How to get the most out of older gadgets
Who can afford to keep up with the relentless pace of new technology? Change is constant and chances are someone has something that's faster, bigger, thinner, fancier … and just plain better than "this ole' thing." So here are a handful of apps and not-so-spendy new gadgets that can help you step off the new tech treadmill and squeeze another few months — or even years — out of what you already own.
Make More Room On Your Smartphone
Listen, we've all made the mistake of buying an iPhone or iPad that just doesn't have enough storage space to handle all the videos and high-res photos that we can't stop snapping. 16GB iPhones? Please. That's not even enough to hold the photos I take within the first five minutes of my daughter's music recital, not to mention the — have you see my new bangs?! — selfies! SanDisk is swooping in to save us from our overzealous snap-happy ways with the iXpand flash drive ($99). This little beauty will hold up to 64GB of your beloved photos and videos so you can free up the precious space. Oh, and thanks to a free app, you can still watch all the videos and listen to all the music that you can, anytime, anywhere.
Turning Clunkers Into Connected Cars
In the not-so-distant future, cars will drive themselves around. Until then, you can make just about any clunker a whole lot smarter for less than $100 with Automatic. It's a tiny little box that plugs into your car's diagnostics port and will boost your fuel mileage, help if you get in a crash, and can even tell you how much money you can save if you stop driving like a bat out of hell. It's like a tiny mechanic along for the ride wherever you go!
Make Your Dumb TV Smarter
Smart TV, schblart TV, if you've got an HDTV with an HDMI port, you can turn it into a top-of-the-line entertainment device for less than the price of a couple of trips to Starbucks. Google dreamt up this little stick called the Chromecast ($35), and it's basically the brains of a smart TV shrunken down for anyone to use. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and dozens of other streaming web apps will flow to your TV in beautiful high definition. Amazon makes their own version they call the Fire TV Stick and then there's one of my all time favorites, Roku. While there are a few differences here and there, it's all the same idea: The internet on any TV with an HDMI port. Hooray!
Smart Home … Savings
If you're already tired of hearing about smart homes, you're not alone. While 2015 is being hailed as the year of the smart home, a recent industry survey shows a whole lot of people in America are wondering why they should fork out good money for a new connected device like a smoke detector, when their old one works just fine. If being cost conscious is as important to you as being connected, you're in luck, because for as little as $15 bucks you can start building the smart home of your dreams with the GE Link bulbs. You can turn these on or off with a touch of the free Wink app.
If you want to remotely turn on/off any device in your home using your smartphone, iDevices' Switch is a $50 a smart-plug that you can control anywhere using Siri on your iPhone. That one comes out later this spring, but you can get in on some fancy smartphone-controlled home accents right now with Lutron's Caséta wireless controller which can tweak your shades, adjust the temperature, and dim your lights all with the tap of a touchscreen.
Apps to the Rescue!
You might not even need a physical product in order to make your gadget last a bit longer. DataMan is a super simple app that can help you stay within your phone's plan limits, tracking 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi usage so you can keep within the boundaries of your plan without going to the local carrier office and switching things up.
What are some other ways you've figured out how to get squeeze more life into your old gadgets? Be sure to let us know in the comments section.