About half of the Chinese gadgets sold on sites like Dealextreme. They’ll either be flaky, or crap out on you in a month or two. The thing is, you never now when you’re going to get something decent, or something that sucks, Rule of thumb: if it has any electronic parts, it’s probably going to suck.
Don’t waste your time/money on ____ (stuff that DOESN’T work)
My brother. pos never works
It probably goes without saying, but anything from the “As Seen On TV” store. If it’s truly an effective product, it’ll show up in supermarkets and department stores.
They make a liquid hand soap with no added fragrance and color. I hate having my hands smell fruity or flowery or chemically or all three at once. I don’t know about the rest of their stuff, but I’d pay fancy-schmancy prices for this, no matter what the bottle looked like. [/rant]
And just what, pray tell, would they use a Mac FOR? There’s almost no commercially available software for it! I’ve looked into getting a Mac. Let’s see, I can surf, and I can do word processing. Nope, no games for me!
Someone who is computer illiterate, or nearly so, has almost no use for a Mac, unless they are going to use it as a jumped up word processor.
Um- it will run Windows… and it is now unix…
We already established they ARE computer illiterate, so they’re the best customers for Macs frankly.
I don’t know of many 60 and 70-something parents who are gamers. I do know a lot of them who email and like to browse news sites. They, coincidentally, get themselves into all kinds of malware issues on Windows computers.
I’m a fifty something parent, and I game. I’m not really computer illiterate, but I’ve been known to give up on a game that requires me to tweak this, adjust that, and download these five easy patches before I can play it (Alpha Centauri, I’m looking at YOU). Seriously, it’s easier to deal with the Windows malware issues than the Mac non-compatibility issues. Or at least it is for me.
I’ll second this. Probably the most overpriced thing a person could buy.
Generally speaking, I never buy cables in the store. I buy all my cables from here. Excellent selection and excellent value.
Never heard of the site, so I went to it to check it out. Almost bought the digital probe thermometer for $5.24 before I remembered exactly why I was there.
D’oh.
Hmmm… I run Windows and Solaris at work, and still choose to use Macs at home. In fact I’m a pretty decent software developer (and I don’t mean Visual Basic). I’m not going to post my whole C.V. here, but I’m probably one the most computer literate people here. And I still choose to use Macs at home. About your only valid point is for video games, and I’m perfectly happy with Starcraft II and Eve-Online. (I have a Wii for games, or could boot into Windows 7, or run WINE or Crossover.) I’m just guessing that his parents aren’t big on the latest and great FPS’s.
Eh, I don’t do FPS for the most part. My reflexes are shot. You’re computer literate, and you choose Macs. Fine, that actually reinforces my point. I’m not that comp literate, and I prefer my PCs. I mean, I still play Fallout 1 & 2, and Arcanum, and my various Zorks.
Hell, my little brother was a systems analyst? engineer? for Apple, and even he admitted that (back then, at least) Apple computers couldn’t offer me what I wanted, and couldn’t compete on the price. I’m not going to buy something that will cost more and do less for me.
Don’t waste your money on an LG brand DVR. Apparently not all DVRs are created equally in the recording from stations department; the LG brand is extremely sensitive to signals from the station that block recording; other DVRs are (we’ve heard) less compliant.
Those potato peeling gloves. Unless you cook the damn potato first, they don’t work AT ALL.
Pretty much anything in the Brookstone catalog.
Consider my ignorance fought, I might actually go look for this soap. I didn’t know they had such a thing.
I got a big-ass bottle of Method hand soap at Costco because it wasn’t the antibacterial kind. (I get enough of that at work, as I work in a hospital; you don’t need that at home.) It did have a little color and scent, but the scent is subtle; it’s called “water” or something similar, so it’s not of the intensity level of the OMG fruit/flowers! types.
Dunno about some of their products, but I like their pink grapefruit kitchen/all-purpose spray a lot, as well as their stainless steel spray, wood furniture spray (though this is more liquidy than commercial sprays, so start wiping soon after application), and tub/tile spray for all but the most stubborn bathtub stuff.
No fragrance (on their fragrance free soaps) but my hands end up feeling sticky (if they were sticky before) or still oily if they were oily before. Dial has a smell. But my hands are clean.
The Method unscented/uncolored line used to be called Go naked, but now it’s just unscented. We have the Go naked surface cleaner also, but my wife tells me it doesn’t cut grease very well.
And that set off her Formula 409 rant, ‘which used to cut grease really well, but then they “improved” it, and now it doesn’t work very well any more, and there isn’t really anything that does.’ So if any one knows of a surface cleaner that does cut grease well, let me know. 
Ha, I was betting on Monoprice for your link. True story: my company sells a product that includes a cable in its packaging. We were getting them from direct from a distributor in China and all that. Turns out Monoprice was cheaper, so we started ordering from them instead. Their prices are indeed great.
Dealextreme is actually not all that bad. Yeah, I wouldn’t get anything more than a few bucks or that I was really reliant on in the electronics area, but their prices are great. The ‘weird stuffs’ category is neat for stocking stuffer gifts, though shipping takes awhile as I recall. I did get one of those ‘jelly’ stress relievers, and it was smelly and very sticky. I threw that one out. I used the earphones I got from there for a long time, though.