And here we go again.

Try walking into Target, Wawlmart, Staples, or a discount furniture store this time of year.

Everyone is spending all that discretionary income on back to school and back to college items. Beds and futons. Microwaves and microfridges. Notebooks and netbooks. It’s a cornucopia really.

We guarantee you missed something vital.

Here are five things you need, but didn’t buy, for your dorm or recently graduated apartment.

1. A home theater receiver with HDMI

You may have speakers. You may not, so keep that in mind.

What we know you DO have is a video game console or two, a Blu-ray player or DVD player and cable service with DVR. You also have that shiny new flat panel your parents bought you.

You need a home theater receiver to (a) have surround sound and (b) organize everything into a manageable mess.

An old hand-me-down receiver will not work. You need a receiver with HDMI ports.

On a budget, the Yamaha RX-V371BL will do the trick. It has four HDMI inputs as well as an output. This means you only need HDMI cables to wire up your PS3, video player, etc. You do not need several multicolored cables for video and optical cables for audio. One wire, done.

Of course, if you want to get a little more complicated and a lot more high-end, check this out.

2. A personal smoothie blender

You want the Oster BLSTPB-WBL My Blend 250-Watt Blender. Just trust our judgement on that.

You want to get in shape. You want to eat and drink healthy things. You just don’t have a handy solution. For all of $29.50, you can have a personal blender that makes fruit smoothies, mixes protein shakes, and allows you to craft something just for you.

The 20-ounce BPA-free plastic bottle is dishwasher safe and fits most cup holders.

It will pulverize frozen fruit, fresh fruit, ice, and even veggies, if you’re really healthy.

The My Blend also comes in a variety of stylish colors.

3. A keyboard case for iPad

You may very well have been lucky enough to own an iPad or have received one as a gift. The iPad is wonderful. The apps. The multimedia. The battery life. Love it.

The super duper new folding case? Not so much. It slips off and doesn’t provide much protection.

It’s also a bitch to type anything long on a touchscreen.

The Logitech Keyboard Case for iPad 2 solves a lot of these problems.

First, it is an aluminum case. It adds a new level of protection beyond the soft cover you may have purchased with the iPad. It’s also soft on the inside to keep your screen safe.

Second, it’s a real keyboard, no worse than a laptop keyboard. It lets you sit there and take notes or write emails or blog more comfortably on an iPad.

It also works in portrait or landscape mode.

4. HDMI and Cat5e Cables

We touched on wires a bit in the first option, but cables are the salt of the techno-dorm’s earth. The two main wires in services today are HDMI multimedia cables and Cat5e network wire.

Do. Not. Buy. Them. At. Best Buy.

At their core, cables and wires are cheap. They are just wire! Copper, plastic, rubber. Raw materials. They cost very little to make.

Do not pay $50 for an HDMI cable and $30 for a network cable.

Buy your cables on Amazon. You can get a good HDMI cable for $10 or a decent cable for about $3.

Network cable is even cheaper.

You can get 25-feet of Cat5E (which works for gigabit ethernet) for 30 cents on Amazon.

You need cables for all your devices. Don’t pay a lot for them.

5. A Crock-Pot

Even if you can’t cook at all, you can still use a Crock-Pot to make food.

And the Crock-Pot Cook and Carry 6-Quart Oval Manual Portable Slow Cooker lets you not only cook but bring your melange of foodstuffs with you. You can actually bring something homemade to that housewarming party you’re going to next week.

These slow cookers make stews and and chilis very doable. Anyone can cook with a Crock Pot, and if you’re new to living on your own, you need one. Unless you enjoy Ramen every day.

Oh, and it’s $29, so no price excuses here.

Logitech, makers of all sorts of damn fine electronic goodies, today revealed brand new high-end faux-instruments for gamers of the Guitar Hero crowd.

A brand new stylish and wireless drumset and a sleek Iron Maiden modeled guitar await Wii gamers, while Xbox 360 fans are treated to a fully collapsable and performance-ready drum kit.

Logitech hears you, Wii gamers, and did not skimp on production value for the guitar, as it is crafted with the exact same materials as its Xbox 360 and PS3 companions. You’re getting a maple neck, rosewood fingerboard and full-on metal frets. Aesthetically, the guitar has a white body with a black pickguard with realistic looking humbuckers and whammy bar.

Additionally, the drumset features adjustable drum pads and cymbals and utilizes a recessed rim design making it easier for the living room rocker to earn high scores and avoid those lousy accidental rim shots. The kick pedal is built with stainless steel and promises a “durable, responsive experience.” The Xbox 360 drumset fits the previous description word for word and only differs in its sans-Wii Remote nature.

Your Wii remote easily snaps into both the guitar (in the back where, thankfully, it cannot be seen) and the drum kit (awkwardly placed in front). Now for the damage. The Wii Logitech guitar will set you back $199, while the drum-set will run you $229 (Xbox 360 too).

