this one.
Bound to Happen The drive's starting to make some chimp-like yelps in its old age, and I'm wondering whether it's going to flare out sooner rather than later.
Why It Deserves Adulation External hard drives are so cheap nowadays that this doesn't seem like a particularly great steal in retrospect. But at the time it was a good price and, more importantly, Firewire compatible; I was using a Sony Vaio PGC-GR390 at the time, which oddly had Firewire but no USB 2.0. The Acomdata drive is hefty and not much to look at, but it's save my hide on multiple occasions. The only question now is whether I buy another one, so I can have a backup for my backup. Or is that overly paranoid?

Sony ICF-C120 "Dream Machine" Clock Radio
Date of Purchase Can't Even Remember—1997, perhaps? Earlier?
Price Under $10, for sure
Backgrounder Purchased at a "variety store" in Washington D.C.'s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. I was a newly minted adult at the time, with a job I had to get to—showered and dressed—by 9 a.m. I had a travel alarm clock from my days in Ireland, but wanted to wake up to the soothing sounds of WPGC ("The People's Station"). The Dream Machine seemed like the way to go.
Bound to Happen The slider on the top that toggles between off, radio, and buzzer is pretty loose, and it'll come off if you jiggle it to hard. There are also lots of crevices that have become a might dirty. Suffice to say, this isn't the sort of alarm clock you'll see showing up in too many Wallpaper spreads.
Why It Deserves Adulation This white cube's survived some seriously rough handling over the years. I'm the farthest thing from a morning person, and I've often taken my wrath out on the poor Dream Machine. But it keeps on pumping out the ear-piercing tunes every morning and, as a special bonus, it's broken in a very beneficial way—if you put the slider in just the right position, it'll buzz and radio at the same time. If that doesn't get you up, you don't deserve to be a functional member of society.

I've got others, but I'm going to end here and throw it over to y'all: got a low-end gadget that's lasted you for years, and without which your life wouldn't be complete? Mention it in comments, or better yet, send me a brief description and a picture. You're dream of seeing your $5 knock-off/off-brand gadget on Gizmodo can come true! But nothing too racy, please—this is definitely a family site.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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A few weeks back, I asked y'all a tough ethical question: have you ever felt guilty about buying pirated goods in the name of saving a few bucks? Now I've got another dilemma to ponder, inspired by my recent discovery of the four-gig Ematic flash drive pictured to the right. What kind of moral quandary could such a humdrum gizmo possibly cause, you might inquire? It's not about the product itself, but rather who's selling it: the boogeyman of mom-and-pops, the decimator of downtowns, the bane of organized labor, the Arkansan colossus which dare not speak its name. Yeah, you know who I'm talking about—and if you don't, well, best get your ignorant self up to speed.

Back before I started this column, I wouldn't have thought twice about buying electronics at Wal-Mart—I'm an eternal sap for low, low prices. But then I namechecked the store's Durabrand in a column last year, and got a flood of e-mails to the effect of: How dare you support such a menace to American decency?

I haven't bought a Wal-Mart gadget since, either online or off. But I was tempted this week by that Ematic, listed at $59.98. And it got me thinking not just about Wal-Mart, but about what it means to be both a cheapskate and a geek.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna rehash the standard pro-con debate on Wal-Mart. Odds are your mind's already made up about that, and I invite y'all to leave arguments on either side in comments. (Play nice.) But in the constant back-and-forth on the subject, I've rarely seen much about Wal-Mart's impact on other electronics retailers. Sure, we all know that they're squeezing the life out of Main Street grocery stores and apparel shops. But what's the effect been on the place where you bought your first disk drive? And was that place a CompUSA or Radio Shack, neither of which can be deemed a lot more cuddly than the Bentonville Gorilla? In my experience, Wal-Mart hasn't Borged the electro-retail landscape like it has elsewhere.

I'm also not sure that Wal-Mart can be blamed (the wrong verb, perhaps) for making Guangdong the capital of the cheap electronics world. Yes, the $29 DVD player that Wal-Mart debuted a few Christmases ago was a paradigm shifter (not to mention an event that revealed the very worst about humanity). But Wal-Mart was a relative latecomer to the low-end electronics game; the knock-off factories were already humming before Duraband was a glimmer in some corporate lackey's eye.

So then, what has been the "Wal-Mart effect" on the gadgets industry? They've certainly made computers affordable for a lot of families who otherwise not have them, a development you quibble with at the risk of being branded an elitist prick. And their constant inflow of cheaper and cheaper products has spurred the sort of price competition that us low-enders dream of—basic economics, right?

But here's the rub: by buying that $59.98 Ematic drive, I'd be patronizing a company that's done some things I disagree with on a very deep, profound level. Which is a weird feeling to have, because my brain usually shuts down once it realizes what a great bargain's to be had.

It's also weird because, let's face it, us gearheads aren't always the most political lot. We have our causes, sure, mostly to do with personal freedoms and the protection of a vibrant public commons. But let me put it this way: the CES floor is not a place where you're going to hear a lot of strong opinions about non-gadget issues, and cramming your head full of iPhone rumors leaves scant room for other pressing matters. We tend to fixate on objects and their esoteric backstories, often to the exclusion of a bigger picture—not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just sayin'.

My ultimate train of thought goes something like this: though I think Wal-Mart's impact on the electronics landscape has been a lot less deleterious than people think, I took a stand and refrained from buying that Ematic drive. However, there's a big caveat here: my choice was made all the easier by Newegg, which has this Avixe four-gig drive on sale for even less. It's easy to make a political stance when it's not hitting me in my beloved pocketbook, natch. I'd like to think I'd still do the "right thing" if Wal-Mart was the budget champ, but my judgment can go haywire when a deal is just too juicy.

Worry not, the droning's done. Now I'm gonna throw it back to y'all, dear readers: do you have any ethical qualms about purchasing electronics from Wal-Mart, especially when the price is oh-so-right and your bank account is oh-so-empty? Have I been hoodwinked into conducting my boycott-of-one, or should I be patting myself on the back? Replies in comments (which I avidly peruse over a couple of Ballantines every Thursday evening), or directly to me.

Also, while you're at it—is there some reason I should be steering clear of Newegg? Their prices of late have been too good to be true—I'm worried that they're making flash drives out of Chinese raccoon dogs or something.

BEST OF TECH 2007: The fact you made it this far in the column proves that you love you some tech writing. Put that passion to good use by nominating entries for the next installment of The Best of Technology Writing, the anthology I edited last year. This year's guest editor is way, way more stellar—journo superstar Steven Levy. Go here to submit nominations; self-nominations are welcome.

LASTLY: Colts are gonna win. You can't stop The Horse!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I'm in the middle of writing a book, an activity that requires a near ungodly level of concentration. Just my luck, then, that I live in a rollicking neighborhood where the day is routinely punctuated by sirens, barking pit bulls, and men accusing one another of welshing on debts. You try writing a lyrical, 1,500-word passage about the sinister beauty of the Indo-Burmese jungle while a St. Ides enthusiast hurls racial epithets at the mailman—not easy.

The solution, I recently decided, is a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Alas, I don't have the kung-fu required to build my own, nor the scratch necessary to buy a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2s or Sony MDR-NC50s. In fact, after recently blowing most of my disposable income on a post-victory bottle of Champagne, anything more than $40 is gonna hurt.

There are options out there that fit the budget, no doubt. But are the likes of the Philips HN110s (pictured at right) really any better than foam earplugs? Click forward, fearless reader, and share some thoughts. PLUS: The fakest-yet-most-alluring Sony knock-off you'll ever see.

To be honest, the high price of active noise-canceling headphones has always struck me as odd. In purely mechanical terms, the technology doesn't seem that complicated—the good folks over at CNet brilliantly summed up the mechanism here, in a single paragraph. The trick seems to be designing mics that can accurately detect, and then counteract, incoming signals, rather than just bathing your ears in indiscriminate sonic pudding. Let me state for the record here that I have no doubt the Bose engineers—er, "scientists," as they seem to prefer being called—have developed a superior system for the QuietComfort, though I'll never stop scoffing at the company's price-to-quality ratio. (I am, of course, hardly the only one to arrive at this grim conclusion.)

My hunch going into this was that, although the $100-and-up headphones would certainly perform better than the sub-$40 units, the latter group would perform adequately for the money. My criteria? All I asked for was that, when activated sans music, the 'phones would block out enough sonic pollution so that I could focus on work. A humble enough request, right?

I started off by trying out a pair of Coby CV191s at a local discount electronics shop. As the Newegg.com reviewers so bluntly put it, save your fifteen bucks; when the unit was switched on, it was like standing next to a mosquito zapper. Not sure how they designed these, but it sounded like they just took the innards of an antiquated Sharper Image wave machine and somehow squeezed them inside some really cheaply constructed headphones. So much for the dream of having change left over from my Jackson.

I went downtown to try out the Philips HN110s. Believe me, I wasn't expecting much after my Coby experience. But y'know what? They worked pretty well. High frequencies were definitely dulled, and after a few minutes of keeping them strapped to my head, I got in that noise-canceled zone where you feel slightly less manic than normal—exactly what I was looking for. The store I was doing the testing at had 'em priced northward of $50, but they can be had online for $15 less. As soon as I pay off my next credit-card bill, I'm going to order a pair. (Note to several previous correspondents who've taken issue with the ethics of my online shopping: No, I'm not going to buy the HN110s from WalMart.com.)

Now, I know what you're thinking. Yes, I realize they probably provide lousy sound quality for the money. And, yes, anytime you buy a curiously low-priced item, you're risking bad construction. But my priority here was noise cancellation, and as I've established before, I'm a gambler when it comes to low-end products. Considering that these are going for roughly 90 percent less than the QuietComfort 2s, it seems like a risk worth taking.

My only qualm isn't that I'm going too low-end, but rather that I might be getting ripped off. The CV191 debacle soured me on cheaper alternatives, but there's a good chance I'm missing out on an even greater bargain. The IceTech CD-788Vs, perchance? Tips in comments, or directly to your abbot of all things cheap.

THE KNOCKOFF TO END ALL KNOCKOFFS: Nothing makes my heart smile like a reader tip about a laughable knock-off. The latest? A "Sony" digital camera that also plays MP3s, MP4s, and WMA, and uses an SD memory card. The tipster says he's seen the gizmo (pictured at right) on sale in Brooklyn's Chinatown for $120.

I poked around the Internets and thought it looked most similar to this camera sold under the Digiboy brand. Could they both be from the same Guangdong factory? Did a middleman decide to emboss the scrunched-together Sony brand on the schwag?

Most importantly, has anyone else seen this digicam in their hometown? Extra karmic points if you've actually tried it out. Given the specs, it actually seems like a pretty good deal—though, obviously, I wouldn't think the warranty would be worth the paper it's printed on. (Thanks, Allan!)

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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The best teacher I ever had was this crazy Jesuit with a prodigious gut, Madame Mao glasses, and ridiculously overactive sweat glands. He was a cartoonish sight, but also a fantastic entertainer—a prerequisite for getting a bunch of horny 15-year-olds interested in the Peace of Westphalia.

Part of his approach was to make these gobsmacking claims that really made you sit up and take notice. One that's always stuck in my mind is something he said during our World War II unit. He asked if we were familiar with musical greeting cards, the ones that play "Happy Birthday" when opened. When we grunted in assent, he sprung his surprise: "Well, the chip inside one of those cards is more advanced than anything from World War II. Nations would have killed to have that chip—it would have changed the war."

Really? As a budding Geekish-American at the time, this claim obviously captured my interest. But it's not until recently that I've actually paused to ask, Was he right, or was he just trying to keep us from zoning out and thinking about boobies? Here, of course, is where you come in, comrades.

I've got to say, I'm sorta stunned that it's taken me this long to tackle the musical greeting card. What could be more low-end than a $5 card that plays a 12-second audio clip? And like many of y'all, I distinctly remember getting one of these as a kiddo, and taking apart its innards in a rudimentary attempt to understand how it worked. (Unlike when I took apart my Mattel electronic baseball game, my dad didn't yell at me for this bout of curiosity.)

The staple chip in musical greeting cards is the ChipCorder. A California company called Information Storage Devices used to make 'em, but they got bought out by Taiwan's Winbond in 1998. Some of you might recall buying the old ISD1000A chips from Radio Shack back in the day; the current low-end option for quickie sound clips is the ISD1100 series.

There are, of course, plenty of unbranded options nowadays, like this chip-on-board CMOS that plays a telephone ring, for a mere 99 cents. (Anything electronic that costs less than a dollar is like crack to a cheapskate like your humble narrator.) Regardless of your source, the elementary concept is always the same—analog data is stored on ROM chip, and the tune is blared through a small pizeo speaker.

Even the cheapest chips aren't exempt from Moore's Law, of course, and today's musical greeting cards are better than the ones you and I got back in the day. The quality of the playback has improved to the point that Hallmark now sells a line of "Sound Cards" that'll rock a note-perfect rendition of the Star Wars theme for that special Wookie-lover in your life; said cards also feature a three-volt lithium-ion battery, which means (hopefully) that the card won't go dead mere hours after being opened. Even more impressive are those cards tricked out with voice-recording capabilities.

Still, we're obviously talking about the lowest of low-end tech here. If we hopped in a time machine and delivered a ChipCorder to Dwight D. Eisenhower circa 1942, would the war really have ended so quickly? I understand the immediate applications for, say, intelligence operations, but I don't understand how an ISD1000A programmed to play "Jingle Bells" would bring the Allies a swifter victory.

The trick would be getting Eisenhower to realize that the ChipCorder needed to be reverse engineered, not for the purposes of copying, but in order to understand the basic fabrication techniques for integrated circuits. If I remember anything from taking Electrical Engineering 101 in college (grade: pass/C+), it's that the IC wasn't patented until the late 1950s. No question having IC technology could swing the war.

Ah, but how long would it take to reverse engineer a technology from the future? The obvious scenario that pops to mind is from Star Trek IV—yes, the awful one in which they kidnap the darn humpback whale. In exchange for a whole bunch of plexiglass, Scotty and Bones McCoy give a twentieth-century plastics engineer the formula for transparent aluminum. They don't feel bad about doing so because, as the engineer notes, "it'll take years" to reverse engineer the plans downloaded to his Mac 512k. (Hey, the movie came out in 1986—what did you expect?)

