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Plex, the fantastic media center software I’ve written about before, added some icing on the cake recently: out-of-the-box support for Logitech Harmony universal remotes.

Logitech Harmony remotes are great because Logitech maintains a massive database of all the codes for pretty much every consumer electronics device ever made (the Harmony 550 was my pick for the best gadget gift under $100). You (usually) don’t have to sit there “training” the Harmony with your original remotes — you just hook it up to your computer, type in the model numbers of your TV, receiver, game console, etc, and you’re off. It vastly improves (and simplifies) control of your home entertainment center.

However, while Logitech did have remote codes for the Mac Mini (which is what I’m using to run Plex), the six buttons of the Apple remote aren’t enough to control a full-featured software suite like Plex. So I wound up buying a piece of software called Remote Buddy that interprets signals from remote controls and turns them into keystrokes. Basically, I spent 2 hours having my Harmony learn IR codes from 7 “virtual” Apple remotes (7 distinct sets of 6 IR codes) to give me 42 effective buttons, but then I had to create keystrokes for each of those 42 IR codes in Remote Buddy so that the proper commands would be sent to Plex (as keystrokes). It was extremely tedious, and I wound up having to do most of it over again because one of the learned IR commands was corrupted (resulting in double-presses).
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I’m going to take a little intermission before Part 3 of the Navigating the Financiapocalypse series, since I need a little more time to get my thoughts down on investment advice. Instead of saving money, today we’re going to talk about what you should buy if you want to spend some money: gadgets! That’s right, get out there and stimulate our crappy economy any way you can. And yes, you’ll stimulate my personal economy if you buy through the links I’ve provided — which just happen to be great deals!

I’ve thought about doing this for awhile because if there’s one type of question I get more than any other, it’s “What ____ (TV/MP3 player/camera/monitor/laptop/etc) should I buy?” I keep up on most of this stuff, so allow me to point out my favorites for this season. My criteria is really just one thing: what gets you the most for your money?

I’m going to hit the big categories first and probably come back later to make more obscure picks. Do you want a recommendation? Hit up the comments!

JUMP TO MY PICKS FOR THE BEST…

• HDTV
• Portable GPS
• Laptop
• Portable music player
• Point-and-shoot camera
• Consumer DSLR
• Blu-Ray player
• Overall gadget under $100

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