I bought mine from KK Electronics. The prices are good - 10 for the cost of two from the local supermarket.

Nicely packaged in a box of 10 with cap protectors to avoid shorting if you mix them up. Use-by date was Mar 2017, so these are not old stock.

Have used three to replace fire alarm batteries. All work, no duds.

Very satisfied.

I've had this for a week and I'm completely delighted and, indeed, captivated by it.

It's a small rechargeable robot vacuum cleaner and will allow you to clean the flat areas of your house without (much) intervention.

It works best with large empty rooms with light carpets and furniture.

It takes between 30 and 60 minutes to clean a room using a semi-random walk and will return to its docking station when it's finished. It will follow walls and often does a circuit of table and chair legs. Mine's never got stuck (yet) but can sometimes get behind or under something and can then take a while to extract itself. This is actually a good thing as it's cleaning all the time and so actually does the "hard to reach" places more thoroughly than the vast expanse of carpet in the middle of the room. It nudges light-coloured walls and furniture to make sure is gets as close to them as possible, but will crash into dark objects at full speed. I've not noted any damage (it has a smooth spring-loaded bumper) but it sometimes sounds as if it's having a fit. It detects stairs and will stop and back away. It will also untangle itself from cables but can pull light objects from tables. Lamps seem to be okay, but I've had cordless phones' docking stations pulled from tables.

It is programmable, with each day being able to be set for a different time.

Mine lives in the bedroom, and vacuums every day at 10am when I'm at work. By the time I come home it's back in its docking station and fully recharged. I then put it in another room (without its docking station - it has easily enough charge to do a room), and finally take it back to its docking station in the bedroom at night.

Thus each week the bedroom is cleaned 7 times and each other room once.

You will still need a "normal" vacuum cleaner for stairs, the tops of skirting boards and behind anywhere the Roomba cannot reach.

It is best to clean the Roomba after every use. This is simple - the dust box needs emptying (it WILL be full) and the rollers need de-grotting. The Roomba is designed for ease - the removable parts pop out with no fuss. You'll have cleaned it in 60 seconds and it's not a dirty job - assuming it has just been picking up dust.

It's not as powerful as a normal vacuum cleaner but by taking up to an hour to clean a room it is very thorough. I'd say it does more in the hour than I'd do in 15 minutes with a Dyson. And, of course, I'm not actually having to do any of the work in that hour. When you first get it you will just stand and watch it with an inane grin on your face. I'm hoping the effect will wear off - I've spent longer watching it that I would have done hoovering myself.

This is a spectacular, if pricey, piece of kit and is certainly not a toy. My house is now cleaned more often and more thoroughly that I'd ever be able to do myself. And it's effortless. I don't believe that this is a gadget I'll tire of - it really works and does what I want it to.

But if you have a small, cramped, cluttered house, with dark carpets then you may struggle to get maximum benefit.

Recommended.

I normally use Kingston DataTraveller USB sticks but this 32GB capacity drive at about 50p per GB was too good an opportunity to miss.

On the plus side it works and data transfer seems quick - but this is always rather subjective. It seems a lot faster than my 16GB DataTraveller.

The 32GB capacity is excellent - I used 4GB for Readyboost on my Vista laptop leaving a more-than-adequate 28GB for storage. (I'm not absolutely convinced by Readyboost, but that's not the drive's problem.)

On the down side it's a fat little thing and you may have trouble if you've another occupied USB slot above/below this one. There's no light to show data transfer (but so what?). Finally the top is fully detachable and there's no slot for attachment to a keyring or lanyard - both minor niggles.

I recently needed to swap out a failing hard drive. After replacing the 250GB WD Scorpio Blue for a 640GB Samsung drive I decided to upgrade the memory from the original 2GB to 4GB.

I'm only using 32-bit Vista which will, so I believe, only recognise 4GB in total. As the Dell only has two memory slots the 2x2GB option was the only one.

I think the laptoop would have accepted the faster PC2-6400 RAM but as I'm no techie I stuck with a like-for-like swap.

