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

So, another year of new students are getting ready to head to university; they’ve got the cookbook telling them how to make a £4 bag of pasta last two terms, an inflatable armchair with at least one puncture and a tube full of carefully chosen film posters. At some stage they’re going to have to get around to doing some work, and these days that usually means that if they don’t want to join a long queue to use the computers in the college library, they’ll need one of their own. Thankfully for those already watching meagre summer job savings dwindle or preparing to test the limits of parental generosity, this doesn’t necessarily involve a vast amount of money.

Netbooks, the slimmed down cousins of laptops, will handle essay writing and web access (strictly for research purposes, naturally) & are perfect for lugging around campus in a book-bag. They’ve actually scored higher with our reviewers than laptops on design (8.8 vs 8.4), portability (9.1 vs 8.1) and battery life (8.2 vs 6.8). Student shoppers who’ve reviewed them for Reevoo have written about how they’re “light enough to carry around the university campus”, the “right size for taking to lectures” and are equipped with “amazing battery life”. Unfortunately they will still tend to break if you pour enough beer into them.

What is a netbook, anyway?

There’s no universally agreed definition but as a rule of thumb it’s anything that looks like a laptop, but:

- Costs under £400
- Has a screen under 13 inches in size
- Weighs under 1.5kg
- Doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive
- Has a single core processor

The Top 10 Netbooks (According To Reevoo’s Consumer Reviewers)

1. Asus Eee PC 10005HA SeaShell (9.1/10, from £250)
2. Samsung NC10 (9.1/10, from £250)
3. Asus Eee PC 901 (8.9/10, from £300)
4. Asus Eee PC 1000H (8.9/10, from £280)
5. Samsung N110 (8.9/10, from £330)
6. Asus Eee PC 1000HE (8.9/10, from £321)
7. Toshiba NB100-12A (8.8/10, from £250)
8. Asus Eee PC 904HD (8.7/10, from £190)
9. Samsung N310 (8.7/10, from £298)
10. Samsung NC20 (8.7/10, from £350)

There are a couple of things to be aware of when making your choice. The first is that whilst many netbooks come with Windows XP, a few come with an alternative Linux-based operating system. It’ll do the same sort of things but may take a little more getting used to. The second is that netbooks don’t have a CD/DVD drive so installing new software can be fiddly. Thankfully Microsoft offer a few solutions for a student essential, Office:

- Some netbooks come with trial version of Microsoft Office Home & Student which you can then pay to unlock.

- If you buy a boxed copy, Microsoft will let you use your product key to install it onto your netbook from their website.

- Or you can buy it straight from their online store.

Alternatively you can try a free equivalent called OpenOffice; as with the alternative operating system mentioned above it’ll do roughly the same things but may not be as familiar.

Nokia have announced the full specifications of the Booklet 3G, their entrant into the thriving netbook market, at the annual Nokia World conference. With an Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and 120GB of disc space it isn’t going to set the netbook world alight on the basis of computing power; the main areas of interest are the built-in 3G mobile internet access and promise of a 12 hour battery life. They’ve also thrown in an HDMI port, assisted-GPS, and Windows 7.

There’s no release date yet, but it will be available in black, white & blue and will cost around £500 (although it’s likely to be available for less if purchased with a 3G data plan).

When buying a new computer, whether it be a laptop or desktop, there are a lot of numbers to consider: how much memory it has to run software, how much storage space it has for your files and even how much room it’ll take up on your desk. One that’s only become something to consider in the last few years is how many cores the processor has.

The processor sits at the heart of your computer and does all the number-crunching that makes everything else possible, from writing a letter to listening to music; it used be the case that you just needed to pay attention to how fast it was: how many gigahertz (or going back further, megahertz) did it run at?

Whilst it may have looked like your computer was doing lots of different things at once (loading a web page & playing a music file), with a single core it was actually doing things one at a time, switching rapidly back and forth between different tasks to provide a (hopefully) seamless experience of each thing you needed it to do. If you wanted to do more things more quickly you needed to increase the speed of the processor.

