Of course, it’s not even one deal of the day as in place of a very small handful of magazines there are hundreds of websites and collectively they offer a magnificent variety of stuff for our collective perusal right throughout the day. Just as with their paper predecessors many’s a day can go by just leafing through the selections on offer.

Not that I buy many, of course.

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What a minefield that was! Whereas elsewhere in the store you’re lucky to even see a shop assistant, in the cosmetic section you can’t even pause for more than 30 seconds before one of them tries to sell you something from their counter (rarely the one you’re looking at).

So if you’re looking for the best wrinkle cream it will always be from whatever brand that they are selling. That’s one of the best examples as there actually is a best wrinkle cream because one of them actually makes the wrinkles reduce rather than merely covering them up as all the others do.

Worse too is that they’re constantly plonking stuff on you. The other day Wendy ended up with quite a severe headache because of that as she’s allergic to one of the products (which, of course, goes straight over the head of the bimbos on those counters).

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The snag is, of course, that the usual pet shops are quite small places and simply don’t have the space to stock the larger scale of stuff that the larger animals use. However, we’ve found that even supermarket size pet shops don’t bother to stock the gear for the larger animals.

Online, as usual, it’s a different matter fortunately and that’s the place you’re best considering.

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However, these days the portable is very much a standard issue device with not a whole lot of uniqueness to really distinguish the products from different manufacturers. There still remains some specialism of course but mainly that’s severely limited so, for example, Sony tend to specialise in expensive multimedia models and, as always, Apple plough their own furrow in the marketplace. A year ago I’d have added that for a mini portable it was Asus but that marketplace is now totally swamped by offerings from the other manufacturers.

What’s missing from that sameness are the little things. For instance, I’m looking for a portable right now and would like to have an AV socket on it yet there doesn’t seem to be such a beastie these days and instead some have HDMI connections which are handy but it would have been nice to have been able to connect camcorders and whatnot that are only a few years old and don’t have HDMI. Likewise, I’d have liked to have been able to continue to use some PCMCIA devices but everyone seems to have moved on to ExpressCard slots now.

On the software front it’s nice to see that several flavours of Unix are on offer these days, notably on the netbooks of course in that it would seem pretty ridiculous to be spending far more to buy the wordprocessing software than it did to buy the computer.

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However, it always seems to be close to the worst time to buy one no matter when you’re looking for one, doesn’t it? For a long time it was safe enough buying TVs: from the 1970s when colour came out in the UK it was OK to pick up a 405 line set for getting on for 20 years until the 405 line broadcasts were turned off. Even within that period it was fine for quite some time if you bought a 625 line model as they were fine well into the 1990s.

These days it’s a whole different story though. Not only have we moved from the simple 625 line broadcasts in their 4:3 aspect ratio to the more common widescreen version but we’re also getting into the digital transmission era, moving to flatscreen technology and high definition all at the same time.

Aside from the flatscreens being a whole lot lighter than their predecessors, there isn’t really a whole lot going for them right now in that the colour on the old style CRT versions is generally better and you don’t get those annoying little coloured spots that are found on flatscreen versions. Most flatscreens come with digital tuners as standard though which is something of a plus in that the analogue signals are gradually being turned off.

What about HD though? Well, that comes in two versions: the real thing and “HD ready” which means that it’s not really HD at all. Going for true HD seriously bumps up the cost though and since there aren’t really a whole lot of HD broadcasts around at the moment, it seems to make more sense to go for an HD ready TV now with a view to replacing it in four or five years time when the price of true HD will have dropped and the number of HD programmes should have gone up a lot.

Of course, by then chances are the first of the 3D TVs will be starting to drop to relatively sensible prices….

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Of course, these days such magazines have long since been replaced by online sales places which come with weekly sale and even daily sales pages which are just as fascinating to browse. The big plus point is that, these days, the listings come with colour photos and lengthy descriptions and, of course, the ubiquitous “buy now” button. That’s not forgetting that were you to print out the entire “magazine” it would be a whole lot larger than the printed version ever was.

