Woot.com has a pretty good deal on the refurbished 11.6-inch Gateway LT3103 for $280. This machine opts for an AMD processor over an Intel Atom, so you’ll get a little extra oomph while giving up a couple hours of battery life.

Features:

• AMD Athlon 64 L110 CPU at 1.2GHz
• 11.6-inch LED-backlit screen at 1366×768
• ATI Radeon X1270 graphics
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 250GB SATA hard drive
• Six-cell battery (up to 5 hours), three USB ports, VGA out
• Dimensions: 11.26” x 7.99” x 1.03” and 3.04 pounds

Since this is a refurbished machine, you’ll unfortunately lose out on the free Vista to Windows 7 upgrade. There’s a 90-day Gateway warranty included.

Gateway 11.6-inch Netbook [Woot.com]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can use your computer to watch TV now? These machines can do anything! To prove that point, Woot.com is selling the ATI TV Wonder USB Digital HDTV Tuner for just $20 plus $5 for shipping.

Features include the following:

• USB 2.0 HDTV Tuner with remote control
• Included 22-inch ATSC antenna with 45-inch coax cable
• PVR software, parental controls, Windows Media Center compatibility

For $20, this might be something to pick up just to have it. This is a new-in-box product (not refurbished, that is) and the deal is good today only.

ATI TV Wonder USB Digital HDTV Tuner [Woot.com]

The only thing that scares me more than cleaning is robots, so I’m gonna sit this one out. But if you’re not afraid of robots or refurbished technology products, then $130 for an iRobot Roomba 530, charging station, and virtual wall unit is a wheel of a deal.

Features!

• Efficiently vacuums dirt, debris, pet hair, dust, allergens and more from carpets and hard floors
• Counter rotating Bristle Brush and Beater Brush work together like a dustpan and broom
• Sturdy Bristle Brush digs deep into carpet fibers to grab dirt, debris, pet hair and more
• Powerful vacuum sucks large and small debris into the large, bag-less bin
• Fine filter traps dust, pollen and tiny particulate inside the bin
• Cleans the whole floor, under and around furniture, into corners and along wall edges
• Detects dirtier areas and spends more time cleaning them
• Spot Clean provides quick clean-up of spills and concentrated messes
• Automatically senses and avoids stairs and other drop-offs
• Simple operation—just press the Clean button and Roomba does the rest
• Automatically returns to its self-charging Home Base to dock and recharge between cleanings
• Faster counter-rotating brushes with improved design pick up more hair and debris and are easier to remove and clean
• Improved filter captures more dust and allergens while a larger bin holds more debris
• Improved anti-tangle technology keeps Roomba from getting stuck on cords, carpet fringe and tassels
• Improved sidebrush makes Roomba even more efficient at cleaning edges and corners

Although this is a refurbished product, you do get a 90-day warranty directly from iRobot.

iRobot Roomba 530 Robotic Vacuum with Virtual Wall [Woot.com]

Come on, you’re making good money now right? When’s the last time you bought something nice for yourself? Think of this as an investment! With the portability that this netbook provides, you’ll finally be able to start up that emu farm that you’ve always been talking about.

Just picture it: you’re outside feeding your emus and an order comes in from the new e-emu-sales.net web site you designed with your 11.6-inch netbook and you can fulfill the order while balancing the computer atop a wooden fence post. Then the guy who ordered the emu from you tells two friends about your emu web site, then they tell two friends, then they tell two friends.

Boom. All of a sudden, you’re the emu king of the upper Midwest.

Anyhoo, Woot.com is selling the refurbished Acer Aspire One 751h (see review here) for $250 with a 90-day Acer warranty. That’s about $50 less than a brand new model.

Features include:

• Intel Atom Z520 CPU at 1.33GHz
• 11.6-inch display at 1366×768
• Windows XP Home
• 1GB of RAM
• 160GB hard drive
• Three-cell battery good for up to four hours
• Weighs 2.8 pounds

Acer Aspire One 11.6-inch Netbook [Woot.com]

It’s refurbished but carries a 90-day manufacturer’s warranty. Specs include the following:

• 19-inch display, 1400×900 resolution
• 2 HDMI inputs, VGA input
• ATSC/QAM over-the-air tuner
• 300cd/m2 brightness, 800:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time

The deal is good today only, which ought to force you to finally have the uncomfortable “I’d like a new TV for the rumpus room” conversation you’ve been putting off for so long.