Multi-core processors provide a different way to speed things up. Instead of making one processor core work faster, you split the work between 2 or more. You could think of it like the old school maths problem: if it takes 1 painter 1 hour to paint 1 wall, how long will it take 2 painters to paint the same wall?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t automatically mean that a dual-core 2GHz processor will run at 4GHz. Software has to be written in a special way to enable it to split the work up and make the most of multiple cores; if you want your wall painted twice as fast, you have to make sure that both painters are going to turn up and know the most efficient way to divide up the wall between them! The good news is that as multi-core processors have become so common, more and more software is being designed to take advantage of them, so your computer can paint more walls, more quickly!

The only problem with buying yourself a great new gadget, or fitting out your kitchen with up-to-the minute appliances is what to do with the things they replace. Disposing of old electricals can be a bit of a headache and they often end up gathering dust at the back of a cupboard or in the attic.

At the moment, over 75% of old electricals end up in landfills, polluting the soil. Every year Britain produces enough electrical waste to fill Wembley Stadium 6 times over. And this mountain of junk is growing - Britain produces 5% more electrical waste every year.

The irony is that over 85% of the materials that make up electrical goods are recyclable, and recycling them has never been easier. Here’s our quick guide to the right way to get rid of old TVs, kitchen appliances, gadgets and mobile phones.

What can I recycle?

If your product has a plug or a battery it can probably be recycled.  Double check by looking for the crossed-out wheely bin symbol somewhere on the product case or manual.

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Recently Reevoo’s been hearing rumours of a gentleman who’s developed a rather unusual way of catching his laptop.

This YouTube video, portraying a group of acrobats in tights throwing and catching a laptop with their behinds, has just reached 100,000 views. The laptop in question is a 3-pound, under an 1 inch thick, MSi X-Slim. We shudder to think what would have happened had it been a chunky Dell model.

The jury is out on whether the video is a fake or if it’s just a few people prepared to do anything to win a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and a new laptop in - surprise, surprise - a contest organised by MSi. Our bet is on the former. At the moment there are only 21 contest videos on the MSi web site, with the most popular one reaching just 1,200 views. Whatever its origins, this ‘butt-catching’ video is sure to get this number up.

Kudos to MSi for a great marketing campaign. We eagerly await teeth, chin & toe-catching imitators.

It can be frustratingly confusing when shopping online as manufacturers like to use fancy words where it might be better to just say ‘portable’. The word ‘Qosmio’ sounds cool but it doesn’t tell you that Qosmio machines are the most powerful in Toshiba’s range of laptops.

So, here’s a breakdown of the Toshiba laptop ranges which should make it easier for you to identify the kind of laptop you’re looking for.

Equium
The Equium range offers laptops for everyday use around the house and out and about such as internet browsing and word processing.
Equium laptops are only available from PC World and Currys.
The U series come with small 13.3 inch screens and Vista Home Premium.
The A series come with a 15.4 inch screen but it is only the same resolution as the U series.
The P series machines have a larger chassis and screen at 17 inches and 1440×900.

View Toshiba Equium customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Portégé
The Portégé range is designed with portability in mind. The Portégés are lightweight, starting at only 1kg, and extremely thin. Some models come with solid state storage which means there are less moving parts and therefore less heat and less power being consumed. This helps to increase battery life, extending the machine’s portability even further. They are also the most stylish of the Toshiba laptops, and I dare say they were influenced by Apple’s Macbook Air. Because some Portégés come with Solid State hard drives, just like the Macbook Air, there’s less chance of damaging your data should you accidentally drop the machine.

View Toshiba Portégé customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Qosmio
These machines are for pure brute power gaming and media use. The top Qosmios come with 18.4 inch, HD ready screens, extremely fast quad core processors and dedicated nVidia graphics cards. Unsurprisingly they are considerably more expensive than other ranges. If you need an element of portability but can tolerate 4.4kg on your lap, then Qosmio is for you.

