Top Ten Tips On Saving Fuel Costs

Everywhere you look there are 'Top 10' tips/guides on saving fuel and therefore money and I have compiled a few of them below:

• Turn off your air conditioning if you have it


• Shut all your windows (to reduce drag)

So basically sweat like a pig whilst driving along in the summer! From what I gather, if you are driving around town and the like then turn off your air-con and open up your windows as for short trips this is the most economical.

If you are going on a long journey on Motorways etc. then you should close your windows and put on the air con ensuring that you are circulating the air inside the car.

• Reduce weight in your car by emptying your boot - do you really need all that stuff in your boot?


• Check your tyre pressure - underinflated tyres can severly effect your MPG


• If you have it, use cruise control


• If you don't, drive smoothly - don't accellerate or break too sharply.


• Change gears between 2,000 and 2,500 rpm for optimum fuel economy.  Leave your car in gear at all times unless you come to a stop! Coasting down a hill actually uses petrol as you engine will be idleing which uses petrol, by keeping the clutch engaged the fuel will actually be routed back to the fuel tank instead - thus saving fuel!


• If your stuck in a traffic jam, turn off your engine if you are likely to be sitting there for more than 1 minute.


• Make sure your car is regularly serviced etc.


• Avoid short trips - walk to the shop that's just round the corner

So there you have it, there are my top 10 tips to help improve your fuel economy. I'm not a car expert, but what I have done is have a good look around the internet and the 10 that I have listed are the ones that make the most logical sense to me!

Asus EEE 1000H

The Asus Eee 1000H is a fantastic bit of kit and I can see why the Asus Eee sub-notebook PCs have been getting rave reviews all over the place!

Small, compact, lighter than a full-size notebook/laptop but large enough to do the job.  The Eee 1000H comes with a 10" display which is more manageable than the 8.9" or less that the other Eee models have.  The keyboard is easy to use as it is about 95% of the size of a standard laptops keyboard. With a battery life of upto 8 hours it is a fantastic buy!

The processor is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom which is designed specifically for netbooks (as they are now being called) and with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk drive, the machine is definately up to the job of running most business type of applications.

You can upgrade the RAM to a maximum of 2GB which is ample for this type of computer, remember it's not laptop, it's a netbook that is designed to be used to go on the Internet.  Having said that, it is more than capable of running applications such as Microsoft Word albeit slightly slower than a normal laptop.  As it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive you will need an external CD drive to install any software you have on CD/DVD.  I have noticed that certain antivirus companies are selling their software on USB sticks specifically for NetBook owners.

One negative thing I have to say about the unit is that the cooling fan is a lot noisier than you might expect, it may not be any louder than that found on a full-sized laptop but on something as small as this it is quite noticeable in a quiet room.


Google Chrome OS

With Google's free Chrome OS being released in 2010, NetBooks are set to become a hell of a lot faster as Microsoft Windows is a bit of an overkill if all you want to do is surf the web.

:)

3G Card Reviews

Networks Under Review: BT Mobile Broadband, Vodafone Mobile Broadband and 3 Mobile Broadband

Vodafone Mobile Broadband

I tested the Vodafone mobile broadband over a 48hr period and with them advertising all over the place that they are the fastest mobile broadband provider with a maximum speed of 7.2Mbps I had high expectations.

My experience was unfortunately less than satisfactory.

Throughout the 48hr period I could not get a connection faster than .01Mbps so it was most definately not a fast internet connection, I would have been better off using and old fasioned dialup modem.

I did try emailing their technical support to see if there was anything wrong with the access points but I didnt get a reply until 7 days later when I had already returned the product to the shop I got it from and cancelled within the 14 day period.

They then had the cheek to charge me around £5 for trying to use it!

Score: 5/10 - Every time I tried to connect I could but the very poor connection speed let it down.

BT Mobile Broadband

At work we use various different mobile broadband solutions, one of which is BT Broadband.

I had to work from home over the last couple of days so I borrowed one to see how I got on with it.

Promising speeds up to 3.6Mbps I was pleasantly surprised to see that I got a 512Mbps connection speed. However this wasnt constant and kept dropping down to 53Kbps - slower than a dialup modems speed.

When it did disconnect me I had to constantly fiddle to get it to connect again, the software was telling me to check the SIM, remove the modem, plug it back in again, stand on my head, pull a funny face and then reboot.

Rebooting seemed to do the trick but I never had this problem with Vodafone, it may have been a poor connection speed but it was at least constant and stable.

Score: 4/10 - it may be faster (at times) than the Vodafone offering but the messing about to get it working when it kept on disconnecting itself lets it down tremendously.

3 Mobile Broadband

Vodafone may be the largest mobile phone company, but did you know that 3 have the largest mobile broadband coverage at 80%? 80% may not sound much, but Vodafone and BT Mobile Broadband dont have a mobile broadband coverage that high.

The 3 mobile broadband offering states speeds of up to 3.6Mbps but they then say only to expect up to a 1Mbps speed unless you are in a large City such as London. Now there's honesty we dont see from other providers!

The speed I get from 3's mobile broadband network is a constant 512Mbps. It didnt disconnect from me at all but just to test it, I disconnected it manually a few times and was able to reconnect withing a minute without any messing about!

I tried contacting 3's techincal support and they were about as much use as the Vodafone response as they also took around 7 days to reply. So much for email being quicker than Royal Mail!!!

Score: 8/10 - With a constant fast-ish speed that never let me down this has got to be the mobile broadband of choice. Only the long delay from emailing technical support lets this offering down.

