Back-To-School Week: Tech Gadgets

According to the National Retail Federation, the average family will be spending $597 on back-to-school purchases. Even though that’s down by 8% from last year, parents are still looking for ways to spend less.

Fortunately, consumer reporter and senior editor of BehindTheBuy.com David Gregg is here with tips and products to help you get the most bang for your back-to-school buck.

• BACK TO SCHOOL PRINTING
Whether it's creating school papers, projects, or capturing milestones such as the first day of school or a sporting event, printers are mainstays for any student and their family. Kodak has a number of options including its all in one series of home printers known for delivering the industry’s least expensive ink cartridges. For big printing jobs that use lots of paper and ink (i.e. photo books, calendars, and DVD’s) KODAK offers the option of using one of the over 90,000 Kodak Picture Kiosks around the country. The kiosks make it fast and easy to transfer the images from your camera, memory card or scan old photos and instantly create personalized projects. www.Kodak.com

• BACK TO SCHOOL CHECKLIST
The best ways to organize your back to school shopping is with a checklist. The folks at Bed Bath Beyond have created checklists that include every conceivable category of product a college student needs to decorate and organize their academic life and dorm room . The next challenge is how to get all their stuff to school? Taking advantage of their thousands of store locations, parents and students can shop in stores or online, order products and use a program called Pack & Hold and pick up their purchases at a store near their college when they arrive. This way there's no packing the car or renting a truck to get all your stuff there. www.bedbathbeyond.com

• BACK TO SCHOOL BACK UP
If you've ever lost all your data due to a computer crash you now know the importance of backing up your content. Seagate's line of FreeAgent Go portable storage devices are capable of saving up to 640GB of content - that's the equivalent of 5 laptop computers! The only way to make sure you never have to worry about losing your favorite photos, videos, movies, music and oh yeah…homework is to back it up! A rainbow of colors are available and there’s even a model that is available in a blinged out special edition with chrome detailing. To add a little more style to your external drive, Seagate has created an exclusive partnership with MusicSkins. You can put your own personal signature on your drive by picking a skin from your favorite artist or musician. Free Agent drives are compact, easy to use and are available for Windows and Mac OS’s. Prices start at $100 for the 250GB version. www.seagate.com

• BACK TO SCHOOL WHOLE HOUSE WIRELESS
The new Linksys N Ultra Range Plus routers are not only aesthetically pleasing with its sleek and antenna-less design, it also incorporates new dual band technology which removes wireless frequency interference caused by living in densely populated areas like colleges and cities. The router technology allows you to switch from a traditional 2.4 GHz to a 5GHz frequency so you can avoid interference that can hamper your connection. This router is future-proofed thanks to the internal gigabyte connection making it compatible with next generation computers. It's also energy efficient and equipped with free Network Magic software to allow you to manage all of your wireless device connections including parental controls for kids computers. Best of all, router prices start in the low $100's and there are a number of special back to school bundles available on www.linksysbycisco.com/bts

• Back to School Best Value Phone Deal magicJACK
Magic Jack will allow you and your college student to cut costs on expensive land lines. Simply connect magicJack to any broadband enabled USB port and it enables you to immediately start making calls from anywhere in the world to the US and Canada at no additional charge. It's portable, meaning you can carry your phone with your laptop wherever you go, and all calls are carried over its own IP network for higher quality and a more reliable call experience than similar products on the market. To use, simply plug any regular phone into the “free” side of the device (when plugged into the USB slot) or you can connect to any audio setting on the PC (microphone and speaker, with a Bluetooth headset, etc.) so no handset necessary. It sells for $40 and includes the first year of service. Then users pay a charge $20 a year fee for each year after the initial year service. www.magicjack.com

• BACK TO SCHOOL BEST VALUE IN COMPUTERS AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES
Staples is offering a $500 coupon booklet with the purchase of any computer during the back-to-school season. The coupons offer $5-$20 savings on the most needed accessories (i.e. printers/modems/external drives) for your new computer. This will make your savings on HP's G60 a full-size 16-inch laptop ($449) even greater. Prices have also been reduced and the selection has been expanded on core back-to-school items like backpacks, notebooks, locker accessories and calculators. www.Staples.com

For more information on these products, go to www.behindthebuy.com.

For more Back-To-School tips, visit www.wpix.com/lifestyle/back-to-school.