Linksys WRE54G Wireless-G Repeater Our Rating:

Want better wireless signal in your house? This is exactly what you need. This device homes in on your wireless signal from your router, and then boosts it, extending the range of your wireless network.

The product itself is a small box that can either be mounted right on the outlet, or used with a provided cord and mounted on the wall, or simply set on a surface. Once mounted, all you have to do is aim the antenna straight up. Then you just hold down the auto-configure button, and it will configure itself to repeat the strongest wireless signal it can find that is not secured. If your network is secure, you must connect it to your network or use the software on the provided CD.

This is where we dock a star from the rating. The software didn’t work right at all for us. It is supposed to give you the ability to further configure your product, and to confirm that it is connected to the correct network. It also is needed to connect to a non-secure network. However, every access point scan we did failed, yet we could auto-configure to multiple networks. This was tested on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Furthermore, the software is not Mac compatible.

Once connected to your wireless network, this product significantly increases your signal strength. It increased our signal by over 300%, and we can get an almost perfect signal from one end of our house to the other – before this, we could not get signal at all in the basement, or in many areas of the house. In addition, the internet speed is retained great throughout the house. We recommend getting one of these if your wireless network range needs a boost, or you just want a more reliable wireless signal.

Apple Remote Our Rating:

The Apple remote is a necessity for your Macbook or Macbook Pro, iMac,or Apple TV. With this tiny remote, you can have the ability to control your computer and applications on your Apple computer.

The Apple remote features only 6 buttons: volume control up and down, skip left and right, play/pause, and menu. In a media application, this remote controls all of the normal functions in that application, making it simple to control your music or movies from right in front of your computer to all the way across the room.

The menu button pulls up the Front Row application on Apple computers. This gives you access to movies, music, videos, podcasts, and photos in an appealing interface, all navigated with the remote. In the Front Row, you can also access features such as the top 10 music videos or top 10 songs in the iTunes store, movie previews, and more.

Not only is it a media controller, but a presentation controller. It can also be used in other applications. Additionally, it can play media applications in a Windows Boot Camp partition.

The remote has a long range, and has a long battery life. It also is very light and small, yet large enough to not lose it easily. It works great, and is essential to get the most out of your Apple computer experience.

Intec Audio/Video Selector Our Rating:

If you’re like me, you have tons of things hooked up to your TV. You have your DVD player, video games, and anything else around. This means that whenever you want to switch over to another system, you have to hassle with all of the cables to get it working. This nifty audio/video selector takes away the hassle.

This product allows you to plug in up to 3 devices into it. Then, you use the provided cords to hook the product up to your equipment. It accepts the regular audio and video, along with S-video. Then, all you have to do it hit the switch for whatever device you want to use, and play away! It’s that simple, and this product does the job flawlessly.

Nintendo Gamecube Game Boy Player Our Rating:

Here is a perfect accessory for your Gamecube. Slap this on the bottom of your Gamecube to instantly allow it to play any Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance game on your TV!

Most every game works in the Game Boy Player. There are some games that are not fit for use in this, including tilt-sensitive games, Gamesharks, or other large games or games that interact in various ways other than normal. Also, Game Boy Video cartridges cannot be played in it for copyright reasons. The device also has a link port so you can link up and play with other Game Boys, or use accessories that use the link port.

There are many ways to play the games. You can use a Gamecube controller, or you can buy a Game Boy to Gamecube link adapter to use your Game Boy Advance/SP as a controller.

The software has a few extra features. It allows you to put a number of frames around the game screen, includes sharpening levels, and has a timer of up to 60 minutes.

This has worked flawlessly for us, and has allowed us to play our Game Boy games on a whole new level, nice and large on the television. Much better than that tiny screen – this is a must-have for any Game Boy enthusiast.

Mad Catz Gamecube Control Pad Pro Our Rating:

Here is one controller you do not want to get. If you’re looking for an extra Gamecube controller for games, or for your Wii, skip right past this one and move to the next.

The controller’s feel is not bad. It fits comfortably and has those rubber grips on the joysticks and sides of the controller like the Microcon controller. It also has the same macro feature. The problem comes in with the buttons.

The buttons just don’t feel right. The “A” button presses really far, and kinda sticks, just because of the way the button is. The other buttons aren’t too bad. However, after a short while, the “B” button on our controller broke, and you now have to jam the button down as hard as you can to get any input at all. With funny feeling buttons and a button breaking so early after purchase, we do not recommend this controller.

Mad Catz Microcon Gamecube Controller Our Rating:

Here’s a tiny controller! As the name implies, the Microcon controller is micro-sized. We found that this was actually really comfortable to use.

