Decide what to buy | the Reevoo.com blog, featuring news on TVs, cameras, laptops, mp3 players & other gadgets, shopping tips and deals, reviews and more

It’s official. Women may like to spend money on expensive handbags and shoes but when it comes to the living room, boys shell out the most cash.

According to the latest research from Reevoo, kitting out a bachelor pad with huge plasma TVs, top of the range laptops, games consoles, high-end stereos and other gadgets puts the bill up to £4,678.97.

Reevoo looked at the highest rated products with over 30 reviews to compile the research. According to shoppers, the best wide screen plasma HD ready TV is the Panasonic TH50PZ70B which can be nicely accompanied by the top DVD recorder, the Sony RDR-HX510. Just these two cost over £1,500.

Every man’s need and desire to put as little effort into living as possible has been accounted for. There’s the Proline TTR 65 P mini beer fridge which can be plugged in right next to your sofa so that cold beer is only a short stretch away, the Hewlett Packard Pavilion DV9605 laptop, so you can check up on your stocks and shares while you’re watching the footie and an Xbox 360 Elite for when you run out of DVDs.

Other items to complete the perfect bachelor pad include the Philips HD7810/60 coffee machine, the Blackberry Curve 8310, and the Miele G1222SC
dishwasher, so that you don’t have to get involved in any of that mucky washing up.

So girls, next time you get an earful off him indoors, direct him to this handy bit of research before you head for the shops.

Here’s a full list for those who want to create the perfect pad:

Panasonic
TH50PZ70B 50 inch HD ready plasma screen TV £1,351.00

Xbox 360 Elite
games console £250.00

Panasonic FZ50 digital
camera £306.00

Sony DCR-SR 32E handycam
camcorder with 30GB hard drive £259.00

Blackberry Curve
8310 mobile phone £274.99

Denon D-m 35 DAB hi-fi
mini system £150.00

Apple iPod touch 16GB black
£229.00

Wharfedale
Diamond 9.1 bookshelf speakers £129.00

Hewlett Packard Pavilion
DV9605 laptop £699.99

Pure Talksport DAB
radio £40.00

Proline TTR 65 P mini
fridge £69.99

Philips HD7810/60
Coffee Machine £50

Miele G1222SC
dishwasher £493.00

Philips HQ8150 electric
shaver £78.00

Sony RDR-HX510 DVD
Recorder £299.00

Like Stephen Fry, I’m a big fan of the Asus Eee PC. In fact, I’m using one right now to write this! Sure, the screen’s a bit small, and the keyboard’s not for the fattest-fingered typist, but the price, size and resilience are what make it really useful. It’s small and light enough to take anywhere, and the solid state disk has no moving parts to break, which means that you can throw the Eee PC in your bag without the normal laptop paranoia. Reviewers agree that it’s excellent value for money.

Tiny computers have been available for a long time, with Sony and Toshiba in particular making some very small but full-featured devices. However, they’ve typically been expensive, and some of the best ones that they sell in Japan haven’t been available for sale over here. The success of the Eee PC shows that there’s a market for a cheap ultra-portable computer, and it looks like Sony are feeling threatened by it.

According to UMPC Portal, Asus, T-Mobile, and Microsoft are going to make an announcement about the Eee PC and mobile internet access at the CeBIT trade show next month. They surmise that this will be the introduction of an Eee PC model running Windows with an internal 3G data adaptor.

3G internet access would be a natural addition to the Eee. It already has WiFi, but there are plenty of places where WiFi’s not available (or, worse, available only at exorbitant prices). With 3G and a sensible pricing plan, an Eee PC would be ideal for nomadic working. As someone who’s happily running a customised version of Ubuntu Linux on my Eee PC, I’d be aggrieved to pay extra for a copy of Windows, but I know that it will make a lot of people happy.

We’ll find out for certain on 4th March.

Earlier this week, a woman in Seoul, South Korea, received an unpleasant surprise when her Samsung laptop computer spontaneously combusted.

A Samsung Electronics Co. official confirmed the accident, saying that
it might be caused by overheating, because the laptop computer was used
for a long time on a pillow, which apparently blocked ventilation of
the machine.

"Since the woman used the computer on a pillow for
hours, it could block a ventilating hole below the model," said the
company official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There’s been a spate of burning battery stories in the news over the last few years. Sony, Dell, Apple, LG and others have had to recall faulty batches of lithium ion batteries. There was even a report last month that a South Korean man was killed by an exploding mobile phone battery.

Here’s a great video showing what actually happens when a laptop’s lithium ion battery catches fire:

Luckily, catastrophic failure doesn’t actually happen all that often, when you consider just how many of these batteries are around the place: there must be a hundred or more lithium ion batteries in the Reevoo offices alone, and none of them have blown up so far — touch wood.

Still, you’d be hard pressed to find any manufacturer referring to their portable computer as a ‘laptop’ these days. Sure, we
the buying public call them laptops — we even use them on our laps —
but the makers are afraid of the liability of encouraging this
behaviour, selling ‘notebook’ or ‘portable’ computers instead.

It’s
perhaps not particularly surprising, given the high energy density of lithium ion cells and their tendency to burst, burn,
or even blow up when overheated. Blocking your computer’s air vents
with bedding is one way to make it overheat, as is placing it on a soft surface that restricts its ability to dissipate heat — trousered legs, for example.

Gentlemen have something else to worry about, too: using a computer on your lap may affect your fertility!