View Toshiba Qosmio customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Satellite
The Satellite series of laptops are mid-range machines, all equipped with either Intel or AMD Dual Core processors. For most every day, extended use, the Satellite range is perfectly suitable. The machines run Windows Vista Premium and come in a variety of sizes ranging from 13.3 inches to 17.1. As there are a wide variety of laptops in the Satellite range it is easy for you to pick which suits you best.

Optional features include:

A variety of graphics chip solutions – If you play any games consider the ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 equipped models.

Harman Kardon stereo speakers – Most people have MP3 players which means their laptops are used to store music. If this applies to you then Harman Kardon equipped speakers will give you the best sound quality.

Face Recognition – Some Satellite models come with a 0.3 or 1.3 megapixel built in webcam. Not only is this good for making Youtube videos or communicating online but you can also use them for security. If your face isn’t recognised you will get locked out of the system. Just be sure not to set it up just before shaving off a well established beard.

View Toshiba Satellite customer reviews on Reevoo.com

Mini Laptops
The Mini Laptop range are best described as ‘netbooks’. Tiny, with an 8.9 inch display, and only 1kg in weight, they’re built to travel with. They have a 3.5 hour battery life so are ideal if your needs are maximum portability internet access and document editing.
Everything in a Mini Laptop is designed around size so their processor, hard disk space and memory sizes are lower than in other Toshiba ranges. As with certain Portégé models, the Mini’s come equipped with solid state storage and are therefore reasonably durable.

Operating System - As with other manufacturers’ netbook laptops the Toshiba Mini series comes with either Windows XP or Linux. Windows XP is the version of Windows prior to Vista and most people should be familiar with it. Linux is a separate operating system and will not be compatible with your usual Windows software so make sure you take this into consideration when deciding what to buy.

View Toshiba Mini Laptop customer reviews on Reevoo.com

There’s a new dual screen laptop on the block and it comes courtesy of gScreen Corp. The two screens on the G400 are of equal size – both 15.4 inch backlit LEDs, so you can work seamlessly on a very spacious canvass. The G400 also comes with up to 8 GB of RAM, up to 500GB hard drive, 6 USB 2.0 ports, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz T9600 or P8400 2.26-GHz and the Quadro FX 2700M or GeForce 9800M GT from Nvidia.

Not too shabby. Of course, the double vision does mean that it’s a bit on the heavy side. The G400 weighs in at 3.49kg and is due to be released on 25th February. No word on price yet but we’ll keep you posted.

Laptops can be tricky things to purchase. If you want a larger hard drive or more RAM, how much more should you pay? Do you go for well established brands or cheaper newcomers?

Read on to find out what happened when we analysed 900 laptops to answer:
1. How much does a large screen cost vs. a small screen?
2. How much does an extra 100GB of hard drive space or an extra 1000MB (1GB) of RAM cost?
3. Who really makes the best laptops?
4. Should I buy a new model or buy an older model for a cheaper price?

1. How much does a large screen cost vs. a small screen?
Strangely, the size of screen has very little to do with the price of a laptop. Check out the graph below which shows that 17” screens can vary from £235 to £2000! And quite often, 13” and 15” models are the same price as the larger 17” models.

So, when you come to choose a laptop, chose a size that’s right for you. If you want to be able to take it with you wherever you go, go for something that’s small and light but if you will be using your laptop for design work or to watch DVDs, then go for a larger screen size.

Click image to enlarge

2. How much does an extra 100GB of hard drive space cost, or an extra 100MB (1GB) of RAM cost?
It’s quite difficult to split out different features to determine how much they each add on to the price but – and here comes the science – by doing a regression across all the different laptops we know, using the price as the dependent variable and all key factors influencing price as the independent variables, we picked out the coefficient of the size of the hard drive and number of MB RAM to come up with the following:

• An extra 100GB of hard drive space typically costs around £100
• An extra 1000MB (1GB) of RAM costs £70
This isn’t always the case but we’ve noticed that it’s a general trend, using the methodology above.

Take a look at the table below which shows how brands like Sony and Toshiba pack in larger hard drives or more RAM and alter their prices accordingly.

