I know it’s all a bit doom and gloom at the moment in the money department but what happens when you actually need to buy something?
Laptops may seem like an unaffordable luxury but if you’re a student or you run your own business or you just need soemthing that you can carry around with you, laptops are your best bet and you can get one for cheaper than you think.
We’ve set the bar at £300 and found some great deals. Here are the top ten most highly rated laptops under £300, rated by people who have actually bought them:
So there we go. With prices as low as £170, you’re sure to find something. Asus EEE PCs are great to take anywhere because they’re so tiny, and I especially like all of the new colours they come in but they may take a bit of getting used to. A couple of the reviews from guys mention that the keys are a little difficult for them to type with. If they don’t sound like they’re for you, an extra 50 or so will get you the Advent 4211. It’s got some great reviews. Nuala from County Louth says:
“It’s just fantastic. The best money I ever spent. You can use it anywhere. I would’nt be without it”
And if online gaming’s your thing, Fiona from Wales says:
“Very small and lightweight. Speedy processor means not matter how many screens you’ve got open it doesnt slow. Would higly recommend for anyone looking for an internet laptop. I find it good for online gaming as the applications do not slow the computer even if palying several sites at once.”
If you’re after something stylish, go for the Compaq CQ50100EM SI40. Everyone raves about its design. But if you ask me, the Toshiba Equium L350-10L packs a whole lot into £300 and looks to be well worth the money.
So lots of bargains there and lots of different laptops to choose from. If you’ve come across any others, let us know.
Rumors, rumours. They’ve been flying around the last few days. Here are two that should interest you:
Last week, at the Future of Web Apps expo in London, Kevin Rose, Digg founder extraordinaire, predicted that Apple will unveil their MacBooks packing Blu-ray drives tomorrow at their special event which focuses on notebooks. Exciting stuff? So could this be the beginning of a beautiful relationship that will see all MacBooks with Blu-ray as standard? If you have any thoughts, let us know. In the meantime, if you’re still trying to decide on a MacBook, check out the MacBook reviews.
The other juicy rumor that seems to have come around faster that we’d thought is the release of the Firefox mobile. Firefox’s first mobile outing will be on the Linux-running Nokia N810.
It will be a little like the iPhone, with the N810’s touchscreen but we’re promised that the software will be pretty nifty with tabs, smart URLs and browser extensions. As it’s still early days, this release is intended for testing but check out the video below for a sneak peak.
We?ve been looking into design here at Reevoo. Good product design is becoming more and more important and clever and innovative designs are what consumers look for to save time and make their lives a little easier.
So we looked into which brands were coming up with the best designs. When a shopper buys something from one of Reevoo?s 55 retail partners, they are sent an email asking them to rate it. One of the categories they rate is the design of the product.
Looking at 22,000 products, with over 15 reviews, we took these design scores and ranked all of the products in terms of their score for design ? the product with the highest score at the top.
What we found was pretty impressive for one brand in particular. In the top 100 products for design, a whopping 51 of them are from Samsung! It?s a real result for the brand that has put a strong focus on design in recent years.
LG in second place and Sony and Apple in joint third made up the top 3.
If you?re a regular reader of Decide What to Buy, I?m sure you can guess at which product Numatic had in the top 100? Hetty! She?s had a stonking 2008, already topping the best vacuum cleaner list back in June and in March.
But we wanted to look deeper into the data so we split the products up into categories. We looked at Home Entertainment, Mobile Phones, White Goods, Computing and Home and DIY in more detail to see which brand?s products performed the best for design in each category.
If you’re a girl who needs everything to be pink; if you’re a guy who’s struggling to find a gift for his girlfriend or if you’re a man who just likes a bit of pink, it turns out you’re not alone.
Research by consumer review website, Reevoo.com, looked at how popular pink products were across its own website and those of its partners. Websites such as Dixons, The Carphone Warehouse and Currys were analysed to find out how pink products shaped up compared to their duller counterparts.
In the last 3 months, the pink JVC Everio GZ-MG330 camcorder has been one of the most popular models on the market and one of the most popular pink products. One in twenty camcorder visits has been to look at this pink camcorder.
