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.

Read more Low End Theory

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.

Read more Low End Theory

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 Squa