Anyone gone on any mad spending splurges recently?

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Auntie Slag
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Anyone gone on any mad spending splurges recently?

Post by Auntie Slag »

Its been a while since anyone posted a thread where people list their recent major tech spends. The last I remember (vaguely) was when people upgraded or changed PC's for the onset of Vista. Is it because iPads and Smartphones rule most people's lives now? It makes good sense I suppose, not many people need a full-on computer these days when the alternatives have it covered so well.

I'm not gonna get all wistful for Commodore 64's or anything. Modern age tech is flipping marvellous. Never has one person felt so connected to so many he didn't care about... as Churchill the dog said.

It is good, though.
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Clay
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Post by Clay »

I'm looking at the real possibility of building a new box in the next month or two. Recently upgraded to Windows 7 on this one and it's not really taking... can't find the exact problem, but I suspect it's a driver issue with one of the motherboard components.

Newegg has many, many DIY starter kits that include a case, motherboard, and processor(s), so I've been looking at those. I can definitely say the new comp will have a SSD as the primary HD, though.
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Post by Denyer »

I downsized to a media PC with no fans and that takes up hardly any space -- one of the Shuttle models. Would expect future purchases to be similar but provide more raw power whilst staying silent. I prefer to have separate laptop and netbook options. Wouldn't usually recommend desktop systems to people, versus a laptop.

On the tablet front, gone through some basic ones, Nexus models when they became available (currently mainly using a second gen 7) and am interested in a future 8" Nexus if it's not much heavier.

No interest in smartphones. It's only in the last few years I've gone for something with a camera.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

With Amazon having merged with Love Film and turned Amazon Prime into a streaming service I figured I should get the most out of the price rise on a service I'd only previously used for guaranteed (ha!) next day delivery by getting some equipment I could actually play the content on my TV with.

So I bought a new blu ray player that was both compatible with Amazon (my previous one and the telly being just too old) and with inbuilt wi-fi. It took a couple of weeks before Amazon actually started working through it (I don't know why, they hadn't set the service up with Samsung yet?) but it now works fine and as a bonus I can watch YouTube and play music and video from my phone and tablet on the telly as well.

It also is multi-region (for the DVD's anyway, I'm not sure why getting one with the blu ray bit unlocked is so much more expensive), meaning I no longer need to switch to the old DVD player everytime I want to watch Beast Wars. Which, thanks to me going mad on blu rays over the last three years, is pretty much my only region 1 DVDs left making it an almost pointless bonus, but hey ho.

I am now just that little bit too in love with it.

Also, because there was now a blu ray player going spare, my mother went mad and spent £500 on a massive new TV for the living room to go with it, meaning I can now watch blu rays (and youtube and phone/tablet stuff as it's got the wifi as well) in the living room rather than my increasingly over cramped bedroom all the time. Result.

Annoyingly, the HD picture on the new TV looks, to my eyes, much better than the one on mine. So I've taken to endlessly fiddling with the settings to try and match them but with the only result of making it, if anything, slightly worse.

Mind, doing this whilst watching The Man With the Golden Gun wasn't a very good idea as trying to use Sir Roger Moore's face as a standard for human skin tones is the route to madness.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

We bought a new smart telly as out old telly broke, we also so got some less sexy grown up things like a new bedroom furniture and a new boiler (woooo). Not been able to get the Smart bit working yet. Our Sky box has an adaptor thing to do similar smart functions, and I think its hogging all the bandwith.

What Blu-Ray player have you got that's region free for DVDs, dalek?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

It's a Sony one... but I've no idea what the brand is now I've thrown out the box (I do remember the Amazon listing for the same player claimed it was region locked despite mine from Ebay being sealed in pack and region free, so it might be worth having a scan around Ebay. Mine was fairly expensive because of the wifi, if you've got that on your TV you'll pick up something the same a lot cheaper).

In terms of the smart thing... if your TV is connected to the internet then it should be working- at least in relation to the things you can select from your TV menu (Netflix; IPlayer; Youtube; Amazon/Lovefilm and so on), and any recent phone or tablet should should play stuff on there automatically (you just go into your music or video player, and once you hit play- assuming you're connected to wifi- a little square box should appear in the corner when you tap the screen than has the number of compatible devices in- just hitting that square-assuming only one such device connected- will start the video/music playing through your telly automatically).

In terms of working stuff on your telly through your PC, you might need to download some softwear. For instance, the living room telly in a LG, the smart menu registers the PC when the PC is turned on, but when I try to select that option to connect the two it tells me to go to the LG website and download something that will make the two work in sympathy.










Does any of that make sense?
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Yes it does, thank you :)
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Post by Knightdramon »

Been pacing myself really well the past...6 or so months. Last "big" purchase/splurge was my nintendo 3DS XL and pokemon X back in October.

Last TF I bought for myself was MP Smokescreen in December.

January-May I've been playing it smart and not doing anything reckless with cash, however, this whole thing changes mid/late May.

No big telly or anything, possibly a halfway decent computer monitor and I foresee some mad spending on collectibles soon-ish...
Few stuff in the UK to trade/sell. Measly sales thread.
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Post by Heinrad »

As I'm buying a new to me car in a couple of weeks('93 Thunderbird. Not my first choice, not even what I was looking for, but it's in good shape and spent 16 of it's 21 years in Florida, and since coming to this salted hell, hasn't been on the road at all in the winter), I've been trying to keep my splurges to a minimum. That being said, Last month I upgraded my iPad and got an iPhone. Which is being used as an iPod as well until I get the iPod fixed.

