Dave Thorp's Blog

Well least they will be on 17th May 2007. After a lot of thought finally decided to get a V+ box.

Been considering it because virgin refunded the £100 deposit we had to pay when we signed up but did it as a bill credit so we get just over 2 free months now. Been after either a DVD recorder or a PVR so this kind of makes sense (plus we keep missing programmes and when we do miss them they don’t show up on catch up TV on demand)

Means we now pay £45.20 a month and get

Phone size L (free evenings and weekends to landlines) with caller display
Broadband size L (4Mb…. though if they’re upping the speed of size XL to 20Mb hopefully size L will get upped eventually)
TV Size XL with V+ Box

Got a free install on the V+ as well (when it’s meant to be £75 for existing customers who don’t take a second box) so pretty happy there too!

Well after porting to t-mobile just over a month ago I’m now considering another change.

Orange have just released a new tariff called speak easy with text trigger. I currently top up approx £20 a month. On t-mobile that gets me:

Unlimited free evening and weekend texts
Calls 40ppm xnet, 20ppm on net and landline. Texts 3p
Data price capped at £1 a day

Were I to move to orange I’d instead get:

600 free texts
Calls 15ppm any network. Texts 10p
Unlimited free evening data. Option to add an extra to allow unlimited peak data for £1 a day.

Orange recently have become somewhat of a joke with them removing everything that made them orange (such as wildfire, OVP and much more). Not to mention the recent animal tariffs. However I spent 3 years on contract with them between 2000 and 2003 so I still feel a certain affinity towards them.

Decisions decisions

Most supermarkets now operate a basics/economy/rola/smart price food range. These are normally a cheaper version of their mainstream products.

Normally this comes down to a more basic recipe, cheaper ingredients or some other more basic produce. However there are some products that surely cannot be more basic.

We purchased a sainsburys basics pack of eggs today for £0.54. The normal eggs are £0.80-£1.00. Now here is where the cheaper range gets interesting. An egg comes from a hens behind and once that happens it is simply a potential baby chicken in a shell. So what is the difference between the basic eggs and the normal range.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the basic range of eggs come from hens that cannot afford to send their children to private school. Other than that there is no real difference.

Perhaps people should consider that more when shopping and choose the cheaper version of a product when there can be no real difference between that and the more expensive version