Best $100 speakers

I need a good pair of speakers for my limited $100 budget. My expectation from them would be,

1. Medium to good quality high range frequency production
2. Good quality mid range frequency (vocal quality if very important to me - for music and movies)
3. Low to medium quality low range frequency (Obviously i can't expect more than that from a $100 speaker)
4. Good stereo imaging
5. Compact size
6. Aux input for my old iRiver H120
7. Should be able to connect to my TV if need be.
8. Headphone jack


After hours of research, i have closed on Logitech Z2300, M-Audio Studiophile 30 and Bose companion 2. Though i don't think Z2300 will make the cut with its competitors, i am going to decide that only after listening to one of them at a store. If one prefers bass over vocal performance, Z2300 is the choice. I am not much after rap, R&B or house as my Last.fm library would tell you and so, the 2.1 Z2300 need not be the one for me.

Z2300 is $85 and the others sell at $99/pair on Amazon and BestBuy and hence technically in my budget. All of them seem to have the audio reproduction characteristics that i am looking at and i am already a little biased towards M-Audio from what i have discovered about them so far.



M-Audio Studiophile 30


Best in the category for its low to mid range reproduction. Most people who bought this felt that this pair produces the complete spectrum accurately.




Logitech Z2300


8" woofer for the beats




Bose Companion2


Famous for its stereo imagining capability


In part 2 of this blog, i'll update my in store experience with these speakers and my decision.

My new XPS1330. Its here!!

Okay, one item from my wishlist has a tick against it now. I have made this XPS1330 mine.

Here is the detailed configuration
My XPS

Making it to a project through recession

The timing when i got off my last project was terribly bad. The worst time to think of a job switch. However, i had my reasons and was on the look for a new project in October. Recession was bleeding from all veins of the economy all across the world. I could not find a serious opening for the first one month at all. All the job applications that i was sending made their ways to recruiter's inboxes and client's deleted folders.

It is really hard to keep yourself relaxed while all this is happening around you. So, what is it that you can really do to help!? Nothing really, as long as you are not a politician or an economist. In fact i am not sure if even they have a real concrete plan about what next. I was seeing comments by a great Harvard economist on CNN the other day and what he suggested was to wait till markets and businesses get better in its own cycles. All the bailouts and rescue plans will only add chaos to the current situation, if the expectation is they alone can pull the situation up. That, sounded like the most acceptable view to me so far.

However, i can do many things to help myself and keep myself alive. Some of them..

# Started blogging. Yess! This is the first time i am trying it. I have managed to put my experiences with some linux experiments into words and on to blogger.

# Got more serious about my RSS feeds on google reader. Reader 'trends' started showing some serious sine waves.

# Take a trip. Chicago is a nice city on a sunny day. Take your camera, jacket and hit the road!!

# EJB3. I've been hearing good things about it on the web a lot. This is a good time to catch up and see what the Sun engineers have been upto. I must admit i like the way they have been expected to work with this release. More like a spring application context than a framework that Java engineers normally use to do the show off in their resumes. EJBs now look like they are going to be useful by all means.

# My mp3 collection was in a complete mess. Took days of manual effort and mp3 taggers work to get them into some shape. I use MusicBrainz Picard (http://musicbrainz.org) for tagging my files.

# Catch up with friends.

# A new linux flavor was something i've been missing for some action. And then there was Gentoo and Sabayon. For those linux lovers who haven't seen them, i recommend it; worth a try, for sure.

# Prepared my next gadget wishlist. I am going to get a 13.3' laptop, a Nikon D80 and a Sony HD camcoder. Yp, that's next in chart.

# Trying my hands on some Indian style cooking. I am not that bad at all..it turned out.

# Of course, keep my eyes open looking for a new project. How can i miss that!

While i have been into all of these, (of course) i have been doing interviews as well! So, here i am. After 1.5 months of recession trouble and 3 interviews, i have 2 offers in hand this week. I am joining my new project next week. New city, new work; i am excited.