Buying for your child is a daunting experience. There’s such a plethora of baby paraphernalia out there that deciding what you need, what you don’t and what all the jargon means can cause sleepless nights (and that’s only supposed to start once the baby is born!). It’s certainly a minefield, but one that John Lewis aims to help you navigate.

John Lewis Nursery Advice is a free service, offered to all parents, which aims to guide you through the complexities of the ideal cot, car seat, buggy, pram, wardrobe and all other manner of equipment. Being an expectant father, I decided to check it out.

It was evident by the length of time that we had to wait before getting an appointment that the service was popular. Expect to wait at least 2 weeks if you want a weekend slot, less if you’re able to go during the week.

The appointment lasts around an hour, which is plenty of time to cover all aspects of baby purchases. The nursery advisor also made us feel like we were the only thing on her mind and the appointment felt unrushed.

The advice given was very sound, truly impartial and very informative. When asking about which option was best, the advisor recommended the product that was right for us, not necessarily the most expensive option and indeed guided us away from expensive novelty items that the uninitiated may have felt would be bordering on child abuse not to provide their baby with.

By the time we were ready to leave we felt that we’d been given a really useful run-through of what we needed and where to get it and could look on smugly at the harassed-looking parents-to-be wading their way unaided through the terrifyingly well-stocked nursery department.

By the time we had cogitated over our complimentary pastry and coffee and thought of another question for Sue, she had already finalised our list and was able give it to us there and then (normally posted out to you).

The list contained all the basic items we would require, with a few luxury items for us to ponder on and was available online for us to order.

The list can also be issued to friends and relatives for them to use as you would a wedding list.

You can also add items to the list at will – although I’m sure Sue’s no-nonsense approach to a baby’s requirements would have ensured nothing vital was missing in the first place.

We were able to purchase big items on the day and have since ordered off the list, so now we just sit back and wait for John Lewis to deliver it all on the pre-arranged date – oh and that’s free too!

Tags: Dad Baby John Lewis

John Lewis Nursery Advice Service originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:34:09 +0100

You might want to get your other half involved in a spot of DIY over a bank holiday weekend, but does that mean you have to fall for gimmicks and tools that don’t provide the oomph? We put the Diva/Handy Mandy screwdriver drill combo to the test and unfortunately the results were very disappointing.

Don’t get us wrong, we admit that you don’t need the biggest, most powerful over the top drill/screwdriver for every job but these are so under-powered that you have to question whether they can even cope putting together a set of shelves from the flat-pack holy grail - IKEA.

Perhaps if the manufacturer hadn’t spent its time on working out which funky colour to coat them in it might have created a tool that could actually shift stubborn screws or drill into even the softest of woods rather than being only really suitable for very easy jobs.

Coloured in gold and purple respectively they’ll just about handle the most basic jobs. If you’re brave enough to buy one for your girlfriend, you may also want to be wearing protection - they smack of being the tiniest bit sexist.

To complete the look, they also come with a belt holder that allows you to carry round both the tool and it’s accessories (they come with a selection of screwdriver and drill bits), and if the battery lasts we very much doubt it will, you might have a piece of kit that is more than a paperweight after 10 minutes.

Tags: Gadgets DIY

The DIY Diva Handy Mandy originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 11 May 2005 00:35:20 +0100

Stanley has a reputation for doing things properly and their range of power strips and surge protectors are no exception. Both units come in ‘home’ and ‘workshop’ options, with the workshop options being built for the rugged life in a metal casing. With the Surge Protector the difference is that the home version comes in a 6-way version, whereas the metal cased workshop version only comes in 4-way.

Both versions include an integral illuminated power switch means that you can be sure that nothing has been left on accidentally - a real plus when you’re running multiple devices from the same power supply.

The power strips include nifty little rubber covers for the sockets not in use - meaning that all the mess you generate in your workshop does not end up in the bottom of them and with 5M of cable they’re sufficiently long for most applications.

While the surge protectors come with a £6,000 Connected Equipment Warranty, meaning that if anything fries whilst connected to it, Stanley will do the right thing, and replace your products. If anything this demonstrates the confidence Stanley has in its product.

Whilst we at Pocket-Lint towers found it difficult to deliberately simulate a power surge, we were incredibly impressed with the quality of the build and the attention to detail - these products are really built to last.

Tags: Gadgets Belkin

Stanley 4-Way Power Strips and Stanley Surge Protectors originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 04 May 2005 19:15:19 +0100

A satellite navigation system is only as good as the roads it takes you on - or so we’ve been told. Determined to put this premise through rigorous testing, we took the Navman iCN510 on an excursion through Europe, just to see where it took us.

