10 ways to save time and money (Top Ten Websites)

Member Name: Daisybelle

Product:	Top Ten Websites
Date:	14/01/02 (834 review reads)
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Good old Top Tens. Having lost the ability to type for a while there, I came across this category and thought aha, just the ticket, as instead of inflicting my opinions on the good souls at dooyoo I've been surfing a lot. This has bought up a few sites that for various reasons are worth sharing. I'm not going to include any opinion sites as we all know about them, they aren't in any order and there is a definite leaning towards boring old consumerism, as like it or not, it's what makes things tick today. Here goes.

First up is an American website called Steve's Digicams, www.steves-digicams.com. This is THE digital camera website. Anyone who's looked around the British net offerings will know that there are none worth speaking of, so this is a gem to have up your sleeve. Digicams are the gadget of the week, and like anything there are good and bad ones. Research is the key, and this site offers in depth reviews of just about every digicam as soon as they hit the market. Each review is about half a dozen pages long and covers every conceivable aspect including a QuickTime 3D tour of the cameras. The menus are all looked at in detail, as are all of the features. Sample photos are offered and a large summary and conclusion gives Steve's candid view on who the camera might be suited to. Another excellent US site of this type, for those who are interested in digital cameras, is www.dpreview.com, which has even better reviews than Steve's that also include comparison labs of similarly priced cameras, but lags behind a bit with getting out reviews of the newest picture takers on the market.

Next is MyVoice, the survey site and apparently the Ciao reviewers No. 1 loyalty site, beating even Ciao itself. www.myvoice.co.uk offers a few survey's a week to subscribers, which they pay on average 20p for. These can be redeemed against vouchers when you reach 20 quid. Doesn't sound very exciting, but the surveys are sho
rt and usually interesting, and feedback is given straight away so you know how your views compare to that of Mr and Mrs average. There are also discussion forums, which aren't my bag. What I really like about MyVoice is that they have prize draws for the surveys, and I won £200 in November on one, proving that these things are real and not just a make believe hook as I'm sure many of the more cynical amongst us suspect from time to time.

www.kazaa.com is one of the many Napster offspring, and a very good one too in my humble opinion. It's not so much the website itself that rocks, it's the little piece of software you download that makes it all worthwhile. Kazaa works by enabling you to act as a server and connect to other peoples PCs and exchange MP3's, AVIs, images etc. Kazaa only provide the software and search engine so are a lot safer than Napster from the corporate lawyers, but they are still being pursued. There are usually about half a million users logged on at any given time, so there's plenty of choice available, and being a newly appointed parent it's an ideal place for finding songs I liked as a toddler to sooth mon enfant. Getting free music is great considering the ridiculous price of CDs, although I have actually bought albums as a result of hearing ripped tracks, so long live Kazaa.

The Ski Club of Great Britain's website, www.skiclub.co.uk, is probably the most useful skiing resource online. They offer information on just about every resort, up to date news, shopping, insurance, holidays, comps, discussion forums, all of which are very handy, but the real pearls are the day to day snow reports and resort snow history information. Armed with this you need to be either very unlucky or incredibly stupid to end up on a snow-free skiing holiday, which is the critical unknown for many people when booking.

www.amazon.co.uk has it's detractors, but even though it's not the cheapest ar
ound it's one of the best online shops for a number of reasons. Once you've registered it's highly customisable as you can rate items you own or have used and Amazon will suggest new products to you accordingly. This can be a bit hit or miss, but if you're a window shopper by nature it's great fun. They have a huge product range and offer candid consumer reviews to give you an idea if an item's your cup of tea, as well as telling you what else customers who bought the product also bought. All in all an innovative and information packed commercial site, that might actually survive in the long term.

If you're after any consumer goods check out www.price-guide.co.uk before buying. This is a simple but extremely useful tool for the online shopper as they offer regularly updated pricing summaries, showing cheapest first (Including VAT), along with the delivery costs, as supplied by retailers for a variety of goods including domestic appliances, books, CDs, electronic goods, digital cameras, wine and travel. This saves a lot of time if you're after a good deal and is a very fast loading site to boot.

A limited site in that it doesn't have the greatest selection of goods around, www.cd-wow.com is here by virtue of it's prices. Chart CDs at £8.99 including delivery is very hard to beat, and they normally take 4 days to get to my house which is pretty impressive as I live in Shetland and they operate from Hong Kong. A well laid out and fast loading website, if a little bright, they also have a back catalogue of cheaper CDs and are now offering DVDs at £14.99. Highly rated by Dooyoo, and usually cheapest when checking prices via price-guide, this is a website to bookmark.

Although graphically it looks as if it was designed using Netscape 2, www.smoothhound.co.uk is the best hotel resource I've been able to find. Phone numbers, e-mail addresses, photographs internal and external, links to websites, direct
ions and location maps, along with lists of facilities and prices of vast numbers of hotels both in the UK and abroad make this an excellent aid if you need accommodation away from home. Having used this site on many occasions I've yet to be disappointed by either the price or the service provided, the search options are varied and well thought out, and I've always found somewhere to stay in the area I was after.

To round it off we have www.onlineweather.com , a detailed weather utility whose main feature, for me anyway, is 5 day local forecasts, that include wind speed and direction, temperature and % risk of precipitation, no other site offers all of these together and if your life is greatly affected by the weather it's very handy. Also available are mountain and sailing forecasts, webcams, general forecasts, telephone updates and sunset/rise times. Oh, and they cover the whole world.

Well that's it, hopefully there're a few useful ones amongst them for some of you.

Cheers,
Daisybelle

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