So I'm gonna call shenanigans on my teacher's contention that a ChipCorder or similar COB CMOS could have altered the course of World War II. But the fun part about alternative history is that there is no right answer—what do y'all think? Was this just another instance of the The Man feeding me a line, or could a sub-$1 piece of silicon really have brought down fascism more quickly? Responses in comments, or to me directly. As always, I'll respond to every e-mail I get, as long as you refrain from name-calling. Gizmodo writers have feelings too, y'know.

CAN'T STOP THE HORSE: One of my least favorite geek stereotypes is that we don't enjoy us some (American) football. As a rabid Indianapolis Colts fan, this is a big week for me—one more victory over our sinister nemesis and we're in the Super Bowl. I'm writing about the matchup in Slate this week; come on over and check it out if you're so inclined.

But if I'm speaking Greek to you, and you're incensed that I dared mention football in a blog reserved for banter about RAM and the iPhone, please accept my apologies.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I'm probably about the only geek on Spaceship Earth who doesn't think CES is the frickin' bee's knees. Yeah, yeah, the iPhone's great and all—but c'mon, $499? Do you know how long I'd have to subsist on White Rose mac-'n-chesse in order to save that much? Alas, for a cheapskate like your humble narrator, CES is a sad annual reminder that much of what we crave in life is unattainable.

But if you look past the splashy 108-inch TVs and stacked booth babes, there's always a low-end story or two to track in Vegas. And this year, it's the brewing Battle of the RC Helicopters, a tale rife with accusations of piracy, marketing sleight-of-hand, and international legal intrigue. Oh yeah, and also sub-$40 electro-toys of a sort that make me wish I'd been born in the Nineties rather than the Seventies. The sordid story so far after the jump.

The saga begins with last year's debut of the PicooZ Micro RC Helicopter, produced by Hong Kong-based Silverlit Toys. Silverlit's North American distributor is Spin Master, a company familiar to viewers of TNT's "Primetime in the Daytime" lineup for its incessant Air Hogs commercials. Spin Master got the PicooZ out in time for the holidays, expecting fat sales among the low-end dads who really wanted to get Junior an RC chopper, but didn't want to dip into his beer money in order to do so.

Solid plan, except for the machinations of the Guangdong copycats in Silverlit's backyard—specifically in Shantou. Someone over there got a hold of the PicooZ's plans and started churning out lots of clones. When overseas toy stores started running out of PicooZ's as Christmas approached, fly-by-night distributors were only too happy to step into the breach with their knock-offs.

And how boldly they did step! Not content to simply offer a vague facsimile of the real thing—a tried-and-true pirating strategy—the cloners copied the PicooZ almost to the micrometer. Then, to add salt to the wound, they even copied the name—ladies and gentlemen, meet the PiccoZ, with two c's in lieu of two o's.

It's all fun and games until someone realizes that their pocket may be getting picked, of course. Silverlit basically went bonkers upon learning about the PiccoZ, ostensibly from customers who claimed to be dissatisfied with the knock-offs' quality. They pointed a finger at Hobbytron.com, a venture of Absolute Toy Marketing of Orem, Utah. Indeed, it doesn't take a genius to click through and realize that Hobbytron is gleefully selling the PiccoZ. So earlier this week, in the midst of the Hong Kong Toy & Games Fair that coincides with CES, Silverlit filed suit in America against Absolute, alleging a whole lotta trademark infringement.

Now here's where the CES connection comes in. The same day they got slapped with the suit, Absolute and its Hobbytron.com arm announced that they'd be showing off "its own branded Picco 3 micro RC helicopter" at Wynn Hotel and Casino. Huh? Is that all it takes to squash an international trade spat—change the Z to a 3?

Maybe. I'm about as much of a legal scholar as Bubbles the Chimp, but Silverlit seems to have a halfway legitimate gripe here. But something tells me that Silverlit isn't 100 percent confident that legal remedies will save the day, as they're engineering their own name change—henceforth, the PicooZ will be the Havoc Heli. Brilliant—shouldn't take the Shantou knock-off factories more than 12 hours to change their printing equipment.

Even if Silverlit wins its legal battle against Absolute, there are just so many knock-offs out there—did I mention the PicoZ? (A full list of alleged copycats is available here.)

Okay, so Chinese pirates are the indestructible cockroaches of the electronics trade—yeah, yeah, film at 11. But I think this case does raise an important low-end moral quandary: at what point does a cheapskate's conscience overwhelm his primal desire for a good deal? No kids of my own, so didn't do any RC copter shopping this holiday season. But if I had, and I had the chance to purchase a PiccoZ for ten bucks less than the PicooZ, what would I have done? The choice is less morally confusing when one of the involved parties is a Corporate Colossus—if I see, say, a Samsung knock-off, I'm not gonna agonize over the morality of my decision to go cheap. But when it's one low-end manufacturer versus another? A much tougher call.

So my question to y'all this week, if you can somehow spare a few brain cells that aren't yet filled with visions of iPhones prancing about: have you ever felt guilty about buying a knock-off gadget, especially one that has obviously been pirated right down to the last detail? Or are you so skeeved out by The Man that you feel any dollar you can save is a righteous blow for the glorious revolution (or something like that)? Answer in comments, or drop me a line. Lord knows that I've felt lonely this week, with my Gizmodo brethren up to more important matters.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I've lived most of my life according to two axioms, and two axioms only. The first is a chestnut o' wisdom handed down by my father: "No swimming for 30 minutes after eating." The second was bestowed upon me by an ex-boss: "If you buy a laptop that's one generation behind the curve, you get 80 percent of the computing power for 50 percent of the price."

How jarring, then, to have these core precepts challenged in recent months. The initial blow came when I discovered that the swimming rule is total bunk. ("Thanks", pops.) Now I'm having doubts about the laptops rule—not because it's wrong, per se, but because it doesn't go far enough. Fifty percent off? If the initial price was over two grand, how does that help an uber-cheapskate such as myself?

So in this week's column, I'm appealing to y'all to help me coin a new Axiom of Cheap Laptops. The nub of the quandary basically comes down to this: is the best move to wait a whopping 18-to-24 months until the ThinkPad or Vaio you crave is on the closeout shelf? Or was my ex-boss entirely on the wrong track, and you should you simply shell out for a spankin' new cheapie from the likes of Avaratec or Asus?

First, of course, some ground rules. I'm assuming that no one who's hunting for a sub-$700 laptop is planning on any heavy-duty computing tasks—no Supreme Commander, no stereolithography. Let's assume that the computing goals here are pretty run-of-the-mill: word processing, Web surfing, and basic media chores like editing photos and organizing music.

Also, no refurbs. I'm not saying refurbs can't do you right, but the whole topic seems to merit its own column down the line. Suffice to say that I've been burned on refurbs before—a pox upon your children, Overstock.com!—so I'm gonna have some choice words to offer.

With refurbs ruled out, I discovered, you're not likely to come across anything older than two years; thanks to a combo of Moore's Law and corporate marketing policies, laptops start to gently go into that good night after twelve months or so. Despite copious scouting online and in the local alt-weeklies, I didn't come across any legitimately new laptops that hit the street before the spring of 2005.

The pickings were slim, to say the least. Given my personal aversion to most Gateway and Dell products, I focused mainly on Lenovo ThinkPads, especially the Z60 series that debuted in the late summer of 2005. The Z60m, priced at $615, seemed a good deal given the raw specs. But looking back at the initial street price, I can see that the Z60m's only been discounted around $230 after nearly 18 months. The wait definitely wouldn't have been worth it.

I next looked at the available over-the-hill Toshibas on offer. I was struck by the wide availability of the M55; I distinctly recall seriously considering the purchase of a new M55 back in the summer of '05, before I came to my senses and remembered how my previous Toshiba experience had ended with me taking part in a class-action lawsuit. The savings here are pretty solid, to $673.24 down from an initial street price of close to $1,300 for the 331 configuration. You still get the manufacturer's warranty, too.

Now let's compare the soon-to-be-dinosaured M55 to something that costs exactly the same, but is fresh from the vendor: Lenovo's C Series notebooks, with prices starting at $599 (after rebate) for the C200. Like the M55, it sports a Celeron M processor, but one that offers slightly less clock speed. No DVD writing on the base model, either—an 8x drive will cost you an extra $50. Other than that, it's pretty much a wash; if push came to shove and performance was my primary concern, I'd definitely opt for the Toshiba.

As for ostensible budget laptop mavens like Asus and Avaratec, lemme say phooey. The cheapest Asus at Newegg, for example, is the A6RP-AP023H, listing at $800 (okay, $798.99). Almost identical specs to the Lenovo C200 outfitted with the DVD writer. Color me not impressed by the company's sensitivity towards my miserly ways.

So I'm gonna declare that my boss was right in one respect—waiting can save you 50 percent. But when it comes to the sub-$700 budget category, waiting out one generation just isn't enough. The Pentium family tree isn't exactly easy to parse, but I think it's fair to say that the Celeron M is roughly three generations behind the mobile curve. Sure, it was designed as a value chip, but in terms of Intel hype, it certainly ranks behind the 4-M and the Centrino, right?

Thus, I'm proposing an amendment to the axiom: "If you buy a cheap laptop that's three generations behind the curve, you can get 40 percent of the computing power for 50 percent of the price, which was already pretty low to begin with." Not as poetic as my boss's words, I'm afraid, but hopefully skinflint wisdom to live by nonetheless. Please leave proposed additions, deletions, and wholesale rejiggerings in comments.

As for those so-called "budget" laptops that are rolling off the assembly lines today? I'll pass, thanks, unless y'all can point me towards a sub-$700 one that's worth hopping on in lieu of waiting 18 months for a remaindered Toshiba. Convince me.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Fuzzy logic is one of those high-falutin' concepts that I realize I'm too dim to fully comprehend. I mean, okay, I get the part about partial truths between yes and no, or one and zero. Just don't ask me to get up in front of a group of inquisitive eight-year-olds and explain fuzzy logic's finer points; I'd be exposed as a fraud within minutes.

Leave it to The Man to exploit my ignorance by turning "fuzzy logic" into a marketing catchphrase, one designed to gussy up the humble rice cooker. Exhibit A in this trend is this $200 unit from Zojirushi, alluringly called the Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker and Warmer. Laden with microprocessors that (per the hype sheet) "allow the rice cooker to 'think' for itself," the Zojirushi surely makes a mean bowl o' unadorned starch. But twenty times better than the rice I prepare in my beloved $10 Chinatown special? Really?

What we've got here is a textbook marketing play: using lingo that the public recognizes, but doesn't really grok, in order to rescue a product category from value-store Purgatory. A dissection after the jump, as well as a (somewhat) spirited defense of the humble $10 rice cooker. PLUS: Who knew Gadget Grips had so many fans?

Some of you with eagle-grade eyes will recall that this isn't the first time that Gizmodo has tackled the topic of rice cookers; we linked to a Wired test last month, in a post that attracted some unusually impassioned comments (including the semi-tasteful chides of some Asian readers who questioned Wired's decision to have a white reporter tackle the assignment). Most notable among the responses, however, was this one from "flipped4gizmos":

Huh? I eat rice like it's going out of style, and use a $15 Panasonic. Rice is perfect every time. The trick is knowing how much water to add to the type of rice your cooking. Now that's fuzzy logic...

I gotta say, I tend to agree. With a little culinary tact and wisdom, a low-end cooker sans circuit boards will cook up a really, really good mess of rice. (My personal secret is to lightly—lightly!—salt the rice.) Since I mastered the nuances of the bargain rice cooker some eight or nine years ago, I've never yearned for a much fancier model—maybe one with an LCD readout instead of a mere on-off light, but that's about the only modification I ever craved.

But imagine you're a major appliance maker, sick of competing in the crowded toaster, microwave, and food processor spaces. Where do you seize the advantage? Why, by finding a product category long-ago surrendered to unbranded $10 models—rice cookers. But you can't just say, Okay, people will pay $50 just because our cooker is going to say Panasonic or Sanyo instead of Happy Lucky Go-Go Products Ltd. No, let's shoot for the moon and charge $200 for it, and justify the expense by convincing the consumer that they're not just buying a rice cooker—they're establishing themselves at the forefront of the artificial-intelligence revolution.

And so reluctant kudos to the junior marketing exec who realized that the phrase "fuzzy logic" holds a certain mystical allure for Joe Q. Consumer. Like a Hemi engine, it's one of those techie things we've been conditioned to think of as innately impressive, although the reality is disappointingly mundane: simply by adjusting cooking temperature according to the desired amount of doneness, an appliance can be said to be employing fuzzy logic.

Lemme take this opportunity to finally, for the first time ever, put my English degree to use: it's all about the word "fuzzy" on this one. It initially sounds out of place in a technological context, but that's the genius in it; it evokes a future era of surgical androids and pleasurebots, who will care for you more tenderly than your own family. I'm sure this isn't what mathematics maven Lofti Asker Zadeh's had in mind when he founded fuzzy logic in the '60s; he could easily (and accurately) have called it "approximation logic", and Madison Avenue would never have taken a second glance.

But fuzzy it was, and I'm sure the folks over at Zojirushi light candles in Zadeh's honor every morning. I mean, a rice cooker that boasts trademarked "neuro fuzzy" technology? Marketing genius. I bet that a good number of those who buy such a cooker half-expect the device to also do the dishes, then sit down for a nice game of chess.

What this reminds me of most is when Dockers started touting its khakis as enhanced with stain-fighting nanotechnology. Yes, Levis was claiming to be manipulating individual atoms in the name of making your pants better able to fend off soy sauce splatters. A very clever Popular Science reporter revealed what a fraud this was, by confronting an unfortunate 1-800-DOCKERS operator with her suspicions.

The question is, what's the next low-end treasure to get high-ended with hyperbolic techspeak? I'm going to nominate the inflatable mattress, which my beloved Gem Gem Gem value store is now selling for $14.99. All some company needs to do is stick a few microchips in there—say, ones that automate reinflation if the air pressure gets too low. Then market the mattress as featuring automorphic forms technology. Charge $200 for each mattress, and start saving up to purchase Nsonga Island.

