Category Archives: Tech Shopping

Serving Up Coffee Tech With The Keurig Vue

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Cooking and kitchen gadgets scare me. I’m not embarrassed to admit it… I’m tech savvy but kitchen challenged.  Consumer electronics are intuitive and easy for me to understand…. but cooking technology is another story. When the folks at Keurig asked me to join the Keurig Vue Twitter Party and receive a unit to review, I was excited to participate and finally conquer my culinaryphobia with the newest in coffee tech. Using the Keurig Vue, I concluded that making different hot beverages for all the members of my family is both EASY and yummy, and the technology is very impressive.

 

The Keurig Vue custom brew, single-serve beverage delivery technology allows me to brew coffee strong or regular, Latte with foam or iced tea, hot chocolate, hot tea and more. The high-tech brewer adjusts water pressure, timing, and airflow to brew to taste. The programmable settings offer temperature, strength and size selections so my husband can get his extra hot, extra strong coffee while I can have my tall regular coffee. The eight brew sizes range from 4 oz. to an 18 oz. travel mug. The removable 74 oz. water reservoir means that I don’t need to fill the water every day or when we are entertaining many guests. Best of all, it brews each cup in under one minute, which I need with my busy schedule.

 

To keep on our eco-friendly roll (we just started composting), I appreciate that the Vue packs are made from recyclable polypropylene #5 plastic. I found the recycling locations by checking the Keurig Vue recycling website.

 

 

 

The individual Keurig Vue packs come in so many fun flavors including different coffee roasts, Cappucino, cocoa, and teas – who needs a coffee shop with these!  The press release stated the following choices:

“Vue™ packs will debut with more than 30 varieties representing a mix of brands and taste profiles including Green Mountain Coffee®, Barista Prima®, Tully’s®, Coffee People®, Gloria Jean’s®, Green Mountain Naturals™, Café Escapes®, Caribou Coffee®, Celestial Seasonings®, Emeril’s®, Newman’s Own® Organics, Timothy’s® and Van Houtte®.  In addition, exclusive to Vue™ is GMCR’s newest beverage innovation, two-step Barista Prima Café beverages, which includes separate dairy frother packs designed to deliver a high quality blending of premium gourmet coffee and creamy froth while maintaining the convenience of Keurig® brewing.  GMCR expects of offer up to 50 varieties by the end of June.”

 

 

The digital controls let me know both what I need to do and what step I am on. For example, when I turn on the Keurig Vue, the controls show me that the brewer is pre-heating.

 

Keurig Vue

 

It is easy to pop open the lid to add the Keurig Vue pack of my choice when I am ready to brew.

 

 

 

Then I can select which beverage I am brewing, the strength and the beverage size. If I were brewing a beverage with froth or ice – then I would select that setting.

 

 

After I make my selection, I was happy to see that the controls show me that the beverage is brewing.

 

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In under a minute I had myself a hot, yummy cup of coffee. It was easy enough for even culinaryphobias like myself to use.

 

 

 

The only frustration I had was that I raced to the store to buy more Keurig Vue packs last week  – then realized they are not coming out until early March. Ah…. such a dilemma… to be patient for great coffee.

 

The Vue Brewer press release provided information on availability:

“The Keurig® Vue™ V700 Brewer is the first of a planned Vue™ Series for home use. Currently available for purchase in Bed Bath and Beyond stores nationwide as well as GMCR’s two consumer- direct websites (http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com and http://www.keurig.com), the Vue™ V700 Brewer and associated Vue™ packs will become more widely available in a variety of retail stores over the coming months. GMCR’s new Vue™ Brewer and Vue™ packs will complement the current Keurig® platform and its K-Cup® packs.”

 

Disclosure: I was compensated to participate in the Keurig Vue Twitter Party on February 16, 2012 and received a Keurig Vue unit to review. All of my opinions and words are my own. This is my first experience with the Keurig System and just received the unit. I will post an update after I have taken it for a full test drive.

 

 

Gift Time =Time to Upgrade Tech: TV’s

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Spending all year writing about technology leaves me little time to focus on my own household tech. My preference is to have home technology that is not only low maintenance but also high quality. Looking around the house, I realized that the fully functional 12 year-old family TV no longer remotely qualified as “top of the line”. Not to mention the glares my tween son’s friends gave me when they came over and realized we have a (shriek and face plant) TV with “tubes” in it.

