Faithful Technobabble readers may remember my long-running obsession with space heaters over the years and my decision to purchase the bargain electric fireplace (that turned out not to be a bargain in the long run).

The electric fireplace landed in our sun room, which for many years did double-duty as my home office… that is, until roughly around the time that the fireplace arrived, when my home office moved back into the smallest bedroom in the house.

I’m not complaining, mind you… the alternative space heaters in the office keep things toasty in a winter where I’ve been keeping the programmable thermostat turned down low, after having dumped more than $1500 of heating oil into the tank to this point.

There’s one only one heat duct in the office, but the room remains remarkably warmer than the rest of the house when the family is home. Between the desktop PC, CRT monitor (remember them?), the routers, a VoIP box, a laptop, a 20-inch conventional TV, and the boy’s Xbox 360, the room can get downright toasty. Close the office door and it will get uncomfortably warm.

The Xbox is a lot of things to a lot of people, but around these parts, it’s a fantastic alternative space heater. Could the wizards at Microsoft have possibly considered this when they designed the beast? A warm woolen hat’s off to them, regardless!