GADGET GRIPS TRYOUT: Wow, pretty amazed by how many Gadget Grips fans there are out there, based on the response to my pre-Xmas slagging of the product. Fair's fair, so I'm going to give Gadget Grips a chance; just ordered a packet online, and I'll be putting 'em through their paces over the next few weeks. (Note to Gizmodo overlords: Expect expense report for $5.47 in coming days.) If they work as well as "kapitan" and "mjsmitho" claimed in comments, expect a humiliating retraction in this space. But if they're as lousy as they look, y'all owe me a 24-ouncer of Beck's. Deal?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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There's a classic Family Ties episode in which Alex P. Keaton, having been cured of his anti-Christmas attitude by Dickensian specters, buys last-minute gifts for the family at the local Kwik-E-Mart. The gifts are absurd—cough syrup and the like—but the sitcom's message is clear: it's the thought that counts.

Yet what if your thoughts are less than kind, bordering on the wicked? Like when you're obligated to buy something for a co-worker you don't much care for, or for an uncle whose drunken tirades stopped being amusing around 1991. They bought you some irregular tube socks, so you sorta have to buy them something. So what can you conjure up on short notice, that's both cheap and capable of conveying the subtextual message, "I'm only getting this for you because society says I have to; if it were up to me, I'd much prefer that we never speak again"?

Sure, a box of Tide wrapped in Frosty the Snowman paper might do the trick. But since everyone knows you're a Geekish-American, they're probably expecting something from the gadgets realm. So if you're aim is to disappoint, yet still preserve your reputation as a gearhead, rocket past the jump for Low End Theory's first (and possibly last) annual gift guide for people who skeeve you out.

Gadget Grips
Price $5.95 from WeLoveMacs.com; or, if you've got a long list of frenemies, order 1,000 from Garrett Specialties and get a price break on down to $1.32 per package.
Their Reaction Elation followed by bewilderment. One of those products that seems incredibly useful on a 4 a.m. infomercial, but ends up languishing in your hallway closet for the next 18 years.
What It Says on Your Behalf "Maybe these work, maybe they don't. But, honestly, I don't really care what happens to your cellphone, iPod, or whatever other gadget you choose to balance precariously upon the dashboard of your yellow Ford Focus."

USB Vacuum Cleaner
Price $8.99 from TangShop.com
Their Reaction Offense taken. Giving someone a cleaning product is like telling them, "You've got the sanitary habits of a cracked-out warthog." Don't worry, though; the receiver will mask his or her disdain behind a sugary smile. Just be sure to watch your back in '07.
What It Says on Your Behalf "I could have gotten you a USB beverage warmer for six bucks more, but you're so not worth it."

Cell Phone Flash-Lite
Price $14.99 from SafetyEssentials.com
Their Reaction Mild concern. There's no better way to induce paranoia than to give someone a gift designed especially to help one survive a catastrophe.
What It Says on Your Behalf "Be afraid. Be very afraid. And happy holidays."

Excalibur Electronic Talking Texas Hold 'Em
Price $7.49 from Boscov's
Their Reaction Genuine happiness at first—I mean, hey, free game. But this gift is part of a long-term undermining strategy; you want the recipient to grow overconfident about their poker-playing abilities. Eventually, he/she will work up the nerve to spend a weekend in Atlantic City, where their family fortune will be squandered a la Julie Hagerty in Lost in America.
What It Says on Your Behalf "Welcome to the path of self-destruction, punk."

"My Computer is Faster Than Yours" Bumper Sticker
Price $5 from Directron.com
Their Reaction Utter disdain.
What It Says on Your Behalf "I know this is a longshot, but I'm totally hoping you actually slap this on your car. Because there's no surer way to invite a beating from Ricky Manning Jr.."

Child-Sized Optical Computer Mouse
Price $6.99 from MacMall.com
Their Reaction Anxiety; "Is there something wrong with the size of my child's hands?"
What It Says on Your Behalf "Your kid's hands are perfectly normal; I'm just trying to mess with your head."

Linkskey 4-Port Mini USB 2.0 Hub
Price $9.99 from our eternal pals at Newegg.com
Their Reaction Confusion. Your aunt thinks it's a newfangled cigarette lighter at first, then a telephone jack. You get to feel all intellectually superior as you explain the nuances of USB hub, in language that she can't possibly understand.
What It Says on Your Behalf "When the revolution comes, I'm gonna be given a sweetheart job in the Ministry of Peace and Technology; due to your obvious mental midgetry, you're gonna be assigned to a collectivized beet farm. I anxiously await that day."

NEXT WEEK: Rice cookers!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Of all the lame Christmas gifts I've received over the years, two stand out in my memory as particularly egregious. The first was a Manhattan Transfer album, the awfulness of which requires no further description from these quarters. The second? A shower radio that assuredly cost its giver less than a tenner. I know, I know, it's the thought that counts. But when poor reception limits your showertime musical entertainment to a station that specializes in airing the devilish wailings of sackless lite-rock crooners, my holiday spirit flushes away like so much corn-flecked dung.

Not that I'm philosophically opposed to the concept of shower radios, and I realize that there are some groovy options out there. But let's face reality here: sub-$10 shower radios of dubious quality are too often the gearhead's equivalent of a lump o' coal—yes, even if they're shaped like Shrek. After the jump, a brief history of this water-resistant gadget's transformation into the fruitcake of geekdom. PLUS: Spammers aren't nearly as smart as you think.

Let's start by rewinding to a glorious year: 1984, when the Olympics came to my hometown and Ghostbusters rightfully reigned supreme at the box office. It's also the year when, to the best of my knowledge, executoy catalogue Hammacher Schlemmer first offered the WetTunes, the granddaddy of semi-affordable shower radios. Powered by a 9-volt battery, the WetTunes was pretty revolutionary at the time—we'd all grown up learning that radio plus bathtub equals death, so the product gave me a newfound sense of faith in technology's ability to solve all of humanity's pressing problems. Alas, priced at $30 (c. $58 in today's dollars), the WetTunes was too expensive for my dad; I think he got me some knock-off Gobots instead.

Shower radios stayed high-end for a few years then, with Sony (of course) entering the fray with a technologically superior, ridiculously overpriced model: the ICF-S77W (c. $89 in today's dollars). But then you saw the boom in home-shopping channels, the perfect medium through which to sell shower radios. See, here's what I've figured out about the likes of HSN and QVC when it comes to electronics: they don't care a jot about specs, what they need is a superficial "wow" factor. And waterproofing is a cheap, easily understandable wow. Heck, here's a little free advice, guys—waterproof a 13-inch TV by encasing it in plastic, and advertise it as "the first TV you can watch in the tub!" You'll sell out within minutes.

All of a sudden, you had shower radios crashing below the $20 barrier, then the $10 barrier. The fact of the matter is that waterproofing—or, more accurately, water resistance—is pretty straightforward: have your Guangdong factory make a mold for the case, then crank those puppies out en masse. (There may be an FCC approval step here that I'm missing, but I don't have much faith in that particular agency's regulatory zeal nowadays, for better or for worse.)

The problem with gadgets that sell on gimmicks, of course, is that they have no incentive to, y'know, make the blasted thing work as advertised. The GearToGo's and Sentrya's of the world know that these sub-$10 units are purchased by-and-large for novelty purposes, or as gifts. They depend on the receiver of said gifts to be so amazed by the fact that he can actually listen to the radio in the shower without being electrocuted, he won't really mind when his audio choices are limited to a half-dozen Clear Channel atrocities.

Thing is, this is 2006, and such wowable consumers are a dying breed. In an age in which even Jessica Simpson namechecks HDTV video modes in commercials, shower radios float relatively few boats. So how about all us skinflint gearheads make a vow this year, in order to end the madness once and for all: if we are given a shower radio, we will kindly tell the giver that, while the thought appreciated, such craptacular electronics no longer have a place in our society.

Then, for dramatic effect, the radio in question should be thrown upon the ground and stomped into smithereens, in plain view of the giver who thought he/she was being oh-so-clever by spending $5.03 on such a gee-whiz gadget. Sounds heartless, I realize, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Who's with me?

BEHIND THE TIMES: Spammers are known for baiting potential dupes with absurdly good deals—mortgage rates of 2.15 percent and the like. So what to make of a recent spam I got from "USB Stick Factory", advertising a 1-gig Flash memory drive for $12.99? That's a decent price, for sure, but come on—I can easily get an identically sized drive from xPCGear.com (and lots of other legitimate joints) for just seven bucks more. Us low-enders are concerned about price, sure, but a $7 price differential isn't worth the gamble.

So, note to Douglas Ching, who identifies himself in this spam as "marketing manager, Starline International Group": you gotta keep up with the times and slash those tease prices, my friend. No one's gonna gamble on your goods unless they can save at least 75 percent by rolling the spam dice.

NEXT WEEK: Last-minute gift guide for that not-so-special someone in your life.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Were it not for the magic of ultra-aggressive bargaining, there would be no such thing as low-end electronics in India—at least not for pale-faced tourists such as your humble narrator. I came to this not-so-brilliant conclusion within 24 hours of landing in Delhi, when I decided to spend a recovery day perusing the city's chaotic bazaars. The first gadgets' hawker I engaged in broken-English conversation asked ungodly sums for his dreck—hundreds, if not thousands, of rupees for flimsy calculators, faux Discmen, and even plug adapters. Had I underestimated the breadth of the Indian economic miracle, the weakness of the dollar, or both?

Ah, but then I turned to depart, and the prices instantly tumbled. An Orpat calculator (right), initially a ridiculous 700 rupees, tumbled to 500, then 300, then, "My friend, how much you pay?" And I finally started to remember that fixed prices are perhaps a very Western phenomenon; the art of negotiation lives on the Subcontinent, and God(s) bless 'em for it.

Also alive and well in India: low-end brands you can't get on 125th Street (yet), guerrilla consumer tactics, Sansui, and, at least in the area where I spent most of my time, dodgy street protests. Jet-lagged observations after the jump.

Calculators, Calculators Everywhere For a country with pretty high mobile phone penetration, I was a bit perplexed by the abundance of cheap calculators on offer. Seriously, every peddler from Delhi to Dibrugarh sold calculators alongside their standard assortment of bottled water, batteries, and betel nuts. The indigenous Orpat competes with models from Citizen—yes, apparently the same Citizen that makes those snazzy Eco-Drive watches. ("Fun" fact: The Citizen "calculator sales office" is in Hamburg, Germany.) Do Indians really need palm-sized calculators in addition to their cellphone calcs? Or am I exhibiting exactly the sort of American ignorance that is dooming our poor country to also-ran status in the global engineering sweepstakes?

Congli By far my favorite low-end brand discovery, if only because it sounds an awful like the name of the villain in Bloodsport. Disappointed to learn that it's not Indian, but rather another Guangdonger that seems to have better market penetration in South Asia than in the U.S. Saw a lot of their Walkmen knock-offs in Assam; gotta love the external speakers, so everyone on the block can bob their heads to a little "Dhadak Dhadak" while strolling through Guwahati. Bonus reason to love Congli: fantastic Engrish on their site, including this unforgettable line—"Also make sure more stability of huada forward steps and more sunshine of future development in a deeper level."

Sansui Who knew this brand was flourishing? In Itanagar, capital of the province of Arunachal Pradesh, I was essentially unable to locate a TV from any other brand. (Okay, okay, there were a few cheap Samsungs, but lemme have this one for dramatic effect.) The awesomely named SY-14 Supereye was spotted several times, with prices quoted to me in the 4,000 rupee range. I guess you can chop that in half if you're Indian and/or can speak Assamese.

Nokia=Good! Part of my travels took me to a coal field near the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. It was totally like traveling back in time—they transported materials via canoes and coal-powered trains, and there didn't seem to be much in the way of neither electricity nor health regulations. But, lo and behold, the miners' kiosk was selling Nokia 6600 handset with pre-loaded minutes. I was rushed out of there before I could find out the price, but given the economic circumstances of the place, I'm willing to bet the kiosk was selling the 6600 for a lot less than its initial $600-plus price from 2003.

Nokia=Bad! Alas, I got the feeling that Nokia may be able to offer such cut-rate handsets by offering cut-rate quality—dumping remaindered phones on Third World markets, perhaps? All over Dibrugarh, the tea capital of Assam, there were fliers glued to shacks begging passers-by to refrain from buying Nokia products. "Nokia service is terrible!" the fliers declare. "Their call centre is understaffed!" The signs made me wonder—when your business is in India and you're trying to save money on customer service, where do you outsource your call-center jobs to? My guess is Nepal.

Miscellaneous Good to know that, if you're a member of the worldwide brotherhood of geeks, you can always find a pal at the local cybercafe. Almost went insane from social isolation before meeting some kindly eggheads in both Dibrugarh and Digboi, who provided me with chai and vigorous, English-language debate over the merits of Windows XP. (Alas, my Hindi vocabulary consists of just four phrases; my Assamese is even worse.) Kudos, too, to Air Deccan, which ferried me to/from Kolkata for about $50. On time, to boot.

Memo to the Assamese Police, or Whoever Is in Charge of Law and Order I realize that you're sick of people griping about your province's relative backwardness. You know what you could do to counteract such perceptions? The next time hundreds of drunken, balaclava-wearing youths decided to roadblock a major provincial highway for several days straight, do something about it. Thanks—much appreciated.

LASTLY: Apologies if you sent in an e-mail after November 14th and didn't hear back. I returned to find my inbox awash in pleas from Mobutu Sese Seko's lost daughter, several Shenzhen-based purveyors of cheap USB memory, and every manufacturer of fake Xanax on the entire frickin' planet. Was pretty aggressive with the delete key, so may have lost your missive. If it was important, please resend, and please don't hate.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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My wife is a lingerie designer (seriously), and thus makes semi-frequent trips to China's Guangdong Province to oversee sample production. Upon her last return, she made a bold pronouncement: the Middle Kingdom's days as the world's chief producer of affordable ladies' undergarments are numbered. Lingerie companies are already finding it cheaper to deal with factories in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and other nations with a dearth of modern skyscrapers.

