apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

One of the reasons that people are buying less desktops is basically because of the way that they look. Most desktops are just plain boxes of plastic, that are best hidden underneath your desk. Tangled wires erupt from the front and back, and depending on how neat you are or if you have implanted some kind of wire management system, there might be quite a few wires lying around. It's not hard to see that people like having all of that messy stuff crammed into a neat little laptop.

Getting your SO to do a bit of cleaning around the house can be sometimes problematic. In essence, that's the reasoning behind the Dyson brand of vacuum cleaners. They give a lot of manly attributes to vacuum cleaners so that male sensibilities aren't upset when we start doing a bit of cleaning, using no less than the world's fastest motor to suck up all of the grime and dust.

It was inevitable that Americans with over-the-air TVs are slowly realizing the their regular analog service has stopped working and won't return. It's been a few weeks since the DTV transition and there are still about 1.8% of US households that are without digital service, according to data provided by Nielsen.

When you are traveling in other countries, you become reliant on free WiFi hotspots. No one wants to use their credit card to get access to the internet. Since multiple WiFi networks can permeate the air, it seems logical to think that there is a way to access many and therefore getting onto the internet. Some of the major airports offer free WiFi, but we've noticed more than a few that just offer a free 30 minutes.

Unplggd reader Jake had this following question:

I am a college student, majoring in game programming. Currently, I've been running out of hard drive space. I recently bought a 1tb internal hard drive for my desktop, now my overall hard drive space is around 1.6tb and I only have around 200gb left. I would like some advice in getting large amount of space for a backup hard drive. A lost of data would be a tragic situation I cannot afford. If it ever happen during finals week, I will have no choice but to repeat the classes to which I've lost data of. And, I am on a budget. No more than $250.

When you take your laptop with you, you rarely take your mousepad. Even though optical mice track on most surfaces, they don't always track well on all. That's why it's a good idea to have one around. Luckily Artmu have come up with a solution to this problem: a mousepad that is integrated into a laptop sleeve, to make sure that you have it with you at all times.

Ever since Ikea made glass desks really affordable, they have been popping around everywhere. We bet that you know quite a few people who have glass desks. Do they like them much? One thing is for sure, if you are using a glass desk as you computer desk, you may hit a problem or two when you try activating your mouse. Modern optical mice work almost anywhere. It's kind of strange to realize that they don't work on glass.

We love mood lighting. There is nothing like placing a few mood lights around a room to revitalize it and change what it looks like. One problem that people face is the actual cost of buying and installing all of these mood lights. Thankfully, we've found a cheaper way to accomplish this, with just a little TLC, you'll change moods easily and cheaply.

iPods and iPhones have become ubiquitous. If you compare the small form factor, size of the HD and just plain usability, the iPod is hard to beat. With up to 160GB of storage, which was strangely reduced to 120GB, you only need one thing to share you music with friends and family: a dock. It sounds simple, but there are thousands of docks available, and not all of them are equal. Some of them can do some pretty nifty stuff. Others, are just ornamental.

In this economy, and probably in any other, it's always wise to find ways to save money on expenses. Analyzing your power bill and taking the time to find out exactly what costs you the most is a great way of trying to reduce expenses and reducing your carbon footprint at the same time. Even if you aren't crazy about being green, everyone likes saving money.

Most of us spend a lot of time online without really realizing how much our senses can get dulled by this daily routine. It's been proven that we need to use our senses to develop them. Web browsing and the internet engages our sight and hearing, and we do have to use our sense of touch to input information, but that's it. There hasn't been anything that would engage our sense of smell until now.

When you are getting ready to watch your favorite movie or playing your favorite game, it's usually great to have a specific seat in which you can get really comfortable. It's important that these technological chairs mesh in with the rest of your living room. You can't just have this one chair upsetting the look and feel of your media room. That's one of the reasons why we don't think that the giant multimedia chairs will ever work in such spaces. They just mess up how everything else looks.

The iPhone 3G received a product update last week and loads of people decided to wait hours in line to be able to get their new shinning iPhone 3G S. Were you among those lusting after the new model? We enjoy it when good products get better, and in that respect, the new iPhone definitely hits the mark. Since it's launch on Friday, over a million iPhone 3G S were sold. In the midst of this successful launch, there was also a report from the Wall Street Journal, which seemed like an intentional leak, about the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs.

The one thing that is stopping a lot of people from using solar power is the fact that some of these panels can get quite expensive, especially the ones that you mount on your house. These panels will create electricity thanks to solar energy, and will also sell electricity back to the grid if you produce a surplus. This project is about something a lot smaller. Parker Jardine has put together a guide to create a solar panel from scratch.