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

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

Just wondering

Does it come with the loan application?

$15k

Like most Best Buy customers, I should be able to afford this package. At $15,000 it's a steal, really.

I imagine...

...that they check your receipt very carefully as you leave.

Dualing Factions!

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.

Wow, imagine the mêlée at the company picnics.

[unsure whether to tag this "biz" "automation" "slownewsday" or "slashertizement"]

Doing the same thing to my house

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

The Target Market is Clear

For the obscenely wealthy person whose never purchased anything.

Marketing Hype

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.

Using Microsoft software ?

So what happens when your house gets a BSOD ?

And do you have to reboot it every night ?

Then the sales person will ask...

... "Can I tell you about the Best Buy Performance Service Plan for this item? For only 10% of the purchase price, you get ...".

It's an exercise for the reader to determine what happens next.

Another best buy qualified employee?

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?

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.
 

Thankfully...

... it includes a $14,900 mail-in rebate.

Re:Thankfully...

Unfortunately, that's a european decimal notation.

SALE!!

$15,000?!?! I've never seen such a good boxing day deal at Best Buy! Count me in!

Survey SAYS...

Before you mod this "redundant", at the time of this posting, no one else has actually done the math, just guessed...


For that you get a Media Center PC
Averages around $900 [prostores.com], but they use the HP z560 [circuitcity.com] at $1800...

Lifeware automation software from Exceptional Innovation
This one took some work. The closest I could get to a price, $5000 [cepro.com], includes hardware. But it puts us at an upper limit, at least.

an Xbox 360
The easiest to find, at $400 [amazon.com]

IP surveillance cameras
They use a pair of Panasonics (not sure of the model number), around $380 [newegg.com] each.

automated light switches
FTA: "five dimmers, five switches, two keypads". Home Depot [homedepot.com], $80.

a thermostat
Again, no model number given, but the standard model [asihome.com] goes for $270

and installation.
Not really - They want you to have the "hard" parts done yourself, by a privately contracted licensed electrician.



The package costs $15,000.

Total so far, $8310 (not counting your own electrician).

So, not counting needing to hire your own electrician, that puts the cost of their installation at roughly ... $6690.



I've made some pretty damned good wages doing contract work, but over $6k for less than a day's work? Wow, talk about a dream job...

Anyone that wants this system - Hunt me down for contact info. I'll do it for a third less (you pay airfair outside the continental US, and though I know how to work safely with home AC systems , you'll probably still need a licensed electrician to do this legally in most places).

What a strange procedure to put customers through.

waits for its arrival in a big box about four-foot square.

Customers have to wait in a big box about four foot square until Best Buy delivers it???

Thud!

I can hear the lead balloon falling. Fifteen grand? What are they smoking?

Pricing

• 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

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.

Right

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."

Kind of like how the new Ferrari dealership is going to compete against the Toyota dealership across the street.

Internal competition

I hardly think this will put any of Best Buy's internal units against each other. First off, there will be the $2500 service package they will sell you to configure your firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and I suppose anti-nosy neighbor. Then the end user (being the technically inept we all know they will be because anyone technically capable will build it themselves, not buy it in a box) will lock themselves out of their very own home automation system requiring a mandatory Geek Squad service contract and on-site repair. "no, ma'am, we don't know your password, but for $99.95 we will come out and reset it for you"; "no ma'am, we don't know (or care) that its 32F in your house but we will gladly adjust your thermostat for a discounted fee of $69.95." I imagine the Best Buy execs are dreaming of all those wanna be techies with money and see this as the last great cash cow. In-fighting withing Best Buy, I doubt it!

Too pricey for no automation

Well, it's already been established that this whole package is way overpriced. But what hasn't been pointed out is that the actual package isn't what you need to automate your home.

So, what is home automation? Every day your coffee maker turns on at 6AM. Your computer speaks the weather report and the daily headlines. Can lifeware do that? Lifeware is a fancy MCE interface, that can control your home. But it can't automate your home. I've used HomeSeer [homeseer.com] for almost a year. It's more DIY than this package, but isn't that what every Slashdot user is looking for?

Something else that hasn't been mentioned - INSTEON. This is a new technology, but it's based on old X10 powerline. It's unreliable, and everything I've heard about it has been riddled with problems. Z-Wave is what I have in my home, it's RF based and the more devices you add the more reliable it becomes. 15 grand for old technology? Z-Wave is about the same price and it can defintely do far more.

By that time

By the time I get $15000 Duke Nuke'em Forever will be out, and I can play it on my obscenely expensive menagerie of Best Buy consumables.

Faction war?

When the Geek Squad fights the Over-priced Home Automation Corps, we all win.