Logitech neither confirmed nor denied compatibility with Rock Band games, but when we hear, you’ll hear.

Xbox 360

Watch this man describe the Xbox 360 drumset.

The Sqeezebox Radio.

Logitech finally released details on its newest additions to the Squeezebox series of internet radios, and they’re just as exciting as we’d hoped.

The Logitech Squeezebox radio offers simple set-up through your wi-fi network sporting a similar “plug it in, turn it on, and go” endorsement from its maker. The Squeezebox radio gives you access to all the glories “" and terrors “" of internet radio as well as giving you access to music subscriptions services such as Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, Sirius-XM and last.fm from anywhere you take the device, played through on-board speakers.

The device also has a color screen capable of displaying album art and track information for mp3s streamed from your computer as well as for radio station information. Features include six preset buttons, a brightness sensor for the screen, a built in alarm clock and, because technology isn’t advanced enough to pipe the music directly into your skull, your old friend, the handy dandy 3.5mm headphone jack is there as well.

The Squeezebox Touch.

The size of the device is 5.12in x 8.66in x 5.04in and it sports a 3-inch woofer and a three-quarter inch tweeter. Suggested retail pricing for the Squeezebox Radio is $199.99 and it will be available this month. A limited edition will also be available in red. A rechargeable battery pack is also available for the Squeezebox Radio, sold separately, of course. Battery life is rated at six hours. This will be included in the Squeezebox Radio Accessory pack available from Logitech for $49.99 in November.

The Logitech Squeezebox Touch sports a 4.3in color touch screen and needs to be attached to your existing speakers for music playback. The Touch also sports a USB port and a SD card slot to allow access to pictures and music on external devices. The Logitech Squeezebox Touch will be available in December with a suggested retail price of $299.99. There is also a wall mount bracket available for the Touch”"again, sold separately”"for $99.99.

Logitech bills the G13 as a “game changing experience,” and it’s both true and false.

If you are a dedicated PC gamer — an elite WoW player, Call of Duty, Fallout 3, etc. — then the G13 can completely change the way you play. This is especially true online, where the customizable buttons on the G13 can give you a decided edge.

There’s just one thing that you have to get past: A game changing experience means you have to change the way you game. If you’re in your 20s and have been using control to shoot, alt to strafe, and space to open doors for the past 15 years, then the G13 is going to feel like a foreign object for a while. Younger players have the advantage here. Their minds aren’t as hard-coded as ours.

Getting past the difficulties of old age, the G13 has 25 programmable keys that you can set and switch with five savable profiles. You can also customize the backlight to four different colors. There’s also a 160×43-pixel LCD panel that can show messages between players and live game stats. The LCD panel is a bit of a gimmick, and the viewing angle isn’t great since your fingers are right above it.

One of the most useful functions of the unit is the ability to program macros to script commands as you see fit.

The unit is also nicely sized and won’t slide around your desk.

The control profiles are stored in the unit, so you can take the G13 with you with no software reconfigurations to worry about.

Still, a lot of us are used to what we do with the existing keyboard and mouse, but I do like the G13 even more as a laptop gaming solution. The mini joystick on the right of the unit is really handy in that regard.

While I never really got used to using the unit, with PC gaming on the downturn, it might be a blessing in disguise that something totally different has come along. The G13 works with PC or MAC and comes with a free World of Warcraft trial, which is one of the games it’s meant to be used with.

Blast factor: If you’re still an avid PC gamer, the G13 is a great solution with built-in profiles for the top games. The backlit keys and LCD really add to the appeal, too.

Logitech has announced a rather nifty new technology that allows you to use precise laser tracking mice of glass surfaces, something that until now has frustrated many an owner of IKEA’s Billsta glass top desk. The Logitech Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX will allow you to use your mouse on practically any surface.

Most laser mice work by reading the many tiny imperfections in a surface”"wood and plastic are absolutely full of them. Glass, however, tends to be much smoother, and you sand the glass, laser tracking mice just flat out will not work. Logitech’s new darkfield technology works by viewing the glass as a, well, dark field, and tracks the tiny minute imperfections on the surface of the glass as little bright spots. By tracking these spots, the mouse will be able to function where no mouse previously would.

The wireless mouse also comes with a tiny “unifying” USB receiver that also works with other Logitech devices, a micro-USB cord for recharging the batteries in the mouse even during use, and their fancy new “hyper scrolling mode“ that we’ve seen on their other mice. Retailing for $100 and $80 respectively, the Performance Mouse MX and Anywhere Mouse MX will be available this month.

Your desktop keyboard mouse set just got a bit fancier. Meet the MK 700 Wireless Desktop Kit from Logitech.