Her learned observation got me thinking: will China's reign atop the low-end electronics heap soon end as well? After all, the natural cycle in gadget production has been for a country to start out as a purveyor of discount knock-offs, then gradually reinvent itself as a premium supplier. We're all probably too young to remember this, but "Made in Tokyo" was a sign of inferior quality circa 1950. And weren't LG and Samsung considered cheaper alternatives to Japanese goods just a generation (or less) ago?

You can already see what might be the first stirrings of China's maturation—the transformation of Lenovo into an IBM-buying global brand, for example, or the efforts of Japanese companies like Matsushita Electric to move high-end manufacturing operations to Shanghai. I'm not saying that the flood of cheap MP3 players from Shenzhen is gonna stop in the next twelve months, but maybe it's time to start asking: when it comes to low-end gadgets, what's the next China? Oddsmaking after the jump. PLUS: The Van Morrison riddle resolved, and Low End Theory goes on hiatus—in the jungle.

The obvious prerequisites for a successful low-end electronics industry are political will, stability (even, alas, of the odious authoritarian variety), and a low-wage workforce. China offers all three, at least in the regions especially set aside to interact with foreign economic interests. The cycle starts out with established foreign manufacturers either showing an interest in contract factories, or actually establishing their own industrial operations to handle low-level products. Local managers are thus mentored on the details of technical production and international trade; they soon split off to form their own contract factories, and the deluge of cheap watches and whatnot begins in earnest.

Where will this low-end answer to The Lion King's "Circle of Life" next kick into existence? A list of possibilities, from likeliest to the darkest horse in the race:

India (3-to-1) The obvious candidate, though the political will might be lacking—having already conquered the programming and call-center worlds, does going the cheapo manufacturing route make sense? Perhaps in one of the nation's less economically developed provinces, as part of a concerted top-down effort to attract even more foreign investment.

Vietnam (5-to-1) A huge population (over 83 million), a government akin to China's, and seemingly more than a passing interest in pursuing a "to get rich is glorious" economic makeover.

Indonesia (10-to-1) Archipelagos are bound to seem chaotic at times, and Jakarta can be a mindbender. But democracy is taking root, and the proximity to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore has to count for something. Already has some solid domestic brands.

Mexico (20-to-1) Location next to world's largest consumer market is an enormous plus, and already hosts manufacturing facilities for the likes of HP. But a lot of concerns about the industry's ethics; supremely depressing as this is going to sound, it's much easier for Joe Q. American to ignore the plight of overseas workers. (Low End Theory categorically does not advocate the mistreatment of fellow human beings for the sake of saving a few bucks. We're good people over here, honest.)

Turkey (50-to-1) Like India, already established in affiliated industries. Also, a lot of government-trained talent thanks to military programs. So why the longer odds? In a word, bureaucracy—will have to curtail the hoop-jumping faced by foreign investors, in a much more aggressive manner than just establishing some "technology parks".

Longshots (99-to-1 or worse) The Philippines, Morocco, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand

An important disclaimer: I'm an expert on being a skinflint, not international business, so my gut instincts here could be way off. Please, no angry e-mails from Bangladeshi programmers or Turkish product designers explaining why their country is about to become the Japan of the 21st century. Civil arguments in comments much preferred, thanks.

A last point, though: perhaps the successor to China will be China itself, albeit a different part. Guangdong got first crack thanks to its proximity to Hong Kong, and special rules designed to encourage foreign involvement. Once Shenzhen is played out, could the Chinese government simply move the low-end playing field to, say, Fujian of (gulp!) Yunnan? In other words, will the Sungale of tomorrow simply churn out its products in a different province?

FINAL WORD ON VAN MORRISON: Thanks to a couple of very dedicated Van Morrison fans, I've finally been able to resolve the controversy over the lyrics to "Brown-Eyed Girl". A JPEG of the original sheet music was forwarded to me, and the lyric is, indeed, "the old mine," not "the old man." I was almost convinced by one reader's suggestion that Van was simply butchering the pronunciation of "Ormeau", a main Belfast road. But the hard evidence is clear on this one: Van and his lady (supposedly Janet Planet) were listening to a transistor radio in some quarry somewhere (most likely California).

TO THE JUNGLE: No Low End Theory for the next two weeks, I'm afraid. I'm currently in Delhi, first stop en route to the Indo-Burmese jungle, where I'll be researching my forthcoming book. (It's slated to come out from The Penguin Press in 2008—start saving up now!) Won't be checking e-mail from the road, so best to leave anything germane in comments. And if I have any readers in Dibrugarh, hey, let's grab a beer while I'm over there.

Otherwise, see y'all again on December 7th. Until then, keep it cheap.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Let me begin this week by paraphrasing the great customs inspector Herman Melville: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp and drizzly November in my soul, then I account it high time to get to 125th Street as soon as I can. For nothing puts a smile upon my face, nor sparks so many column ideas, as my travels among the ceaseless stores hawking camo coats, shea butter, faux alligator shoes, and, above all, really cheap electronics.

How cheap are we talking here? Well, I've waxed poetic before about 125th's plethora of Discmen knockoffs and shelf systems that resemble Voltron's constituent parts. But I think I discovered the strip's cake-taker this past Saturday: a store near Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard had a sidewalk bin filled with $9.99 RCA Lyra 128 MB MP3 players.

A low price, to be sure, but a real bargain? If you break it down logically, the answer is definitely "no way." But I can see what the store's proprietors were thinking: they're hoping the Bandwagon Effect will help 'em clear some inventory. A semi-coherent definition of said effect after the jump. PLUS: The Van Morrison lyrical debate heats up!

Let's start with a little mathematical breakdown here. Those ten-dollar Lyras are offering a meg's worth of storage for approximately 8 cents. Compare that to this one-gig player from Kinamax, which gives you a meg for about half that price. Since features on low-end digital audio players tend to be pretty non-existent, storage capacity is the one spec that really merits attention. Better to save up $20 and go for the better bang-for-your-buck deal.

But if you're stuck on a sub-$40 budget, does it really make sense to go all digital in the first place? The superior deal is a Discman descendent that can play MP3s. They go for about $15 nowadays, and assuming that you max out each disc to its full 700 MB capacity, that's a real bargain—about two cents per meg. Can't get much more low-end than that, now, can you?

Such calculations are rarely made by us cheapo consumers, however. We want something that inexpensive, sure. But rare is the bargain hunter who wants to be left in the technological dust. We know we're not gonna be getting top-of-the-line equipment, but we also don't want to feel we're settling for yesterday's news. In other words, we've got egos, just like the rest of humanity (save for those who've attained Nirvana, and the late Larry "I Had an Ego Death" Hagman).

With iPods and their ilk way out of the low-end price range—you know how long it takes me to make $200?!?!—that means we're stuck with the likes of the Lyra. Sure, there's a nagging internal voice that lets us know the player's a rip-off at its core. But the temptation to join the future is strong among low-enders, even if it's only a symbolic gesture such as rocking an MP3 player in lieu of a CD unit. And upon seeing that one can join that glorious digital future for the low, low price of $9.99, well, forgive a skinflint for experiencing a little irrational exuberance.

Alas, it's all a mirage. Once the buzz of going purely digital wears off, one realizes that he or she's saddled with an inferior product that earns one derision, not respect, from the geek crowd. Sort of like that time you really, really wanted some Air Jordans, but your dad bought you some counterfeit Reeboks instead—you think you've accrued enough footwear cache to impress your schoolyard pals, but they just end up ripping on you nonetheless. (Yes, I'm speaking from experience here.) The urge to hop on the bandwagon is quite strong, and leads to low-end consumer decisions that rarely have the intended effect. I shudder to think how many Jazz cameras have been sold to low-enders with a gleam in their eye.

Can't blame a discount electronics merchant from trying to take advantage of this impulse, I guess. Not can I blame him for not affixing warning labels to each Lyra that read, "CAUTION: May not be as high-tech as you think, and will probably get you laughed at on the subway, thereby destroying your illusions of having joined the digital elite in some small way." But then again, perhaps the momentary high of the purchase makes up for inevitable disappointment. For some people, ten bucks is a reasonable price to pay for a few minutes elation—an axiom that Pablo Escobar knew all too well.

MINE OR MAN: Several commenters have disputed the Van Morrison quote I cited in last week's column. The general argument is that Van and his brown-eyed girl don't take their transistor radio down to "the old mine", but rather down "the old man"—"man" being slang for either a California highway or the Mississippi River.

Is there any way to settle this definitively? Does anyone know if Van ever commented on the lyrics? (Can't say I trust lyrics sheets from any "Best of..." compilations, so please don't cite them.) I did a little Google fight between the terms, and I still think it's "the old mine". I mean, hey, Van's from Belfast, and I can totally see him and his girl drinking lager and heavy petting in some open-cast mine on the outskirts of town. Wait, does that make any sense? I've been to Belfast several times, and can't remember seeing any mines, just lots of political murals and tumblers of Bushmills.

Help! Leave definitive evidence of "mine" or "man" in comments, or drop me a line. Can't rest until I know the answer.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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When a whiskey-addled Van Morrison first belted out the above lyrics in 1967, he was trying to come to terms with a long-ago love—a brown-eyed girl obliging enough to give him quickies behind some East Belfast stadium, apparently. Yet Van was also celebrating the giddy 1962 high of realizing that, thanks to the wizards at Texas Instruments, Sony, and other electronics titans, you no longer had to hang at your parent's house in order to enjoy some choice AM nuggets. You could, indeed, play music while drinking beer down the old mine. The only prerequisite was a pal rich enough to buy a cheap Japanese transistor radio, which ran around $20—$123 or so in today's dollars.

A transistor radio nowadays, of course, is about as low-end a gadget imaginable—the Sony pictured at right goes for less than $13, putting it well within the price range of just about everyone. But who buys transistor radios anymore? Tell a girl that your idea of the perfect date is pumping Hot 97 on a Sony ICF-S10MK2, and your odds of removing her pants someday descend to absolute zero—what a simpler time you grew up in, Van.

Still, the likes of Sony and Panasonic ain't dumb, and there's obviously a market for these things. So who's keeping the transistor-radio fires burning, and are they an endangered species? Read on, brothers and only friends, read on. PLUS: GSM phone recs for a reader headed for the Middle East?

The Paranoid At least two, and possibly three, generations of electronics consumers were raised to believe that any bomb-shelter or disaster-preparedness kit should include a transistor radio. I can clearly remember learning this in elementary school, when everyone quite earnestly believed that a nuclear exchange with the Soviets was right around the corner—don't laugh, young'uns, until you consider what it must've been like to see The Day After as a nine-year-old. The idea was that, in the event my hometown of Los Angeles was turned into an apocalyptic wasteland rife with looting and zombies, our family would be able to receive news updates regarding just how screwed we really were.

Don't get me wrong, I sort of get this mindset—in the event of a true catastrophe, it'd be nice to know where I might be able to snag a Red Cross meal, or which highways are still open. But given the abundance of multi-function gadgets that feature AM/FM capabilities—a lot of digital audio players, for example—should I really invest in a dedicated transistor radio just for emergency purposes? Anyone who grew up during the Cuban Missile Crisis probably disagrees with me, though, which is why I'm willing to bet a lot of transistor radio buyers are on the north side of 50—and probably still quite leery of a Soviet comeback.

Baseball Fans I actually saw the Panasonic RF-P50 (below right) advertised expressly for this market—the radio was in the window of a discount electronics store on 14th Street, above a star-shaped sign reading "Great for the Ballpark!" Again, I don't see the wisdom in buying a radio-only unit like the RF-P50 when, for a few bucks more, you can get the radio capabilities integrated into a more versatile gadget. But aging baseball fans who grew up marveling at fellow spectators listening to the radio broadcasts? For them, there's still something magical about the humble transistor radio and the one-piece earphone—it's as much a part of the going-to-the-ballpark experience as 64-ounce beers and paying $29.95 for parking. Plus, if some drunken fan knocks your RF-P50 to the ground by accident, no worries—it's only $13, which is about what it costs to buy a hot dog at Shea Stadium nowadays.

Hopeless Radio Geeks The Japanese word otaku deserves far more usage in the West—we English speakers don't have a similar word that so succinctly conveys the obsessive jags of some smart-yet-maladjusted folks. Like trainspotters or model-railroad enthusiasts, radio geeks have a curious fixation on everything to do with the RF portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. That usually means ham radios and the like, but there continues to be an inexplicable fascination with low-end gear, too. Countless forums are filled with comparison tests between $10 transistor radios and pricier living-room units, with the former often winning the Battle of Reception. Believe me, there are few happier souls on this planet than the radio geek who just discovered he can pick up an FM station in a different time zone if he adjusts the antenna on his transistor unit just like so.

What's the common thread between all these consumers? I've gotta say it's age—I just don't think you're going to see many under-30s buying transistor radios. That's in large part because radio is a common feature on MP3 players and Walkmen knock-offs, but also because there's no wow factor in the technology—in the era of the baby cellphone, getting AM/FM reception for twelve bucks ain't all that.

Kinda sad, as the Van Morrison lyric at this column's top so neatly encapsulates the thrill of technology, a thrill that seems pretty hard-to-come-by in today's more electronics-saturated world. I mean, is there a "Brown Eyed Girl" of the iPod Era, a song that conveys the high of that first time you realized you could fit 4,000 songs in your pocket? Tips in comments or via e-mail, please.

HELP JEFF OUT: I didn't get into this business to help people. But every once in a while, I get an e-mail appeal so moving, I can help but shed a tear and led a hand. So here goes: A devoted LET reader is traveling to the Middle East this winter, and asks the following: "In lieu of getting an unlocked Razr, do you have any
suggestions for a good, reliable, compact, unlocked quadband GSM phone for me
to travel with?" I'm both too cheap and too lazy to pass along any worthy advice, so I'm leaving it up to y'all—leave tips in comments.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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For this week's column, I'm gonna ask y'all to jump in my Frink-worthy time machine and journey back to a bygone era: the halcyon days of late 2004. Ah, what a glorious time it was to be alive—the winds of change were blowing through the Ukraine, Ken Jennings' reign of terror on Jeopardy! came to an end, and Ireland had yet to fully adopt the metric system. But above all, the Motorola Razr V3 went on sale, for the whopping sum of $500 (after rebate!). Beyond my cheapo means, no doubt, but at least it was a Great Leap Forward for handset technology, right?

