Comments on: When Gadgets Become Appliances

By: David N. Triche

David N. Triche — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:25:01 +0000

Yo Yon,

How would you classify a waffle maker, espresso or a bread machine.

By: Midnight

Midnight — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:49:05 +0000

I’m not “Yon” but I’ll assume you’re talking to me.

It doesn’t matter how I classify any device, because gadget or appliance is relative to the user. I don’t use any of the three objects you listed, so I don’t have an opinion.

By: TexasWes

TexasWes — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:24:46 +0000

Unfortunately I have a lot of things that have turned from gadget to appliance.. much to my dismay…

my tube amp… 2 months of design.. 3 months of component acquisition.. 1 month of initial construction… followed by 6 months of tinkering and tweaking (which I absolutely loved). Then came the day that I decoded I had got THE sound that I wanted, and needed to put away my soldering iron before I wound up dying by: A: Electrocution; B: Lead poisoning or C: Murdered by a wife tired of smelling burnt solder and living with caps and resistors strewn across the study.
I definitely miss the gadget that has become my amp.
i could name off a million other gadgets-turned-appliances, but for now I think i’m going to go pull my amp out of the closet and see if it needs any more tweaking. It’s been over a year since the smell of solder has drifted through our house - and i think we may be due.

By: Brian Duffy

Brian Duffy — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:53:16 +0000

It gets worse when you’re an IT guy with access to whole lab full of equipment. I piss off my wife all of the time when I tweak or change something that doesn’t quite work out…

At work, it’s no big deal… I grab another piece of gear, rebuild, etc. At home it’s a different story!

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:49:34 +0000

I just wanted to let you know that there is a beautiful video and song written and performed by Harold Perrineau, or the TV show Lost. It is called Stay Strong, and you can watch the video on Youtube, or you can buy the song on iTunes. It is a thank you to the troops and a portion of the proceeds are going to benefit the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for returning soldiers with injury. It is so moving, and a great song.

By: D15AV0W3D

D15AV0W3D — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:56:05 +0000

I’m in the process of turning my original Xbox into a Media Center. It has been an interesting learning experience soldering the mod chip in, installing bigger hdd, loading Xbox Media Center, etc. Right now it’s a gadget, but I’m sure at some point, it is going to be merely an appliance.

I will say, however, that an HTPC w/ Windows vs. a Xbox w/ Linux, the HTPC would be more of a gadget out of necessity. Once Linux is loaded on my Xbox, I may never even need to reboot it…

By: Midnight

Midnight — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:17:34 +0000

Disavowed, I wish you luck in ever getting a modded xbox to appliance status. My experience was that there are so many things that depend on homebrew software that bugs are simply unavoidable. They’re not usually difficult to get around (reboot), but I can’t imagine leaving my modded xbox on my home network as a server and having it function properly for many days at a time. However, I never installed Linux, so that may be where you find the solution.