Designed with all the usual ergonomic accoutrements like “finger-cradling curves” and a cushioned palm rest, the glossy black keyboard also has a build in LCD screen to give you all of the keyboard’s status symbols, like caps and num lock, mute, and a battery status indicator in a dashboard style set-up.

Speaking of batteries, this one comes with a rather impressive lifespan, with up to three years on the keyboard and a year on the mouse. We don’t remember the last time someone quoted a battery’s lifespan to us in years.

The mouse comes with a “hyper-fast” scrolling mode where the scroll wheel will move “near frictionlessly.” While we’re all about defying the laws of physics with our desktop sets, the mouse also can scroll through documents at a normal pace too.

The MK700 will ship before the end of the month to your favorite electronics store.

Logitech, purveyor of all sorts of fine electronics products, unveiled their latest endeavor today: the Xbox 360 exclusive Guitar Hero controller, and my goodness does it look sleek.

Adorned with metal frets, a tapping slider, maple wood neck, rosewood fingerboard, and a deep polyurethane gloss finish on the body itself, the guitar will be a collectors item of sorts, and one that’ll have all the kids on the block jealous.

What’s more is that the strum bar is “precision made” with quiet action void of the “disturbing clicking sound” found in earlier, more plasticky models. And for those of you unwilling to flail around to activate Star Power, the guitar’s double coil humbucker doubles as a Star Power activator for easy palm access.

The guitar is said to be exclusive to Xbox 360 and Guitar Hero World Tour. The guitar will set you back $199 USD and will be available beginning in August. For now, enjoy this info-heavy video detailing the product.

Sometimes you need a bit more power than those shiny white earbuds that come with your iPod can offer.

That’s where an entire audio sub-industry has sprung up, catering entirely to iPod owners who want to “dock” their music box somewhere and jam to a room-filling sound that’s not mashed into their ears.

Blast and The Boston Globe recently tested five of these docks: the Altec Lansing inMotion Max at $199, the Logitech Pure-Fi Express Plus for $78, the compact iHome iH4B for $39.99, the Cambridge SoundWorks i765 for $299, and Wayland-based Sprout Creation’s all-wood Vers 2X at $199.

As a bonus, Blast also tested the Boston Acoustics Duo-I at $199 and the iHome iH51BR at $149.

For professional advice, we turned to Dariusz Dobrolinski, is co-owner of the tiny yet historic Q Audio store on Vassar Street in Cambridge, which claims to be the worlds smallest hi-fi store and one of the original distributors of CD players in the US in the early 80s. Dobrolinski said the Altec Lansing inMotion Max was the best item on the list, and we agreed.

“It sounded the richest,” Dobrolinski said. He warned us not to jump at the deepest bass or the highest treble, which some inexpensive systems tend to crank up to make up for their lower quality components.

“If you want to buy a docking system, don’t look for something that has bass and sizzles, it may impress you, but later on you will notice you don’t get the midrange and that’s where all the instruments and all the voices are,” Dobrolinski said. “Bass is not critical unless you want to fill a huge room, but none of those systems are designed for huge rooms.”

The Altec Lansing and Cambridge SoundWorks models were all very similar, though. They sounded great, look great, and come from brand names that are known for generally building their products to high quality specifications.

The iHome name has gained a lot of ground in the last three years. You often see these functional alarm clock iPod docks in both luxury hotels and college dorms. They generally sound good and have useful wakeup features like dual alarm clock times and, of course, the ability to wake up to your favorite songs blasting from your nightstand. The iH4b’s compact size and low price makes it a great value for dorm rooms and bedrooms. It has a good sound on a small footprint.

The Vers 2X is a great choice people who want something different. It doesn’t have a radio or really any other features except an iPod dock, but it’s an attractive, well-built speaker system.

Dobrolinski said that you should also focus on how the product looks. Style is important. He also said that you’ll want your dock to have a remote control so you’re not getting up all the time to tune it.

Individual products on Page 2

A Boynton Beach, Fla. woman busted four robbers who broke into her house after she saw them ransacking her home on a digital webcam security system that let her check in on her house from her work computer.

Talk about timing.

When Jeanne Thomas saw four men robbing her house, she called 911 and the cops got there before the thieves could get away with the loot.

In the interview with CBS, Thomas says she used refers to the camera as a “webcam” but Logitech was quick to point out that it was actually their WiLife Digital Video Security System.

The product, while not a traditional webcam per se, is a bunch of webcam-like cameras that you can view from the web.

Names aside, it was a good $250 investment for Thomas.

Logitech’s portable Pure-Fi Express Plus provides a solid and functional solution for playing your music and podcasts.

It is portable and can run off batteries or AC power, but that doesn’t mean you should drag it to the beach. The cloth grille and rotating knob don’t feel like they’d stack up too well against millions of miniature sand particles infiltrating their pores. (check this out for something different)

But for indoor or clean-outdoor use, you do get a compact sound machine with clear audio, decent if not great highs and the same thumping bass we’ve come to expect from every small form factor audio product on the market from a decent manufacturer.

