X

Mary's Christmas shopping: pocket fillers

With just three shopping days to go before Virtual Crave Pounds become as valuable as Turkish Lira, it's time to go all out and shop until you technically drop...

Mary Lojkine
3 min read

Three shopping days until Christmas and I still have £1,175 Virtual Crave Pounds burning a hole in my virtual pocket. Better start filling my pockets with an insulating layer of personal technology, then.

Of all the phones that passed through the office this year, the two I miss the most are the Nokia 7280, for its unique styling, and the Sony Ericsson W800i, for its all-round practicality. If I could only have one of them, it would be the W800i. It's compact, the music player works well, it has a half-decent camera with autofocus, and it's feel-good orange. SIM-free it costs a whopping £320 from Expansys, but at least it comes with everything you need, including a 512MB Memory Stick PRO Duo for storing music.

My much-loved but sadly discontinued Sony Clié TJ-37 handheld is approaching battery death. It still works, but it runs out of juice in an hour, whether I'm using it or not. I'm planning to replace it with a Palm TX (£207 from Dabs). I'd also like a 2GB SD card for storing MP3s (£131 from Palm Store), so it can stand on my desk, looking alive and alert, instead sprawling casually on its back. And since it's Christmas, and I think listening to the sky with your handheld is very cool, can I have TomTom Navigator 5 Bluetooth (£140 from Expansys) GPS package as well?

Since I still have £311 to spare, I'll throw in an iPod nano, because who wouldn't want one, frankly. I'll get it from the Apple Store, so I can have it engraved with the refrain from Matchbox Twenty's Unwell ("I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell"). As well as spending £179 on the nano, I'll get a USB power adaptor (£19), an armband (£19) and a Contour Design iSee for iPod nano case (£20) to protect it from scratches. Plus I hate the standard iPod earbuds with a passion (who has circular ears), so I'll need a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SLB Fontopia headphones (£26 from Amazon).

Down to the wire now, just £41 remaining. I'll spend it on a book with an absurdly long title, Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC (£28 from Amazon, a groovy rubber duck (£7 from Totally Funky) and three Pixar videos from the iTunes Music store: For the Birds, Boundin' and Luxo Jr (£2 each). And that's it... my pockets are empty of money, and full of cool toys. -Mary Lojkine

Today Mary has bought these items:
Sony Ericsson W800i for £320
Palm TX for £207
2GB SD card for £131
Two docking cradles for £34 each
TomTom Navigator 5 Bluetooth for £140
Apple iPod nano for £179
USB power adaptor for £19
iPod nano armband for £19
Contour Design iSee for iPod nano case for £20
Sony MDR-EX71SLB Fontopia headphones for £26
Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC for £28
Decorator duck for £7
Three iTunes videos for £6

Mary has already bought these items:
Sigma 14mm and Canon 70-300mm lensesEpson P-4000 photo viewerCanon Selphy CP710 photo printer
Sony Vaio VGN-TX1 laptop and accessories

She has £0 left to spend before Christmas Day. Click here to find out more about Crave's virtual Christmas shopping spree.