Decide what to buy: the Reevoo.com blog

Nothing takes the shine off getting a new TV like spending hours trying to work out how to connect the ruddy thing up to your DVD player, PVR and set-top box, and then getting all of them to agree to work together.

Never fear (and never lose your rag again) - the Digital TV Group has come to the rescue with a connection wizard.  Just put in what kit you want to connect, and it’ll show you a diagram telling you how to do it.

DTG Connection Wizard

Unfortunately, it only caters for scart connections at the moment.  But maybe, if we ask nicely, the DTV will tell us what to do with our HMDI sockets too.

We’re going to take some weekend snaps with this outstanding deal on the Canon Powershot S90 from Jessops, down to £295 using our voucher code –  that’s £80 cheaper than the next best price and 40% off RRP! and with free CAMLINK Camera Cleaning Kit and free delivery, or collect in store from your nearest Jessops.

Books have hardly changed for hundreds of years.  Sure, the adventures of a boy wizard or everyone’s favourite cannibal psychiatrist might surprise a Victorian reader, but the form the story comes in would be all too familiar. You might have the latest home cinema set-up and the smartest of smartphones, but still be absorbing your reading material using something that was old hat in Dicken’s time.

And then came the eBook reader, dragging the humble novel into the forefront of gadgety cool.  eReaders have been around for over a decade, but it was Amazon’s accessible Kindle (coming complete with wireless access to Amazon’s impressive ebook shop) which started their move to the mainstream.

Since the dawn of the Kindle era, Amazon has brought out a second generation of readers, now available in the UK, and the Kindle DX, with a screen big enough to read a daily paper on (available USA only).  Sony has jumped into the market with three readers, including a nifty touchscreen eReader, while Interead has made the iPod Nano of eReaders, the Cool-ER, which comes in a range of cheerful colours.  Bookeen’s also got into the game in the UK, while across the pond and the channel it seems like a new reader is announced every month or so.  And of course there’s an app (or rather, a thousand apps) for reading books on your iPhone or smartphone.

So what’s the point of this upgrade to the familiar paperback? Convenience has got to be top of the list of eReaders’ advantages. You can carry dozens or even hundreds of books around with you in something that smaller and lighter than one hardback.  This alone should be enough to convince booklovers who struggle to squeeze swimming costumes into holiday suitcases filled with books, or anyone who’s ever finished their book in the first half hour of a long train journey and had to spend the rest of it staring at other passengers or reading the train company’s in-flight magazine.

What are the other advantages?

• the small size is also an advantage at home: just think what you could do with the room that you’d otherwise need to store books
• the ability to enlarge the text is a real boon if you’ve got less than perfect eyesight
• searchable text helps you pinpoint that witty phrase ready for you to drop into conversation
• you can bookmark pages (and sometimes make notes) - and these bookmarks don’t fall out
• while the eReader may be quite pricey, eBooks are generally cheaper than paper books
• eBooks can be bought from online shops at any time of day or night and are instantly available - no need to go to a bookshop or wait for a delivery
• free books: as of August 2009, there were 2 million free ebooks available online, including almost everything published before 1900 and many promotional give-aways of new books
• eBooks are more eco-friendly, using 3 times more water and 78 times more raw materials

Many of the obvious objections to eReaders have actually already been overcome.  If the idea of reading on screen puts you off, you should know that all the current models of eReaders use E-Ink screens, which have no backlighting and are as easy to read as paper.

Battery life is also longer that you’d expect: the main drain on battery for ereaders are WiFi connections (for some) and ‘turning’ the page.  A single charge on an eRreader without WiFi usually lasts for around two weeks’ worth of page turning, while WiFi-enabled ebook readers will stretch one charge up to 4 days with WiFi switched on, and up to a week if you switch it off.

One problem that’s gradually being overcome in newwer generations of eReaders is DRM, or Digital Rights Management, on eBooks.  DRM is the same thing that used to stop you copying and sharing music bought from iTunes.  It prevents you lending eBooks to friends or selling them on second-hand.

Difficulties can also be caused by eBook formats: there are lots of different file types used for eBooks, from the widely-accepted ‘open’ ePub format, to formats which work only on certain readers, like Amazon’s exclusive Kindle format.  It can be very difficult or even impossible to change devices without losing your eBook library because not all readers accept all formats of eBooks.  To futureproof your library, the best advice at the moment is to go for an eReader that accepts ePub files, and buy as many of your eBooks as possible in this format.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jblyberg/ / CC BY 2.0

Now we’ve dealt with the basics, look out for part 2 of the beginner’s guide to ereaders, in which I’ll take you through the readers currently available in the UK.  If you’ve got any questions in the meantime, or anything’s not clear, let me know in the comments.

