Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

One of the areas that does not get a lot of attention — at least on the business coverage side of the world — is the strong industry Southern California has in the business of consumer electronics.

So, just for kicks, I sat down and put together a list — if you were really into buying stuff from just Southern California — of a consumer computer setup  based on products from companies stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Here’s the setup:

• Buy a notebook or desktop from Gateway (based in Irvine), either their Gateway or eMachines brands.
• Load up the Lindows operating system, a consumer version of Linux from Lindows Inc. (based in San Diego).
• Make sure the extra DRAM memory you have installed is from Kingston Technology (Fountain Valley) or SimpleTech (Santa Ana).
• For some extra storage, use a disk drive from Western Digital (Lake Forest), housed in a casing from IOGEAR (Irvine).
• For your display, buy one from Viewsonic (Walnut) or Westinghouse Digital (City of Industry). Or, skip the display entirely and use a video headset from Headplay (Santa Monica).
• Use a wireless router, either from D-Link (Fountain Valley), Linksys (Irvine) or Belkin (Compton).
• Amp up your computer with some computer speakers from JBL (Northridge), or skip the computer speakers and just distribute your music wirelessly with Sonos (Santa Barbara). Make sure your system supports DTS Audio (Agoura Hills).
• If you’re a gamer, buy your gaming controller from Mad Catz (San Diego) or DreamGear (Torrance).
• Add an Internet powered alarm clock/thing from Chumby (La Jolla)
• When you’re buying all this gear, get it from NewEgg (City of Industry), PC Mall (Torrance) or Buy.com (Aliso Viejo), and also do some comparison shopping on PriceGrabber (Los Angeles), PriceRunner (Westlake Village), Shopzilla (Santa Monica), or Smarter.com/Mezimedia (Monrovia).
• Make sure to check out ThisNext (Santa Monica) for any good product reviews.

I’m sure I’ve missed dozens of companies…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Electronics, Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.