The sound is excellent both ways. Music and voice comes in clean and precise. Zirene Power Bass gives the music a rich, full sound that isn’t murky like enhancement features found on some audio systems. What’s more, the Halo’s two built-in microphones deliver clear speech to the person on the other end a call.

Compatible with Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, Blackberry’s smartphones and many other mobile phones, digital music players, computers and other devices, the HALO headset is very easy to set up. In fact, it can be synced to two devices as once with little problem.

Briana Carter, 31, recently spied a $40 pink laptop cooling pad at a Kohl’s department store. She scanned its bar code with her iPhone and using an application called ShopSavvy found the same thing for $25 at online retailer Amazon.com.

While still inside Kohl’s, Carter, of Tipton, Ind., bought the pad from Amazon through her phone.

Shoppers definitely have discounts on the brain. Unique visits to the top 10 coupon and rewards sites rose 6 percent from October to November to 70.4 million, Nielsen Co. research said.

Merchants, already struggling with weak sales and a mediocre holiday season in this tough economy, are forced to play along, said David Bassuk, a managing director in the retail practice at consultancy AlixPartners.

Macy’s Inc., The Gap Inc., and many others are paying a growing list of sites to list deals online.

A few years ago, the Web site www.savings.com listed coupons for about 1,000 retailers; that’s up to 4,000 now.

“The retailers are very, very hungry right now, so the consumer is in the driver seat,” Bassuk said.

Sales to people who click through the savings.com site are expected to double to $200 million this year from last.

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