Greased Lightning - My First Ever TV Shopping Channel Purchase

Normally when I'm watching a shopping channel on TV (I think a lot of them are absolutely hilarious), I normally just see a load of old Tat that the presenters are making out is an absolute bargain!

I happened to be channel hopping the other day through the FreeView channels that I get and I stopped on the IdealWorld shopping channel and started to listen to what they were saying about a quick and easy way to wash you car without taking it to a carwash and without getting a hosepipe and buckets of water involved.

After 30+ minutes of listening to what they were saying and watching the demonstrations, I went straight on to google.co.uk to see if there were any complaints about this product.  I couldn't find a single complaint from anyone who had actually used the product (lots of sceptical people saying it couldn't possibly wash a car without scratching it - how could they know this without trying it?) - surely  if IdealWorld sold a product that ruined the paintwork on peoples cars then they would have been sued by now?

Anyway, here is a link to the product that I brought (the 'free' gift I went with was the tyre blackener thingy).

IdealWorld - Greased Lightning

Is it any good?  Will it scratch my car?  Is it a complete and utter waste of money?

Only time will tell, as soon as my delivery arrives I will try it out and post the results on here.

If People Brought Cars Like Computers...

Call No. 1

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "I got in my car and closed the door, and nothing happened!"

HELPLINE: "Did you put the key in the ignition slot and turn it?"

CUSTOMER: "What's an ignition?"

HELPLINE: "It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine."

CUSTOMER: "Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all of these technical terms just to use my car?"

Call No. 2

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "My car ran fine for a week, and now it won't go anywhere!"

HELPLINE: "Is the gas tank empty?"

CUSTOMER: "Huh? How do I know?"

HELPLINE: "There's a little guage on the front panel, with a needle, and markings from 'E' to 'F.' Where is the needle pointing?"

CUSTOMER: "It's pointing to 'E.' What does that mean?"

HELPLINE: "It means that you have to visit a gasoline vendor, and purchase some more gasoline. You can install it yourself, or pay the vendor to install it for you."

CUSTOMER: "What!? I paid $$12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!"

Call No. 3

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "Your car sucks!"

HELPLINE: "What's wrong?"

CUSTOMER: "It crashed, that's what went wrong!"

HELPLINE: "What were you doing?"

CUSTOMER: "I wanted to run faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while, and then it crashed -- and now it won't start!"

HELPLINE: "It's your responsibility if you misuse the product. What do you expect us to do about it?"

CUSTOMER: "I want you to send me one of the latest versions that doesn't crash anymore!"

Call No. 4

HELPLINE: "General Motors Helpline, how can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "Hi! I just bought my first car, and I chose your car because it has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, and power door locks."

HELPLINE: "Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "How do I work it?"

HELPLINE: "Do you know how to drive?"

CUSTOMER: "Do I know how to what?"

HELPLINE: "Do you know how to drive?"

CUSTOMER: "I'm not a technical person! I just want to go places in my car!"

Ask any support tech: they'll tell you these are not exaggerations!

Apple USB Keyboard With Numeric Pad

The standard keyboard you get with a Mac is OK, but if you want extra functionality then the Apple USB Keyboard With Numeric Pad is well worth buying.

Not only do you get the handy numeric keypad, but several additional keys such as DELETE, PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN.

If like me you have a MacBook then having an external keyboard to the built in one means you can position your MacBook in a more comfortable viewing position and if you have an external monitor that is larger than the screen on your MacBook then it also makes sense to have this item.

AirPort Extreme Base Station

The AirPort Extreme Base Station is basically a wireless access point that you can connect to your existing broadband internet connection.

You can use it to share your internet connection with other computers (both Mac’s and PC’s).  It has a single USB port on the back so you can connect either a compatible USB printer or external hard disk drive which can then be shared across your network.  If you want to connect more than one USB device to the Base Station then simply plug in a USB hub and connect up your devices.

I have two external USB hard disk drives that I have plugged in to a USB hub which is in turn connected to the USB port on my Base Station.  One of the hard drives I use to store my downloads on and the other I let OS X Snow Leopard use backup my MacBook with using Time Machine.

Carbon Copy Cloner

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to make a bootable clone of your Apple Mac hard drive then Carbon Copy Cloner will be right up your street!

You can download a free, yes FREE working copy of their software from their website at www.bombich.com there is a Donate button on their website should you find the software useful you can use PayPal to make a donation to say thank you for the software.

After downloading the software and copying it to your Applications folder all you need to do is run the application, click on the hard disk/partition you want to clone and then click on the hard disk you want the clone on.  That’s as complicated as it gets!

I now have a bootable clone of my MacBook’s hard drive so if the worst happens and my hard disk drive fails I can boot the clone I have made and copy it to a replacement drive in my MacBook.

I still use Time Machine to do the normal file backups so I have a ‘belt and braces’ backup method should anything happen to my MacBooks hard disk drive.

Apple iWeb '09

As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve been having a go with iWeb ’09 which is Apple’s website creation software and is very easy to use.

It has a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface which means there’s no messing about with HTML or any other website programming language, you simple create a new page and insert text and images just like you would do in Apple Pages or Microsoft Word.  What you see on screen is exactly how your website will look like.

If you take a look at my other website (www.ketrin.co.uk) you will see that you can easily put in photo albums and even videos or podcasts if you wanted!

Included with iWeb ’09 are plenty of templates that you can use to easily and quickly change the look of your website.  There are also plenty of websites that you can get additional templates from, some are free and other you have to pay a nominal fee for.

If you’re a PC user and have ever used FrontPage before then you’ll see that it is the same sort of thing only a lot simpler and easier to use!