Best Buy's ConnectedLife One-Ups Geek Squad

Retail writes "Best Buy is going to sell a packaged solution of Media Center plus home automation. Literally, it's a package — a box. A customer walks into a Best Buy store, delights in the demo, buys the package, and waits for its arrival in a big box about four-foot square. The package costs $15,000. For that you get a Media Center PC, Lifeware automation software from Exceptional Innovation, an Xbox 360, IP surveillance cameras, automated light switches, a thermostat and installation. It's a complicated business model, called ConnectedLife.Home, and it's bound to pit the new group against other Best Buy factions like Geek Squad."

services

[bmecoli]

sure, it may be 15K, but just wait until we convince you to get a 3 year Product Service Plan and a whole bunch of geek squad services... not to mention accessories then it'll be 20K ;p

Marketing Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy in to this nonsense. There are no feuding factions inside Best Buy; if there are, it's because the illusion suits the marketing department. The idea is absurd, their respective products don't even compete. Once again, a company's marketing department tricks Slashdot editors in to presenting the pre-packaged product with the pre-packaged spin. Why doesn't the headline say "Best Buy offers over-priced home automation kit?"

Expect more from your press release aggregators.

Not that geeky...

[fireboy1919]

Once I get my media server back I'll be installing the web based control software and then figuring out how to get the old XP MCE based software to install on Vista.

I'm doing it myself because I'm a geek (saying that while posting on /. is redundant, right?) and actually I'd like to start doing it professionally.

So you're going to buy essentially premade stuff and install it using the constraints given to you by the makers of the software. Can't think of a more un-geeklike way of going about it. Using Vista isn't a point to your credit, either.

A geekier thing would be to use Mister House [wikispaces.com] at the very least...making the control system an old PC would make this even better.

You also lose a few geek points for using hardware you didn't design yourself, and for using newer, more expensive equipment (geeks design on a budget, which in this case would be buying the much cheaper X10 hardware).

All in all, I'd say you're operating a lot closer to a geek-squad member than an actual geek. But they stay in business.

If it's new enough, even low-skill work can be high paying.

Pricing

[Animats]

• HP z560 Digital Entertainment Center - $1800 list
• XBox 360 - $400
• 2 Panasonic wireless cameras - $265 each
• One communicating thermostat from Residential Control Systems - $217
• Ethernet/powerline adapters from Corinex - 3 @ $199 each
• Five dimmers @ $40 ea
• Five switches @ $40 ea
• Two keypads @ $150 ea

That adds up to $4,244. They want $15,000 for this gear, installed. What's wrong with this picture?

Misleading story and description

[staeiou]

How exactly is this supposed to create a rift between the retail drones who sell hardware and the Geek Squad who fixes it? They are two different branches of the company.

This isn't a story. Stop selling ad space in our stories, OSTG. You've got them everywhere else.