R2I - TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE - CDS, BOOKS and ELECTRONICS

Since we didn't want to carry CDs with us, I undertook the mission of burning all of our CDs so that we would have a digital library of our music and i would be ways to import past of the library to different devices. We had about 150 english CDs and about 160 hindi and marathi CDs. Each CD took only about a minute to burn but the process was labor intensive since CDs needed to be ejected and new CDs put in. Also some of the CDSs were  not original and so the song names were not imported automatically.  I was doing this for more than a month but was extremely satisfied with my effort. I also created a backup in case the hard disk conked off. 
We had more than 2 big bookcases full of books before we shifted to kindle. We took most of them with us. However I got rid of my entire national geographic collection. I had more than 15 yrs worth of national geographic and was very sad to let it go. When I dumped it at half price, I got something like $10 for the entire collection :-(
 The advice that we got regarding electronics and appliances was to get things like desktops, laptops, tablets and cameras from US and get the rest from India. Basically anything that is not dual voltage and needs to be plugged in for a long time is better off being local. For others, getting them from US is cheaper and for the non dual voltage ones, one would have to use step down transformers to be able to use in india. Apparently continuous use of step-down transformer generates a lot of heat and is not good for the appliance. Also we were told to get the transformer of at least twice the wattage of the devices that were going to be plugged on to it. We got a few high wattage and a few low wattage transformers with us from amazon. We have shipped the following stuff from US
- LED TV. Apparently TATA SKY has a digital receiver and so you don't have to worry about NTSC/PAL formats. 
- BOSE sound system. It only has standalone speakers.
- XBOX 360, Kinect, Wii
We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our entertainment system.

- Desktop, printers, LCD monitor and speakers.  We would need one high wattage step down transformer for our home office.
- IPAD2
- Digital cameras + analog SLR camera that we had (don't know why we got it)
- Sonicare toothbrushes
- Handheld vacuum
- Hair dryer
- IPod docking stations with amp and alarm.

The rest we plan to buy in India. This includes things like fridge, washer, dryer, microwave, iron. toaster, ACs, DVD player, etc. More on the actual experience of buying these things in a later post.....