Its true if you shop and haggle on the high street you're bound to pickup a bargain especially concerning the current economic client the consumer has more power over price than they have ever had before.

Wandering around PCWorld my wife and I saw a real bargain of a PC in their clearance section.  This section isn't looked at much by the normal customer who is more attracted to the all dancing all dazzling display models. The clearance sections consists of ex display models or machines with missing bits all wrapped in bubble wrap. Usually these machines are identical to the display area but are missing box's, cables and software and discounted by as much as 50% in some cases. We found one such example with one of PCWorlds own brand PC's which usually retail for £220 but had been discounted to £185 because it didn't have a box or cables.

We got my father who was wandering around some other shops and had been keen to get another PC after his old one had given up the ghost. I had to rush my father through as someone else had seen the same bargain in store and was waiting for me to put the PC down so they could get the bargain. However I was unable to get it to the till without the sheet of paper containing its price which seemed to be missing so it proved to be a real conundrum getting a price as all of the staff were suddenly busy. Eventually we got the price sheet for the computer and it had been brought down to £129! Nice! It was rather easy to get the machine setup for dad, after I had discovered PCWorld still had the demo OS installed which I didn't have the password for. Not a problem there is a setup menu just before the OS boots which will reinstall it from scratch for you with Windows Vista. Its a pretty fast PC which my father is rather happy with after I set him up with 3 Mobile Broadband. We told my parents in-law and they also wanted one! Now I have ordered them a £185 version online. The thing I love about ordering a PC online is you don't get put through the PCWorld staff sales pitch trying to sell you after sales support. I don't need it but maybe some people do, in my mind its just a waste of money because I know how to recover or tune a PC. The staff treat you as though you are nuts not taking it because it appears essential in their minds. I am guessing it might be to some people, but for now I am saving money.

I had been working on site with a client (can't reveal the company name because of work confidentiality) who very kindly got me 2 going away gifts. One of them was this rather cool and trendy WiFi T shirt! I don't have to emphasize how coveted an item this is amongst geek's like myself! 

You may laugh at how excited I am in owning one of these but that's only because you secretly want one yourself. Just think when your in the middle of city somewhere with no 3G or broadband you can tell your mates where the WiFi is at!

How cool is this a robot vacuum cleaner for £49.99 from eBuyer!

Once I have enough money in my gadget fund, I think this will be my next purchase. I only hope it can actually clean the room and is not just a bit of a gimmick. Even so I can imagine it being hours of entertainment for the cats.

Take a look at this cool personal foot powered energy device called the Weza.

Its battery at full charge is capable of jump starting a car. It can also be used to power other electrical devices.

I had a look at my friend Owen's Christmas present (to himself I think) an MP4 Watch! And thought "I really want one of those!" (envy). But I was stuck with a bit of a dilemma, I had to get to a friends place for a get together and I had to go by car and I really wasn't sure of the route. So ... I could purchase a Tom Tom (poor excuse I know) or an MP4 watch (because its so cool!).  

Quite a lot of my friends know that I only have a provisional drivers licence, that means I can only drive a car with L plates and a supervising responsible adult  with a full drivers licence in the passenger seat (my wife). What this also means is that I can't go on any Motors Ways when I am travelling anywhere (bummer). As you can see the TOM TOM is becoming more and more attractive hey? And yes to cut a long story short I did purchase the Tom Tom and it is soooo cool!

I was able to put the post code of my destination into the Tom Tom and then revise the route excluding all motor ways and it automatically re-calculated the route...sweet! What was even cooler was when I was on my way through Windsor I didn't turn off at an exit when it told me to and the Tom Tom just recalculated the route on the fly telling me where to go to get back on course again. Another interesting part which I had no idea these devices had was the speed camera warnings (defined by Tom Tom as "Safety Cameras").  I know many people have had these devices and I am only just discovering how really cool they actually are, as a backup however I did have my wife map reading next to me but we soon discovered we didn't need a map. This is one of the new entry level Tom Tom's available from Halfords for only £149 which I think is a real bargain. The only complaint I actually have was the customer service in Halfords, they don't really seem to have anyone around to help you out and when the till is busy they leave one poor girl struggling with a long queue while other staff members seemingly seem to be doing stock checks. If you do find someone in the store you are lucky if they get back to you as they sometimes seem to have forgotten they were checking something for you. Its not only my local Halfords where this has happened, a number of friends have complained about various stores where its the same problem. Great advertising campaigns on TV guys just get the service in stores sorted and you could be making a lot more money, instead of people leaving long queues at your stores annoyed by having to wait so long.

A while ago my wife purchased me a new Infinity Razor. In short I would be able to say "Good bye to being a slave to the Gillette corporation!" because you would never have to replace it. In reality however after using it 3 times I soon realised that Gillette had absolutely nothing to fear, the Infinity Razor just wasn't as good as my trusty 3 blade Gillette which gave me a nice smooth shave unlike the Infinity which was incredibly rough and didn't at all live up to its expectations. Oh well...it was a nice dream though?

I have a hard time trying to explain to the older members of my family and friends that leaving a mobile phone on while they are out and about does not.

• Cause wear and tear to the phone
• Just because you don't think someone will phone you doesn't mean you shouldn't turn on your mobile phone.
• You are not charged when someone calls you on your mobile.
• A mobile is mobile this means you can take it with you when you go out.

I suppose there is really a generation gap here when brining our elders up to speed with mobile phones and new technology. A while ago I blogged about a granny I overheard talking to her friend about how she stored all her files on floppy disks on a state of the art PC she had bought from Dixons not knowing she could have stored it on the machines 60 gig hard disk.

Every now and again when you are surfing the web you come across some really good ideas and if you are lucky some of them are ahead of their time and free!

StartForce.com is one of those ideas that literally blew me away. Its basically (and I use basic loosely) an Ajax desktop you can access from anywhere in the world using nothing more than a web browser.

So what does that mean to the non technical? Well it means you can store all your files and correspondence in one place on the Internet and access them from anywhere in the world. Logging into your StartForce desktop you can edit Word Processed documents and spreadsheets from this self contained desktop in your browser without having to worry about the software not being installed on the machine you are using in say an Internet cafe for example. The desktop it provides feels very much like Windows XP and provides you with:

• Web browser + favourites
• Word Processor
• Spreadsheet Program
• Games
• RSS reader
• Messenger client for ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Start Force. Which is great for people who may have this blocked on their firewall.
• Video Player 
• Audio Player
• Picture Viewer

This is such a cool application, the only thing I think missing from it is an e-mail client. As you can see from the picture I took, I opened as many application as I could to demonstrate the functionality.

Just picked up a really cool gadget for just £7.50 from Tchibo, its such a cool idea when you think about it. Its basically a simple bit of electronics that detects if your floor is being flooded at night by say maybe a leaking washing machine and lets out a loud alarm sound. I bought it at once, having had a leak from our washing machine in the past that went undetected I thinks it a valuable accessory well worth the investment.