Cut the cord with $19.99 stereo Bluetooth headset
It's a feature-packed Bluetooth headset by day and wireless stereo headphones by night.
Grumble, grumble. I was going to post about the Asus Eee PC 900a that Best Buy is selling for $299, but fellow CNET blogger Michael Horowitz beat me to it. (Still waiting to learn what Netbooks have to do with "defensive computing," Michael. Ahem.)
Instead, let's revisit the Jabra BT8010, a stereo Bluetooth headset that TigerDirect has on sale for $19.99. I've covered it before: CNET rated it four stars out of five for its convertible design, OLED display, and music-playback features.
During business hours, the BT8010 functions as a fairly standard headset, albeit one with a cool OLED display and jog dial. When you want to get your groove on, you just connect the second earpiece and presto: stereo earbuds. Once you've experienced the joy of walking around with your phone in your pocket and music piping wirelessly into your head, you'll never go back to corded headphones.
Just make sure your phone supports A2DP stereo Bluetooth. Many models do, but for some reason, it's not available on all handsets (cough iPhone cough). And it's pretty much AWOL on MP3 players, which mystifies me because, as I may have mentioned, wireless earbuds are suh-weet.
I have a BT8010, and I'd give it 3.5 stars because the headset is overly susceptible to ambient noise and a little uncomfortable over long stretches. But for $19.99 (plus a reasonable $7 for shipping), it's almost too good to pass up.