One of my fav buys of late has been a little netbook computer. If you’ve not looked closely at these babies you might think that they’re just for browsing the Internet and that certainly was the original intention when they were first introduced. However, as well as the weedy 4GB disk (yes, disk, not memory) of those early versions you can also get those with 120GB and more space which is more than enough space for most people I suspect. Not only that but you get the option of Linux software on most of them and that makes quite a radical difference in the useability of them: buy a $329 model with Windows and you could easily double that price to load up enough software to make it a fully useable computer; buy the exact same computer but with Linux and it’s $279 and comes with software that’s fully compatible with and just as useable as the MS Office equivalent. That’s not trial software either: it’s the full package.

In practical terms that “netbook” computer that I bought is, for me, just a smaller version of the rather more substantial computer that I’d normally write on. The keyboard is smaller for sure but just as useable and the only real drawback is that you need to scroll the screen a little more. In fact, were the disk just a little larger I’d be quite tempted to use it as my only computer. For those with bigger fingers and worse eyesight don’t forget that you can easily plug in a full-size keyboard and screen and still end up paying less overall than you would for a full-size computer but with that priceless added advantage that you can take the computer with you.

The current 1GB, 160GB provides more than enough space for most people. You might think that the processor is a little underpowered but it’s more than fast enough to play DVDs (you need to buy a DVD player separately) and generally flies through everything that I’ve thrown at it (some folk even use it for CAD work!).

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The reasons are fairly simple, of course. For a start it saves people the bother of reading a reviews and then buying the book or wine that has been recommended: join one of the clubs that has similar interests to your own and chances are that most of the time the monthly arrival will be pretty close to what you would have bought in the shop after going through all the reviews. On the other side of the coin, it’s clearly an advantage to only have to sell the product once and thereby get an income stream that continues for years afterwards.

The second is obviously quite useful in the current economic climate and one wonders what other categories of producer are trying to work out some way to create their product of the month type club.

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Sports and divers watches are always popular but sometimes it’s difficult to know where to look to find that one that’s just perfect for your needs and that looks the part too. The Technomarine watches range is a make that’s less commonly seen around but no less good than some of the more popular ones. Since it’s not quite so popular, chances are that you’ll get a lot more watch for your money than you’d expect and it’s much more likely to be unique to you among your circle of friends.

That “more for your money” aspect is probably the most significant. In many cases second line manufacturers feel that they have to try that little bit harder through offering more features for the same money as their competitors or by offering keener pricing or, particularly these days, both. Which adds up to significant benefits for their customers.

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The improved diet bit is doable for most of us though it does mean cutting down on the junk-food that we all love of course.

However, the bigger problem is fitting in an exercise programme around your normal life. In an ideal world, we’d all head off for the health club every evening but it’s pretty hard to get the time to do that on a consistent basis. Not only that, but starting off can be a serious turn-off as you walk in and see all those toned bodies everywhere then walk out and never go back as you figure that you’ll never get into that kind of shape.

What you can do to avoid that embarrassment aspect is to start off your exercise at home. One of the best ways to do that is to get yourself one of the ellipticals. An eliptical is basically a very fancy treadmill that exercises a lot more muscles than any normal treadmill could manage to do. That extra exercise means that it’s a lot harder work so you’ll need to set it pretty low to begin with but don’t worry about that… doing it at home means you don’t feel like a weakling when you’ve yours set at 1 and everyone else is at 7 or 8. You’ll get up to the higher settings in due course but starting low means that you’ll be more likely to stick to it.

Thus you’ll have a pretty toned body for that day when you do walk into a gym….

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As always, the selection online is much greater than you’d find in even the specialist tie shops and, of course, the prices are lower (sometimes lower than many of the ordinary ties).

So splash out for Christmas guys!

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