So how did the $500 Razr, the must-have for slinky models and the fat cats who love them just two years back, become today's $29.99 Razr, the default phone for pretty much everyone? Or, more succinctly, how did the Razr get so low-end, so fast? Though the economies of scale and the high-end trend toward data phones played their roles, I'd argue that the Razr was always the proverbial perfumed pig. And therein lies an important—nay, life-or-death—lesson on what really separates the pricey from the cheap. PLUS: A shameful admission about goofing on the Shuffle.

First off, perhaps some of y'all with short memories don't recall the Razr's initial incarnation as a luxury good. But indeed it was so—the slim handset was pitched as the mobilecomm equivalent of an iced-out watch, sure to spark envy among your less with-it pals. The Razr was also supposed to pull Motorola out of its sales doldrums, by helping it recapture the innovative rep it earned with the StarTAC phone way back in 1996. The company poured a lot of money into a clever promotional strategy, getting it into the hands of famous designers, celebrities, and their collagen-loving ilk. Tough to fathom, but folks actually debated over whether to plump for a Treo 650 or the Razr V3—even if they knew the former's obvious data advantages, the Razr's thinness still wowed 'em. And, hey, the prices really weren't all that different in those early days.

So what happened? Less than two years later, the wireless carriers are practically giving away Razrs—Verizon gave me one for $29 when I reupped my contract, and I just saw an ad pitching $49 Razrs for new customers. Okay, I know what a lot of you are saying—those phones are subsidized by the contracts. But that's a straight-up apples-to-apples comparison with the initial Razrs, which required two-year activation with Cingular. And, hey, let's look at the prepaid Razrs out there—this unlocked Razr is $159, and that includes the Mobile Phone Tools software (which Verizon wants me to fork over $39 for—right). Pop in $50 prepaid SIM card, and you're good to talk for a long, long time without getting hooked into an onerous contract.

The bottom line is, those folks who a) paid $500 for their early Razr and b) are still hooked into a Cingular contract as a result have gotta feel ripped off. The question is, was there any early hint that the Razr would become a low-end staple in less than two years? Or was everyone just so bewitched by the handset's unprecedented slimness that they didn't bother to step back and say, Hey, I'm paying a Treo-like price for a phone that lacks a QWERTY keyboard, a video camera (on the initial V3 model), or even a headphone jack—what gives?

An even more intriguing question is whether Motorola foresaw the incredibly rapid low-ending of the Razr back in 2004. Having fallen to number three in the handsets market at that time, they obviously needed a hit, and a high-margin hit at that. The Razr certainly did the trick, and you might argue that Motorola was able to bring the price down quickly as a result—y'know, that old chestnut about the more you manufacture, the cheaper the product gets. But let's face it, Motorola is run by some sharp cookies, and they knew that the initial premium they were charging was ridiculous even by the tech industry's oft-ridiculous standards. The company's Razr PR campaign succeeded where the Moto Pebl's failed—to be blunt, it managed to position the Razr as a phone that would help get you laid. (The Moto Pebl campaign aimed for this in a much more subtle way, but ended up coming off as the phone that will turn you androgynous.)

So for future reference, how can cheap bastards like myself know when a supposed "luxury" gadget is actually a low-ender in disguise, and I need only wait 20 to 22 months for it to tumble into my price range? Here's a few tip-offs, inspired by my experience with the Razr's descent:

Style Over Substance Gadgets hawked on their design superiority don't age well, especially in a fast-paced market like handsets. No matter how sleek the Razr was, it shoulda been obvious that it couldn't hang with pure data phones over the long-run.

Inattention to Details The thing that's always bugged me about the Razr is the lousy user interface—little things like the organization of menus (regardless of carrier), or the fact they make it so hard to switch Bluetooth on and off. A product that hasn't been thought through all the way? Definitely headed for the low-end bin once the hype's worn off.

Material Science Funny how folks always seem to forget that a gadget's only as good as the materials with which its built. I'm hardly the only person to discover that the Razr's plastic exterior doesn't stand up to much of a pounding, and that the "nickel-plated copper alloy" keys have issues. Let's just say I don't plan on taking a Razr with me into the Indo-Burmese wilderness (where I'm heading next month).

Other thoughts on harbingers of a high-end gadget's low-end fate? Leave 'em in comments, or drop me a line. Remember: You've got the power inside you right now. Eternal happiness is just a dollar away.

APOLOGIES TO THE SHUFFLE: A very Apple-savvy reader wrote in last week to point out that I was mistaken about the fate of the 512 MB iPod Shuffle. I wrote that Apple not only ceased making the small-sized Shuffle a while back, but that they'd stopped supporting it. Turns out that the 512er died this year, but Apple does still support it with firmware upgrades et. al. Our tipster also pointed out that, should your Shuffle break (like mine), you can probably just take it to an Apple store and they'll swap you a new one—hey, it's the lowest-end iPod they offer, so why not?

Apologies to Steve Jobs and his hard-working minions for the error. My only excuse is that I've gotten way too many spams offering 512 MB Shuffles if I complete an online survey. I've wished death upon these spammers many a time, and the neural wires must've somehow gotten crossed so that I wished death upon the baby Shuffle, too. Or something like that.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I was all set to write this week's column about how digitized kitchen appliances have paved the way for a more techno-savvy America. (Suggested, admittedly lame-o hed: "The Wisdom of Microwaves".) But I chucked that idea out the window upon reading my latest Visa bill, and noticing my annual $39 rewards-program fee—The Man's yearly reminder that nothing in life is truly free, save for the ham-cube samples at my local C-Town.

Every twelve months, upon noticing that Visa has rendered me $39 poorer, I spend time perusing the rewards catalogue. Being the cheap bastard that I am, I have nowhere near enough points for those Continental vouchers, let alone the inflatable speedboat. But y'know what I can get for my piddling few thousand points? Lots and lots of low-end electronics. And though it's tempting to treat myself to a gadget on Visa, by way of my charging habits, I know deep down it's all a scam. There's gotta be a phalanx of actuaries who approve the rewards catalogue and assign all the points values, in order to stack the deck against Joe Q. Consumer. I mean, come on—16,000 points for an Initial DVD player (right) that goes for $129.99 at CVS?

Yes, I realize that I'm stunning none of y'all by revealing the Scroogeishness of credit-card companies. But I still think the way they mess with their customers' heads is worth expounding upon. The tricks of the reward-program trade, spun geekily, after the jump.

The Brand Tease The electronics rewards that cost the fewest points are invariably the low-end offerings from recognizable brand names—Sony is a particular favorite, especially its lineup of Discmen. My particular program offers this Sony PSYC MP3/ATRAC/CD player for 6,600 points. Anyone cashing in this relatively meager amount of points is profiled as an unsavvy consumer to start with, and so the rewards programs view them as easy marks for the classic "label" con—hook a consumer on inferior products branded with a recognizable name. If someone is really jonesing for a combo MP3/CD player, the smart move is to invest in a Coby or jWIN model, which offer ever bit the performance of a Sony in this space. (Um, except for the ATRAC compatibility, I guess, though this is a feature that 99.9999998 percent of the planet can live without.) Right off the bat, you'd save twenty bucks off the annual program fee—and that's assuming the person could rack up 6,600 points in a year.

Bottom of the Barrel When rewards programs buy their products in bulk, they obviously opt for the specials—particularly models that are about to be dinosaured, or those that have been remaindered due to poor sales. One of the most popular catalogue items is the 512 MB iPod Shuffle, which I believe Apple quit making almost as soon as it started. It can be yours for 10,000 points through my rewards program, and I'm sure it's a popular choice given the recognizable brand name (see above). The program's site definitely doesn't inform you that Apple is no longer supporting the player, which means that when the Shuffle's firmware invariably winks out, you're pretty much screwed. (Appeal to y'all: Has anyone tried getting their Shuffle reflashed at an Apple store? I'm curious.)

Clever Elisions Everyone and their dog wants to own an LCD TV nowadays, but they're generally out of reach for us low-enders. So when someone reads that they can cash in 13,000 points for a "Toshiba Flat-Panel Color TV", they just might start thinking that they're about to join the future to which they rightfully belong. There's even a bunch of hype-sheet jargon in catalogue description that makes you think that, yes, you're getting an LCD. ("Ah, the pleasures of state-of-the-art flat screen technology. Isn't it time for you to take advantage of great viewing from almost any angle and enjoy reduced glare for an all-around better viewing experience?") Except, um, you're just getting a slightly advanced tube model that Amazon is selling for $114.40. And, oh yeah, its diagonal measures a not-so-whopping 14-inches. Enjoy, sucker.

Make Research Impossible This is the part that really irks me: rewards programs don't cite specific model numbers, so you can't do any independent research on whether you're getting a quality gadget, or just something that fell off a truck outside a Visa calling center. (The latter being far more common than the former.) So an HP printer is advertised only as "Hewlett Packard All-in-One Color Printer", and a laughably outmoded Brother printer/scanner combo is breathlessly hyped as "Brother 5-in-1 Color Multi-function Center". (Tagline from the catalogue: "Space saver!") I still haven't figured out exactly which HP unit my credit card is peddling, but it's gotta be a rip-off given that its print resolution is cited as 4800 x 1200 dpi. A printer with those modest gifts goes for well under $150 at Newegg; at 25,000 points in my reward catalogue, that's gotta be the biggest rip-off out there.

My bottom line on rewards programs is this: if you truly feel an irresistible compulsion to spend your hard-earned points on electronics, don't go for any of the options. The wisest choice is to instead opt for one of the Best Buy or Circuit City gift cards that are catalogue staples, and sort through the bargain bins. A $50 Best Buy card costs 4,000 points in my program—several thousand points less than that Discman that can be had for $50 (or less at the local mall). Face it, the catalogue is just trying to tease you with all them pretty pictures of craptacular gear. Better to take the faux money, run, and think seriously about whether you want to keep on forking over $39 every year. Rewards programs may be great if you're putting your kid's college tuition on your Visa; much less so if your biggest purchase since 1999 was the the complete first season of She Spies.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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I've got this uncle who's just thirteen months away from taking early retirement. He won't miss the work whatsoever—let's just say it involves getting up at 5 a.m., and wearing a uniform—but he's bummed about one thing: he'll no longer have a tech support guy on call to deal with his PC woes. How bummed is my beloved relative? Last time we met up, he pleaded with me to serve as his go-to tech advisor, in exchange for a case of Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager per year. Considering that the bulk of the guy's queries are along the lines of "How do I erase my Internet Explorer history?", it seems like I'm getting the best of this deal.

After my initial jubilation, however, I got to thinking: what's the right price for tech support? You see, as a dedicated low-ender, the bulk of products I buy don't offer this luxury; if you want 24/7 phone access to a techie, you've got to pony up for a pretty recognizable name brand. The question is, how much more should a product cost if free tech support is one of the highlighted features? Especially in this day and age of ezboard and other online resources that, quite frankly, are often more effective at solving your problem than "Mike" in Mumbai. An answer that's admittedly muddled, yet hopefully somewhat entertaining, after the dreaded jump.

Knowing Gizmodo readers like I do, I'm sure some of y'all are getting ready to jump down my throat on this one: "Grow a brain! This is a simple calculation based on the cost of outsourcing the service to a call center, checked against a known percentage of consumers who will utilize said service during the lifetime of their product." Okay, granted, that's how the Logitechs and Samsungs of the world probably figure things out. But you don't think they're also padding the premium quite a bit? They know full well that the likes of my uncle view tech support as a highly desirable "spec", and will therefore pay a pretty big markup to get it.

How big? This is a toughie, but I think a good sector to look at is one I've got some experience with: external hard drives. I've long favored external drives by the likes of AcomData, simply because of the cost issue—always remember that I'm a cheap bastard at heart. (I'm currently rocking this tasty 120 GB number, which I picked up for even less than the $40 that CompUSA is asking.) Of course, the company offers zip in the way of phone support, and I'm certainly not going to delude myself into thinking that they're "Tech Support Request" form will get you any meaningful assistance. Caveat emptor to the extreme on this one.

On the other hand, you've got the SimpleTech SimpleDrive, which offers unlimited toll-free tech support. Same size as my AcomData drive, pretty much the same specs (though my drive is FireWire compatible, too), but a good $100 more expensive. I'll write off some of the difference to the SimpleTech drive being a newer model, but I'm still guessing estimating guesstimating they're charging a premium of between 30 and 70 percent for phone support.

This is an anathema to a low-ender, but also a pricing policy that just can't continue—can it? I can understand why someone of my uncle's generation may still enjoy the gentle vocal embrace of an operator, but it's hard to believe that those of us who're young enough to have mastered the Google search will be in the same boat. Honestly, show of hands on this: how many times do you call a gadget's support hotline, versus how many times do you just Google the model number looking for help? And when you do call the hotline, let's face it, for straightforward hardware (like those external hard drives) they're just reading off an instruction sheet anyway. The fact that they can't possibly know the specifics of your machine configuration means that, more often than not, the conversation is gonna end up in a collective shrug of the shoulders and a, "Sorry, sir, we've done all we can."

Does this mean the end of phone support? For a lot of products I'm going to argue, yeah, it will. If you want a snapshot of the future, take a look at Iomega, which has stopped offering toll-free support in order to better compete with the cheapo likes of AcomData. PCs will continue to be a different matter, since software flummoxes so many poor souls. (There's a reason, I reckon, why Geek Squad can afford those full-page magazine ads.) But with the increasing tech savvy of the consumer base, I just can't foresee toll-free support for, say, handsets or CD-ROM drives lasting a lot longer.

Okay, granted, this might be wishful thinking. As a bargain hunter, I want there to be some serious price wars, and that means higher-end brands abandoning their support premiums in favor of competing on nuts-and-bolts costs alone. And, yes, I'm aware that companies have tried to split the difference in the past, with those awful "online support agents" that have yet to resolve a single one of my pertinent issues.

Though I'd be happy just rolling the dice on the flotsam and jetsam of the low-end realm, I'll bow to reality and accept that, yes, some folks may not feel quite so comfortable leaving everything to chance. So I issue the following challenge to the software engineers of the world, who hold the key to dinosauring toll-free tech support: develop a bot that can do the work of 500 "Mikes" in Mumbai. I know you're almost there; just keep on striving for a sweet lick of that shiny brass ring, ai'ight?

