Kettle for you instant noodle, tea brewing, coffee making afficionados.

in , , , , , ,

For a limited time it's less than $38, you have to login to Yugster to see it. (MSRP $60)

Top Rated

Adagio Teas 3 UtiliTEA Variable-Temperature
30-Ounce Electric Kettle

UtiliTEA Overview

  • Expertly crafted by Tea Drinkers for Tea Drinkers
  • Electric stainless-steel kettle with innovative temperature-control system.
  • Perfect for heating water to the right temperature for green, black, white, and oolong teas.
  • Quickly heats up to 30 ounces of water; concealed heating element.
  • Cordless carafe; water-level gauge; power indicator light; flip-top lid button.
  • Lightweight and portable: you can take it around the house.
  • Faster heating than traditional kettles.
  • Small footprint is perfect for your desk or work area.

UtiliTEA Highlights

 

Electric Kettle Makes Gourmet Tea Easy
Not every tea is meant to be brewed at a roaring boil, which can lead to that infamous cup of bitter tea. Enter the UtiliTEA, a variable temperature electric kettle that is designed with the TEA drinker in mind.

Simple and intuitive, this electric kettle has a color coded dial that will help you select the perfect temperature for your water, no matter what tea you are drinking. This way you end up with water heated to the right temperature, whether you’re drinking green, black, white, or oolong tea. And you also end up with a cup of tea that tastes delicious.

 
Small Footprint for Ultimate Convenience and Portability

 

  • The stainless steel exterior and modern design will make it seem right at home, no matter where you place it.
  • A 360 degree base ensures that your teapot will be stable on most surfaces.
  • The cordless carafe allows for convenient brewing, no matter the location.
  • The small footprint of the UtiliTEA makes this kettle the ideal size for brewing at your desk or any workplace.

Simple Temperature Control For Any Tea

 

  • A color coded dial makes temperature selection for your tea as simple as possible.
  • Heat to your preference: 180 for green/white teas or 212 (boiling) for black, dark oolong, and herbal teas.
  • A power indicator switch will let you know when your water is ready.
  • Gone are the days of using thermometers or primitive techniques to gauge the temperature of your water.
  • Unleashing the full flavor of your tea has never been easier.
  • Flip-top lid and water-level gauge make refilling a snap.

 

Set to 212 degrees F for coffee, and use an Aeropress and you're good to go.

 

So you want the best deal on a new Macbook Air - out of pocket in California?

in ,

 

That means, no tax, free shipping, and lowest price, and available right now.  For this example, I will be using the 13" macbook air base model.

 

Apple MacBook Air 13.3" Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz 2GB 128GB Flash nVidia 320M $1249 w/FS - no tax charged for Californians.

I recommend SquareTrade Warranties for your new Macbook Air. Cover against failures for about 10% of item price.  That can include accidental coverage as well, and they feature a 5 day turn-around-time.

Total estimated: $1373 (with better warranty coverage).

vs:

Apple Store MacBook Air: $1299 + tax = $1425.65

Applecare: $249

Total: $1674.65

Nook Color is announced - preorder now, ships November 17th

in , ,



Nook Color is basically a WiFi only Android tablet built for e-reading.  What exciting is that its fairly aggressively priced, has a nice IPS display (hopefully iPad quality), most likely hackable, has a microSD slot, and runs Android.

From the demonstration video, it looks to be a little slower than I'd like in response time.  Also the battery life takes a hit (reported 8 hours).

I would be all over this if they included 3G/4G - but it's doubtful at this point without a monthly fee or more advertising.

For now, personally I'll stick with my Kindle and my iPad till 3G is out.

Backups - Here we go again

in , , ,

This is probably my third post this year about backups, but it's sooo important.  

If you have been following my twitter feed, you will know that I've recently experienced a hard drive failure of my boot (C:) drive on my main multimedia computer tower which is actually composed of two uber fast hard drives (at the time anyway) that spin at 10,000 RPM (normal is 5000+ RPM, up to 7,200 RPM).

The drive is covered under the 5 year warranty so I will get a free replacement from Western Digital, but what isn't covered of course is any loss of data.

Here's my current backup scenario for the main tower.

My backup system for the C drive is composed of an Acronis True Image Home edition backed up weekly to my Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ 4 Terabyte system, which itself is backed up to an external USB drive system.  My C drive does not contain any data, just programs and windows so its non-critical.

When I am ready to restore, all I need is access to my image files (copy them over to a local drive probably), and my restore CD created within Acronis.  

For my drives containing data, I use another external hard drive for immediate backups using Acronis True Image and then online / offsite backup using Mozy. 

I should note that I have multiple computers that also serve as backups to this main computer I work on.  So in case nothing is working right on this computer, I have a few more I can jump on to get work done.  Although sometimes with licensing issues, I experience some downtime while I transfer a license or program over - same thing with settings and macros.  

I haven't decided if I want to go all flash storage yet for the C drive, especially since my drives set in RAID 0 is pretty darned fast already and Black Friday is coming around the corner.

I think I'll wait.

Save 10% on MOZY and get up to 3 months free by using the promo code OCTOBER

Acronis True Image Home 2011

When is unlimited, not unlimited? Turns out almost everywhere.

in , ,

Unlimited

adjective 

1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined
2. boundless; infinite; vast
3. without any qualification, or exception 

Home unlimited internet access is limited.  Try uploading at maximum speeds for a while and you will find your access severely throttled.  I should know because I knew for a fact that Comcast did that, as I'm sure Time Warner did for a while.  What they do now is slow the internet down so its near unbearable for anything else after a while.

Cell phone data plans aren't unlimited, even if they were advertised as so.  Well at least now the carriers have done away with unlimited data plans and are starting to charge more reasonable fees for tiered plans.

And really with the comparatively slow speeds of our "high speed" internet access we can't compare with many other countries in speed or affordability so reach a relatively low cap every month in how many movies we can stream or pictures we can upload.

Ooma calling isn't unlimited.  At first the limit was 3,000 minutes per month, but has recently went up to 5,000 minutes per month.  In case you're wondering that comes out to about 2 weeks of straight talking.

My latest pickle has to do with my Pro Phanfare account with unlimited storage.  Turns out I've hit the limit not once, but twice so far this year.  The first time it was because I hit a 50 GB upload limit back in May while I was in Asia.  I'm sure that I wasn't the typical customer who only takes snapshots on vacation with their pocket cams (but hey, most of my shots in Asia this year was with my pocket camera).

At that time they told me they had just raised the limit to 100 GB upload which I just hit yesterday while uploading pictures from this past week's touristy romp around So. Cal with friends.

I fit the profile of 1% of their customers I'm told, and my current storage costs them about $600 per year not including any bandwidth usage since they use Amazon's S3 storage service.  Click here to see their rates.

My advice.  Read the fine print - there's always fine print.  They re-define what unlimited is, and typically state that no matter what, they can change what 'unlimited' means at any time without notice.