Our original Xbox (4 ½ years old now) has become too flaky, games crash and DVDs skip. We needed a DVD player and it’d be a shame to lose all our games so buying a new XBox makes sense. Halo 3 took any doubt out of the decision. I do feel suckered into the slick [...]
Dahon D7 Folding bike My company started a government sponsored scheme called “bike to work” which gives a significant discount on bicycles as long as they are used for getting to work. I chose an entry level folding bike and also a large frame mountain-bike. I have been thinking about how to streamline my commute [...]
Until now, I have never bought a mobile phone because my Criteria for buying one was pretty damn strict. But, finally (after waiting pretty much 5 years) one that meets most of my requirements was on sale and as soon as I had a chance to test it out for real I bagged it (there [...]
Our bedroom needed a Hi-Fi with a nice DAB radio with sleep and alarm functions. This also takes a memory card so it can play mp3′s and record radio. We chose this model because we thought it’d match our Squeezebox nicely.
The Wii is physically very small and quiet and understated which demonstrates it’s philosophy – It isn’t trying to do everything, it is simply trying to be be playful. The controller is natural to use but very clever. It can detect where your pointing it, whether your tilting it and it’s real forte, it can [...]
Chloe’s company, Panasonic gave away their old PC’s and she managed to bag this machine: CPU: Pentium 4 2Gz RAM: 768MB DDR SDRAM. Inside it is very organised but not very expandable, there isn’t room for more than one harddisk and I could only just fit our TV card into a pci slot riser card. [...]
The Jellyphish is a tabletop lamp that can be “tuned” to any colour or can gradually scroll though the colour spectrum, blending seamlessly from one to the next. The technology in this lamp has only just hit the market so it’s the first time I’ve seen something like it. It must contain a million LEDs [...]
For Christmas Kix and I bought each other half a 26 inch Panasonic Viera LCD TV (TX-26LXD6A). It’s a stylish HD Ready TV with integrated freeview and speakers – perfect for the bedroom. We plugged it into our freshly installed upstairs coaxial socket and switched it on to find that it automatically tuned and ordered [...]
We bought the updated model because we thought Fred would enjoy our current squeezebox as a house-warning present. The new model is almost exactly the same with a few improvements: It can now access internet radio without having your PC on. (Connects to “SqueezeNetwork”). It can now act as a network bridge It now has [...]
Our old ADSL modem was getting a bit unreliable and kept rebooting randomly. It was also messy having a separate wireless router when all-in-one boxes are not expensive anymore. The DG834G is nice and small with a easy web-based admin interface. I particularly like the simple firewall setup. The wireless range is disappointing though (it [...]
Backups are important, my files are worth a lot of money to me so we decided to invest in a piece of hardware to help with backing up our data. Rather than just getting an external hard disk we wanted a networked hard disk (NAS) so Kix and me could share it independent of which [...]
The best radio alarm clock we’ve ever owned. We like the large central snooze button and a sleep timer (adjustable by 5 minute increments up to 60 minutes). The radio stations don’t need tuning in because they are digital and it hides no less than four alarms, which can be individually set to any combination [...]
This is my first printer and I’m glad I waited so long because it’s grown up enough to play nice with Linux (it was actually easier to get working with Linux than it was with Windows)! It’s a network printer so Kix and I can share it and we can put it where we have [...]
This is the king of current generation freeview box’s and a pretty good PVR. It has a 160 GB hard-disk with enough clout to record 2 channels simultaneously while playing back a previous recording. It finds and sets it’s clock automatically when it is powered up. It has a nice 7 day EPG that you [...]
This has the power of the N64 in a portable form but with the quirk of two screens (DS). The touch screen is certainly interesting and I think the long battery life, zero loading time and backwards compatibility with the GBA makes it better than the Sony PSP. Playing Super Mario DS is certainly bringing [...]