NEXT WEEK: Microwaves—educational, and great at warming up frozen burritos.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Every morning as I approach my workspace on 14th Street, I'm assaulted by two very different sensory experiences. The first is the whiff of stale urine outside a certain construction site, where nightly Mad Dog throwdowns seem to occur. The second is the hollering of a tout who spends eight straight hours piping, "Free Sprint phones! Free T-Mobile phones!" She's out there rain or shine, handing out flyers for a nearby cellphone depot. So piercing is her scream that I've started hearing it in my dreams.

But don't get me wrong, I admire the lady bigtime—not just for her Teutonic work ethic, but for advancing the cause, however slightly, of handset enticements. You see, wireless providers seem to think there's only two ways of getting your business: coverage (hence those now-stale "Can you hear me now?" Verizon ads) and plans (hence that really annoying T-Mobile ad with the two long-haired stoners, their dads, and a loudspeaker that blares "Overage! Overage!"). But neither of these is really the way to a cheapskate's heart—and, by extension, his wallet. We're the sorts who prefer a dollar today to a buck fifty two years down the line, and so what we look for is this, and this alone: what sort of free cell do I get for signing up? After the jump, a rundown of what America's wireless providers are giving away at present, as a means to deciding which company really, truly loves us low-enders.

Verizon Wireless The fact that Verizon thinks they can hook you with coverage promises really shows in their lineup of freebies. The chunky CDM-180, manufactured by Audiovox, is the most expensive handset they're willing to part with; it's marked down from $69.99 if you'll do a two-year contract. It's a relatively ancient product, actually, having been launched at the 2005 CES—a fact that Verizon conveniently fails to mention on its hype sheet. It's also strange that they flog the CDM-180's wide screen as perfect for "playing games and browsing the web." Um, Verizon? If I'm signing up for the cheapest possible phone, that probably means I'm not likely to fork over for a data plan, too. Better bet: the PN-210, from our "friends" at Pantech. It's drab and featureless, for sure, but at least it's lightweight.

Cingular "Raising the bar"? Boy, do ad slogans ever lie. The sole free flip phone in Cingular's lineup (again requiring a two-year contract—the rule of thumb from here on in) is the LG C2000. I can tell you from experience that this year-old phone has a ghastly camera, as well as middling talk time. If you must have Bluetooth, then you can opt for the Motorola L2, which lacks a lid. Strangely, I've also read that the L2 was priced in the $175 range when it debuted last August. I wonder if its quick descent into low-end land tells you something about it's quality.

Sprint Lord knows I'm no fan of Sprint, which I ditched many moons ago after growing weary of asking myself, "How the hell can I be roaming in my kitchen?" I'm definitely not the only person who's down on the house the Cleyson Leroy Brown built; I heard the emcee at the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night make a similar joke a few months back, and the audience went absolutely buck nuts in agreement. So how do you repair your image? Why, by offering a pretty decent assortment of freebies. The nicest stuff here is by Samsung, particularly the A640. What's incredible about the A640 deal is that it's such a new handset, having only been released this past July. The fact that they're handing this out to new recruits isn't exactly a sign that you should start buying Sprint stock, but a company's misery is often a miser's gain, eh?

T-Mobile The way I feel about T-Mobile is the same way I feel about TBS and TNT—solid, but not apt to wow (though I do enjoy those Family Guy reruns on TBS, I'll admit). T-Mobile's lineup of entry-level handsets is about what you'd expect from such a company, with the best attraction being the year-old Motorola V360. It's a serviceable phone, I guess, and I definitely appreciate them not saddling with you a 65,000-color screen like some tightfisted providers. But my ultimate reaction is along the lines of "meh". (On the other hand, note that the ad on the Mobiledia review promos a deal that'll net you a profit of $50 in exchange for your two-year agreement—how come the wireless providers themselves never advertise such deals on their sites?)

Alltel I have no idea what to think about this Johnny-come-lately, at least judging by their handset deals. No true freebies here, but they do have two so-so models available for nominal fees: the Kyocera Candid KX16 for 99 cents, and the LG AX4270 at two-for-a-dollar. The LG offer seems especially tasty at first glance, though the handset's spec sheet is decrepit—a listed talk time of 168 minutes probably means you'll get an eighth of that within a few months, if you're lucky. But what I'm really conflicted about is whether the nominal-fee scheme is ingenious marketing, or some sort of total dick move. I'm actually looking into writing an upcoming column on the psychology of various promotional tactics, so stay tuned.

The Bottom Line I never thought I'd say this, but...Sprint wins! Sprint wins! They're definitely layin' it all on the line, in terms of putting passable cellphones in the hands of new cheapskate subscribers. But, as noted above, the abysmal service the company offers should soon end the honeymoon. Which makes me wonder—is there some sort of axiom we can take away from this? Does the appeal of a wireless providers' entry-level handsets increase in direct proportion to how awful their service is? If that turns out to be the case, let's totally call it the Low End Theory Rule #2; Low End Theory Rule #1, of course, is never buy a $100 Powerbook from an eBay seller who lists his e-mail address as hdrhghgfhgh@yahoo.com.cn.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Automakers may run all those ads in which cowboy-booted, mustachioed Americans lovingly reel off their vehicle's astronomical mileage counts ("482,000 miles, and still going strong!"). But let's face it, they don't really want you pushing the odometer that high—they'd much prefer that you upgrade to a new car every seven or eight years. And the way they stack the deck against you is by building cars that, after said seven or eight years, become onerously expensive to maintain. Barring a righteous urge to keep pouring money into your decaying engine, the fiscally responsible move is to stop fighting The Man and fork over for some new wheels.

Laptop manufacturers have the same idea—they want you to junk your current model every three years, and upgrade to whatever fantastic new chip they've just bought in bulk from Intel. But there's a big flaw in this strategy when it comes to laptops: thanks to our low-end pals in Guangdong and elsewhere, it's not prohibitively expensive to maintain your Vaio or LifeBook. And there's no greater example of this point than the seriously humble PCMCIA Ethernet adapter, the bane of notebook makers everywhere, and the savior of cheapskates from Qausuittuq to Ushuaia. A paean to what the likes of Xircom and Encore have done for us misers after the jump.

Before I launch into a semi-extended discourse on click-in Ethernet adapters, a little personal anecdote is in order. I got the idea for this column a few days back, after helping a Mom-type download the latest drivers for her wireless card. I was pretty taken aback by how ancient her laptop was—it was a Toshiba Satellite Pro that weighed more than a fat baby, and it had those blocky plastic keys that were a hallmark of laptops 'round the time of the Lewinsky Affair. But she'd managed to kit it out with a Wi-Fi card nonetheless, and with a little ingenuity from yours truly, I got her online.

My helpee was by no means a power user—as far as I could tell, all she wanted to do was word process and check her Hotmail account. But, let's be honest, doesn't that describe something like three-quarters of all potential laptop users? No, not present company, as I know y'all want to be able to program in JARGOL and model simulated air flows along the wings of the X-43A. Mere mortals, however, are content with far, far less.

My point is, an aging laptop is surprisingly sufficient to accommodate most folks, and I remain unconvinced that new budget laptops have improved much on old designs. I'm currently typing this column on a new Vaio running a Centrino Duo chip, and you know what? It gets roughly the same performance as my ol' Pentium III Vaio, the one I outfitted with a 7200 rpm drive for under $100. That $100 upgrade gave my four-year-old laptop the same performance as a brand-new model that costs roughly $1,400.

Ah, but here's where the PCMCIA stuff comes in. Where the laptop makers try to get you is with peripherals and ports breaking down—a few stray coffee grounds get in your Ethernet port, scrape on the connectors, and sooner or later you can't visit the Internets. The Dells, Fujitsus, and Acers of the world assume that the fraying components will eventually tip your frustration meter into the red, and you'll head on down to (ugh) Best Buy to purchase a new notebook.

A pox on that. 'Tis far better to spend a measly $11.50 on the Encore ENP832-TX-PC, and restore your Ethernet capabilities that way. Yes, this can be a bit of a pain, especially if you need to swap other cards into that slot on occasion. But being cheap requires certain sacrifices, and a certain stomach for inconvenience. The bottom line is that you're saving yourself roughly $1,388.50 by going this route—or even more if you opt for a refurbished Xircom card, which can go for as little as $2.

The question is, how long can you keep up the salvage operation? After a few years of fraying components, a laptop turns into a Borg-like creature, with cables jutting out to the external CD-ROM (the original one having burned out long ago), maybe even an external hard drive from which you have to boot up. Then there's the sad spectacle of a cheap Ethernet card dangling out of your PCMCIA slot, the Category 5 cable forever appearing in danger of popping free from the jack. Admittedly, these mods kind of defeat the purpose of having a laptop in the first place, since they affect portability.

Still, giving the middle finger to Big Business is part of the joy of being a committed low-ender. As with those folks who rebuild the engines on their dying Ford Festivas, there's a principle at stake when you maintain your laptop beyond its suggested lifespan. But it also makes fiscal sense, much to the chagrin of the computer industry. If they really want me to buy a new laptop every few years, they're gonna have to start installing some self-destruct mechanisms in the power supplies. Otherwise, I'm gonna ride these things 'til the bitter end, and spend my precious savings on the good things in life.

NEXT WEEK: Which cellphone company really, truly loves its customers?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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My wife and I had a stoop sale a few weeks back, and that meant clearing out the mess o' useless gadgets beneath our bed. Among the battery-less universal remotes and cracked-case Discmen knock-offs was a gem I'd forgotten about: a Fostex four-track recorder, purchased years ago during my brief aspiring-musician phase. (Don't ask.) I distinctly remembered buying it off my pal for $150, with every intention of getting signed to Thrill Jockey in a matter of weeks, touring Europe, bedding svelte Danish groupies, dissolving crushed Adderall in my Crown Royal, blah blah blah. None of that happened, or (sigh) ever will happen, so I decided to sell the Fostex.

But how much should I charge? Home recording's gone almost strictly digital since my heyday, so I figured it'd be tough to find a pricing comp. But a quick Googling revealed that Clinton-era four-track technology has hardly been dustbinned; two of the biggest home-recording brands, Fostex and Tascam, make sub-$100 analog units, the X-12 and the MF-P01, respectively. That's good news for aspiring bedroom heroes who don't like fussing with PCs, or simply prefer the scratchy dither of tape to the austerity of ones and zeroes.

The staying power of the four-track recorder also got me thinking about the reasons legacy technologies stick around—to please us cheapskates, but also because newer isn't always better. More rambling wisdom, of varying quality, after the jump. PLUS: Shameless self-promotion like you wouldn't frickin' believe.

Obviously, the main reason that legacy technologies stick around is to pacify those of us who've made tremendous investments in media. As I write these words, I'm staring at one of my shelves that's weighed down by a two-deep row of VHS tapes—among them a beyond-precious copy of my 1984 appearance on episode two of Punky Brewster. (No, I'm not making this up.) There's an old JVC VCR player stashed beneath my bed, but I doubt it still works—the curse of analog is that parts fray and snap. But someone, somewhere will keep making barebones VCR players until Kingdom Come, because I'm merely one of millions stuck with an outmoded library of analog media. For $20, I can get myself a Zenith VCS442, and watch my old tapes 'til the cows come home.

Four-track recorders, however, are an entirely different low-end beast. You create, rather than play, the media with these things, so it's not like Fostex and Tascam have to keep making 'em to appease folks who've invested small fortunes in tape. But analog four-tracks persist for two reasons near-and-dear to those of my short-armed, deep-pocketed, not-that-bright ilk: price and ease-of-use. Yes, you can get a digital home-recording studio going for a relative song, but you're still talking several hundred dollars worth of software, fancy cables, etc. (not counting the computer itself). At $99, plus a few bucks extra for some Radio Shack input cords, the Fostex X-12 makes music truly an entry-level pastime.

The second point isn't gonna play well with an audience as sharp as y'all, but there's also something to be said for a four-track's simplicity. Mixing software can be confusing, at least compared to the visceral experience of twiddling knobs on your Tascam. And maybe it's because I'm getting old—32 today!—but I like the idea of ushering your young'uns into music recording with an analog recorder. Think of it as a souped-up Fisher-Price toy, then upgrade Junior to an Alesis ADAT-HD24 once he's proven that the whole rock-and-roll thing isn't some fleeting phase.

I'm also gonna throw down the old-guy gauntlet and state that there is a certain romantic appeal to analog sound. I say this as a devoted record geek, and thus a person predisposed to enjoying a bit of dither in his sound. The digital-versus-analog argument has been endlessly rehashed by people far more musically talented than I, so I won't make a fool of myself here. But for music neophytes, there's got to be some value to joining the analog tradition from the get-go—the scratchiness of tape is something that's always characterized the early recordings of artists, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Plus, low-quality Radio Shack mics tend to sound better on analog recorders—the products' shortcomings can be written off as quaint when hissing through a tape, while the MP3 format tends to reveal their serious limitations in a starker way.

The bottom line is that I hope analog four-track recorders won't disappear anytime soon. They remain a great way to draw low-end consumers (and, more importantly, their offspring) into the universe of music creation. My only gripe is that $99 still sounds pretty steep to me. I know this isn't the greatest comparison in the world, but the Coby CX-R-122 cassette recorder can be had for under $17, and probably less if you shop around. Multiply that one-track recorder by four, and you get a price under $80. Sound doable, oh mandarins of Fostex and Tascam? The next King Buzzo might be sitting out there right now, wishing he could scrape together that last $20 to get himself a four-track. Make his life easier.

BEST OF TECH: I'm always reluctant to engage in anything that smacks of self-promotion, but that's loser talk, eh? So if you're looking for a good autumn read, may I humbly suggest you pick up a copy of Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited and introduced by your humble narrator. It ain't exactly The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but it's a pretty darn entertaining compendium of savvy tech writing, featuring such stars as Adam L. Penenberg, Steven Levy, Clive Thompson, and Steven Johnson. Plus, after the first, like, million copies are sold, I start getting a nickel's worth of royalties on each additional book we peddle. And Lord knows the wife is begging, begging for a new coffee maker.

