Let's just cut to the chase: this week's IRL is a little schizophrenic. On the one hand, you've got Andy singing his bloggie's praises, Terrence waxing philosophical about his unused OLPC XO and Darren ranting about his grandmother's vacuum cleaner. Do you like camcorders that are not a smartphone? Do you despise door-to-door Sentria salesmen? Good. Let's hit it, then.

The lively comments in yesterday's Nest thermostat post got us thinking: for all our talk of smartphones and Ultrabooks, it's the mundane, not-glamorous stuff that we're spending most of our money on. Take Brad, for instance, who had to make room in his iTunes library for the Aladdin soundtrack and had to get creative after maxing out his iPhone's (non-expandable) storage. Or Zach, who felt not one, but two vacuum cleaners were necessary in his bachelor pad. And at least one of us avoids paying anything by choosing to tinker around in Ubuntu. How'd Brad make do with his 16GB of fixed storage? Why is Zach such a compulsive cleaner? And who's the Linux fanboy on staff? Meet us after the break to find out.