You stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things on your way home from work. There are the items you want for dinner that night. That’s easy enough.
But walking the aisles packed with possibilities, you start to wonder what else you might need.
How old’s that pack of cold cuts you opened earlier in the week for your lunches? Are there any more cans of orange juice in the freezer? When’s the cream for your coffee going to curdle?
No problem. The answers are only a phone call away. Not to your spouse or one of the kids. Just pull out your cell phone and call the fridge itself.
That’s right. If you happen to be the proud owner of an LG Internet Refrigerator, you can take a virtual glance inside your fridge and freezer doors online to find out everything you need to know about your food supply.
“There’s no grocery list any more,” said Charlie Nickerson Jr., co-owner of Nickerson Appliances of St. Catharines “” the first store in the region, its owners say, to sell the computer-equipped fridge.
But keeping tabs on what’s on your shelves is far from all the fridge’s powerful computer can do. It can also enable its owners to send e-mail, surf the Net, watch TV, listen to digital music files or leave video messages for loved ones.
The ice box has reached a brave new stage. No longer content to simply keep food cool, the fridge has morphed into a high-tech multi-media machine.
“This is a new generation of appliance. It’s a new era coming along and we’re just on the crest of it. It’ll be interesting and we’ll be there,” Nickerson said Wednesday.
LG Electronics Canada, Inc. of Mississauga began selling Internet fridges “” which carry a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $11,995 “” in a few big city markets about four months ago. The company recently expanded to a select number of smaller cities, including St. Catharines.
Nickerson plugged in the one unit the Russell Avenue store has received Friday.
“It’s a wild piece and it is the future,” Bruce Elliot, LG’s regional sales supervisor, said in an interview from Mississauga. “Probably in I don’t know how many years from now we’ll be looking at it and it’ll be commonplace for us all to have them.”
The freezer door of the metallic-coloured fridge houses a water dispenser and ice-maker “” high-tech enough for any consumers who still cling to avocado-coloured appliances from decades gone by.
But on the opposite side is the futuristic gizmo that has been grabbing headlines. Mounted on the door is a flip-out 38-centimetre LCD display panel which serves as a computer monitor, TV screen and message board. A touch-screen keyboard allows users to type e-mails, download recipes or trigger other computer-assisted functions. Peeking from above the screen is the eye of a digital camera that can take still photos or record video segments.
Rather than scrawling “I’ll be home late tonight” on a piece of paper and sticking it to the fridge with a magnet, an Internet fridge owner could write the message on the LCD screen using a finger tip.
Elliot insisted the Korean-built fridge is not simply a novelty item designed for consumers with a taste for the latest in technology. LG manufactures other Internet-capable appliances, including microwave ovens and washing machines.
Those “smart” appliances aren’t yet available in Canada, but when they are, the company believes homeowners will want to link them in a network centred by their computerized fridge, said Elliot.
“It’s not a gimmick, as a lot of people may think it is,” he said. “It will be the brain of the smart home.”
Nickerson acknowledged Internet fridges will likely be considered practical and affordable by a limited number of customers at his family’s store. “It’ll be a niche market. For every one of these we sell, we’ll sell a lot of $599 fridges.”
But as people become more accustomed to the technology, Nickerson is confident sales will build. “This might be leading edge right now, but every year it will be less so,” he said. “Today, it’s a little bit of the future but that future is tomorrow and next month.”
>From St Catharines Standard