Shopaholic? Me?

I have already found you a great deal for this year. Besides the sales which Jessops currently has… you can also get some money off your total spend. You can actually get up to £50 off, so that could go towards another lens or even just photo printing. And the best bit is that you will have memories for years.

Enjoy!

I needed a wireless printer to make life a tad easier and I bought an HP Deskjet 3050. It’s RRP is £100 but I paid half price at £55. The one thing I did not take into account was that although I thought I wanted a basic printer, I didn’t!

So let me start with the Pros:-

• Prints Fast
• You can make copies
• You can scan
• It has wireless
• It is easy to set up
• You can get 2 sizes of inks – Black 190 or 480 / Colour 165 or 330 pages per cartridge
• You only need 2 sets of ink – a black and a colour cartridge
• Inks are cheap costing between £10-£15 each
• You can get compatible inks for HP
• Printing from pc to printer is decent quality

Cons

• It does not do borderless printing, which I think is important for photos
• You cannot properly centre the photos so the border is uneven
• The quality of a copied photo is miserable
• There is no preview pane
• You do not have quality choices for scanning or copying

Summary

If you want cheap and good prints except for “photo” copies and are ok with bordered photos, then it is a good printer… otherwise sorry you need to spend a tad more!

While trying to find some vouchers for cheap prints, I came across these fantastic deals at Jessops for big spends online. Up to £50 off and free delivery!!

buy.com has multiple bases including USA, UK, Italy, Canada, France, Germany and Spain which pretty much means they are as international as you can get.

What really impressed me was the price of this Polaroid I1437 Compact Digital Camera. At £60 for a 14 MP, it is cheap especially considering it is a Polaroid. And it has free shipping to boot. Admittedly it is part of the weekly deals, so you might not find it next week!

I need to get myself some wireless cctv cameras. I mostly need them for the playroom but being wireless means I can move them around the house as necessary (like to keep an eye out on a kid in punishment). What I really would love is a discreet wireless cam like a pen. It would be like being a fly on the wall. I would so love to see how my son’s day at school goes, because according to him he does lots of things but cannot remember any of them!

In the past, you went on holiday, took photos, got back and took your film for processing. You then stuck them in an album and forgot about them. With digital today, you go on holiday, take photos and download to your computer and then forget about them. However there is so much you can do. I like preparing slideshows and then showing them to friends and family. Just a quick email and viola, they get to share our memories. However I still print a few photos to stick in frames or er around the house. I even send a couple in my son’s pencil box.

And if you are into albums… personally I love photobooks. I am sure I have an offer for photobooks…. will dig it out and offer it to my shopaholics.

Tomorrow is my son’s first day at school. How time flies. Only yesterday I got him home from hospital. And now… School. I must get everything ready. His uniform, his school bag, his pencil box, my camcorder and my camera (to take lots of photos to remember this day), tissues (to wipe my tears), my alarm clock (to wake up despite the early wake up of the twins because you know tomorrow they will sleep in) etc etc.

One of my other hobbies besides shopping is photography. It does give the added benefit of all the extra shopping but it can build up in cost. However most people do not need to go into exorbitant expense as most are into point and shoot photography. This is why digital cameras are fantastic, you point, you shoot and you can see your results instantly. Also if you are not satisfied you can shoot again and again.

There are a number of things to look for in a camera but this is dependant on what you are after. However, in digital photography the main feature is pixels. The reality is that most cameras today have sufficient pixels to provide decent photographs. A lot of cameras are nowadays coming with 10 Mega Pixels or more. The reality is that anywhere in the range between 1 and 10 mp is good, though I would aim for between 5 – 7 mp.

I saw the phone that I would like to buy, now that I decided to withhold my spending for a while. Yes, I am trying to be prudent in this economic crisis. I must say that the shops are making it so hard with all the promotions available. Anyway, I digress, I love the new Ericsson phone with a 12 Megapixel camera but I cannot get one just yet here in the Isle of Man. Not that it matters so much, because it does not depend on the phone but on the cell towers to reflect on the reception (and unless you live very centrally in IOM)… so for now I guess Iwill wait. You never know… maybe Santa drops me one in my stocking!!!

We are back from Paris. Strangely enough the romance seemed to have reduced so much. Admittedly, I did go pregnant and with a toddler… but it was our wedding anniversary. Though it could be the fact that I had a strange lack of shopping in a major shopping capital!! I was a bit too exhausted to shop and shopping with a toddler and husband in tow, really doesn’t work.

On the plus side… the whole family seemed to enjoy the second part of the holiday in Disney. I have to admit that due to being so tired, I limited carrying our camcorders and cameras to one day at Disney. I did allow my hubby to use his compact camera… and I did keep stealing it to take photos… but it is nothing like my dslr! Perhaps I out to do a post of his compact versus my dslr.