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if you're anything like me at some point you've probably made the mistake of

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buying your non- techsavvy parents or siblings or friends some kind of

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technology related item as a gift not because you wanted to punish both

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yourself and them but because you wanted to share your love of cool devices with

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the others in your life and then after spending hours setting it up only to

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have them break it in 10 minutes you probably vowed never to do it again well

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I have to but this year I found a tech

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gift a Sonos connect amp that solves a problem and genuinely makes life more

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convenient for my parents and is easy

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for me to maintain so I'd like to share that story with you and if you stick

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around till the end there might be a fun way for you to Tech up your loved ones

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this year as

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well the blast 4hx headphones from ozone

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gaming are compatible with the Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 and PC they

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also feature a foldable design inline control and 44mm drivers check out the

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link in the video description to learn more so my parents used to be techsavvy

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I mean at least my mom was I'm fairly sure my dad still teaches his classes

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with an overhead projector but but seriously we were actually kind of a

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tech family in the early days we had a Commodore 64 I played the crap out of

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Marble Madness we even had the joystick accessory that looked a little something

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like this we upgraded to a 386 custom machine

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built by Gino at bits and bites computer

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store uh we were the first on the block with a 486 with CD ROM o and CA mixed up

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Mother Goose anyone and I still remember the feeling of utter boredom that I felt

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when my mom excitedly showed me the box for our state of the freaking art 144

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kilobit pers second modem and loaded up a web page to show me how amazing it was

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for some research paper she was doing for her master's degree we even joined

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the Pentium era right early on 200 megaherz with MMX

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friends but however it happened my parents went from The Cutting Edge to

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where they're at today we're like we wanted to do a video shoot in their

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house last year and Brandon asked for some photos of the set that we'd be

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using so he could plan and it took me literally half an hour to get a picture

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off of an Android smartphone and have them send it to me it would have been faster for me to drive there so I'm you

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guys can imagine then and I take at least 40% of the blame for this the

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disastrous experience a couple years ago that was setting up a home theater

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system with a projector Media Center PC complete with TV capture card a game

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console and at one point a karaoke machine there were so many remotes that

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even with the mat that I created that had like outlines for where they went

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and then labels for the buttons they couldn't figure out how to use it at the

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best of times and diagnosing stuff like that over the phone is impossible the

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service calls every time someone wanted to watch TV were a burden that no one

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was happy with so when my parents moved to a condo and no longer had room for

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the projector I think everyone was a little relieved but the AV receiver and

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amplifier and the speakers lived on as kind of a badass stereo unit until

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finally the receiver gave up The Ghost and with their teeth gritted my parents

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came to me asking how they can keep using those speakers they spent all that

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freaking money on it recommendation so that is where this

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came in I reviewed the all-in-one speaker products in Sonos ecosystem a

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while back and even with daily use I've been really really pleased with their

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ease of use when accompanied by an all you can eat music service like Google

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play music but the one thing I criticized about them at the time

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something that really hasn't been addressed is that the speakers are super

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unspecial sounding like especially for what you're paying for them so the

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solution then was the connect amp it's a compact little white and silver box that

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should be easy enough to hide somewhere discreet that allows you to use your own

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stereo or 2.1 speaker setup with the Sonos ecosystem just plug in the power

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cord plug in your speakers the same way you would to any receiver or any other

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amplifier and follow the exact same setup guide as the rest of their product

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sort of I was actually pleased to discover that you no longer need the

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bridge accessory and everything can stream through your noral Wi-Fi hotspot

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so basically you download the app go through the Wi-Fi setup set up which

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room it's in and boom you're able to listen to any existing uh music library

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songs you have you can listen to Internet radio through the Sonos app and

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you can bind additional accounts so that's what I did I gifted my parents a

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Google Play music account for 6 months and then with that done it took me a

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matter of 5 to 10 minutes to show my mom how to use it my sister even already

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knew how and it's times like this that my love of Technology become something

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that I can legitimately share with others because while you can make the

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argument that VLC or Plex or some commandline tool somewhere can do

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everything that a consumer product like this can do and is significantly cheaper

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the reality of it is that as Tech Geeks we get kind of wrapped up in the OMG

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this is so cool it could do all this stuff and we forget about the you know

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companies arriving for a cocktail party in 3 minutes and I need some ambient

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music why isn't this working I don't want to reboot a

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so then that's my challenge to you guys today whatever your story of how you got

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into Tech is and however disconnected your loved ones are from the

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technological World head over to the lonus tech tips Forum thread Linked In

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the video description with the rules and full giveaway details and post what

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technology gift you would buy for a non-

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teie up to $300 and three lucky winners

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yes we are giving away $900 worth of stuff three lucky winners will have

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their gift sent to them to the person of their choice in time for Christmas by me

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so Merry Christmas everyone on the subject of things being easy to use

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tunnel bear the easy to use VPN app for mobile and desktop if you don't know

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you tunnel to 16 different countries

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allowing you to browse the internet and use online services as though you are in

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that other country so it's kind of like a like a man in the middle so that the

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traffic coming to a website or service be it Netflix say for example appears as

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though it's coming from a given country which allows you to get around firewall

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rules it allows you to well use services like Netflix and have access to the

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library of you know your friends down in the states who have way cooler shows

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than you and all that kind of stuff it's available on Android iOS Chrome uh Mac

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PC and uh yeah I think that's pretty much it and the apps are super easy to

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start ring start ding privately start browsing privately today all right so

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thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like

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button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to

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shop at Amazon instructions for which are up here it is the holiday season

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instructions are up there buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct

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monthly contribution through our for you get a little contributor badge and all that now that you're done doing all that

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stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so check out that little button in the top right corner to see

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our Channel Super Fun video where we play a pretty neat little game that

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might actually be another pretty cool gift idea for the holidays it's called

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Odus lists