To continue the success of pink products, the pink Motorola ROKR U9 has been a great example to all pink mobile phones. Out of all 22,000 products, from TVs to MP3 players and washing machines, it was the 21st most popular product.
A Decide What to Buy favourite, Hetty, also did well to be the 16th most popular vacuum cleaner. There are over 375 vacuums so Hetty did pretty well.
You can see the top 10 pink products below, how popular they are in their categories and how popular they are compared to all the other 22,000 products.
Click on table above to enlarge.
To celebrate all this pinkness, Reevoo has created a page full of the pinkest products around. Fom pink MP3 players and pink laptops to pink irons and pink beanbags, they’re all there. You can find them at www.reevoo.com/pink.
It seems us Brits are baffled by modern technology that was sent to help us. According to a poll of 2000 people (by the folks over at Reevoo), mobile phones, SatNavs and even TV remotes send us into panic and rage when we can’t figure out how to use them. In fact, a whopping 32% of people admitted to throwing a complicated gadget across the room when they couldn’t work out what to do with it.
Digital cameras were voted the most complicated with SatNavs and mobile phones close behind. Interestingly though, people are obviously happy to live in confusion with their SatNavs, as only 6% actually read the manuals!
More alarming is that the same numbers of us are as baffled by our laptops as our ovens (the nation’s health crisis suddenly makes sense now…). And people are more inclined to read their TV manual over their oven’s. Hmmmm.
And even when a device goes wrong, more than a quarter will try to fix it themselves, or even buy a new one, instead of turning to the instructions.
Here’s the full list of things we find complicated:
1. Digital Camera - 26% 2. GPS navigation - 21% 3. Mobile phone - 19% 4. Washing machine - 18% 5. Camcorder - 17% 6. DVD player - 15% 7. Games console - 13% 8. TV remote control - 13% 9. MP3 player - 13% 10. Microwave - 12% 11. Computer - 12% 12. Digital photo frame - 12% 13. Scanner - 11% 14. Laptop - 10% 15. Television - 10% 16. Modem - 10% 17. Oven - 9% 18. Printer - 9% 19. Answer machine - 9% 20. Freeview box - 8% 21. Broadband - 8% 22. Sky - 8% 23. Dishwasher - 7% 24. Digital TV - 7% 25. Hi Fi system - 7% 26. Tumble dryer - 6% 27. Iron - 6% 28. Telephone - 6% 29. Clock Radio - 5% 30. Smoke alarm - 5% 31. Electric timer - 5% 32. Smoothie maker - 5% 33. Alarm clock - 4% 34. Blender - 4%
…and how many people bother to read the manuals for these items:
1. I don’t read manuals - 46% 2. Mobile phone - 19% 3. Washing machine - 17% 4. Television - 16% 5. Digital Camera - 14% 6. Microwave - 11% 7. Oven - 10% 8. DVD player - 10% 9. MP3 player - 9% 10. Laptop - 9% 11. Computer - 8% 12. Printer - 8% 13. TV remote control - 8% 14. Broadband - 8% 15. Telephone - 7% 16. Tumble dryer - 6% 17. Iron - 6% 18. GPS navigation - 6% 19. Camcorder - 6% 20. Dishwasher - 6% 21. Hi Fi system - 6% 22. Scanner - 5% 23. Freeview box - 5% 24. Answer machine - 5% 25. Alarm clock - 5% 26. Modem - 5% 27. Smoke alarm - 5% 28. Clock Radio - 5% 29. Games console - 5% 30. Sky - 4% 31. Digital TV - 4% 32. Digital photo frame - 3% 33. Electric timer - 2%
In today’s what to buy, we’re looking at home offices. Whether you work from home or you just need an office at home, there’s no need to spend a fortune on some decent kit.
We’ve looked at laptops and desktop computers, shredders and fax machines and a lot more to help you furnish your office.
Let’s start off with computers. For those of you who prefer laptops, we’ve picked out the 15 inch Hewlett Packard 530. It’s got an 80GB hard drive, an Intel Celeron M 520 1.6 GHz processor and a DVD re-writer. You can pick one up for £267.97 with an increased 120GB hard drive. A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree.
