An early adopter updates his home's eight-year-old electronic systems with smaller, sleeker, smarter components.
Alex Goodwin has been living with sophisticated electronic systems since 1998 and has loved every minute of it. When other homeowners were just starting to embrace the notion of pressing one button to set the lights, the security system, and the temperature, Alex, his wife Christine, and their three children were using sleek touch panels every day to operate motorized draperies, lights, thermostats, and audio/video equipment in their 14,000-square-foot Baltimore home. "We were definitely early adopters," Alex says. "We really pushed the envelope by incorporating all we possibly could into our home." Fast-forward eight years: The Goodwins still use touch panels, but many of the systems that have kept their house humming for nearly a decade have been updated, modified, or improved in some way. "Things had simply become outdated," explains Sean Weiner of Starr Systems, the Baltimore-based company that the Goodwins hired for their electronics overhaul. Throughout the abode, huge boxy big-screen TVs were replaced with sleek, wall-skimming flat-screens. In the home theater, a ceiling-mounted video projector was removed, and a smaller, less conspicuous unit was installed at the back of the room. The theater's surround-sound system was completely reworked. Even the Goodwins' beloved touch panels were sent packing to make room for a batch of new wireless models. See this slide show

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