New Media Players for the Family Room

In the recent Forbes Magazine (yes, I still get it for free), there was an article about how hard disk drive manufacturers are introducing media players.  They featured devices by Seagate, Iomega, and Western Digital.

The interesting part is that I recently purchased a couple of the Seagate FreeAgent drives at Sam's Club last month.  They have a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+1080P HD Media Player STCEA201-RK that is available on Amazon.com that can play HD or non-HD media.  The price for the device is right at $149.99.  It looks like it will take any of their current FreeAgent drives.

Not sure it is a need at this time.  Time will tell whether this pans out as a useful tool.

For more information why I go to Sam's Club and not Costco click here on a previous post.  I have "survived" for at least one year without Costco and the only reason why I feel I would need it is for the $10 coupon off of TurboTax?

1% for College at Samsclub.com through upromise

Excellent. Just got an email notifying me that I can get 1% of purchases at SamsClub.com towards upromise.

Click here for my post on reasons to shop at Sam's Club instead of Costco.

This is the same deal as if I were to buy something from Best Buy. Here are the steps:

1. Log on to upromise.com
2. Choose Sam's Club to save 1% (click on the link)
3. Shop at SamsClub.com
4. When selecting items, choose the "Pick Up" option
5. Checkout and go pickup

With Best Buy, you currently get 2%. Sometimes the percent goes higher.

Click here to get started with upromise:

Sam's Club or Costco Membership?

Well, I said I was going to discuss this later, but I didn't know it would be so soon.

Ran into this article posted on Yahoo! but originally from SmartMoney.com that compares some of the commonly purchased items at regular grocery stores vs. BJs, Costco, and Sam's Club. Read at your convenience.

Here are the big reasons why our Family goes to Sam's Club.

• Expanded hours for business club members. Starts at 7:00 AM. At this time, they have things such as danishes, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and coffee for those who shop that early. If the kids are with me, they get to eat as well.
• Way less crowds during the above times.
• Costco has "business" hours, but it is the same time as the regular public hours.
• Click 'n pull (or Fax 'n pull). I haven't used this service, but if I ran a restaurant or other retail business, I would be using this all the time. You can place orders beforehand and they'll pull all the items and place them on a cart for you. Talking about a timesaver.
• They take any MasterCard. Compared to Costco where they take American Express (steep annual fee). It's easier for me to place purchases on my MasterCard and pay it off in full at the end of the statement period.
• Sam's Club Gas Stations take MasterCard. Costco requires ATM or American Express.
• Sam's Club is slightly closer to my house and work (not a really good reason), and is also closer to the BestBuy store (not a really good reason either).

Since we're in California, there aren't any BJs around this area.

The only reason why I personally go to Costco is the once a year coupon to save on TurboTax. I think between my family and myself, we go to Costco less than 5 times per year. So this year we actually decided to not renew our Costco Membership. Costco actually sent me another coupon booklet even though we aren't members. I think they were trying to see if we would renew based on the coupon booklet offers. Not right now....