I mean... seriously. Are we talking Geek Squad ninjas with USB cable garrotes engaging in midnight raids on the Home Automation Camp? Stupid VW bugs with silly stickers being turned into car bombs? Windows Media Center cameras recording Geek Squad insurgents?

In other words:

A new low in hype and slashvertisments. Bah.

WTF?!.....

I pay 15 THOUSAND and that's all that comes in it? For that price, it at least better come with a lightsaber.

Yeah all in a box...

Oh jesus, who in the hell do you think will set it up for these people? -GeekSquad duh... competition my ass.

15K?

For 15,000 I better get a fuckin blowjob with it.

I'd be happy

I'd only be happy if best buy went out of business and its execs all committed suicide for dishonoring their families by working for such a monstrously stupid company.

Idiotic Neiman-Marcus type product

This is one of these silly non-products that companies like Neiman-Marcus and Hammacher Schlemmer like to have in their catalogs. It's not a real product, it's all about publicity.

It's one of these crazy but amusing-sounded "products" that sound as if they'd be appropriate for the title character in "Brewster's Millions" (who had to waste $30 million in 30 days in order to inherit $300 million).

They tend to be not-quite-one-of-a-kind items that are nevertheless certainly not mass-produced and frequently involve an obvious component of personal service or installation.

This year Hammacher Schlemmer has a $15,000 rocking horse [hammacher.com]. Nieman-Marcus has a $40,000 7 foot sculpture [neimanmarcus.com] made entirely out of pencils, but their big item is the $1,764,000.00 six-person trip into space. [neimanmarcus.com]

I can't seem to find any of items that must involve sending a small army of people to install them, but they've had them in the past. You know, amusement-park-sized train rides for a 400-acre backyard or live camels or that sort of thing.

I suspect that very, very, few of these items are actually sold, and I bet that in some cases the companies wait for the item to be purchased before figuring out how they are going to deliver or install it. Nieman-Marcus may or may not make money on the Virgin Galactic space flights, but their business is not built on these offerings.

These products are offered so that hundreds of local news pairs of talking heads will alternatively swivel them toward each other as Kimberly says "If you're looking for the gift for the person who has everything, take a look at _this_ from the Glooper-Gnorgl catalog!" then swivels her head toward Lance who says "That's right, it's a real home hospital complete with emergency room, three motorized gurneys, and a five-person medical staff, and it can be yours for $56,000,000!"

Do I need exalted rep?

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

The divisions are factions? So does that mean I need exalted rep to buy from them? Argh, I hate faction grinding.

Exceptional Innovation

Not really related to the actual post, but on the topic of Exceptional Innovation.... I interviewed with them a while back, to the dismay of several of my coworkers (they have worked with several of the management biggies there at past jobs). I went to the interview anyways, just to hear what they had to say and eye some pretty neat technologies. Anyways, the interview was going great, the HR/recruiter guy doing his best to sell me hard on the company. As he dug into my work history it became apparent that I have dual citizenship (ill leave the countries undisclosed), but lets just say that one of those countries implied my ethnic and/or religious background. I was immediately rushed out the door and received a "thanks but no thanks" email a few hours later. i wont make any brash statements here, but think about it before you endorse any of their products.

IP surveillance - Anyone else read that as...

Intellectual Property surveillance cameras -- cameras that keep an eye on you to make sure you don't download MP3s or rip DVDs.

Keep away from cello playing neighbors

This all in one connected system, when exposed to alcohol, may also take up industrial design, asking questions about the meaning of life, and wooing Virginia Madsen.

Motorola Homesight

I'd reather see motorola homesight get a little more robust. It seems like a damn good start, (wifi sensors, computer interface, easy to use...) But it's missing some key stuff. For one, it's all security now. They need to add automation. Second, while you can use it online, you have to use some service that starts charging you after the first year. Finally, they don't have 64bit drivers.

Does anyone know of anything similar? Not X10 but a system that you can drop in wireless devices that report to the base station for security and automation. Something that has online monitoring of the sensors, cameras, and status of switches. Preferably something that interfaces with Windows Media Center Edition, (though maybe it can just be a channel on my WII). Motorola starts at about $100 dollars and goes up 15-50 as you add stuff. Any suggestions?

four foot on a side, it's a cube ...

... that won't fit in most people's entryways (do YOU have a 48" wide door?).

A bit silly. Obviously, ways around it (garage, unbox on the street) - but ... I thought most companies had this solved by at least making packages that were thinner on one axis than entryways....

Re:weeeeeeee

You know, Slashdot should start selling a "first post" in a box. Given how much people seem to want it, they might just sell them for $15,000 a piece.

The question would be, if the box comes with Cowboyneal inside....