Thank you for your support.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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There are only two questions that I dread hearing: "What's that leaking out of your [insert orifice]?" and "May I help you?" Yes, I'm one of the millions of consumers who would prefer that salesmen only speak when spoken to. I know this quirk of character probably makes me seem like a real jerk in some of your judgmental eyes, but I can't help it—I'm too vain and too antisocial to quietly suffer the upselling of some Circuit City sales associate.

I trace my salesman-phobia back to early encounters with ads starring Cal Worthington (right), a car salesman and minor star in my native Southern California. Lots of the kids loved Cal's commercials because he'd tool around in a Dodge with a monkey, or ride an elephant across his lot. (The orca stunt was new to me.) But cynic that I am, I saw right through the zoological pranks and realized that this was exactly the sort of salesman who'd sell you that "anti-rust coating" that you didn't need—a Stetson-wearing version of William Macy's character from Fargo.

My distaste for pushy salesmen is part of the reason I've always liked stores with "discount", "value", or "99 cent" in their names. For the most part, the salesmen at these establishments aren't working on commission, don't know the first thing about electronics, and much prefer to check out the posteriors of passing females than assist you in selecting a Uniden cordless phone. They know that low prices are your personal deity, and thus there's no use in trying to get you to upgrade to something $100 more expensive—as if they stocked anything over $100 to begin with.

That said, it would be a gross oversimplification to say that all low-end salesmen are alike. Over the years, I've taken extensive mental notes on the Coby and jWIN hawkers I've come across, and I've managed to break down their genus into five distinct species. After the jump, the fruit of years of quasi-scientific research in the burgeoning field of low-end studies.

Mr. Hover Unlike his counterparts in the mainstream electronics world, Mr. Hover (aka Closeupensis lingeranosis) doesn't hang around because he wants to flip you upwards from the Pioneer PDP-4360HD to the more expensive PRO1130HD. Far from it—he's probably only seen a TV set that awesome at a sports bar, and he's never paused to consider the gaseous properties that make such sets tick. The reason he's breathing down your neck is because a couple of kids who looked a lot like you ripped off his store last week, doing a distract-and-dash scam with an armful of GPX CD players. If you want him to unlock the glass case that holds all the camcorder batteries, you're gonna have to make nice and compliment his cubic zirconia necklace, which mysteriously has a pendant reading "JUICY".

The Nephew This guy's family owns the store, so he's hip to the latest fell-off-a-truck shipment they got in. The one directive he's gotten from above is to get rid of the schwag fast, even if it means selling it far below the marked price. The Nephew will actually come up to you while you're looking at, say, a boombox and try to downsell you—"We've got a special on these slightly damaged Memorex MP3207s! Yeah, it'll play your Credence tapes, no problem. How much you wanna give me?"

The Bamboozler A particularly dangerous and, thankfully, rare species of low-end salesman. The Bamboozler seems to congregate primarily in the electronics shops around New York's Times Square, where tourists who've yet to figure out the exchange rate come in search of bargains. He doesn't exactly try to upsell, as his main goal is to get folks in and out of the store as quickly as possible. But he will prevaricate like Pinocchio on a moonshine bender. The Bamboozler's preferred strategy is to invent specs on the spot, figuring that his marks won't know that there's no such thing as a "telephotonic lens" on a digital camera. The species can be sussed out by giving him a pop quiz on memory-card options; if he claims that the SD in "SD Card" stands for "super dependable," run out of there as quick as your legs will take you.

Wide-Eyed Willie The last two dozen customers at Wide-Eyed Willie's multipurpose store bought tube socks and bootleg Manu Dibango CDs, so he's pretty amazed that he has a shot at selling you one of the Nextel push-to-talk phones that's been hanging in his display window since approximately the dawn of time. So amazed, in fact, that you actually have the upper hand on the guy; try to talk him into throwing in the used Emerson TV in the window, too, the one that he used to have hooked up to his (defunct) security-camera system. If you really play your cards right, you'll have a friend for life, and a hook up for buying toilet paper on credit the next time you're low on funds.

Up From Appliances This guy spent the last few months selling blenders on the other side of the store, but now he's moved over to the shelves with all the Apex DVD players. This is a prime location because it's close to the door, where the bin of $9.99 Coby CD players attracts girls during the summer months. The proximity to outside also gives him a chance to take more frequent smoke breaks. But don't be fooled by the easy smile and the fact that he calls you "brother man". Up From Appliances is secretly ambitious, and though he's not exactly pushy in the classic Guitar Center mold, he'll do what it takes to make sure you spend some cash. His preferred sales tactics include: pointing out the terrific bass on whatever weak-ass shelf system you're checking out, telling you "I owe one of these," and making vague promises that he'll invite you to his band's show at the local juice bar. Of course, when you come back several weeks later to either complain about the crappy CD player you bought, or ask when Up From Appliances' band is playing, you're informed that he just quit...in order to take a job at Circuit City.

NEXT WEEK: Rockin' in the free world, and on four tracks to boot.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

One of my favorite archetypes of shadiness is the dude whose trenchcoat is lined with fake Rolexes. He's got gold front and a bad combover, and he insists on doing business in a urine-soaked alley, but somehow you can't help but be dazzled by his merchandise—all those shiny Submariners for about what it costs to treat the family to Waffle House. Not that I've ever bought anything from such a Runyonesque character—I may appreciate the style, but even I know that a $40 Rolex is barely worth the tin its stamped out of.

At least that used to be the case. Not only has the trenchcoated fake Rolex dealer gone the way of the dodo bird, but so too has the knockoff watch that breaks within hours of being purchased. Quality "replica watches" (the preferred euphemism among low-end merchants) are actually decent pieces of machinery nowadays, complete with genuine Swiss movements. I'm not saying you can't tell the difference between a fake and the real thing, but you'll need some chops. And even if you can, hey, who among us low-enders is really gonna shell out an extra $9,950 for the genuine article? In our modest realms, all a name-brand watch gets you is a beatdown on the crosstown bus.

But, ah, that pesky demon known as guilt. Now that there's not much of a downside to going the knockoff route, is the realization that we're taking money out the mouths of the Gucci and Cartier? In other words, I'm asking you, can—or should—low-end consumers have a conscience? Thoughts worthy of Jack Handy at his shallowest after the jump.

It really should come as no surprise that knock-off luxury watches have really increased in quality over the last, say, five years. Folks much smarter than I have expended considerable ink on the reasons for this; my favorite theory is that, once a lot of the luxury vendors started outsourcing their mid-tier manufacturing to China, they made it that much easier for the Wizards of Guangdong to copy core designs. Also worth noting is the fact that there's a lot more capital sloshing around Asian factories, which means they've got the dosh needed to buy European parts rather than fabricating their own. There was a great Wall Street Journal piece a few months back which reported that a Swatch subsidiary was shipping oodles of parts to China; they said they wanted to stop, but that European Union competition rules precluded them from doing so for at least another five years.

The other thing to consider here is the shifting distribution pattern, abetted by that lovely beast known as international business. Used to be you needed a serious hook up, via multiple middlemen, to get a batch of watches from Shenzhen to downtown New York. No longer: the factories can now sell direct via fly-by-night Web sites. (To avoid antagonizing the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, I'll refrain from listing any currently active URLs. But I know y'all can Google "Rolex replica".) This is bad news for our pal in the trenchcoat, who's been forced to pay for his lotto and Night Train habits by taking on other work. (For example, y'know that guy who says his car broke down, and he needs $45 to get it fixed, and he totally wants your address so he can pay you back, pronto? Erstwhile watch salesman.) But it's good news for folks who want a solid, albeit unspectacular, watch at a price that won't get them into debt.

The luxury watch industry's standard argument against fakes has been that they're a) of terrible quality, and b) not the real thing, and so won't impress the people you want to impress. But now Guangdong (and, to a lesser extent, the greater Bangkok area) has rendered the former point moot, and the latter point never really mattered to us low-enders, now, did it? It's not like I'm gonna be hanging in the VIP room with Busta Rhymes anytime soon no matter what watch I wear; I just want one that looks good, and will work for several years. (Note to Busta: If you do perchance read Gizmodo and wanna hang, drop me a line.)

So the industry's new argument is the immorality of supporting counterfeiters. It's obviously illegal to knowingly purchase counterfeit goods (right, law-talking guys?), and I do buy the argument that creating an environment in which piracy is winked at can have deleterious long-term consequences. Lord knows I'd be pretty miffed if someone started writing an Engrish-filled column called Low End Theory for some Chinese gadgets site. (Especially if they tried passing themselves off as "Branden I. Kerner" or something.)

But, come on, don't those of us who make the median and below deserve decent watches? So, lemme propose a solution to the Rolexes of the world: take a page from the Target playbook and come out with some reasonably priced, limited-edition lines once in a while. Y'know, how Target hires a couple of big designers every year to do a seasonal line of stylish-yet-affordable togs. Us Joe Sixpacks would pay a markup over the replicas, if only because we could get real warranties. We're cheap, yes, but we'll shell out for the right product—just not an extra few grand extra for the sake of the brag factor.

Don't worry, Rolex, the snobs will still love you as long as you keep icing out your watches to ridiculous extremes; there's always an Arab sheik or coked-out supermodel who's got $500,000 lying around. But if you really want us on the low-end to protect that market by shunning the fakes, how about tossing us a frickin' bone here?

NEXT WEEK: The low-end salesman—an anthropological study!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Time Bandits

You might recall a little incident down in Florida a few years back, when a bunch of Wal-Mart shoppers stampeded over one another like so many cracked-out longhorns. Their excuse for acting more like beasts than men? A DVD player going for the then-unheard of price of $29.87. It was, at first glance, a sad day for humanity, not to mention for that one lady who got knocked unconscious.

But you know what? As a fellow cheapskate, I understand where these folks were coming form. Not to say I'm itching to pancake someone in pursuit of an Apex DVD player, but let's face it—when a once unattainable product dips below the magic $30 barrier, those of us with shorts arms and deep pockets tend to lose our minds. How could this happen? Pshaw, why doesn't it happen more?

I share this depressing thought by way of introducing the newest member of the sub-$30 club: the personal video recorder. That's right, the TiVo has been low-ended into the $29.99 I/O Magic PC PVR, which brings time shifting and live pausing to the masses—well, at least the masses willing to tinker with their PCI slots. It's by no means the end of the set-top box—you can still buy some more atrocious free agents for the Knicks, James Dolan—but the proliferation of budget PVRs does hint at the growing sophistication of low-end consumers. Ruminations and recriminations after (you guessed it) the jump. PLUS: Low-end spam, scourge or menace?

The downward trend in PVR prices is notable mostly for its rapidity. This, of course, is mainly thanks to the WinTV line from Hauppauge, starting with the popular WinTV-PVR-150. If memory serves, these listed at $99 as recently as the spring—a pretty good deal, no doubt, but not quite low-end territory. Now look: aside from the I/O Magic bargain-basement unit, there are sub-$50 options from Kworld, AVer, Bytecc, and some other brands whose ads you definitely won't be seeing during the Super Bowl.

When our discount pals in Shenzhen get cranking on a product this quickly, it obviously indicates a couple of things. First off, the technical details must be relatively straightforward, or at least easy to copy off publicly available documentation. (I'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt here and assume—totally, totally naively—that corporate espionage only happens in America.) Secondly, there are low-end retailers willing to stock the product, with the full expectation of turning a profit. And that means there's an assumption of demand among a demographic not known for its technological acumen.

The Kworld PVR is USB 2.0 compatible, but the rest of the lot are for PCI slots. All of us know what that means—lots of troubleshooting, especially for those unfortunate XP Home users who never upgraded to Service Pack 2. (Or, like myself, left my damn antivirus software on while doing so, and ended up with the OS equivalent of Quatto, minus the telepathy.) But we've reached a level where those who've missed the TiVo boat are willing to put up with a certain level of tech discomfort in pursuit of the PVR's seemingly magical benefits.

Though technically more sophisticated than in years past—thanks in small part, I hope, to our sister site Lifehacker—low-end consumers must still possess strong stomachs. That's because the dime-store PVRs not only lack the nifty menus and recommendation engines of pay services like TiVo, they also are still rough around the edges when it comes to performance. I haven't tried the sub-$30 I/O Magic unit, but I can vouch for the fact that the Kworld USB 2.0 unit has some quality issues. Yes, it time shifts as advertised, but you also have to figure out that a driver update is required, as well as noodle with some typically godawful bundled software. And the picture quality is a notch below TiVo at its most compressed.

Fortunately, low-enders like myself are used to deprivations of this nature. Heck, I watched the entire 2005 NFL playoffs on a 13-inch Apex tube TV that was covered in a thick layer of dust. (I swore off Windexing for Lent last year, and just kept on going.) But just because we're cheap doesn't mean we don't want to take part in the PVR revolution, and I gotta hand it to I/O Magic and its off-brand cohorts for realizing that late adopters need love, too.

Now it's time for the TV makers of the world to step up to the plate. You hear me, Coby and jWIN? We want sub-$100 tube TVs that'll work with PCI cards without extensive modifications. I'm sure there's some way to work this mod as-is, with the aid of many gold-plated Radio Shack cables, but my life's a wee bit too hectic to learn it—the wife's buggin' me to grout the ledge, and the third season of The Wire just came out on DVD. Please, help us TiVo without the TiVo (not to mention the monthly fee).

GADGET SPAM: I've long wanted to do a Low End Theory on gadgets that can be purchased via spam solicitations. I'm hip got hipped to a Thai company called Inex Global thanks to one of those annoying little e-mails, and I'm trying to do some due diligence. But I'd also like to throw open the chore to y'all, gentle readers, and ask the question: has anyone out there ever purchased a gadget off a spam? If so, what was your experience? Did your identity end up getting swiped by a 16-year-old Bulgarian Java programmer, or were you actually happy you took the plunge? Lemme know (in comments, if you'd like), and the, uh, immortality of a mention in this glorious space could be yours.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Dongleberries

Bluetooth reminds me of this on-again, off-again girlfriend I had back in the day—let's call her Heavenleigh. When things first got hot with Heavenleigh, man, it was lovely—a feeling similar to the one I got after creating my first piconet. But the tingle wore off once the complications of the relationship became apparent: Heavenleigh had "issues", and the Sony Ericssons of the world were charging too much for Bluetooth chips. The three of us drifted apart.

