The Great "Staying Behind The Joneses" Hunt

gbjbasdw · 6 September 2007 at 10:55AM

How about trying shops that rent out household items ?

I got an ex-rental 36" Toshiba widescreen TV for about £300 with a 1 year warranty from the shop. The original price would have been close to £2000.

The picture is just superb and it has features galore ( 3 scart, component video, dolby etc ) as you would expect from a flagship product.

littlescarlet · 6 September 2007 at 11:14AM

Having been a long time fan of PC gaming, and ALWAYS being 'behind the Jones's' I wanted to get something all our family (me, DH and 7yr old son) could play together in the living room instead of out of the way in office or bedroom. About 6 months ago I bought a 'nearly new' Gamecube for £40 on eBay complete with 5 games including the brilliant Zelda Windwaker. We have all played for hundreds of hours and with a Gamecube you can still play the games when you upgrade to a Wii, hopefully just after Christmas the Jones's will all be selling them off on eBay for the next big thing....

BillScarab · 6 September 2007 at 11:48AM

I suspect it will be a while before Wii's are being sold off cheap. Maybe when Nintendo release the updated version there have been rumours about.

sylviesinc · 6 September 2007 at 12:17PM

I just wanted to contribute and say that we bought our Hannspree 32" LCD TV from www.teleland.co.uk for the bargain price of £299.95 last month but it was on a 2 day sale. They still have them for sale under £350 however. We already had a freeview box so it didn't matter that there was no built in freeview. Then last week our freeview box died so we bought a Humax 9200TB PVR with freeview and 160GB HD which enables you to record 2 separate programmes while watching another, store photos, music, pause live Tv, etc etc....everything the Sky box can do. We paid a bargain £179.95 for this from Comet online.

We had never heard of Hannspree so took a chance, but the picture is absolutely gorgeous and the slim black TV looks fab. Having had a monster Sony before, we are very pleased with this one and have been able to give away our Sony to my son. I have since seen them sponsoring F1 racing so Hannspree must be a substantial company.

I did research PVRs before buying the Humax as there were a few cheapies on the net but I read so many reports of problems with them that we went with the one with the best reviews. The Humax is so user friendly I can't believe it and makes recording/watching TV such a pleasure! We watch normal DVDs on the PC or on the TV through the PS2.

So, for under £500 we have ourselves a top of the range entertainment centre........great!

Sami_Bee · 6 September 2007 at 12:20PM

We just got a great deal on a video camera at our local jessops (bolton in case anyone's interested) thats closing down, up to 70% off so don't forget to keep your ear to the ground a true everything must go sale is always a goldmine of bargains if we could of afforded it we would have bought 2 and sold the extra on ebay

silversurfer2 · 6 September 2007 at 12:34PM

Hi BilScarab, just joined forum having saw your comment about upgrading PC's. I did do a post yesterday but it seems to have got lost in the ether (normal for me!) Anyway, i have a 18 month old (still under grntee.)medion 8800 with a dual core pentium 830 3gh. I am confused over dual core and core 2 dual? can dual core be improved, (I do video editing with 1 gb memory) ? also the PC already has 3 fans; one on PS, one big one inside front case and another on 6700gx graphics card (just replaced by medion as it was noisy). Where would an extra fan be best located ? this PC is, on medion users site reputed to run hot anyway. I am not PC literate, i can fit and modifiy within reason but the workings are black magic to me ! thanks for any tips you post, Ted

BillScarab · 6 September 2007 at 2:00PM

Best if you start a new thread, however briefly the core 2 duo range are the successors to the dual core pentiums. You can get faster Pentium D processors so you could upgrade if you want, you should also be able to fit a core 2 duo processor as they have the same socket format, you'd need to check carefully though that your mother board would support it.

I think your graphics card uses some of the system memory so the best improvement you could make would be to add extra RAM.

If you want to improve the cooling realistically you have two choices, add more fans or replace the existing ones with better ones. If you have a fan at the front sucking in air you may be able to fit one at the back to blow it out if you have the space. Or you could replace your CPU and GPU fans with better quality ones.

Wolf · 6 September 2007 at 2:39PM

Hi everyone. First post etc....

With regard to surfer2, totally agree with Bill, the memory is the first thing to increase if you are using a lot of video/picture editing. As much as the motherboard will take and as much as you can afford just now as memory is at a decent price. Try Crucial, excellent company with top notch customer services.
Also you may look at where your PC is situated. If move it so it has a decent amount of space right round the base unit that can help as much as buying a new cooling setup. I have been to friends houses to fix a problem PC and find they have squeezed it away with no air circulation to let the hot air escape.
Your processor will be fine, unless you are doing high quality work and need the extra speed, there are quad core PC's out there now. The best way to think of it is having 4 PC's each running its own task, a dual core will be fine for some time.

As far as flat screen TV's go, my advice is don't bother yet. The technology is still not there yet. The original HD tv's that were sold to show SKY tv weren't even capable of showing the true picture and to an extent, still aren't. The best example i can give is to suggest looking in the background of a fast moving scene whilst the foreground has you fixed on a subject. You will notice that the motion blur far from being convincing is actually your panel being unable to display it accurately so it shows a suggested picture rather than a true one.
I commented on this to a store that was screening a £6000 set and his response was, 'people don't usually see that'.
Static or slow moving pictures look great, but move them at speed and they fall to pieces, a standard image will look fragmented and only true HD broadcasts show the improvement that still is disappointing.
They are very good for gaming tho, but again only on the consoles able to give the true hi-quality output.

Hope some of this helps, and saves a bit of cash.

silversurfer2 · 6 September 2007 at 2:53PM

Hi BillScarab, thanks for quick reply, probably not going ot mess with the 3gh chip, not much room to get extra fan in but i will check it out, I assume there will be a plug somewhere to power up the fan, or piggy back the existing fan supply. Yes ram will be the way forward but I understand to keep it balanced I need two extra strips of 1gb each, will need to watch martins tips for good deals! thanks again Ted

BillScarab · 6 September 2007 at 3:22PM

For RAM go to https://www.crucial.com and run the system scanner, it will tell you what your options are. Their prices are reasonable and free postage as well I think.

The Great "Staying Behind The Joneses" Hunt

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