If you were born before the ’80s, you will remember the days when even owning a microwave was considered posh. Today, in the age of iPods, everyone seems to have one of everything. What sets you apart from the crowd is which one you have. This applies to everything from microwaves to refrigerators, televisions to air conditioners, and much more.
Odds ‘n’ Ends
There’s always been the devices that have no real purpose, or features that have no business being in a device, and the people who can afford them lap them up with relish! Since we couldn’t come up with a name that did this category justice, we decided to call this the Odds ‘n’ Ends category. Let’s take a look at the top three products that we came across, and took a fancy to for some reason or the other.
Multimedia Chair
Let’s face it-all of us are couch potatoes at heart! We’d like nothing better than to kick back after a hard day’s work (or play) and relax to some serious gaming console action! Or perhaps we’d like to watch a movie, or just chill to our favourite TV series. Well, now you should be able to do it with style, and loads of comfort to boot. If there’s one thing that will get your buddies all green, it’s the Hammacher Multimedia Chair.
Yes, as the name suggests, it’s a chair meant to laze about and enjoy any type of multimedia content. It has two 50-watt speakers built into the headrest, and promises to envelop you in rich, life-like sound. Whether it’s Mozart, a movie, or F.E.A.R., you’re sure to love the experience this chair has to offer-not just because it has speakers in the headrest, but because it boasts of a “tactile sound transducer” that actually vibrates the chair realistically according to the woofer’s output.
The technology is not new, however, and was first seen in USAF flight simulators and also later in some theme parks and movie theatres.
The good thing is that even at lower volumes, because of the chair’s transducer, you will still feel every bump in the road in a racing game, and have a richer movie-watching experience. It will also add a full body experience for those who use game consoles-instead of just tactile feedback for your hands from joysticks, your entire body will feel the recoil of that sniper rifle!
Of course you can control the volume of the 300-watt amplifier as well as the chair’s vibrations from a hidden side panel that’s within easy reach for the truly lazy. There’s a headphone jack for when the family is asleep, and the comfort levels are said to be exquisite-thanks to the suede micro-fibre upholstery, high-density foam and hardwood frame.
Price: $800 (Rs 36,000)
Coolness Factor: 7/10
URL: www.hammacher.com
PC Desk
So your friend just bought the latest gaming rig. And everyone is trying to outdo everyone else with their configurations. RAM sizes are soaring into the GBs, hard disks are approaching the TB mark, and everyone has a 64-bit 3 GHz processor with at least two graphics cards…
Yes, life’s a competition for most of us geeks, and in our quest to get the best and outdo the rest, we often forget that it’s not what you have, but how you flaunt it!
Now here’s a product that will make the dual AMD X2 4800 system your friend just bought look like the biggest joke. Forget funky cooling solutions and silly lighting, forget about modding your PC cabinet. Just get a Powerdesk!
We gave this product a coolness factor of 9/10, not because of the configuration of the PC it contains, but because this is literally a PC Desk. It’s not just a desk that you put your PC on top of, it is the PC!
For those who didn’t get it, Powerdesk has integrated the PC and the desk to form one unit that hides all clutter, all wires and makes your home or office so neat-looking that your friends will have to hang their heads in abject shame!
You also have the added flaunt value of showcasing a PC that almost no one without a crane can steal! Plus it can be adjusted for any height-a seated child or a standing adult. Of course, if you have the money, and really want to rub your friends’ faces in the dirt, you can completely customise the hardware configuration, and get those four 7800s in quad-SLI mode on a dual-core, dual-CPU setup! It’s also easily upgradeable, and you can do it yourself.
Pay a visit to www.powerdesk .com, sell a kidney and buy one of these. The dark side commands you to!
Price: Starting at £1,550 (Rs 1,32,000)
Coolness Factor: 9/10
URL: www.powerdesk.com
If every part of your house is outfitted to display your geekdom, make sure the bathroom isn’t left out!
Now we all have fancy bath fittings and weird little gadgets for soap dispensers and the like, but how many of us have heard of a home theatre bathtub?
It’s not one of those tiny little one-person affairs either: this is a tub you will be showing off with, and you’ll want your friends to join you in a nice Jacuzzi-cum-movie experience-so it’s got enough place to fit eight adults, and measures 96 x 96 x 40 inches. 96 inches is eight feet!
This is obviously not the tub for any of our apartments, and you better own a nice big bungalow before you buy this baby. Of course, at a price that’s reported to be over Rs 14,50,000 (yes, that’s 14 lakh 50 thousand), you’ll probably own a bungalow or two anyway! You might need to sell one of them to buy this extravagantly ridiculous tub and its accessories though.
With 80 water jets, waterfalls, lights, a 17-inch LCD screen, DVD player, Extreme Sound subwoofers, a refrigerator, and even a water-proof, floating remote, the tub actually seems worth the 15 lakh investment! Perhaps you can fake your death and collect the insurance money to get one of these!
Price: Over Rs 14.5 lakh
Coolness Factor: 10/10 (Kill for money, buy this, and you’ll probably be the talk of the country!)
URL: www.coastspa.com
And More…
Here are a few more products that were too wacky not to mention!
The “On Target” Urinal By Marcel Neundörfer
This one is for men who don’t pay too much attention to aim when going. It actually has an LCD screen in the urinal, with a target that gets smaller as time progresses, as well as sound and visual effects!
URL: www.apartment10.net
Computer Bug Zapper
You know how we see bugs getting zapped in restaurants? Here’s one that is hung above your computer and runs on batteries. It’s completely pointless, but your friends should get a laugh out of the explanation you concoct for it! This is the perfect gift for software testers, who can claim they’re destroying a bug every time this thing goes off!
It’s available from www. thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/80c9/?cpg=cj
We often forget that it’s not what tech gadgets you have, but how you flaunt it!
Speaker-Sneakers-Code M From Dada Footwear
Now here’s a new way to listen to music while you jog-instead of an MP3 player, you can have speakers in your sneakers! Well, the speakers aren’t that great, so they added a wireless headset with a range of 30 metres. This is because you might want to take off your shoes but continue listening to music, or perhaps you’re over 30 metres tall! The shoes are rechargeable via a USB port, can store up to 100 songs, and offers six hours of playback on a single charge! Plans are underway to integrate cell phone technology with the shoes so that you never lose your cell phone or find it stolen-unless you get mugged for your shoes, that is!
URL: www.dadafootwear.com