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It’s the time of year when we’re all trying to get all our Christmas presents for friends and family.  Last year we did our 12 Days of Christmas Shopping and we thought it would be good to remind you of some great places to purchase gifts online!

1. Apple
2. 123-Reg
3. Dell
4. Amazon
5. AVG
6. Misco
7. CD WOW
8. Dabs
9. HMV
10. PC World
11. The Carphone Warehouse
12. I Want One Of Those

We hope you find this helpful for ideas!

So our first post on Windows 7 RC was relativly short, this one comes after a bit of use and testing and we stand by the previous title “Windows 7 RC is BRILLIANT”  we are very impressed.

If you don’t want to read on then you can take these three things away from our findings

• Speed
• Stable
• Compatible

For those with the time to read on we will explain what we are meaning by these three findings.

Speed

We have Windows 7 running on a pretty average system, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Memory, 160GB Hard Drive. Nothing hugely special by today’s standards but we have found it to run very nicely.

The sort of use it has got is in the list below and at no point have we found it to be slow, non-responsive or sluggish. Obviously it is a new install and this helps but still we are impressed! So it has been used for the following over the last few weeks

• Website design
• Internet / Email
• General Office work
• FTP
• Remote Support

Stable

No crashes or hanging to date! What more can we say…?

Compatability

Software / Hardware we have successfully working on the Windows 7 system is as follows:

• Dell Optiplex 360 – ok, this is actually the hardware it is running on, but still useful to know!
• T-Mobile Mobile Broadband Adaptor – this didn’t work on the Beta so we are very impressed it works now!
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Hamachi VPN
• Filezilla
• Firefox
• Crossloop
• AVG 8.5 Internet Security
• Windows Home Server Connector Software

We still have got a bit more testing before we would be happy to adopt it as a operating system for a production office machine, but I am very tempted! Roll on Final Release…

As we can only talk about the machines we have actually tested it does limit us a little to the wide range that Dell offer.  But here are our Top 3!

1. Studio 15 – This may not be a high end laptop, but not everyone can afford a Precision or XPS Studio!  The Studio 15 starts at around £399 and comes with the options to be a very  powerful or gaming laptop.  Intel Core Duo 2 Processors, up to 4GB Memory, Running Windows Vista, Graphics Card from 128MB!  Perfect for the average home gamer!  These laptops are stylish and well built and best of all great value for money!  Can’t be bad!
2. Latitude E5500 – Starting at around £530 this isn’t a cheap business laptop, but neither is it a really expensive one with some great like back-lit keyboard, ambient light sensor as well as all the usual stuff this laptop has incredible battery life, one user in particular can’t believe how good it is.  If you are looking for a machine that will give you a long time running the machine away from a power source then the Latitude E5500 is a certain.  We haven’t reviewed the E5500 but here is our review of the E6500 which is a similar machine!
3. XPS M1330 – This neat little laptop is brilliant, although no cheap.  For anyone who wants a lightweight, small notebook this should definitely be considered.  With options for high memory and a decent graphics card it is really a showy off laptop!  Read our Dell XPS M1330 Reviews:

• Dell XPS M1330 – Long Term Test

• Dell XPS M1330 Crimson Red Laptop Review

Over the past 12 days we’ve recommended 12 different retailers to you for Christmas present ideas.  As we are at the end of it all we thought it would be a good idea for us to do a quick review of who the 12 retailers were.

1. Apple
2. 123-Reg
3. Dell
4. Amazon
5. AVG
6. Misco
7. CD WOW
8. Dabs
9. HMV
10. PC World
11. The Carphone Warehouse
12. I Want One Of Those

Which retailers have you used?  Who is your favourite retailer?

Our 10th recommended Christmas retailer is PC World.  PC World, probably best known for their advertising slogan, specialise in Computers.  Their product range is mainly based on either computer hardware, computer software, computer accessories and electronic gadgets (digital cameras, tv’s, etc).  We mainly recommend Dell machines, but you can occasionally find a gem of a deal at PC World so its worth checking out their offers!

One the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me a brand new Dell Computer!  Sounds pretty nice eh!  We are a big fan of dell as they provide very good quality machines at reasonable prices!  They are bound to have some great deals going on around the festive period!

Want to read review before you buy?  Check out the Dell Machine Reviews on the Brandstar Website!

The question I get asked so often is how much is the cheapest laptop? Which isn’t as black and white as people seem to think (or maybe hope!). Using our favoured supplier Dell let’s look at a some prices and see what we get!

