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."

Doing the same thing to my house

[HeadbangerSmurf]

I'm in the middle of a home automation install but I'm not using the software/hardware Best Buy is going to pushing. I'm putting in a Home Automation, Inc http://www.homeauto.com/ [homeauto.com] Omni IIe controller with UPB control for my lights. I have the thermostat and keypad installed and wired into the controller. 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. So far the system is incredible but it's definately not something the average Joe is going to get into. 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. I've already got the computer networking business, why not add home automation and computerized audio/video to it? The high end stereo place in town does no automation and they don't want to get into computer based media. Sounds to me like a market that needs filling.

Tom

Another best buy qualified employee?

[www.sorehands.com]

Given my experience in talking to the Geek Squad, I would not trust the technical qualifications of anyone associated with Best Buy. When I complained to the management in the Sunnyvale store about my friend paying for an unqualified diagnostics of a drive corruption problem, she resented that I said that, "she paid for a diagnostic by someone qualified, not someone who just finished collecting the shopping carts." The employee said she resented it because "I don't collect shopping carts," not that she is unqualified to do a diagnostic.

Two dimensional box?

[nacturation]

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.

So the box is flat? Or is each of its six faces four square feet (two feet by two feet) in area? Or did they get both wrong and it's actually four feet cubed?

... it's bound to pit the new group against other Best Buy factions like Geek Squad.

Note that the submission was sent in by "Retail", likely some Best Buy marketing drone who tried submitting this multiple times but got rejected because, after all, who actually cares that they're selling some prepackaged junk with an insanely high profit margin? Finally, this drone added some fake sensationalism "ooh... an inner struggle within Best Buy" and managed to get it accepted. Yawn.