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.

If you’re doing well in this economy, and you really want to blow the world away with your audio and video, check out the Marantz SR7005 receiver.

There is simply nothing better on the market right now.

Some people who spend a lot of money on audio/video products will say “no, Denon is better,” but they are essentially the same thing in different cases.

The SR7005 has six HDMI inputs, including one in the front, iPhone/iPod integration/AirPlay receiver, network media (Windows 7 compatible) playing and multiple zones to power speakers in different rooms.

OK so the catch is it’s $1500, but when you figure out that you spend about triple that on speakers, a TV, video game systems, Blu-ray, etc., it gets less scary.

The unit is advertised as a 7.1 system, but I’m very happy using it as a 5.2 system, as it has two subwoofer outputs.

As our friend Kirk Hobbs from South Shore Audio Video Installation points out, if you are going to go 7.1 or increase your speakers in any way, it’s best to start from the front. You don’t necessarily need four speakers behind you. Start with the basic 5.1 system, and add two additional front speakers, set above your first ones. This is especially true if you have high ceilings and are mounting speakers to the wall with the television.

You have plenty of room on the SR7005, because it supports up to 11 speakers in three different zones.

Setup was a breeze. The on-screen menu makes life easier. Plug everything in, then assign the correct names to your devices. Then plug in the included microphone, which automatically starts the speaker setup. Let it run through its paces, and your surround sound will be optimized automatically to the architecture of your room.

AirPlay is certainly one of the best features, especially for iPhone users, you can literally press a few buttons and send music and movies to their television. Windows 7 connectivity adds a similar bonus.

With its network connectivity features, the SR7005 also allows you to access Pandora and similar music services. The only thing I was looking for was Netflix. Perhaps in a future firmware upgrade…

Audio quality blew me away. The unit’s seven discrete, 125 watt amplifiers really do the job. Bass is powerful, high notes are clear with no distortion. Voices sound like they are in the room with you.

It also handles the full suite of Dolby technology: TrueHD, Digital Plus, Pro Logic IIz, IIx, II, Virtual Speaker, and Dolby Headphone as well as DTS features including HD Master Audio, High Resolution Audio, ES Discete6.1, Matrix6.1, Neo:6, 96/24, Express, and Neural Surround.

The unit is also sized right. It’s no bigger than any other receiver. It fits in your rack or TV cabinet just fine with the cable box and PS3.

If you’re looking for a high-quality choice to focus your home theater around, the SR7005 is right on the money.

Orb Audio puts out a bangin’ audiophile-approved sound in a tiny package.

What’s best about the company’s products is that they’re infinitely expandable — from 2.0 left-right speakers to full-on 7.2 monsters. You can buy two speakers for your setup, and when you’re ready to expand, you can keep the little orbs coming until you have your dream unit.

In a way, this translates to their “Computer Unit,” which Blast had a while to test out lately. But it’s not a perfect marriage.

The Orb Computer Unit is build on two speakers and a Pyle Pro PTA 2 2X40 watt stereo amplifier. By rewiring the orbs, you can bang out an amazing stereo experience, with up to eight speakers wired in four-unit pairs, but since the product is built on a two-channel amplifier, you can’t go beyond the two channels without scrapping the amp and buying a brand new one that can do 3-4-5-6-7 channels of audio.

The Pyle amplifier also doesn’t have an output for a subwoofer, so you have to run speaker wire from the amp, to the subwoofer, to the speakers if you want some real bass. That gets clunky quickly.

There also isn’t any design ingenuity. The product is just two orb speakers and the stock amplifier. If this was really a computer/standalone unit, Orb should have scrapped the “expandability” concept and engineered a modular product with an amplifier’s guts, its orb speakers, and some flashy casing.

On the flip side, the 40-watt amp is plenty of power for the Orbs, though they can certainly handle at least 100-watts. And to be even more fair, the product sounds fantastic. Music, gaming, and movies all sound crisp, clear, and well-defined. The Orb unit sounds better than most standard computer speakers that you could buy in the store.

But it is more expensive than most, at $299. You have to be pretty dedicated to your computer audio to shell out $300 for speakers.

If you’re interested in Orb, and you should be, I’d invest in a surround unit. An Orb Audio Mod1 Plus 5.1 system at $999 is pretty moderate when you think about what people invest in five speakers and a subwoofer.

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Sometimes you can just allow yourself to sit back and enjoy the music.

That’s what Blast got to do for the last few months as we tested out the Paradigm Studio Esprit reference speakers.

The front of the system is essentially the three same speakers: the Esprit L/R and C for center. We paired the front speakers the Paradigm’s Studio ADP-590 surrounds bringing up the rear.

We also tested their Seismic 10 subwoofer.

Total price: $6,652.

The speakers have incredible range and sound great in all applications — including CD music, television, video games and DTS audio.

Installation is a worry. Unless you want to dish out $500 more for the left/right stands, you have to mount the speakers to the wall, which ends up being quite a construction feat.

Robert Stanton, co-owner of Connecticut’s Smarthome & Theater Systems and its “head geek” who’s helped me out on several Boston Globe stories, said the system was impressive too.

The most important thing about an audio setup, Stanton said, is that all the speakers are the same brand.

“That’s very important,” he said. “When sound travels across the surround field, you want whatever is whipping by you to sound the same through every speaker.”

We were both most impressed by the Paradigm set.

Pros: It’s the best-sounding system on the list. The front, center, and rear speakers combine to create a realistic surround sound experience, and the subwoofer not only shakes a room but adds deep definition to the package.

Cons: Price is a worry. If you don’t want to drill a half dozen holes in your wall, the stands for the front speaker cost $500 more.

Overall: The Esprit sounds amazing and gets the job done, no matter what you’re using it for.

Specs on page 2.