Monster Cable has built an entire empire out of selling metaphorical snake oil to clueless customers who don’t understand the rudiments of cabling physics: their high profit margin cables have been proven indistinguishable from cheaper cables in countless blind audio tests. I never thought I’d see them selling liquid snake oil, though: they have just announced five separate products for cleaning your gadget screens… a different formula for your laptop screen, iPhone screen, GPS screen, camera screen or PDA screen!
$10 each! Collect them all! They aren’t all the same interchangeable formula of diluted Windex to Water! Pinky swear!
Monster Cable thinks you need special cleaner for your iPhone, camera, cell phone, GPS, and laptop [Crunchgear]
1:1 ratio of distilled H2O and isopropanol (propan-2-ol) works an absolute treat. probably costs about 10p for a litre.
As long as this company keeps shoveling this kind of crap, I expect there will be a certain percentage of sheep-like consumers there to eat it up.
Boo!
As I keep telling my wife as she squirts untold number of hazardous chemicals about the house; it’s amazing what a little dilute dish soap and water will clean.
And, sorry, but this thought just occurred to me and I simply can’t resist: Monster Cable -”the Karl Rove of electronic accessories”.
What? No cable connector cleaning fluid, and what about my eyes? They are all dirty from the filthy pictures Internet keeps showing me.
There’s a customer segment born every minute.
Call it “Scamming the Market”. Just as there is a marketing tactic dedicated to skimming the cream of the market by targeting a small group of early adopters who are willing to pay a higher price early in the product life cycle, this tactic is devised to convincing the mass of uneducated consumers (this means you aunt edith) that there is actually a need for such crap so that the sales guys at Best Buy can push it as a high margin add on when they sell any type of gizmo.
It would be more ironic if they literally called it ‘Snake Oil’ but I guess there is only so much crap you can shovel down a consumers mouth before they wise up and go somewhere else.
I remembered someone tried to test some geeks with metal hangers and monster cables…… and they can’t find the difference!
You might be skeptic that you need different solutions for different things but you would be wrong…
If you use the Monster iPod screen cleaner to clean a GPS screen, the unit will explode and cause a rip in the fabric of time and space.
I believe there is a waring on the package.
To note, you should use the appropriate cleaning spray for the surface. Not all glass cleaners are safe for plastic… though #1s suggestion is, generally speaking, safe for nearly anything.
#3
: Monster Cable -”the Karl Rove of electronic accessories”.
Ummm . . . how do you figure? I mean, besides the fact you don’t like Rove or Monster Cable?
Monster cable is the David Simkins-Champlan of left handed fly fishing!
(which is to say that he’s the Steve Thomlinson of concrete spitoonery)
I use a mix of 1 part water, 1 part white vinegar and 1 part rubbing alcohol. Works great and cleans tons of stuff!
Monster cables are pretty average, but the fact that you can mail them in for repair, sans packaging or receipt, is pretty sweet.
If you’re moving a lot of data over long distances (say 10 meters), cheap cables may begin to show noticeable problems in some cases. Short distances are pretty safe with any cable, but personally I like to buy reasonable quality cables (like low-end Monsters) to at least get a well built cable that will still work after a decade or three. (I have thrown away lots of cheap 20 year old cables that just self-destructed
Whats wrong with a little spit?
spit cleans everything, it’s free.
I’m a little surprised that the don’t offer a whole cleaning *kit* for that insanely overpriced network cable that Denon was selling — lubricant for your snake oil.
I’m even more surprised that Monster’s legal thugs aren’t suing Windex for patent infringment like they did with Blue Jeans Cable
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm
The data-cable quality comments are twaddle — building networks are wired with standard network cabling (16¢ a foot even at Radio Shack) and do just fine for many years.
I have to disagree. While many applications simply don’t benefit from having expensive cables. Some do. I play upright bass and know from experience many of these boutique cable provide a noticeable improvement in sustain. Not exactly something a blind ear test would be checking on, no? And while the sound isn’t always better the evenness across the the frequency spectrum is much more reliable with these cords then generic ones.
Bad news Monster doesn’t have the no receipt policy anymore for replacement. And you are right they are over priced. Check out Phil Jones Bass cables if you want to see some real foo-foo shit.