There's £100 to spend on something electrical or gadgety for my birthday present... but on what?
A little background reading for those of you who have still to make up your mind.
Here's my 10 current favourite electrical/gadgety things:
1) Sony NWMS9 Memory Stick Walkman: Ahhh, now I can download 2 hours 40 minutes of ace music of my choice into something small and shiny that fits dead easily into my pocket. This gadget has improved my tube journeys no end, allowing me to travel to work lost somewhere inside headphone world. Just so long as I remember not to start singing along in public.
2) Dell Dimension 4400 computer: OK, so it may not be the most glamorous PC in the world, but it works, it works well, and it gets me online to talk to you lot. And yes Apple fans, I know it's not a fashion icon like your white designer slab of technological wet dream, but I do sometimes like to be slightly conventional.
3) Sony Ericsson T68 mobile: My phone's a year old this week, so it's not exactly cutting edge any more, but at least it's had the upgrade so it thinks it's a T68i instead. Colour screen, WAP-enabled (whatever happened to WAP?) and a rather smart Arsenal background. One day I must learn to use it for something other than text messaging and playing patience.
4) Sony Cybershot-U DSC U10: Good to know that, should aliens ever land in Piccadilly Circus, I can whip my camera out, snap a few megapixels, upload the scoop of the century onto my PC and publish it on my blog. Assuming the aliens haven't zapped me dead first using their favourite gadget, of course.
5) Sony CDP-CX235 200-Disc Megastorage CD Player: When your CD collection exceeds 200, it's great to have the black-box equivalent of a jukebox to play them all in. Of course, if your CD collection really exceeds 200, it's still tough to decide which discs to leave out. I've set my black box permanently on completely random play, so it chucks up gem after gem after 'oh God, is that in my CD collection?' after gem.
6) Hewlett Packard Officejet G55 printer: Go back 25 years and photocopiers were fridge-sized smelly boxes that produced grubby A4 documents printed in grey at an angle, and you might just have seen one in an office. Now I have one in my own home that's small, accurate, clean and prints in colour. I believe it's also a fax machine, but I have yet to try getting that to work.
7) Pure Digital EVOKE-1 digital radio: It sounds better than it looks but, at last for under £100, perfect quality wireless. It took two months to find a shop that actually had one in stock, but now at last I can listen to more than just the five BBC stations, cheesy commercial drivel, geriatric phone-ins and amateur interfering local pirates. Top 3 favourite digital stations so far: BBC 6music, Ministry of Sound and XFM.
8) Philips 28PW6615 television: It's big and it's silver. It's also widescreen which means it has 20% extra TV picture, except that nothing ever happens along the edge of the screen so I'm still not sure why I bothered. Ah, if only my TV aerial could deliver the pixel-perfect picture quality of my television I'd be delighted.
9) ITV Digital box: Since the advent of Freeview my viewing pleasure has happily increased, for no additional money. I can watch TV Travel Shop. I can watch QVC. I can watch CBeebies. Thankfully there are a few other channels that are actually worth watching.
10) Oregon Scientific Projection Clock: I'm the kind of person who likes to know exactly what the time is to the second, and not just that the big hand is somewhere down the right-hand side of the dial. That's why I still wear a digital watch, whereas the trendier amongst you prefer an inaccurate but more fashion-conscious analogue bracelet. This radio-controlled clock satisfies my need for accuracy, plus it projects the time onto my bedroom ceiling so that even the myopic can be certain what time it is at twenty seven minutes past two in the morning, precisely.
That's 10 gadgets I already own.
Hopefully there's plenty of scope for you to nominate something I haven't yet got.
Maybe even something I might like...
You should nominate my £100-ish birthday electrical gadgety thing by posting a comment in the comments box below, or by email. Tell me the name of your nominated thing, and if possible a price and a website I can see/buy it on. All nominations to be received by midnight next Tuesday 25th February. Full details below.
The retail therapy project (Phase 2) (additional guidance)