I also got the Masterpiece G2 Sideswipe.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Skyquake87 wrote:Yes it does, thank you :)
Now you can watch my YouTube videos on your big screen TV like I'm in the room with you sitting on your face!
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

inflatable dalek wrote:Now you can watch my YouTube videos on your big screen TV like I'm in the room with you sitting on your face!

...ha! whilst doing wavy hand gestures!
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Post by ganon578 »

My splurges come from a smattering of small buys that I don't pay attention to until I add them all up. I've recently bought a bunch of stuff consisting of:

Rechargeable batteries for my 360 controller
Vanquish (360), Halo: Reach (360 Digital), Halo Wars (360 Digital), Kingdoms of Amalur (360 Digital), Mega Man 6 (3DS)
Mega Bloks Warthog Resistance, UNSC Cryo Bay, ODST Drop Pod, 4 Blind Packs

It all rounds out to ~$115, but it's all stuff I don't need when I should be buying more appropriate stuff for the house/yard.

Buyers remorse, here I come!!!
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Post by Sades »

Um, I bought Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Does that count?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

It depends, were you mad when you did it?


@Skyquake: A useful tip I've found if your wifi signal makes it difficult to play stuff from your phone/tablet on the telly: It helps to put the device next to the broadband router thing rather than closer to the telly as you might think.

My signal is actually really annoying, works fine with music but when I try to play videos from my tablet it just keeps pausing and freezing up. I suspect an upgrade to SUPER broadband is coming very soon. I could just watch the things on my tablets, but having this technology means I insist on using it in the face of all sense. It was really annoying when I was trying to watch the video of the Richard Herring internet show I went to a couple of months ago, I want to see if I can spot myself in the audience, not have to keep dealing with freezing imagery.

Annoyingly I couldn't spot myself. What short of internet comedy show wouldn't want lots of nice big close ups of the most tired looking man in the audience to show how funny it was?
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STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
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Post by Clogs »

Had a call from BT, my ISP, about services I currently use and, before the chap could get any further, I asked for BT Infinity. Hm, turns out I pre-empted a 9 minute sales talk :) Upshot is upgrade and new hub, no cost to me except a half day off work and having to tidy up the bedroom...

Not bought anything...

Er, this thread is about tech, yes? Not clothes?
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Post by Clay »

Denyer wrote:I downsized to a media PC with no fans and that takes up hardly any space -- one of the Shuttle models. Would expect future purchases to be similar but provide more raw power whilst staying silent. I prefer to have separate laptop and netbook options. Wouldn't usually recommend desktop systems to people, versus a laptop.
What would you recommend as a thrifty option that web browse and run a word processor? The old box has turned to not really have the hardware to handle Windows 7, and using the phone for everything pretty well sucks.

Still intend to build another desktop, but I need something serviceable in the meantime.
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Post by Denyer »

If you can find a second-hand netbook that won't be running the fan constantly, such as a Dell Mini 1012 (because it doesn't have any fans) hook one up to a monitor. That's my backup machine of choice, and it doesn't hurt that it travels in very little space.

Same would probably go for most used laptops, TBH. The 2006 era Thinkpad I've still got runs Vista/7 perfectly acceptably. So do the similar vintage Dell Latitudes at work we're only just getting to replacing. Older but well-built is a good approach provided you can test it or get from a reputable seller.

Would offer you the Core 2 Duo box that's gathering dust here if you were in the UK...
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Post by Auntie Slag »

Alright, I’ve just bought my first new computer since 2001, I’ve had others in the intervening time but they’ve all been second-hand and from a similar 1999-2003 era (as that’s what I was comfortable with and they’ve done a good job until now).

So this is my first Windows machine (Windows 8), and its early days. I want to download applications from the internet so I googled up some ideas and went to a website (Techradar) that reviewed the 10 best video editing apps (with links) and the comments at the bottom were from disgruntled people saying: “Hey thanks a lot pal, I downloaded the (well known) program from your link and it screwed up my favourites, hobbled my home page and installed a Trojan”.

I don’t fancy this, but I’ve found a site called Sourceforge which looks like a reliable repository for pretty much everything I could ever need. Do they um… virus check every downloadable app they have there? Would I have to be extremely unlucky to contract anything from them?
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Post by Denyer »

I don't think SF prohibits bundling ad-ware. They tried it themselves at one point and it blew up in their faces.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comm ... ed_adware/

Some otherwise decent software I use (would have to check for examples) does come bundled with this type of thing...

Check reviews, ask here, etc. From memory that may be faulty or not represent current circumstances, VirtualDub and AviDemux are safe but not really what you'd call editors for anything other than basic filters, Freemake comes with shit, don't know about the rest.
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Post by Auntie Slag »

Thanks Denyer, I'm glad you mentioned VirtualDub as it seems to be held in high regard. I need something that would be the equivalent of Apple's iMovie, that would led me edit 4-5 minute video pieces and overlay text (e.g. name and job title of the person on screen), and allow for nice screen blends and fades so I can cut from say, the person to the building they're working in and back again).

Nothing more complex than that. People can do this with just an iPhone nowadays, so I was hoping it was pretty standard fare as a free downloadable program now that I've got the grunt to handle such things.
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