Let’s start with the display. The iCN510 performs well with a clear display that even in bright sunlight has sufficient contrast to allow you to see where you’re going. The touch screen is good and navigation around a variety of options is simple. Settings can be customized easily, allowing you to tweak the system to your own tastes.

During navigation (on the roads, not the menu!) it offers you a variety of views - including 3D, but, whilst looking impressive, quickly became tiresome and we opted for a more map-like display - with the map adjusting itself around the position of your car, allowing you to quickly spot that right angle bend ahead - a real bonus when driving unknown roads. The canned voice (available in both male and female versions) provides clear instructions and helped get us out of a number of fixes, although on long journeys it can start to grate!

When in England, with half an idea of where we were going, we tried to confuse the device. It didn’t work. Within seconds it had recalculated the route and set us back on track. It only asked us to perform a U-turn when there really wasn’t an alternative route to our destination. This, however, did present its own problems. Living in rural Wiltshire, we found ourselves being sent down barely drivable roads, although we put that down more to the highways agency than the satellite navigation.

On to the European epic. Setting off with minimal time to spare the system gave us a very clear indication of how fine we were about to cut it to reach the Channel Tunnel - we made it with 6 minutes to spare, having had to negotiate around the log jam created by militant French lorry drivers blocking the ferry ports.

The system didn’t automatically assume that we were travelling via the Channel Tunnel and instead opted to steer us towards the ferry terminals. On this point comes our first piece of advice - you need to use the sat nav with a bit of common sense. If the road signs point you towards the tunnel and the sat nav disagrees, always go with the road signs…

When on the continent, basemaps are provided as standard with the unit, giving you details of all the major routes. They proved surprisingly useful, especially on the mammoth 14-hour drive we embarked upon. You could say it really cut the mustard through Dijon…

The 510 proved the only thing that preserved tempers within the car on the trip (to Chamonix). Its confident directions left us in no doubt on the route to take, eliminating arguments over inadequate map-reading, although it can be depressing when it asks you to remain on the same road for 200 miles, telling you that you’ve only got another 11 hours of driving remaining!

The European maps come in at an additional £150, but if you’re going to be doing a lot of driving on the continent they’re probably worth it. Incredibly detailed, they proved invaluable when attempting to locate an inexplicably hidden coach station when picking up another member of our party in Chamonix.

One of the few gripes we had about the system was that the memory was not really sufficient for more than the essentials, meaning that serious travellers might either want to take a laptop along with them, or upgrade to one of the 510’s big brothers in the 600 range. With only a 128MB memory card as standard we only managed to fit the south of England, the European base maps and eastern France road maps on. You could of course increase the storage capacity of your card - but with the system costing £500 and the European road maps another £150, it seems criminal to have to spend more on additional storage.

It would be great to see Navman combining this excellent system with something like Road Angel (to notify you of any pesky traffic cameras etc) and a link to traffic congestion information - quickly routing you round the delay - now that’s really something we’d pay for.

Tags: Car And GPS GPS Navman

Navman iCN510 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:52:49 +0000

At this time of year, golf can be a miserable experience. Trudging around in alternately soaking and freezing clothing and a force 10 gale is acceptable when your ball flies straight and true down the fairway, but trying to dig your ball out of the 14th clump of rough that afternoon is no picnic. If you're a crap golfer with ambitions of taking on Tiger Woods, this may be the game for you.

The game centres on one course, with constantly changing wind conditions. In the solo play mode, you earn prize money for delivering good shots and completing the hole within par. This money can be used to upgrade your skills (power, accuracy, recovery, luck) or to upgrade your tools (woods, irons or balls).

Once you've earned enough prize money you can progress to playing against golfing legends of our time. These prove a real challenge and even the most hardened mobile gamer will struggle to beat these guys easily.

This is very easy to pick up, but incredibly difficult to master. The control system is simple with all shots being set-up and executed from the central nipple on the D-pad. Even the most cack-handed amongst us can get the hang of it.

Tags: Gaming Mobile phone games Sports games EA Phones

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 07:57:07 +0000

If you’ve ever had an estate agent measure up your house you’ve probably seen that natty little box they wield, zapping the walls in an attempt to get a grip on the dimensions of your rooms. Eliminating the need for tape measures, this is JCB’s contribution to the “tapeless” tape measure.

On first impressions the device looks easy to use and the instructions clearly lay out on how to get the best out of the device. Its rugged design also positions it as a tool for the building site as well as the DIY enthusiast.