To give a frame of reference, the controller is slightly more than half the size of a normal Gamecube controller. It fits just perfectly in your hands. All of the buttons press very firmly. Additionally, the rubber grips on the side and on the joystick are amazing. They make it so much more comfortable to hold and easier to play with. It is so simple to use because of it’s small size that you can actually just roll your thumb to press any of the buttons on the left side!

The controller features a macro button, almost ironically because the name. This allows you to program a key input so when you hit the “M” button that parallels “Z”, it will pres the programmed buttons. It works only with the normal buttons and not they joysticks or shoulder buttons, has 2 speeds of input, and can take up to 15 button presses. This is useful for games that use special button presses, such as fighting games.

One issue we had with the controller is that the joystick seemed to loosen up. This occasionally makes it play improperly with games. It is really sensitive because of it’s small size, so if the joystick is a little bit off center when powering on, or the neutral position has a large range, it can affect how games play quite a bit. It won’t matter in a fast paced game where you’re constantly moving around, but for steady games or menus, using it can be tricky sometimes.

Microsoft Bluetooth Intellimouse Our Rating:

Bluetooth. Five buttons. Molded to fit your hand. What more could you want out of a mouse? We loved this mouse, and you will too.

This mouse is colored a deep blue color to fit the theme of bluetooth. It also has 5 buttons on it: the two normal buttons, two thumb buttons, and a wheel-click button. These can all be customized with software to do whatever you want. The extra buttons also make this a nice gaming mouse. It also has a normal scroll wheel which is very smooth.

This mouse does quite well on batteries. They lasted a long time for us. The mouse has a power saving mode, so that your mouse isn’t wasting your batteries after sitting for more thana  few minutes. However, because the mouse never really turns off completely, and because carrying it in a bag tended to click a button and keep it on, we found it best to take a battery out when not in use.

The best part of this mouse is the way it fits in your hand. It is perfectly molded to fit right in your hand very comfortably. We hardly noticed we were using it at all! The only bad thing we found about the mouse is that it occasionally lags a bit. This is never a large problem, and it lags less than a second behind. However, if it weren’t for this, it’d be a perfect mouse and would get a perfect score.

Microsoft Bluetooth Explorer Keyboard Our Rating:

This one grabs your attention pretty quickly – it’s a cool blue color with transparent keys, perfect to fit it’s bluetooth connectivity. While it looks appealing, it loses some of that lure after you use it.

Let’s start with the good stuff. First off, they keys press very nicely. We like the touch of the keys. It also has a comfortable palm-rest that can easily be taken off. All of the special keys on the top of the keyboard are helpful too. They have defaults to Microsoft programs that the keys represent, but they can be programmed to do many custom actions. The media player keys are also very useful.

What we didn’t like really took the scores down. Because it is wireless, it need batteries. This keyboard eats them like candy. Also, they keyboard tens to get caught up with lag now and then. You may be typing, and then all of a sudden it repeats a key-press for about 30 seconds. This is tragic while playing a game, and an annoyance while typing a document. This may have been from bad batteries, but at the rate that they use batteries, this is bound to happen often if that is the cause.

In conclusion, this is not a bad keyboard at all. It is very appealing, easy to use, customizable, and comfortable. However, you just might have to get past some lag issues.

Sony ICF-C25 Dream Machine Alarm Clock Our Rating:

The Dream Machine from Sony is a good choice. With it’s amazingly annoying alarm buzzer, it is sure to get you up in the morning.

The clock is easy to set, and includes both AM and FM radio. Additionally, you can set this to be your alarm instead of the buzzer. A great feature of the alarm clock is the 9 minute snooze, rather than 10 minutes. If you are a multiple snoozer, this actually saves you a few extra minutes than most alarm clocks, yet gives you nearly the same amount of extra rest.

We like it a lot, but the sleep time for the radio is 59 minutes, and that is it. A custom time sleep mode would be better. Other than that, this is a handy alarm clock.

Toshiba SD-V291 DVD/VHS Player Our Rating:

Here is another wonderful product. This player from Toshiba is a DVD/VCR combo. It plays all your old VHS tapes from back in the day, and all of your newer DVDs, all in one unit.

The DVD player plays tons of formats: CD, VCD, CD-R/RW, mp3, WMA, and DVD-R, and can view JPEG pictures as well. It has component video output, and is Dolby Digital/DTS Compatible. The VHS player works great and includes multiple features, such as high speed fast forward/rewind, commercial skipping for recording, automatic clock set, and an automatic head cleaner.

We loved being able to use both common types of video media in this unit with the same remote. However, we found that the DVD player in our machine was touchy at times. Rarely, it would take several tries for it to play a DVD. However, this did not occur often. We found that cleaning it with a DVD drive cleaner helped it significantly. If you want to get a new DVD player, but still have a massive collection of VHS tapes, consider this player.