If you’re more of a desktop computer fan, you can try the Compaq SR5219. This has a 250GB hard drive, a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor and a DVD rewriter. It also comes with a 17inch Tft monitor and is around £360. It has some good reveiws too. Comments in the reviews include “Everything is spot on” and “very easy to set up, nice touch sensitive keyboard, looks smart”.
You’ll be needing a desk to house your bargains. Why not try the Dakota Workstation. It’s simple but stylish and most importantly, it’ll only set you back £20.
For a printer, we’ve gone for the £75 Epson Stylus DX8400. It doubles up as a scanner/copier so you can save some more money there. We’ve also gone for an Epson because you tend to get cheaper ink cartridges, so there’s the potential for long-term money saving. One shopper left this review “the product give me exactly what I was wanting at the right price”.
You can’t do much without the net these days so if you’ve been unfortunate enough to get an internet provider who doesn’t supply you with a router, you can get the 54 Mbps Belkin F5D7231UK4 for £44. It’s got a stonking 200 meter wireless range so you can work in the house or even in the garden (unless you live in a mansion/palace, in which case, I’d checkout your distances before you embark on any ’off-piste’ activities).
They’re not used much these days but if you do need a fax machine, the Brother T104 is £67.
So there we go, under £500 if you go with a laptop and just over £500 if you chose a desktop computer, although there may be other elements there that you don’t need.
Reviews for all of the items can be found on Reevoo, along with lots of other reviews from shoppers.
In today’s what to buy, we’re looking at home offices. Whether you work from home or you just need an office at home, there’s no need to spend a fortune on some decent kit.
We’ve looked at laptops and desktop computers, shredders and fax machines and a lot more to help you furnish your office.
Let’s start off with computers. For those of you who prefer laptops, we’ve picked out the 15 inch Hewlett Packard 530. It’s got an 80GB hard drive, an Intel Celeron M 520 1.6 GHz processor and a DVD re-writer. You can pick one up for £267.97 with an increased 120GB hard drive. A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree.
If you’re more of a desktop computer fan, you can try the Compaq SR5219. This has a 250GB hard drive, a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor and a DVD rewriter. It also comes with a 17inch Tft monitor and is around £360. It has some good reveiws too. Comments in the reviews include "Everything is spot on" and "very easy to set up, nice touch sensitive keyboard, looks smart".
You’ll be needing a desk to house your bargains. Why not try the Dakota Workstation. It’s simple but stylish and most importantly, it’ll only set you back £20.
For a printer, we’ve gone for the £75 Epson Stylus DX8400. It doubles up as a scanner/copier so you can save some more money there. We’ve also gone for an Epson because you tend to get cheaper ink cartridges, so there’s the potential for long-term money saving. One shopper left this review "the product give me exactly what I was wanting at the right price".
You can’t do much without the net these days so if you’ve been unfortunate enough to get an internet provider who doesn’t supply you with a router, you can get the 54 Mbps Belkin F5D7231UK4 for £44. It’s got a stonking 200 meter wireless range so you can work in the house or even in the garden (unless you live in a mansion/palace, in which case, I’d checkout your distances before you embark on any ’off-piste’ activities).
They’re not used much these days but if you do need a fax machine, the Brother T104 is £67.
So there we go, under £500 if you go with a laptop and just over £500 if you chose a desktop computer, although there may be other elements there that you don’t need.
Reviews for all of the items can be found on Reevoo, along with lots of other reviews from shoppers.
"I’d love to one day buy a wire that makes me breakfast in bed - you know, show’s a little appreciation that I bought it, saved it from the shelf…" Logik HDWTH FR EADAP
"It takes a long time to hoover the living room, but ideal for the office desk" USB Retro Vacuum
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.
This week’s Green Piece is all about a humble backpack. Designed by Voltaic, it’s made from the fizzy drinks bottles that we recycle. Not only does this process save on materials, it also uses a lot less energy that if it was made out of something like nylon.
Think that’s it? Oh no, this is a backpack with a difference. It’s got solar panels sewn into it so that you can save even more energy by charging up your gadgets on the go. You can charge your smaller gadgets like MP3s, cameras or PDAs but the best bit is that Voltaic have managed to create a backpack that can also charge your laptop. Great news! Now if we only lived in Spain…and you have a spare £190 lying around…
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