Cyber Monday 2015

Every year we go through the progression of shopping "holidays" after Thanksgiving.  We begin with Black Friday, move into Small Business Saturday, take Sunday off, and finish up with Cyber Monday.  Usually you'll find some exclusive deals only available for each specific day but usually retailer offer reduced prices for the whole weekend or even into the next week.

Since Amazon is one of the, if not the, biggest online retailers we decided to take a look at their deals today to see if any stood out to the cord cutter.

 Since so much of cord cutting is based on streaming media from the internet, a strong home network is a core necessity for nearly all cord cutters.  While they won't deliver the sort of speeds their names indicate, you'll more likely see a quarter of that, powerline networking has come a long way and can help you get some more stable connections in those areas where you cannot seem to get reliable wirelesss or cannot drop a dedicated network connection.  We have tinkered with the non power pass through of this model, the Netgear Powerline 1200 + Extra Outlet (PLP1200-100PAS), before and found it to be a quick way to get a wired connection, so if you have any equipment that still relies on that sort of hook up this might be good for you.  Keep in mind that these will allow you to still make use of the outlet you plug them into.

On the wireless (wifi) deals there are 2 that might be of interest to you.  The first is a wireless router which operates in the 802.11ac band.  We believe that before you consider putting money down on an item such as the NETGEAR Wireless Router - AC 1200 Dual Band Gigabit (R6200) it's important to know 2 things.  The first is that while the router will work for any of your wireless ready equipment you to get the most benefit you'll need devices capable of operating in that 802.11ac band to get the most out of it.  The 2nd is that 802.11ac operates in 2 frequencies and the higher of those 2 (5Ghz) is somewhat saddled with poor range.  We recommend doing some individual research, at a good resource such as http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ before buying a new router.

Speaking of range if you have a wireless network in place and it just isn't making it as far as you'd like you could try an extender.  Wireless extenders work by taking your existing wireless and basically boosting the signal.  Now since there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that is certainly the case here since this technology will pretty much take a 50% throughput hit.  The upside is that the speed even after that 50% hit may in fact be higher than what you were getting due to a very poor signal without the extender.  If you have a wireless network and it is struggling to reach all corners of your home this might be just the thing to get you whole house coverage.
Netgear AC1200 WiFi Range Extender - Essentials Edition (EX6120-100NAS)

The last deal we'll share is the Amazon Fire TV which is the full power streaming tool that Amazon offers.  We say full power since they also offer the Amazon Fire TV Stick which is a little less powerful due to its form factor.  The biggest upside to the Fire TV box is that it can support 4k streams.  Now as we mentioned in our 4k article from a few days ago, 4k streams are not supported by all streaming devices and can involve bouncing back and forth using the TV software and your other devices.  This should alleviate some of that bouncing. The Fire TV also has Alexa support built into the remote. Alexa is Amazon's voice recognition assistant and we've had very good success with voice commands on other Alexa enabled devices. At a special price of $74.99 this is probably the lowest price on a 4k streaming device you'll find today!

Keep in mind that many of these deals are only good for today, and will likely sell out so be sure to move quickly if you're interested!  Also remember that you can get free shipping with Prime.  If you don't have Prime be sure to try Amazon Prime on a 30-Day Free Trial.