Found this gem of a DVD recorder, the Panasonic DMR-EX79, scoring highly in reviews and down from £280.06 to £238.05 at 1st Audio Visual!

It’s that time of year again when you want to record the classic Christmas party moments for posterity…here at Reevoo we’ve found this deal on the Panasonic HDC-TM300 camcorder, down to £710 at Simply Electronics with FREE delivery.  That’s £67 cheaper than the next best price!  Hurry though….limited stock left of this quality camcorder.

We’ve found a great deal on the Vax VZL-7071 Mach 1 vacuum cleaner - down to £90 with FREE delivery at Dixons.  That’s saving £30 off RRP!

The past year has seen the emergence of a new middle-ground in digital photography: Micro Four Thirds is a digital camera standard that falls somewhere between compact and SLR cameras. An adaptation of the older Four Thirds SLR standard, Micro Four Thirds is the result of a partnership by Olympus and Panasonic to create compact cameras with interchangeable lenses; and because the image sensor is smaller than a full-size DSLR, the lenses are also much smaller, lighter and cheaper.

Reducing the sensor size has its downsides: whilst still much bigger and better than the sensors found in compact cameras, performance isn’t as good as SLRs at high ISO levels (i.e. in darker conditions) & depth of field isn’t as broad.

So what cameras are on offer so far? Olympus’ PEN E-P1 (from £530, rated 8.8 out of 10 by Reevoo reviewers) is modelled after their classic Pen range of half-frame film cameras, and the follow-up E-P2 launches this month.

Panasonic’s G1 and GH1 cameras (from £459 and £990, rated 8.9 and 9.1, respectively) went for a mini-SLR look, but their latest, the GF1 (from £620, 8.8) is closer to the more compact style of the Olympus cameras.

Mostly hovering around the £500-£600 range for a camera body with lens included, this could be the way to go for a photographer who feels they’ve outgrown their basic compact camera but isn’t quite ready to grab the reins of a full-size DSLR or for someone who wants the flexibility of being able to swap lenses but doesn’t want to lug about masses of kit.

Whilst Panasonic and Olympus are the only companies producing this kind of camera at the moment, Samsung are launching a Micro Four Thirds competitor called the NX-10, with a similar form-factor and interchangeable lenses, but a full-size DSLR sensor; Pentax and Sony have also expressed interest in entering the market.

What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot if you’re a mobile handset maker, actually. They may just seem like model numbers but they reveal a lot about the handsets they describe. If you’re fed up of trying to remember which phone you want or which phone you have, here’s the first in a series of posts which will explain what mobile model numbers mean.

The first in the series? Nokia model numbers explained, or Nokia naming conventions, as the techies like to call them. Nokia model numbers are usually four figures long, apart from a few exceptions. The first number or letter will tell you which series the phone is in and what that means about the handset itself:

What do Nokia model numbers mean?

1xxx basic – The cheapest and most basic models. Best for those who like the simple life of calling and texting. Usually good battery life due to lack of features
2xxx basic expression – Still basic but some additional features such as bluetooth
3xxx youth expression – Cheap and basic but designed to appeal to teenagers, different designs etc.
4xxx - Not used due to interpretation in certain languages
5xxx active – Handsets used for sport and active people. Usually rugged and music-based
6xxx classic business – Higher-end handsets used for all round business users but more basic and easier to use than the E-series
7xxx fashion/experimental – Experimental handsets such as the Prism and more stylish handsets such as the 7100
8xxx design and premium – Very design based such as the 8800. More focus on looks than packing them full of features
9xxx communicator series – A predecessor to the E-series, handsets for business users

N-series High-end Multimedia Smartphones - Packed full of features and popular with gamers but poor battery life and responsiveness
E-series High-end Business Smartphones – High-end handsets for business users

Always handy to have a funky little iPhone charger in the Reevoo Bus - we’ve picked up this deal from Amazon Marketplace on the Griffin PowerJolt Auto Charger for iPod/iPhone, down to £10 with FREE delivery, those journeys will never be music free again!

Reevoo’s having a television aerial party - the food wasn’t up to Reevoo Santa’s standards, but the reception was excellent!  Thanks to this bargain One For All SV9360, down to £20 at Amazon Marketplace.