Installation is easy - remove the (rather over-tightened) screws holding the memory bay cover in place and unclip the memory modules and remove. Simply clip in the new modules and re-attach the cover.

Vista booted, recognised the new hardware and reported 4GB.

No change to the memory element of the Windows Experience Index - still 4.9.

The new memory and the new HDD make my machine fly, but I can't really tell whether it was the memory or the HDD that made the difference.

I've had my trusty Dell laptop for four years, but a couple of weeks ago I started getting regular freezes.

I tried all the usual diagnostics and while nothing was found they all seemed to hang on the disc drive tests.

I presumed the HDD was coming to the end of its life, although was rather perturbed that CHKDSK and the bundled utilites of Dell and Western Digital could not find/correct the errors without crashing.

So I bought this Samsung 640GB drive and swapped out the WD Scorpio Blue 250GB that came with the Dell.

I've been unable to make a drive copy (Acronis 2009) since the HDD problems as it too hangs.

The physical swap was easy - the Dell manuals give full illustrated instructions. Simply take out the four screws holding the drive in place and pull out the drive. Take off the plastic cover at the end of the drive (two retaining screws) and attach this cover to the new drive.

Slide in the new drive, and power up with the Acronis rescue disc that I'd created when I first got Acronis 2009.

I was then able to restore my drive to a point before the hangs occurred.

I then put the old WD Scorpio HDD into an external caddy and ran some further diagnostics. These worked as the drive was no longer booted. There were a very large number of bad sector errors.

Happily I was able to recover the data and settings that had changed since the Acronis drive image backup I was using.

Touch wood, but I now have a recovered laptop with the advantage of 640GB as opposed to 250GB.

Can't comment on the reliability of the drive - only had it a day - but I fully expect to get a few years out of it.

I'm about to upgrade the internal memory from 2GB to 4GB, to further prolong its life - a new HDD and memory upgrade for less than a three figure sum. Can't be bad.

I was rather scathing about Acronis 2009 on another review. It is really rather poor and fails on backups about two times in three (even before my HDD problems). However, as shown here, if you do have a working drive image backup it's worth its weight in gold.

I've had this HDD for a couple of weeks and it's working fine - although that's not much of a recommendation when you want them to last years.

I use it in an IcyBox docking station (highly recommended - see my review) and apart from having to format the drive first (which I shouldn't have needed to per the sticker on the drive) everything's great.

However I wish I'd read the earlier review re the LLC problem. I've only had the drive running for a total of a few hours and the count is heading towards 1,000. The WD web site says that it's been rated for 1 million cycles but at c1,000 per day that's still not great. I've a WD HDD in my laptop and it has an LLC of 30,000 after over three years of nearly continuous use. I'll reach that in a month if the 2TB green drive were running continuously.

I tried the WDIdle3 fix but couldn't get it to work.

I'm impressed with the speed, quiet running and cool features of the drive, but the LLC problem (and WD's seemingly unconcerned attitude) makes me wary of getting another.

I wish to have two bare 2TB HDD for my backup solution. For my second drive I opted for a Seagate Barracuda - a manufacturer I've always had good results with.

As the drive is rarely mounted - only when making a backup - I guess it will work for me no matter how fast the LLC rises when the drive's running. But I didn't opt to buy another one, and I guess that's quite damning.

Overall, not recommended.

There are some excellent reviews of the films and much passion regarding Rathbone vs Brett.

I'll just note here that these films have not been digitally remastered if, by that, you mean that scratches and artefacts have been removed electronically. They have not been cleaned up in the way that the BBC Restoration Team did on Dr Who releases. Thus there are still some scratches and blobs, and a slight hiss on the soundtrack.

What has been done - as is clearly discussed on the extras feature - is that the best analogue prints have been sourced and missing bits (beginning and end credits usually) have been restored.

Thus what we have here is the best possible analogue prints transferred to DVD.

That said they are sparkling given that they are now some 70 years old. These were not the days of HD and 5.1 sound. It is almost certainly true that you've never seen these films look so good.

Very oddly for such a loving project, there are no subtitles. Very odd indeed.

14 very good quality films for (at present) about a pound each.