Click image to enlarge

3. When I buy a Sony am I just paying for the brand or are they really better? Who really makes the best laptops?
Different brands excel at different things and focus on different parts of the market so it’s quite difficult to tell which brand is best overall. But we’ve looked at a few factors to help you out:

Customer score vs. price
We’ve looked at the correlation between the average selling price for each brand and their customer score to see if those which impress on performance charge more for their products.
This throws up some interesting results:

Click image to enlarge

As you can see there is some degree of positive correlation between average selling price and average score by brand. So as a broad brush statement, we could say:
Brands that are more expensive tend to get more highly rated by consumers

More importantly however, there are some brands that have significantly higher average scores than others. Namely,
• Asus may not be as well known as some of their illustrious competitors, but their low end products (average selling price of c.£300) are consistently highly rated
• Dell are the next best key manufacturer with a strong mid-range offer
• Sony laptops are also highly rated but at a price! People are prepared to pay more to own a Sony but they seem to perform well and impress consumers.

Brands and features
Different types of laptops suit different types of people, so we’ve looked at how brands perform in a number of key features and picked out the top performers in each feature. We’ve also included the average score across the feature so that you can see how well the top-scoring brand did:

Click image to enlarge

As you can see there is some degree of positive correlation between average selling price and average score by brand. So as a broad brush statement, we could say:
Brands that are more expensive tend to get more highly rated by consumers

More importantly however, there are some brands that have significantly higher average scores than others. Namely,
• Asus may not be as well known as some of their illustrious competitors, but their low end products (average selling price of c.£300) are consistently highly rated
• Dell are the next best key manufacturer with a strong mid-range offer
• Sony laptops are also highly rated, but at a price! People are prepared to pay more to own a Sony but they seem to perform well and impress consumers.

Brands and features
Different types of laptops suit different types of people, so we’ve looked at how brands perform in a number of key features and picked out the top performers in each feature. We’ve also included the average score across the feature so that you can see how well the top-scoring brand did:

• Asus do well to outperform the others in battery life, size and weight and overall rating
• Dell win the award for the best designed laptops
• Sony do best in the performance category and;
• Acer get the prize for the best value for money

4. Should I buy a new model or buy an older model for a cheaper price?
Some shoppers can’t resist getting the latest gadget or gizmo but how much could they save if they waited a few weeks?

Prices for most products will vary according to different retailers and different special offers at launch whereas others will keep their price for years on end – games consoles tend to follow this trend as manufacturers make the real money on games and accessories.

We’ve analysed price trend in thousands of electricals to give you an idea of what a typical price decay curve looks like:

Click image to enlarge

As you can see it doesn’t take long for retailers to start knocking the price of new products! Laptops follow a pretty similar path to other electricals, we’ve included TVs and digital cameras here and as you can see:
• if you buy a laptop around 3 months after it has launched, it will be around 20% cheaper than the launch price
• For most laptop purchases, that’s a saving of nearly £100!

However, after 4 months, prices flatten out so that anything older than 4 months will not save you any more money. You will just end up buying a machine that may have been built using older technology, and is more likely to be replaced with a newer version soon (which impacts resell value, but more importantly will probably leave you pretty annoyed)

So there are all the facts. Hopefully you’ll know what to look out for when you go to buy a laptop but if you’re still having problems, drop us an email at feedback@reevoo.com.

(All data based on H2 2008 figures)

Apple has just released their most recent set of earnings figures, detailing how the MP3 player, phone and computer manufacturer performed over the Christmas season. The answer? Strikingly well. In the middle of a global financial meltdown, Apple managed to turn in record breaking revenues ($10bn) and profits ($1.6bn).

Reevoo’s own figures back up Apple’s success story. Reevoo measured traffic to all Apple products across 61 British retailers’ websites, and saw Apple’s share of the market increase dramatically during the Christmas peak, from 1.3% in September to 3.0% in December.

This has everyone wondering whether Apple can continue to thrive selling high-end electronics while lesser manufacturers fight to survive in a race to the bottom of falling margins and lower sales. Of course, what’s driven Apple’s success over the past few years has been its continuing innovation - think of the iPhone, the iMac or the iPod Nano. So some pundits are asking whether this pace of innovation can continue or whether Apple will soon be running out of ideas.