The Cheapest…

Going on Dell laptops for Home you can buy a laptop for £269 including VAT and Delivery. Not bad. But what will the laptop be any good for? Well this is an inspiron Mini 9 running Ubuntu (not Windows) and really is designed solely for internet, emails and maybe the odd word document. But you won’t get much more out of it than that. It is small with a 8.9″ screen so isn’t designed for people who use a PC/Laptop a lot and want an everyday machine. Something portable for checking emails etc whilst on holiday or travelling then this is great! Otherwise…read on.

The Cheapest we would recommend for the average user…

For the cheapest machines you need to look at the Inspiron laptops of the Dell range and they currently start at £329 inc VAT & Delivery. I personally would upgrade the processor to an Intel Core 2 Duo from the Celeron and also increase the memory to at least 2GB rather than 1GB so therefore giving a cost of £439. Not so much because the user would need the specification straight away but most people will look at this being a long term investment and not change it as often as some businesses would. So for the extra £110 I would say it is well worth it.

Sound advice? We believe so, but contact your local independant IT Supplier and see what they have to say too.

The Short Answer

£269 but I would say spend £439 if you want the machine for more than just emails and internet.

RED is a global fund put together to help the fight against AIDS in Africa. In January 08, Dell and Microsoft joined together to support the cause by creating a RED Product Range. Dell and Microsoft are only the most recent companies to join the product range, already RED have support from Motorola, American Express, Gap, Giorgio Armani, Converse, Apple and Hallmark. The links take you to the RED section for each company to see what they are providing for the charity and how they got involved. You may be thinking, “well this is good but I bet it’ll cost me loads more money to buy the products!” Well it doesn’t! It’s at no extra cost to you, you just have to buy the product and the company that the product is from will give some of its’ profit to the charity.

The products in the Dell RED collection are Printer 948 (PRODUCT) RED, XPS M1530 (PRODUCT) RED, XPS M1330 (PRODUCT) RED and XPS One. Microsoft’s RED Product Collection isn’t quite as expansive as the other companies involved, however it is as equally as interesting. Their RED Product is Windows Vista Ultimate (Product) RED which has been put on all of the Dell Laptops and Desktops mentioned previously in this blog article.

Want to find out a bit more about the charity and what they actually do? The image above is RED’s ‘mission statement’, click on it and you’ll go the the site. On the website there is also an about page.

The site also has some cool features which help publicise RED (e.g. Community Tool Kit and Impact Cards.) Also there is an Impact Calculator which shows you how the money you have spent has helped the organisation by showing you what different products can buy the charity.

We think this is a great way for some of the big companies to get really behind a need in this world and one that we can be part of too!  Fantastic Idea!

If you have read any of the blog posts over at brandstar.co.uk you will find that I often rave about the Dell XPS Notebook range, and they really are great machines. However yesterday I got my first play with the new Dell Vostro 1510. Ultimately (well in my opinion) Dell have combined the Vostro 1500 and the XPS 1530 and produced a very nice machine!

Compared to the older Vostro 1500 it is smaller, lighter and thinner. The matt finish of the laptop lid has gone and is now a glossy, almost sparkly finish. Dell have taken the multimedia button idea from the XPS and put buttons above the keyboard on the 1510.

The slot loading CD drive helps the laptop be thinner than its older brother too and the model I saw had an inbuilt web cam much like my xps 1330.

I said when I got my XPS that I would never go back to the Vostro range, but now I am not so sure that is true! What’s more the Vostro is cheaper than the XPS! Well worth a look if you want a portable laptop and a good price

They’re my first thoughts on the Vostro 1510.

For me, buying online is like second nature, in fact I probably spend more online these days that I do in the high-street. It is just more convenient as well as the fact that online prices are usually cheaper. But what about squeezing out a little bit more?

Many people will be familiar with store reward schemes, Tesco Clubcard for example, but the one I want to recommend today is Nectar. Nectar is often thought of as the Sainsburys “clubcard”. But you can collect points at so many more stores, BP for example. But the best bit is that you can collect points online from hundreds if not thousands of retailers including Amazon.co.uk, Play.com, ebookers.com and Dell.co.uk. Which makes collecting points even easier! Nectar.com is the place to start for a full list of those retailers taking part!

If you shop online then this is certainly something to consider, I saved a lot of money in Argos the other day spending nectar points. I bought a plane ticket the other day from ebookers and for every pound the plane ticket cost I got 2 nectar points! That is a common thing 2 points per pound, but there are often offers on. For example, earlier this week I got an offer from Dell of triple points, so that is 6 points per pound, not bad when I just spent over £1000 with Dell!

Some people think it is a bit sad collecting points like this, but for very little effort you can collect something that is going to save you money on something in the future! I saved around £70 in Argos, admittedly I had around 16000 points but as I have just shown you, if you take advantage of the offers then you can save those points pretty quick!

Give it a go, nectar.com also lists the places you can spend your points, both online and on the high-street.