However, when we put it to the test it seemed to occasionally give inaccurate readings when compared against measurements taken with a traditional tape measure.

This may be down to user ineptitude, but you have to be very careful not to fire the sonic ‘beam’ at curtains, picture frames etc. In the garden this becomes even more problematic to get accurate readings, where you have to find a place with a solid wall at either end and no plants or trees blocking the line of fire.

When the measurements were accurate it made the volume and area calculations faultlessly, but this doesn’t really help when we couldn’t get the device to carry out its core function effectively - that of taking accurate measurements.

Tags: Gadgets DIY JCB

JCB Ultrasonic Distance Meter originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:42:37 +0000

Winter is well and truly upon us and time spent in the garden is lessening as the nights draw in. It's cold and the last thing you want to have to do is spend hours tidying up those piles of leaves.

With this in mind we put the Black and Decker Blowervac to the test. Black and Decker say that this design has come about as a result of extensive customer research and this does seem to be borne out in its spec. Changing from blowing to vacuuming is easy, with a quick release mechanism built into the fan unit. The vacuum bag is also simple to fit and empty, although at first attempt we didn't quite get it right and paid the price with a face full of muddy, wet leaves. The 1800w motor certainly helps when you're attempting to vacuum up those stubborn, trodden in leaves.

The Blowervac comes with a special scraper, attached to the bottom of the vacuum nozzle that assists in the lifting of wet leaves. Our garden resembles a quagmire in the wet, but the vacuum did its job and picked up pretty much everything thrown at it. When vacuuming in the wet be sure to wear your dirtiest clothes as any mud picked up rapidly becomes wet slurry running down your leg.

With two speed settings you get the option to have it on very fast, or astoundingly fast. This sometimes means that everything happens a little too quickly, but with practice you get used to the pace of the machine.

When vacuuming, the bag fills rapidly and starts to get quite heavy. The inbuilt shredder slices and dices the leaves so that the bag will convert leave at a 10:1 ratio, hence the weight problem. Even the strap provided doesn't do a great job of taking the weight off and you often end up stooping in an uncomfortable position to complete the job.

The blower is great, although it sends leaves flying around the garden in all directions, rather that allowing you to quietly move them into a pile. This would be helped if the nozzle wasn't totally straight, but bent slightly at the end, pushing the leaves along the ground, rather than into the air. However, the blower is ideal for instant garage floor sweeping, or even returning gravel to your driveway when it's all run out over the road.

The only major gripe we have is that it's not petrol driven, so those of you with large gardens may want to consider other models. Even in our ‘small' garden the cable kept getting in the way and having to carry an extension cable around soon became tiresome.

Tags: Gadgets DIY Black and Decker

Black and Decker GW350 Blowervac originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 15 Dec 2004 14:53:46 +0000

In the great scheme of DIY purchases the cordless screwdriver often comes straight after the power drill. It makes many of those common DIY tasks around the house much more speedy and a lot less effort. With a huge range of devices on the market it's always difficult to decide quite which one is most suited to your needs.

In this review we put JCB's cordless screwdriver kit through its paces. On first impressions the kit promises much. As we opened the specially designed carry case we were amazed at the sheer range of attachments that were available to us. In addition to the usual cross-head and flat-head bits, we were also presented with socket bits, Allen-keys and many more we've yet to find a use for. In all there are 80 individual attachments for the screwdriver.

The screwdriver comes with an internal battery, which means giving it a good charge before its first use. Whilst this isn't normally a problem it does mean that should the power run out half way through a job you would need to wait for it to fully recharge. This should only take 3 hours, but if you're doing a lot of screwing you may want to think about using a model with a removable battery.

The screwdriver feels a little flimsy and the balance of it doesn't quite feel right in your hand, but after much use we're still impressed with its durability. When folded into the gun shape (useful for getting into awkward places) the forward and reverse button is a little difficult to reach and we found applying the necessary pressure onto the screw when in this configuration tricky.

As the screwdriver only has one speed it's a little over eager to complete some operations. It wasn't always ideal for certain jobs because of this. When using it on delicate materials we found we had to be very careful not to over-tighten the screw.

It's also a little underpowered. For some of the tougher jobs the screwdriver struggled to turn and clearly demonstrated it was straining, as the torch-light went out as it worked. The ability to adjust the torque would be useful, which isn't available on this model.

Tags: Gadgets DIY JCB

JCB Cordless Screwdriver Set originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 24 Nov 2004 07:54:05 +0000

JCB have made huge strides in the DIY arena in recent years. Trading on their reputation as manufacturers of heavy plant they’ve produced a wide range of power tools aimed at the amateur DIYer. With their reputation at stake they haven’t let themselves down at all with the Household DIY kit.