Then, out of nowhere, things get rekindled. In Heavenleigh's case, it was due to the combined effects of lonliness, the full moon, and enough Budweiser to fill the Caspian. As for Bluetooth, it was all about the low-ending of dongles like the Cyber-Blue unit pictured at the right. Lord knows that back when Bluetooth hit the scene, I thought I'd never live to see the day I could mod my laptop to network with my cell for under $10.

Alas, if only it were so easy. Bluetooth dongles may be plenty cheap nowadays—for the umpteenth time, thank you, Guangdong. But caveat emptor, bigtime, when wading through the dozens of no-brand options. The online dongles marketplace provides an excellent lesson in the pitfalls that await low-end consumers. A list of the vendors' crimes after the jump, as well as a manifesto of sorts regarding hype-sheet language. PLUS: An indispensable eBay rule of thumb!

When shopping around for a sub-$10 Bluetooth dongle, the first thing you notice is the dearth of USB 2.0-compatible options. E-commerce sites try to be coy about the fact their dongles only work with 1.1, primarily by stressing that their products are v2.0 compliant. To someone who just wants to pull pictures off their Razr without paying $39.99 for Motorola Phone Tools, it can be pretty easy think you're getting something from the hi-speed world. And trust me, using USB 1.1 ports in a much-used version of XP has caused me all sorts of nightmares lately—enough, I'll confess, to make me start dreaming about those Intel-powered MacBook Pros.

The other thing they never cover on the hype sheets, of course, is compatibility, which can be a bit of a haze for dongles that are stuck on the v1.2 spec. As previously discussed in this space a while back, there are few more dispiriting moments in life than realizing that your fabulous bargain is gonna cause you more heartache than joy. Now, I'm not asking the cheapo sites to add a warning to the effect of, "The spec on this dongle was dinosaured two years ago, so you could have some bandwidth and error issues." But it would be nice if they could at least explain what v1.2 means versus v2.0, and why buying the latter is probably the better idea. Hey, man, upsell! Works for Chipotle—damn that one "burrito artist" who once convinced me to drop an extra 45 cents on the peppers-and-onions mix. (Overly crunch and to be avoided, BTW.)

My real gripe, though, is the lack of plain-English information. Okay, I realize that this is the fabled Gizmodo and y'all are smarter than the average bear when it comes to understanding the benefits of Enhanced Data Rate. But I'm a few brain cells short of y'all, and so, too, is 98 percent of the American public. We want to geek out on this stuff—heck, even my dad finally learned how to back up his hard drive—but we're turned off by hype-sheet language that's either a) woefully uninformative as to what it all means, or b) straight-up Engrish.

Writing good ad copy obviously isn't a priority for the XMicros and Kinamaxes out there, and even less so for the discount sites that use bots to glean their hype sheets. But you know what? There are a lot better ways for a low-end brand to save money than skimp on the hype sheets, and a definite upside to, say, including a list of compatible cellphones, or a quick note about the benefits of v2.0 over v1.2. (Brainstorm: How about a bot that scans the Bluetooth SIG site for updates on compatible hardware, and adds the relevant items to a dongle's listing on, say, BuyMyAccessories.com. I bet there's a lot of coders in Kazakhstan or Sri Lanka who'd do that job real cheap.)

The bottom line is that low-end shoppers like myself want to know what we're getting into—we'll gamble on sites and deals that seem too good to be true, but you can definitely give your product a leg up with a bit more intelligent sell. When everything is priced similarly, after all, how else are we supposed to differentiate between the fruits of Guangdong? Go forth, XMicro and Kinamax, and hire yourself an unemployed English major (a demographic to which I once belonged). We'll work for peanuts and write alluring copy, as long as you don't let on to the fact that churning out Bluetooth dongle hype sheets ain't the path toward the Great American Novel.

LAW OF THE GIBBERISH E-MAIL: A close pal of mine recently alerted me to the eBay auction for item number 260023191543—a brand-new MacBook Pro going for $200. He was actually thinking of making the purchase, but I reminded him of that old axiom about deals that appear too good to be true. So he e-mailed the seller, and needless to say he received one of the least encouraging responses ever—the guy actually ended with the assurance, "Please trust to purchase!"

A scam, no doubt, but a mere look at the guy's e-mail address would have done the trick: hdrhghgfhgh@yahoo.com.cn. Safe to say that we can thus create a universal law of eBay usage: never buy a MacBook Pro from someone who obviously created his e-mail address by pounding his fingers on the keyboard wily-nily. For Pete's sake, he could at least have the decency to skip on over to the right side of the board and added a K or P to keep things interesting.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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Lessons of the Pawn Shop

Believe it or not, I can pinpoint the exact day I realized that the VCR Era was over: August 27, 2000. I was on a magazine assignment up in Waterbury, Connecticut, interviewing the patrons of a dingy pawn shop about why they were swapping their precious rings, TVs, and fishing poles for high-interest loans. Early that morning, before a heroin addict pawning his uncle's pistol bilked me out of a fiver (long story), a rake-thin girl in a Pantera t-shirt strolled in holding a mint-condition VCR—can't remember the model and make, but trust me, this wasn't a Wal-Mart special. I guess she was expecting to score an easy $15 or $20, but before she could even get to the counter, one of the brothers who ran the place thundered, "We don't take VCRs anymore! You got a DVD player, come back."

At the time, I didn't even have a DVD player myself, and the advent of the $29 Apex—one of the Great Moments in Low End History—was still a few years off. But when a pawn shop in a post-industrial town declares a technology dead, it's dead. And that's not all our friends with the usurious interest rates, sketchy intake ledgers, and security gates have to teach us about the world of low-end electronics. After the jump, some more wisdom that can be gleaned from hanging out in the shops of last resort, where most of us have either a) purchased a nice electric guitar on the cheap, or b) exchanged grandma's antique brooch for a month's supply of chalupa money.

Always Bet on Gray Product color connotes more than you might think. Used to be that VCRs and the like were uniformly black, on the assumption that the color of night can blend into any interior-design scheme. But low-end products like portable DVD players now tend toward gray, which supposedly suggests more advanced technology. You can definitely see the preference for gray electronics at the local pawn shop—they stand out better along the behind-the-counter shelves, and something about the modern human psyche places a higher innate value on such lighter-colored goods. Didn't have a chance to research this in-depth up in Waterbury, but gray products tended to bring an extra $5 or so from the brothers; I guess they figured it was easier to move a gray DVD player than a black one, and so kicked in that little bonus to the pawner.

Hands Off Even though pawn-shop consumers know that they're dealing with pre-owned products as well as semi-shady merchants, they tend not to test the merchandise beyond a simple turn it on, turn it off. This goes even for complicated devices such as laptops, which can obviously suffer from a variety of ailments. This is in part due to the high-pressure tactics of your typical pawn-shop owner—they're trained to get you out of there as quickly as possible, before you discover their no-refunds policy or some other horrible secret (like the backroom where they buy hot Rolexes from the neighborhood crackhead). But I think there's also a certain willful blindness that descends upon cheap consumers who think they've discovered a real bargain. Once they see the price tag and realize, "Oh my gosh, this is 75 percent less than Circuit City!", they—okay, we—tend to forget about asking the right questions and conducting the right tests. Be forewarned—that $200 Fujitsu LifeBook T4210 won't seem like such an awesome deal when you get it home and realize that it's infected with malware just a few shades less nasty than hantavirus.

Artists Keep Technologies Alive You can still pawn your Nikon 35 mm should you so choose, and for pretty good coin, too. In fact, I'd dare say that a real top-of-the-line vintage camera will be priced higher than a mid-range SLR in a lot of pawn shops. That's because of the Artist Effect—a lot of photographers, filmmakers, musicians, etc. do their gadgets shopping in pawn shops, though not only for economic reasons. Let's face it, there's a certain romantic mystique about finding a deal at the pawn shop; I don't recall Gilby Clarke ever recording an album called Guitar Center Guitars, do you? Now, there's certainly a lot of truth to this line of thinking, but don't think for a second that pawn-shop owners don't love taking advantage of skinny college students wearing ironic t-shirts. They assume such customers are bankrolled by mom and dad, and can thus be hoodwinked for an extra $100 or so on that Nikon SP 2005 Rangefinder they're dying to buy in order to take artsy shots of their girlfriend tied up with Red Vines.

Scaling Up Many pawn-shop owners aren't electronics whizzes, and can't be bothered to look up a product's current market value upon getting it in stock. What they'll often do instead is simple multiplication; if they've been selling a 19-inch TV for, say, $100, they'll make a 27-inch TV $150. No, that's not a great bargain, but once you get into the realm of the real big screens, their sensible scaling-up approach starts to really work in your favor. If you're lucky, you can find a pawn shop that doesn't realize the exponential growth of TV prices above the 27-inch barrier, and furthermore doesn't want to clutter their limited inventory with really big units. Alas, this doesn't really work with LCDs or plasma sets, though primarily because anyone able to drop four figures on a TV probably doesn't frequent pawn shops too much. When such folks have financial troubles, they either take out a second mortgage, or start embezzling.

(Credit where credit is due—many thanks to Water Winter Wonderland for the pawn-shop pic.)

NEXT WEEK: Dongles, dongles everywhere!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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ShackWatch: Music Has the Right to Children

The biz-school adage I'm about to drop isn't quite a classic on the order of "Buy low, sell high." But it's a good'un nonetheless, and I hope you budding entrepreneurs out there will take note: When you can no longer compete on price, it's time to rebrand yourself for the hoity-toity. Take shrimp caught in the U.S.—it's getting massively undercut by cheap imports from Vietnam, so our pals out on those Gulf Coast trawlers (or, rather, their PR folks) are rebranding those tasty little crustaceans as Wild American Shrimp. Now, I'm a cheap bastard, so I'll stick with the imported dreck that Popeye's ladles out. But I can definitely see the appeal of this strategy.

So, too, can Radio Shack, once home to an array of low-priced keyboards perfect for the little Michael McDonalds in your household. But no longer—the cheapest Shack synth now costs over $50, and most are like the LK-1261 pictured at right—relatively high-tech beasts complete with LCDs, light-up keys, and USB ports. Why did America's favorite peddler of rectifier diodes forsake those of us who simply want a sub-$30 unit that rocks a little bossa nova beat? Because the mighty Shack knows it's no match for the music industry's answer to Vietnamese shrimp farms—Chinese factories that have produced a glut of toy-grade keyboards. The whole (somewhat) sordid story after the jump. PLUS: Transferring our Rowdy Roddy Piper obsession to Markie Post!

I actually first noted this phenomenon late last year, while shopping at my beloved Gem Gem Gem value store up on 125th Street. The Gem Gem Gem, as readers of this space know all too well, is a clearinghouse for the basest in electronic gear—if you've ever craved a craptacular Uniden cordless phone with the coveted RocketDial feature, this is your place. They also sell electronic toys made by a Hong Kong-based company called Polyfect, among them a darn fine keyboard that offers enough rhythms and sounds to satisfy anyone in the 3-to-9 age range. The price? A humble $19.99, which makes it an acceptable risk for mommies and daddies blessed with rambunctious young'uns, not to mention the creative forces behind innumerable ironic indie bands. (During my lamentable indie-rock phase—which I blame entirely on an ex-girlfriend—I once saw Mary Timony play a miniature Fisher-Price synth at the Black Cat.)

Even during its '80s incarnation as a total discount store, before someone figured out that selling cellphone plans was the wave of the future, the Shack couldn't compete with those kinds of prices. Its private-label Casio knockoffs were cheap, to be sure, usually in the $30 to $40 range, but it's not like they offered any more scintillating options than the Polyfect model. And that Gem Gem Gem offering is only the tip of the iceberg; check out this JCPenney model for $24.99, and comes complete with (per the hype sheet) "plastic, electronic components." The more aesthetically inclined may want to shell out an additional $5 for Cooltronix Tune-a-Fish. Yes, it's obviously intended for the wee-est of wee ones, but the specs actually compare favorably with what I remember from the Reagan-era Shack models—8 rhythm sounds and 8 instruments was pretty much the standard back in the day, and we didn't get no fancy "demo songs." Also, hey, it's shaped like a fish. So it's got that going for it, which is nice.

In the face of all these budget options, the tsars of Shackdom seem to have decided to abandon the low-end in favor of the mid- and high-ends of the market. Let's disregard anything over the $100 mark, as I'd sooner saw off my left arm with a rusty machete than part with a Franklin. What we're left with on the Shack's musical roster, then, are a bunch of synths in the $80-$90 range with some impressive specs—the LK-1261 isn't really all that different from the Yamaha PSR-70 my dad spent a literal fortune on back in the day. They're obviously going for cheap musicians, rather than kids just learning that whole Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge thing.

The Shack should tread carefully, however. Rebranding yourself for sophisticated tastes after years of serving the low-end market is one of the most difficult things you can do—yes, Penelope Cruz, it's even harder than becoming a mactress, believe it or not. The snobs have you stigmatized as for the peons, while the peons don't have the scratch to pay the premium you're asking. Would it be too much to ask the Shack to throw us poor misers a bone and come through with a sub-$30 keyboard to compete with the toys? My unborn children will thank you for giving them the opportunity to learn music; otherwise, they're gonna have to suffice with blowing on some empty Budweiser 40-ounce bottles.

MARKIE POST: A few eagle-eyed readers recently noticed that, once again, I recently namechecked the infamous "perfume on a pig" scene from John Carpenter's They Live, this time in the service of discussing low-end TV antennas. No, that was not an accident—I just think that "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is an unrecognized genius, and I was planning on plugging him until the cows came home.

But now, thanks to our brothers over at Jalopnik, I've got a new celebrity obsession: getting The Fall Guy on DVD, and in turn bringing glory to the force of nature that is Markie Post. Seriously, I remember totally salivating over a picture of her in a leotard circa 1986, and this is my way of thanking her for assisting in my gentle usherance (word?) into manhood. Wanna help out? Visit the Jalopnik link above, write a firm-but-polite letter to 20th Century Fox, and pray.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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