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About two weeks ago, I purchased a Samsung Chromebook 2 and I must say I am very impressed. The hardware itself is very sleek, about half an inch when closed and total weight of 2 pounds. It’s not quite a Macbook Air, but I think its actually more durable. The lid has a fuax leather stitched on to it and the device itself is just very sturdy.

In terms of usability, its FAST. REALLY FAST. The solid state hard-drive and minimalistic Chrome OS just blaze through together. The hardware comes with either 2GB RAM and a Celeron Processor or 4GB RAM and Exynos 5 processor models. It’s not meant for heavy duty gaming or photo editing, but it handles websites and web apps just fine. I got through 20 hours of tax returns on Intuit Tax Online through it this weekend just fine.

Additionally, there is no set up time required. You just login with your google credentials and your good to go. There’s also no waiting or boot up time ever, close the lid and it sleeps, open it back up and your ready to go in seconds.  It’s also super quiet and cool. No annoying fan noises while working.

Overall, I still need my ThinkPad for the major processing, but the Chromebook is a great nice to quickly pull up sites or look up info on the go or from the couch.

Amazon Link

One of my biggest annoyances with my home media setup was having to sort through multiple remotes (TV, Cable Box, Blue Ray, Sound System, etc.) all the time. I didn’t want to spend $100+ on a Harmony or whatever because honestly I just want a simple remote not another fancy gadget I had to worry about.  I tried purchasing some of your average off-the-shelf universal remotes, but that was a pain too since you have to go through a paper manual and try multiple codes until  you get one that works.  Despite going through a million different codes on numerous devices, I could not find any that would work with my Samsung sound bar. I was about to bite the bullet and buy a Harmony, but then I remember that back in the day my parents had Mitsubishi TV with a remote that had a learning function that would basically monitor another remote and learn the commands it would send. After some research on Amazon, I was able to find a Sony Universal remote with the same learning function and it was only $20! The remote works great, all I had to do was put it in learning mode and press the buttons on the Samsung Remote which I wanted to transfer over and the Sony learned them effortlessly.

Check it out on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1OVDKxA

The Western Digital MyCloud EX2 Mirror has to be one of my best product purchases this year. Not only does it provide redundant cloud accessible storage for all your media. The NAS device also runs a full blown Linux OS which is capable of running many things off it, including a z-wave home controller, wordpress site, and DLNA server. Here’s a link to it right on Amazon: http://amzn.to/22uKMTZ