The fact is, Logitech is turning into a strong player in the personal audio realm, putting out a variety of solutions. The Express Plus is remarkably similar in size, shape and sound as the Squeezebox Boom, which I just loved and has caused me to bookmark BBC Radio 1.

Older (by now, ancient) iPod models don’t fit as well in Pure-Fi Express Plus. At first, the remote control had no effect on my third generation iPod — it didn’t change the songs or play or pause, but I learned that was because the iPod wasn’t fully plugged in. Once I pushed down a bit, the remote worked, but that’s still a problem. The device doesn’t hold larger iPods in place very well. The Nano had no such problem, though.

The remote is a neat feature, though it doesn’t add a ton of value to the product. I tend to lose the mini-motes anyway.

I’m seeing these products for about $50 now. It’s worth it. You need something to dock your iPod, unless you just you to play your songs off iTunes. God help you.

This is one of a series of iPod-docking devices Blast is reviewing in April

The Logitech Squeezebox really tickled our fancy. This product will forever change the way we listen to music. We like it, in part, because the Internet provides tons of free choices from radio stations all over the world.

It would be fair to go into the ring not expecting much of a fight out of the plucky $300 Logitech — it’s based on fairly lossy streaming Internet audio after all and built on good if not basically mediocre drivers. But no. It sounds good. Not audiophile, but you’re not paying for audiophile either, are you?

One of the funnest things about the Logitech Squeezebox Boom is listening to Radio One London from an apartment in Boston.

That’s why Blast loves the Squeezebox: expanded horizons.

One of the funnest things about the Logitech Squeezebox Boom is listening to Radio One London from an apartment in Boston.

Tuning via a knob is much easier than tediously and repeatedly pressing buttons over and over, so that’s a big plus as well.

Download an audio design white paper on the Squeezebox Boom.

Pros: Internet radio provides a number of free choices from radio stations all over the world, giving you not only a wide range of music, but a little culture. A ton of the content is free, and you can also stream your existing music collection from your computer to the Squeezebox. It plugs into your network or downloads via Wi-Fi.

Cons: You have to download special software to send your MP3s and music files to the device. It doesn’t automatically find them on your network.

The final word: This is really more of a lifestyle choice than an impulse buy, meaning it will change your music listening life. We loved it.

Don’t miss John Guilfoil’s “Five ways to listen to music without an iPod” story, in The Boston Globe.

USB speaker technology is almost as old as USB, itself.

They were the cool guy at the party. Suddenly you had digital sound without a big, expensive sound card.

Then it quieted down for a while. People calmed down their PC audio — PC gaming started faltering — and speakers on your computer were less important.

The Logitech Z-5′s are a new arrival to the genre, and they do it justice.

Plug them in, and they play. We liked the ease in installation, even in laptops, where the driver disables the onboard speakers, and then they turn back on after you unplug the Z-5′s.

We were most surprised by the sound, though we’re finding it easier to believe that good things can come in‚  small packages when it comes to speakers.

The speakers are omnidirectional and are great desk toys that you can hear all around the room. Maybe that doesn’t make it great for offices, but definitely in dorms and parties. They’re also durable, though admittedly they feel a little fragile with all that cloth grilling around it. It’s not the kind of thing you want to spill a beer on, that’s for sure.

The remote control works, though I never use remotes for desktop speakers. Try and synch it to a universal remote maybe.

My ears are ringing after this month’s audio issue. These ones pass the test.

With Microsoft and Razer joining forces to produce their Habu mouse, that really leaves two major companies fighting it out in the world of computer mice, specifically hardcore gaming mouses.

The Logitech G5 Laser is regarded by many as the best pure gaming mouse on the market, so we decided to take a look at the G9 to see if it’s the next evolution or just a bunch of cheese.

The first thing we noticed about the G9 Laser Mouse was how different it was compared to the G5. It’s a different size and shape, the buttons are different, heck, even the wheel is different.

The second thing we noticed was that it was very impressive in its own right.

The mouse has all the standard gaming bells and whistles including nine buttons, a 4-way tilt wheel, on board adjustable sensitivity and weight and that Logitech hyperscrolling where you flick a finger and the wheel spins and spins and spins.

The wheel lock/unlock button has been moved to below/the feet side of the mouse, which we don’t necessarily mind as long as the laser is off.

The G9 is a corded mouse. Many gamers, this one included, haven’t made up their minds about cords versus cordless. On one hand you have a wire to worry about, and on the other, batteries. We’ll leave that one alone.

The mouse tracks very well, saves gaming profiles via on board memory, and has decent drivers that let you customize all the buttons. Overall, it’s a great mouse and a solid option for PC gamers.