A closer look at Reevoo’s numbers suggests that it might not be wise to bank on Apple performing as well in future. For one thing, the company’s market share has been pretty flat throughout the year, slipping back through the summer after popularity increased in the spring with the release of new iMac models.

This time around, it looks like Apple has gained most of its increase from the one area where it is truely king: MP3 players.

No-one needs to be told that by far the most popular range of MP3 players is Apple’s distinctive iPods, but amazingly Apple has managed to increase iPod popularity from 60% of MP3 players through the year to 80% during November and December, leaving all other manufacturers to share just 20% of the market over the Christmas peak. Apple released a highly-praised refresh of its bestselling Nano during September and a smaller update of the iPod Touch. Shoppers responded with a thumbs up, giving the new Nano a rating of 9.1 out of 10. But popularity only really rocketed in November, perhaps highlighting their appeal as Christmas gifts.

In addition to their overwhelming popularity, Apple also manage to sell iPods at a premium - only Portable Media Player specialist Archos has a higher average cost per MP3 player sold.

Putting this together suggests that Apple has benefited from a strong run on its impressive MP3 players this Christmas, putting it in position to report those eye-popping revenue revenue figures.

So why the caution? There are two worries about iPods for 2009.

The first is that other manufacturers are improving their products. Samsung and Creative, in particular, saw much-increased ratings from shoppers over Christmas. So if you’re looking for a new MP3 player, it would be a good idea to keep your eye on what these two brands have to offer.

The second worry is that the number of people looking for a new MP3 player seems certain to decrease as smartphones improve and start to reproduce more and more features of MP3 players. With only 4.4m iPhones sold in the last quarter compared to 23m iPods, Apple will have to do a lot of work to make sure iPod fans stick with the brand.

From the best MP3 players of 2008 to the best laptops of 2008. We look at the most popular in the run-up to Christmas and the most highly rated to help you decide what to buy.

So let’s take a look at the lists:

TOP FIVE MOST POPULAR LAPTOPS OF 2008:

1.    Advent 4211

2.    Acer Aspire ONE A110A

3.    Toshiba L300-13S

4.    Toshiba U400-145 T2390

5.    Dell Inspiron 1525 T5750

TOP FIVE HIGHEST RATED LAPTOPS OF 2008:

1.    Samsung NP-NC10 KA

2.    Apple MacBook Pro MB166

3.    Apple MacBook MB402

4.    Asus Eee PC 1000H

5.    Apple MacBook MB403

There’s no surprise to see that MacBooks dominated the highest rated list. People are very impressed with their speed, design and reliability but they don’t escape negative comments completely - owners say that they’re pricey, could do with better battery life and that they scratch easily.

What may surprise some people is that the 10″ Samsung NP-NC10 KA pips the MacBooks to the post. It has a fantastic score for battery life and owners love its size and weight. It has a 160Gb hard drive, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, integrated webcam, WiFi and it weighs only 1.3kg.

Check out some of the reviews:

“it has almost everything that a standard entry level laptop has, but it is smaller and lighter. it is a good looking notebook, the wi fi and bluetooth also go along way to make the laptop a true portable work tool”

“battery life really good, as is speed for size. Brilliant to carry around. keyboard good”

“it would been better if it came with 2gb of ram, now i need to upgrade the ram”

Also flying the flag for the small guys was the Advent 4211. It’s the laptop most people are checking out at the moment. Also coming in at 10″ and a little lighter at 1.12kg, it has an 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi and integrated webcam.

There’s a lot of love for this laptop:

“This little PC is an absolutely top notch system.”

“It’s just fantastic. The best money I ever spent. You can use it anywhere. I wouldn’t be without it.”

“No CD/DVD drive is the only downfall but not really a problem as I bought an external CD/DVD drive and the problem is solved.”

There are loads more laptops to look through. Just read the reviews before you purchase anything to make sure you get the best one for you.