File this one under “Why has it taken so long for someone to start selling this!?”

I got my first laptop on the day my parents dropped me off at college (which was more years ago than I care to admit.)  While I look back on those simpler times fondly, I don’t miss my severely underperforming laptop.  I have a TON of music, so I quickly filled my 80 GB hard drive with iTunes tracks instead of reports and bibliographies…oops.

I quickly realized that an external hard drive was the way to go  if I wanted to keep all my tunes (nevermind the fact that room to hold all of your files portably is sort of the entire POINT of a laptop).  I picked up a brick of an external drive, and kept all of my music on it.  The trouble was, my dorm room was typically small, and the desk where I kept my external hard drive was right across from my bed.  The LED light on that puppy was enough to fuel some raves- that sucker was BRIGHT!  So, I stuck a piece of sticky tack over the light so I could sleep in peace.

Nowdays, in the world of solid state hard drives, and expandable storage options (in my day, we walked uphill in the snow both ways!) the external hard drive is something to back up with, not something to use as a primary storage device.  Technology to tame those pesky LED lights on your electronics has similarly evolved.

I came across LightDims by accident one day while I was browsing ThinkGeek, and my mind was promptly blown into about a million little pieces.  They’re small stickers that serve to dim or altogether black out notification lights on all of your electronic devices- genius!

You get a few choices- a blackout version that totally neutralizes any light coming from the power button on that old VCR that’s always plugged in, OR a semi-transparent version that dims the light, but doesn’t totally block it out so you can still tell if the device is on or not- the second version comes in black or silver so you can customize to your device.

While their website looks somewhat iffy (I might not give them my credit card number if I didn’t know ThinkGeek was also selling the product, giving them their stamp of approval) CNET has a favorable review of the product in their podcast, the 404; both of which would persuade me to give them a try.  In the words of Jeff Bakalar– “they’re not the worst idea in the world!”

Check out their website here, or buy them on ThinkGeek here and give them a try.