 

 

 

So this holiday season I joined the world of high definition and purchased a new HDTV. Because our 12 year old TV Sony TV lasted so long and offered us a great viewing experience – I wanted to purchase another Sony television. At the local Sony Style store I reviewed the different models and received great information from the sales team. I also talked to friends of the family who are Home Electronic Concierges (Intuitive Environments). They sent me an article from PC Mag on how to buy an HDTV. If I were not a technology writer, I would have hired them because to help save money and time. But being a tech geek – I wanted to have the full experience of uprgading the TV on my own. I also checked CNET for reviews and Decide.com to get an idea of what price I should looking for.

 

The hard work paid off a week later when the TV I wanted went on sale so I bought it: 40″ Sony Bravia EX720 Edge LED backlit LCD HDTV (that includes 3D and is Wi-Fi ready). Other then a high quality HDTV, I was also looking for 3D capabilities (for future use), energy saving features, LED backlit for brightness and Wi-Fi ready to stream from the Internet (which the TV had).

I was extra excited to learn that instead of all the cables the old TV required…

 


I just needed one HDI cable from the TV to connect to my cable service box. Connecting to the Internet can be via Wi-Fi (because the TV is Wi-Fi ready) or direct cable.

 

 

Best of all – after we connected our new HDTV, one of the first shows we watched was a Discover Channel show with breath taking images of ancient ruins in Egypt and Europe. My twin 8 year olds are history buffs. After watching the show I realized upgrading to HDTV (and watching a show on a high definition channel) gives the viewer a feeling of actually “being there”.

 

Painful ( but worthwhile): months of reviewing different TV options to find what I wanted and waiting for the right price.

 

Priceless: Finding the right TV for the right price, realizing it was easy to install and then having a Sunday night trip to Ancient Egypt and Europe from my sofa sitting next to my kids.

 

Extra Benefit: Even thought it was not my top concern, it is really nice to have a TV that is cool with the tweens. Best yet – a new TV was the perfect holiday (birthday or any day) gift.

 

Next up: Hooking our new TV up to a Sony Playstation I am reviewing and looking into sound systems. I am also searching around to buy my 8 year old twins a new desktop. Luckily our household has the latest tablets, smartphones and family laptops. But there is nothing that can take the place of a great TV.

 

Tips for No Regrets Holiday Electronics Shopping

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The winter holidays are around the corner, with time split between two of my favorite things: family and shopping. The pressure to find “just the right gift” can change shopping for the worse, causing people to shop impulsively and not look for the right deal. When it comes to consumer electronics, prices may look great on “Black Friday” but waiting for the price drops of early December may be an even better deal.

So what is a bargain hunting consumer to do? I am excited to be partnering with Decide.com, a company that empowers consumers to make smart electronic decisions with a 60 terabyte historical pricing database, 8 billion price observations and growing. Decide.com’s shopping service predicts when to buy consumer electronics with no regrets by providing information such as price comparison, average release cycle, last release, device’s age, average rating and product details. Their just announced Decide.com mobile app for iPhone and iPod touch will enable consumers to have the power of prediction in the palm of their hands while shopping. Here are my no regrets shopping tips to make sure consumers are armed with the right information to make the best decisions.

    1. Don’t be a sale chaser – while it’s true that a few select products go on sale in the wee hours of the morning, you’ll likely regret rushing out to fight the crowds at 5am only to discover there were only 5 TVs available at that price. Spending hours chasing down a special holiday deal can be a big cause of buyer’s remorse. Do your homework and find the real holiday sales.

 

    1. Stock up and save on electronics for the family – wait for the holiday season to upgrade on the latest gadgets and electronics for her family. For practical and smart gift giving, holiday is a great time to stock up on those items that your family needs – a family computer, TV, other devices for family – and save big.

 

    1. Don’t be fooled – buying an older product model at a fire sale price is not necessarily cheaper. For example, by doing a search on cameras I realized that some of the newer models have better pricing then the models they replaced.

 

    1. Arm yourself at the moment of purchase: With Decide’s new prediction app for iPhone, when you’re shopping in the store this holiday, you can know if that product is a deal or not by simply scanning the barcode for an instant prediction.  You don’t need to give up on finding a deal even if you are making a spontaneous purchase (like we all do).

 

Disclosure:  This post is in partnership with Decide.com.

Win a $5K Shopping Spree Contest: Download and install the Decide.com App for iPhone and iPod touch for your chance to win an American Express gift card for $5,000. Contest ends December 25th, 2011. More information on the contest can be found on the Decide.com blog.