Philips 19-inch LCD HDTV [Woot.com]

When I first saw this model on Woot, I thought that it was probably one of their earlier generations and not a Profile 2.0 player. I was wrong! This puppy has the latest spec that brings BD-Live and an Ethernet port to the player. It of course supports 1080p playback, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. If you’ve been waiting for a good Blu-ray player at a reasonable price, this is it.

Remember desktop PCs? People used to use them before laptops were powerful. Some people still use them today, believe it or not! I have one – ha! If you want to see what all the fuss is about in regards to desktop PCs, then Woot! has a pretty stellar deal on a quad-core Gateway system with 8GB of RAM for $480 – it’s refurbished but carries a 90-day warranty.

Other specs include:

• Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 CPU at 2.33GHz, 4MB L2 cache, 1333MHz FSB
• 8GB DDR2 RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GT120 GPU with 1GB DDR2 memory
• 640GB SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
• Card reader, HDTV tuner, 8-channel audio, DVD burner, Gigabit Ethernet
• Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

So for $480, there’s plenty of pop here. Might take a while before this thing is

OBSOLETE

Yeah, that was the secret word.

Sometimes you just want a sack o’ crap MP3 player to take to the gym. If that’s the case, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better deal than the “RCA Jet 1GB Sport Media Player with FM Tuner” being sold for $8 plus $5 shipping at Woot.com (today only).

It’s a “splash proof” design with up to 15 hour battery life, 20 FM presets, stop watch function, and a built-in BMI calculator. These are new units, and each comes with an armband and wristband plus “sport clip earphones” that you’ll probably want to replace immediately.

RCA Jet 1GB Sport Media Player with FM Tuner [Woot.com]

Woot.com is selling the 8-device Philips “Prestigo” universal remote for $20 plus $5 shipping, today only. It normally sells for $70 and up elsewhere, so this is a pretty nice deal if you have too many remotes in your life and you’re looking to simplify.

There’s a little 96×67 LCD screen for manipulating various controls and the remote is able to program macro-like actions. For instance:

“Selecting ‘watch a movie’ button holds all necessary commands to be able to start watching a movie: switch on the TV, switch on the amplifier and select the right input, switch on the the DVD player and start playing.”

The future, my friends. The future.

Philips Prestigo 8-Device Universal Remote [Woot.com]

When in the course of human events people lose their jobs and their ways to pay for bags of random stuff and close-out smoke detectors, it behooves all good men to approach shopping site Woot.com with trepidation and distrust. The result? A steady decline in traffic from the post-holiday period of 2009 until about May 2009. Now, however, that is changing. If I can draw your attention to this graph, you’ll notice that yes, traffic is going up. Everything is going to be OK.

The general trend at Woot has been heading down since 2008 and seems to be rolling back up this summer. Obviously none of this stuff is set in stone and absolutely accurate but it’s fairly clear that Woot is turning around. But what does this mean?


Woot is obviously cyclical and is a direct pointer to the pocket change of a certain technical class who may be interested in lasers and walkie-talkies from China that didn’t sell. That said, one would assume said walkie-talkies would be more desirable when you’re in a job than when you’re out of one and/or when you have a little disposable income.

So to recap: Woot traffic took a dive in January and is slowly creeping up. This means it is more popular. As it is a shopping site I suspect the folks visiting aren’t like street urchins in some Victorian novel, their noses pressed up against the glass of a sweet shop dreaming of toffees and crumbles. They are actually shopping.

In short, while I wouldn’t stake my dissertation on this trend, Woot’s ability to predict a financial rebound should not be dismissed and that trend is going up. Also they’re selling a Bluetooth headset with case right now for $30 clams. Not a bad price.

[Thanks, Thomas!]

Pocket video cameras might eventually be killed off by the iPod horde, but that doesn’t mean that the current crop aren’t worth your time. The Kodak Zi6 HD is a nice little camera and Woot has a nice deal one ‘em today.

