Recommended Products

Items I regularly recommend - all tried and tested by myself. I do not accept referral fees or other inducements.

Many of these links point to Amazon UK. A few things worth knowing.

If a ‘shipped by Amazon’ item arrives later than the date on the confirmation email and you have a Prime subscription you are entitled to a £5 credit. If your don’t pay for Prime they’ll credit the delivery fee. Call them on  0800 279 72345 - open until midnight. Newer customer service reps don’t know this, ask them to check with a supervisor.

The one month ‘return window’ does not apply to faulty or ‘not as described’ items.  You can return items at Amazon’s expense that were ‘shipped by Amazon’. For faulty items, up to at least, two years later. Call them on  0800 279 72345 - until midnight. They may claim your refund is an exception, it isn’t, it’s the law.
For items ‘not shipped by Amazon’ ask them to message the third party ‘Amazon marketplace’ seller on your behalf, this often achieves better results than doing it yourself. If not resolved, promptly make an ‘A-Z guarantee’ claim with Amazon.

When calling them on  0800 279 72345 you’ll need to navigate an awful automated system first. Respond to its questions with ‘wooowoo’ noises that it can’t understand. that forces a transfer to a helpful human.

If you don’t need an item urgently use camelcamelcamel Some Amazon prices wildly fluctuate, to see a price tracker graph, they can send you an email you when the item falls to below a chosen price copy and paste the products page’s web address into the ‘Find Amazon products’ box at the top of the camelcamelcamel site.

If a package is stolen from your doorstep the UK retailer is liable. The law does not consider it delivered until it is put through your letterbox or handed to a person unless, that is, you asked it be left ‘in a safe place’.

Keyboards and pointing devices.

A lovely mechanical  PC Keyboard - Cherry KC200 brown MX2 switches - Amazon UK. Often cheaper. / Cherry. Select the UK version.
- Brown does not refer to a visible external colour, just the type of switch. 
Wireless keyboard with touchpad - Artek.
A decent, basic, wired mouse  -  Tecknet USB Wired Mouse.
A better (non gaming ) mouse - Logitech M500 Wired USB Mouse.
Trackball – an alternative to a mouse, that’s particularly useful to those with RSI - Elecom Huge trackball.

Computer speakers and webcams.

Excellent for the money, computer speakers - Creative Peble V.3 - Amazon UK / Argos.
Better (mid-range) computer speakers - JBL 1 Series 104 - beware - often listed for as much as double the £80 you should pay for it on Amazon.
Better but larger mid-range speakers - PreSonus Eris 3.5 Gen 2
A decent quality good value webcam with microphone - Ugreen
High end 4K webcam with a microphone - Obsbot Meet 2 Ultra HD 4K.

Plug-in storage.

2TB Hard drive for backups - Toshiba Canvio 2TB - Amazon UK / Argos. 
- When buying from Amazon Make sure it is shown as both sold and shipped by Amazon. There are fakes out there.
USB Sticks  (64 to 256GB) - Kingston DataTraveler SE9 Gen 3
2.5 Inch Hard Drive Enclosure - Ugreen. Converts a 2.5” drive installed inside a PC into an external USB plugin drive.
Plugin USB optical (CD and DVD) drive Hitachi-LG GP60

Misc

Unpowered USB 3.0 hub - Ugreen 
USB 3.0 SD Card adapter Beikell
2  x USB C to A adapters - Syntech
USB 3 to Ethernet adaptor (for laptops lacking a wired network socket) - Ugreen
Mouse Mat - Hsurbtra
HDMI Monitor cable (assorted lengths) - Southlight
65W 2 port GaN USB C charger - Ugreen
2 x 100W USB C Cables. ideal for the above charger. These are the least prone to failure of any USB C cable I’ve tried. - Iniu

Networking, internet and security

This 2.4Ghz directional Wi-Fi antennae (Ali Express) paired with this USB Wi-Fi adapter (Amazon) boosts Wi-Fi reception. Very useful when travelling - keep the box for travel.
This GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) Travel Router / Wireless Access Point is ordered from its maker in China via Ali Express but shipped from the UK. It is great value and open source with many uses including expanding Wi-Fi coverage.

My recommended VPN (Virtual Private Network) is Mozilla VPN, by a privacy focused non-profit. See my security advice document for why and when you need a VPN.

Antivirus: For Windows PCs I recommend BitDefender Free Antivirus - though not its VPN, uninstall that, and in its settings switch off the notifications to remove most of the upsell adverting. For Macs use Malwarebytes standard (scroll down for the single PC price). The free version is not sufficient.

Books

A beginners guide for Windows PC owners - Boost Your Skills In Computer Basics and Windows 11 by Gary P Marshall II.
A beginners guide for Apple Mac owners - Macs All-in-One For Dummies by Paul McFedries.
Another good Apple Mac beginners guide - Teach Yourself Visually iMac by Guy Hart-Davies (applies to other Macs too).
Password Book - Clever Fox - like an adress book, but for passwords.

Windows PCs

For PCs, Macs and printers contact me for advice, as prices and availability frequently change and will depend on your needs,
These though are the PCs I currently often recommend:

Desktops

Very low costs compact desktop PC - Asus Expert Centre V500 (John Lewis) - Requires a monitor
Asus all-in-one PCs (a PC combined with its screen, webcam and speakers, all in one unit) -  
Asus 24 inch screen V440VAK (Argos) / Asus 27 inch screen V400 (Argos)
Bargain ‘Mini PC’ N97 ACEMAGICIAN Vista V1 - Ideal for running Linux (an alternative to Windows) Requires a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Laptops

A decent mid-range 15.6” screen laptop - ASUS Vivobook Intel i5 15 X1504VA (Amazon) / ASUS Vivobook 15 Ryzen 7 16GB 512GB (Argos).
Good value higher spec 15.6” OLED screen laptop ASUS Vivobook 15 X1505ZA (Amazon) / ASUS Vivo, bok 15.6 OLED R5 (Argos).
Excellent lightweight 14” OLED screen laptops: Asus Zenbook 14 OLED UM3406KA (Amazon) / ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED 14in Ryzen 7 16GB (John Lewis) .

Additional internal storage for the above

Most of the above laptops and the desktops come with 500GB of storage as standard, if more is needed I recommend upgrading via this 1TB Samsung Evo 990 Plus M.2 SSD. from Amazon or Argos, that’s enough for most people but it is also available in 2TB and 4TB versions.

I love Framework’s modular, ethical, easily repairable and upgradeable laptops but there’s a considerable cost overhead - more than twice the price of the above devices.

High end desktop PCs

For gaming, video editing , 3D graphics, Photoshop etc. I recommend CCLOnline. For help choosing one or configuring a custom build Contact me.