It always happens: I walk into a CDR King store to buy just one item, and walk out with three or four instead. A lot of the items are so ridiculously cheap that your inner voice keeps whispering “Get it na! Hindi mo alam kung kelan ka pupunta ulit dito. Kung di okay, pwedeng itapon — mura lang naman.”

This time, I walked in planning to get a Php75 laser pointer to use during my classes, and walked out with two other items that I didn’t even know I needed. I’m beginning to think that their notoriously slow and bad service is actually their way of forcing you to loiter around the store and look at the other items, thus increasing the chances of one or two more impulse purchases. On that particular day, I ended up with the following items.

• Laser pointer: Php75.00
• Mini car-lighter to USB adapter: Php120.00
• Set of sync/charge cables: P200.00

Laser pointer
What can you say about this laser pointer? It’s small and thin: about the size of two Juicy Fruit sticks of gum stacked together (wait, do they still sell Juicy Fruit?), and weighs about as much. It’s cheap: Php75 is more than reasonable for something that I will probably lose in the course of a semester. I think it’s priced low enough to be a quick impulse buy, and it won’t hurt your pocket when you end up buying another one to replace the first one you lost. It works well, not just in the classroom, but also in the yard, where the cat goes crazy trying to pin down the red dot.

Cheap and useful. Recommended.

Mini car-lighter-to-USB adapter
This one was an immediate bust. It worked, but not so well. About an hour into a long drive up north, I noticed that the metallic plate in the front of the adapter was very warm, as was the metallic part of the USB cord that I had plugged in. Scared of ruining my phone;s battery, I pulled it out and put the older one I used to use back in, and the adapter and USB plug never got warm. Into the trash went this item as soon as I got home.

Sync/charge cables
The package said “High End Mobile Cable” but how high end could a Php200 set of cables be? Still, at a quarter the cost of an original Apple iPod/iPhone cable, how could I go wrong? I’d always been frustrated at the meter-long cables that my gadgets came with, and welcomed the chance to reduce the clutter, if only a bit. The package contained three short cables — one with an iPod/iPhone connector, another with a mini-USB connector, and another with a micro USB connector — and a male-to-female USB extension cord. The iPod/iPhone connector worked for both syncing and charging, the mini USB worked for charging (I wasn’t able to try it out on a device that required data syncing), and the micro USB cable didn’t work at all (I tried it on two devices).

It's also a great cable clutter buster.

Bottom line: Two items will be keepers, and one was a bust, though I was out only Php120. Not bad, really, considering that a single branded item would have cost at least as much as all three items combined.

What was your last best buy from CDR King?

Jason

Jason de Villa is teacher by day and a geek at all other times of the day. When he’s not teaching, he’s reading and writing about technology, looking for ways technology can help in education. His favorite noodles: Pancit Malabon Express.

email: jason@technoodling.netwebsite: http://www.technoodling.net