Amazon sells the pocket cam for $122, but if you can deal with a refurb, Woot has one for only $69.99. You even get your choice of black, pink, or red. The little camera can capture 720p video at 60 fps with 16:9 aspect ratio. All that media gets stored on a SD/SDHC card and you can get about 40 minutes to fit on a 2GB card. Don’t expect production quality video out of it, but we use these cameras all the time and they get the job done.

This little guy won’t win any benchmarking contests or even play Hulu all that well. But it will run a word processor, web browser and solitaire just fine. Plus it has a webcam so you can keep in touch with the ‘rents while you’re away at school. Neato!.

This kind of takes the fun out of grilling but it’s indeed a good way to make sure everything’s cooked properly. Woot! has the Maverick Remote BBQ Thermometer and Timer for $20 plus $5 shipping. The thing is wireless — wireless! — and works up to 100 feet away. So you can just slap everything on the grill, then go inside and read the paper.

While there’s something to be said about standing outside over a hot grill, drinking a beer (mmmm… Zima!) and randomly flattening hamburger patties with a spatula, this thing features a voice prompt that alerts you to which levels beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, or turkey are being cooked.

It’d also probably be a nice tool to have in the dead of winter. I grew up in Minnesota and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let a -60 degree windchill keep us from eating grill-cooked steak in February.

Available today only, as is customary with Woot! offerings.

Maverick Remote BBQ Thermometer and Timer [Woot.com]

Woot’s description of this obvious knock-off is hilarious as it usually is. If you’re in the market for a clone with decent features then the the V-Touch might be worth a look. You even get a free pair of craptastic earbuds!

Check it out: the color touchscreen controls the MP3 player, picture viewer, e-book reader, and video player. The built-in 2.0 megapixel camera also works as a webcam and it shoots video. It also packs an FM receiver, voice recorder, and built-in speaker into its totally original and unique chassis. Combined with the SSB-10 In-Ear Headphones, the V-Touch delivers a multimedia experience that Jobs & co. just can’t hang with.

Woot

My, my, what do we have here? Noise-canceling headphones for $8? That’s insanity in a box!

It’s true, though. Woot! is selling the Philips SHN2500 Active Noise Canceling Headphones for $7.99 plus $5 for shipping. They’re brand new, too — not refurbished.

Ewww, refurbished headphones! Actually, for eight bucks I’d probably look the other way. This deal is good today only, so get while the gettin’ is good.

Philips Active Noise Canceling Headphones [Woot!]

woot!

Star Wars fans with ample desk space may want to pick up a cool six pack of bobble head figures over at Woot.com today. The site is selling all six for $30 plus $5 shipping.

It’s kind of a mixed bag — Luke, Han, Yoda, Tie Fighter Pilot; sure, great.

But Bossk and 4-Lom? Eh, kind of an odd couple of choices there. And Luke looks more like a skinny version of Kevin Sorbo than Mark Hamill. As long as you keep his head bobbling around, though, perhaps nobody will notice.

Star Wars Bobble Heads [Woot.com]

Forget media-streaming set-top boxes and plunk down $150 on this 80GB Zune with free Home AV Pack deal that Woot! has going on (today only).

The Zune is refurbished, yes, but it comes with a 90-day warranty direct from Microsoft and the AV dock is brand new. Since the Zune is wireless, too, you can zip movies to it over your home network as it sits in the dock hooked up to the TV. Not bad for $150, considering you can also carry it around with you as well.

Zune 80GB Multimedia Player & Home Audio/Video Pack [Woot]

Netbooks are getting cheaper and Woot! is here to push their prices even lower. The get-it-while-it-last site currently has an Eee PC 900 Netbook up for only $169. That, folks, is cheap for a quality netbook, but the deal won’t be around forever so get it while you can.

This Linux Asus Eee model comes loaded with an Atom CPU, a 4G SSD hard drive, and 1GB of RAM. Just like other netbooks, don’t expect to play TF2 or really anything besides online card games, but this Eee netbook would make a great travel companion for some.