A Fresh Start

Not real money, of course, but the voucher which arrived this morning.

Courtesy of Gordon Brown’s generosity I’ve paid a visit to PC World today. I didn’t have a choice, ok? The EO version of the HCI scheme was only valid through that infamous chain of spotty teenagers.

One of the problems I’ve had with my multi-laptop technological setup has been getting the laptops to talk to each other … or even to recognise each other’s existence.

My greed having overruled common sense, I’d signed up for the maximum allowable under the scheme and so had in my grubby little hands a voucher for £1,199 of computer equipment (as if I didn’t already have enough of this, eh?). What’s more, I’d be paying for the whole amount over the next three years whether I spent it or not, so I had to spend it all. In one go.

It’s a hard life.

I looked carefully at the iMac selections on offer. Nice. Very nice. But … although the iMacs were very tempting (as I alluded to when I first mentioned this a couple of months ago) I’d decided not to follow that particular path. I moved on to the Windoze section. I glanced briefly over the desktop PCs, much preferring the portability of laptops.

I’d investigated the tablet PCs on offer there and had been much tempted by a Toshiba. It was a bit bulky, though, and I like my laptops light and very portable. As a result, then, I’d come to examine - and hopefully leave with - the new Philips X52 Streamium T2300 12″ widescreen multimedia laptop. It’s tiny yet has a full-sized keyboard, 1GB of RAM and one of the new dual core processors. Spiffing.

Reviews can only tell you so much, so I set myself to testing the display machine, checking the specifications and performance by running as many applications as I could. All highly satisfactory. The only problem was that this laptop didn’t cost £1,199. Nowhere near, unfortunately. Time to find some other goodies to add to my shopping list. What else did I need?

One of the problems I’ve had with my multi-laptop technological setup has been getting the laptops to talk to each other … or even to recognise each other’s existence. This has meant that the external HD I bought has ended up being permanently coupled to one of the laptops and I’ve been unable, for example, to access my iTunes music or photographs from either laptop. Some sort of shared storage would be desirious, then. The Netgear Storage Central SC101 took my eye. I examined the packaging closely - this seemed perfect. A couple of drives to fill its slots and I’d have oodles of storage accessible from anywhere within the router’s wireless radius.

I’ve also been operating a “paperless office” of sorts as I’ve not had a working printer (or scanner for that matter) for quite a while. A network-enabled combined printer/scanner would be very useful to me and would at the very least help fill another of the ethernet sockets on the router. I examined the selection on offer, at a wide range of price tags. In spite of the “HP” label, I settled on the Photosmart 2575 as a printer that I’m sure will serve my purposes admirably.

I’d still not reached my allowance, though, and still had £60 to fritter away.

A few minutes later and my trolley was full, holding the following cornucopia of technological gadgetification:

• 1 x Philips X52 Streamium T2300 12″ widescreen multimedia laptop,
• 1 x HP Photosmart 2575 All-in-One printer, scanner and copier,
• 1 x Netgear Storage Central SC101,
• 2 x 160GB hard drives (price-matched down to £50 each) to go into the SC101 - one drive for music and photographs, the other for my “work” and software - why download stuff separately for each of my pooters when I can install from a single download?,
• 1 x ADS Tech MiniDualTV (half price at the moment) so I’ll be able to surf while watching TV from the garden this summer, and
• 1 x surge protecting extension lead which I’ll be using for my existing router, the SC101 and the Photosmart 2575.

At the end of my spree I had to hand over an additional £4.93 which means I can’t help thinking that I did rather well. It’s going to take me a while to set this all up, though - just as well it’s a bank holiday weekend, in fact.