For what it's worth I think I'll side with Brett for his brooding, almost smouldering, portrayal. That plus the excellent Watson(s) and the glorious Victorian settings. But Rathbone has bearing, presence...and that voice. A close call and with DVDs at these prices (the Brett ones are on offer as I write) there's no reason why we can't have both the Brett and the Rathbone collections.

I was looking for a backup solution that had some form of off-site (or at least "store in another room") capability.

I'd long since outgrown the use of DVDs and while I have an array of external HDD they simply sit alongside my computer. Not ideal from a security point of view.

I was considering the Blu ray option but the discs are expensive as is the hardware currently.

I eventually decided to buy a docking station and use bare HDD as the backup medium. Clearly bare HDD are complex mechanical devices whereas DVD or Blu ray discs should be much more stable. But I'm not looking to archive my data for centuries and anyway HDD are very robust and will last for years of continuous use. Even longer, I hope, when simply used for backup.

The Icy Box docking station is well built and sturdy. A power supply is required as is either a USB or eSATA cable. All are supplied.

Setup couldn't be simpler. Plug in the power supply and connect via USB or eSATA. I'm using USB2 as I do not have eSATA (but the provision of it is useful future proofing).

Then simply slot the bare HDD into the opening in the docking station. It slides in easily with a good firm grip. Nicely precise here - German engineering (but Chinese manufacture).

I'm using a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB HDD which should be ready to use in Vista (per the sticker on the drive). However Vista did not recognise the drive when inserted.

The solution is quite simple. Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management. Then select "Disc Management" from the options on the left. Select the drive you are trying to see and then right mouse and select "Format". Now clearly only do this if you have an empty drive (or you've backed up its contents). A quick format will only take a few seconds and then the drive is recognised in Vista.

Per the instructions drives within the docking station are hot swapable - i.e. you can insert and remove HDD while the computer is still running (using the Safely Remove option). However it is recommended that you do power off the computer first just to be on the safe side.

At the time of writing a 2TB HDD and the Icy Box cost about the same as a Blu ray writer and a couple of re-writable discs. The Blu ray discs have a max capacity of 50GB which is really a bit small these days.

Overall I'm very pleased with the Icy Box / 2TB HDD combination. I can easily make backups of my data (using Acronis - daily data backup, weekly drive copy) and store them on the removable HDD. I use a pair of 2TB HDD for good practice, just in case.

The only downside to this set up is the time it takes to transfer data. My disc image is 140GB (and no, I have no idea how I've managed to accumulate so much stuff) and that takes about 4 hours to move to the removable HDD using USB2. With eSATA it should take about half an hour or so.

And just for completeness I should say that the Icy Box will take 2.5" drives as well as 3.5" ones.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with the Icy Box / Western Digital 2TB combination as a removable backup solution.

...and I'm afraid that its time has passed.

I remember listening to this as a teenager when it was first broadcast and thinking it was very funny. It was. Then. When I was a teenager.

I've tried again and it simply doesn't make me laugh as much as I remember from times of yore. And that makes me sad. So I gave up.

Steam, fry, slow cook, rice cooker.

If, like me, you do not generally buy gadgets that take up work surface space then - perhaps - this item might be the answer.

It does all of the four things that it is supposed to do, but none of them very well. As the other reviews have noted it is too powerful for use as a slow cooker, although the non-stick bowl is a lovely addition.

You can use it as a (small) frying pan to brown your meat and veg before adding the other ingredients in a slow cooked casserole. Buy that's not really much of a recommendation as the Breville doesn't function well as a slow cooker.

It's okay as a rice cooker - takes a bit of getting used to regarding the rice/liquid quantities. It uses Delia's absorption method, whereas I'm generally a "boil in lots of water and drain" sort of person.

And it works for steaming, although you cannot get too much in. You'll not steam fish and veg for a family of four, for example.

One other reviewer hit the nail on the head. This would be perfect for a student son or daughter. Not for a busy family however.

The test for me is whether it gets left on the work surface, not put at the back of a cupboard. I'm afraid this one is in the cupboard.