1. Reviews of Company
This is one of the biggest considerations you must take when buying from a hosting company. If reviews are good, fine move onto the next steps, but if they are bad stay far away! Remember you are entrusting them with you data and money. Make sure it is well spent and is not wasted.

2. Features of the Package
Make sure it has the features YOU need. A large amount of Bandwidth and Storage Space may be pointless if it doesn’t have MYSQL databases, or another Vital Feature you need to run your site. On the complete opposite side of the scale, don’t buy a package because of features you wouldn’t use! It’s pointless!!!

3. Dedicated, Shared or VPS
The choice is yours. Some hosts may try and talk you into getting a Dedicated server which you may not need. They cost a lot more and would be completely unnecessary to someone with a small website which is not completely Vital. My advice would be to go with shared until you feel it would be a travesty for your site you go down. Then go with Dedicated.

4. Read the Small Print
However long and boring the terms of service are they are important! Failure to read them could result in your account being terminated for breaching them. Make sure they do not ban things which are important to your site. E.g. File Banks, e-commerce, etc.

5. Call Them Up
Before you buy call them up and talk to them! If they give you direct, information rich responses they know what they are talking about and are likely to be trustworthy. Companies who’s employees know nothing about their servers and packages are likely to offer poor technical support in the future.

Matthew

1. Pick a catchy Domain!
Try and pick a snappy and rememberable domain name. This is how your site is most likely to be found near the beginning. If you are telling friends and family about it, it would help if they could spell it!!

2. Buy all the extensions you can!
The part of most domain most people forget is the extension. For instance if you live in the UK, .co.uk and .com are a must, and .net would be handy too. The same would apply for the US apart from you would buy .us instead of .co.uk. The more domain extensions you can get the better!

3. Pick a good Registrar!
You should pick a domain registrar because of it’s reliability, price, support and features. Some features which might come in handy are Free Domain WHOIS Privacy, a Basic webpage until you get your site sorted out, a temporary email (like you@domain.com) and a MUST if full DNS Management.

4. Period of time
This is a point where you can save quite a lot of money in the long run. If you believe your site is going to stick around and register it for 5 years or so. This saves you from the hassle of having to renew it yearly and it means you pay a fixed rate instead of paying the price of the ever inflating price.

5. Search the Internet for Discounts
Many registrars, like Godaddy etc, have discount codes giving you 10% or more off. This may not seem like much but every little counts. Remember look after the pennies and the pounds will look out for themselves!!!

Matthew

This a review of the LM2201 22″ Flatscreen monitor by Emprex. It is available from Laskys Here for £145.

Yup, When I first heard the price I was surprised too and had to check that it was really true! A new 22″ Flatscreen TFT monitor for £145. After further examination I purchased it and have been using it for the last two months or so.

It comes in a well packaged, well contained box with all the cables in little cubby holes inside the box. To assemble it all you need to do is clip the base into the main unit then it clicks. As far as I can see the this screen could not be wall mounted as the base only allows the monitor to tilt from 0-15′

The screen is Crisp and well balanced with a Contrast Ratio of 1000:1 it is great for Email, Browsing and Web-Coding. A serious gamer or someone who likes to watch films may want a better ratio but this would be fine for genral use.

The Maximum Display Resolution is 1680×1050 which I feel is just too big for me, though I like 1440×900 display resolution as I think it gives a more workable, more balanced space.

Overall I would say this is a great Screen. The price is almost unbeatable, and what you get is well worth the money. If you are wanting a well priced, good featured, big screen then look no further!!!

Matthew

I ordered myself a new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop recently to replace my old Hewlett Packard Ze4801ea.

This is the first time I have ever bought a Dell on their website so was happy to find how simple and easy the process was. I liked how you could upgrade each individual component, it’s operating system and the software and warranty it comes with, customizing it to your own needs.

This laptop will be mainly used for Internet Browsing and Email but will occasionally be used for Web-Design and Image Editing so I upgraded the CPU from the standard Intel® Pentium Dual Core T2330 Processor to the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5450 Processor so it can cope.

I was happy until the next day I received an email from Dell giving me my expected delivery date. At first I thought great, it said it was coming on the 17th, just 4 days after I had ordered it, but I reread it to find that it was actually coming on the 17th of Next Month!!! I mean come on Dell, That is a Month and 4 Days until I am expected to receive it! A MONTH!!!
Even with production delays, which it might incur I would not expect to be waiting more than 3 weeks to receive my laptop. I hope the wait will be worth it…

techie5487

Hello All. As you will see this is my first post on my new Lockergnome blog. As you will have seen in the description, this is a computer blog although I do occasionally cover other technology such as Macs, Linux, Web-design and such like.

I will be occasionally reviewing hardware and software on this blog and may occasionally do a game review. Other than those you will see information on what I have been doing recently and computer related articles.

I hope that you enjoy looking around the Blog, please bookmark us (Ctrl + D) and come back again!

Thanks for visiting!
techie5487