The kit is firmly pitched at those people needing basic equipment to complete everyday jobs around the house, whilst occasionally needing to carry out a little more ‘advanced’ tasks. It meets those demands well and we’ve yet to find a job that the kit doesn’t contain a tool with which to complete it.

Priced at under £60 it meets those demands well and the kit contains a veritable plethora of tools - a bi-directional power drill, chisels, adjustable spanners, screwdrivers, craft knives, mole grips, pliers, wire strippers, a file and much, much more. All of this comes together with a hardwearing and perfectly sized tool bag. For the fashion conscious amongst you, all the equipment is JCB yellow and carries the world famous logo!

The quality of some of the tools is slightly questionable, with a light flimsy feel to a number of them. We got the impression that after consistent use they may give up on us and need replacement. However, considering the price, that’s hardly surprising. If you want to carry out a ‘specialist’ job you’ll probably want to buy additional items to augment what is already provided.

The only piece of electrical equipment - the power drill - is good enough to take on most jobs and JCB even throw in a range of drill bits for masonry, wood and metal. It again feels a little lightweight, but performed well in most cases. It took a while, but it got through everything but stone walls, which is a challenge for any 240V drill.

Another minor downside is the lack of any screwdriver bits to go with the drill, which, as it is capable of running both clockwise and anticlockwise, would have been a nice addition.

Tags: Gadgets DIY JCB

JCB Household DIY Kit - EXCLUSIVE originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 03 Nov 2004 08:37:46 +0000

Ask many people what Rapesco manufactures and you’ll probably get quite a few bemused looks. Ask who makes their office stapler and they may, after a brief search, discover that Rapesco manufactures many of them.

The company has built itself a reputation on making all manner of office accessories, all manually operated and all designed for the normally safe office environment.

So, when we at Pocket-lint towers opened our postbag, we were a little surprised to pull out what Rapesco claims to be “the world’s best 35mm Nailer/Stapler”. Industrial tools from an office tool manufacturer? We gave it the benefit of the doubt and set about putting it through its paces.

The instructions were simple and within minutes we were locking and loading the nails (included in the box) into the chamber. The nail gun says it will takes nails up to 35mm in length, but we tried it with the slightly shorter 25mm versions.

First impressions were good and it scored highly on the ‘mates will be impressed with this when they look round the shed’ scale. It’s lightweight, fearsomely dangerous (when in the wrong hands) and its looks reminded us somewhat of one of the laser pistols from Star Wars. However, the wife wasn’t overly impressed to see a grown man prancing around the shed reliving desperate battles against hordes of Storm Troopers (she was even less impressed when we asked her to plait her hair into buns and wear a toga pleading “help me Obi Wan”).

We immediately experienced one essential feature. The on/off switch at the back makes it difficult to fire nails unless you really mean to - it saved us from an unfortunate episode in casualty, nearly firing the first nail through our finger.

We put it through it’s paces on a number of different surfaces and even attempted to emulate the manufacturers claimed firing speed - 240 nails/staples a minute. We got nowhere close and think for our own health that it’s probably not a good idea to attempt it again. However, it is quick and fires as fast as you can pull the trigger.

So, what’s it good for? Well, if you’re going to be undertaking some heavy-duty projects this isn’t for you. However, it’s great for many things - as long as you’re only using wood or plasterboard (or other such lightweight materials). It generally performs well and saves a hell of a lot of time if much of your project needs nailing. Even if you only use it to attach the hardboard to the back of your latest Ikea purchase you’ll get some use out of it.

Not everything is rosy however. It caused problems when we tried to use it one handed, firing in staples into beams above our head. The staples refused to fire into the wood so that they were flush. This meant that we had to then get a hammer to finish off the job - not ideal if you’ve invested fifty quid so that you don’t have to do exactly that. Using a second hand to steady the gun helped greatly, but it will mean that you can’t do a number of jobs on your own and will have to enlist the help of a mate.

We also experienced the occasional jam, but they proved easy to clear and hardly surprising considering the force that the nails are being fired into the surface.

A further minor gripe is that Rapesco does require you to load the Master Nailer with it’s own brand of staples, so there’s no buying the cheap ‘un-badged’ versions, but it shouldn’t be a problem considering the range of nails and staples available.

Tags: Gadgets DIY Rapesco

Rapesco TacWise Master Nailer 191EL Pro originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:14:55 +0100