Who wants to give me advice?

[liv]

I want to buy jack a Go set or at least some stones for Christmas. I can Google as well as the next person, but do you happen to know a good shop or website for this kind of thing? My budget is up to about £50 and I'd like to get a set that's either unusual or nice. Nice seems to be doable, as I've seen plenty of glass and a few stone stones within a sensible price-range, but I can't find anything very original. Probably I'll get a cheap, portable board, rather than a shiny wooden goban, as those guys are lovely but too inconvenient (as well as too expensive, mostly).

I need to buy a new computer, and I'm 99% sure it needs to be a laptop and about 90% sure it needs to run Windows, sadly. The question is, how much money and hassle is it worth to get WinXP rather than Vista or Win7? (If you want to try to talk me into Linux, please feel free; at the moment I'm running almost no Microsoft programs, but I do use quite a few that only work under Windows, most notably Adobe Photoshop.) And do you know a good, reputable but not too pricey source of laptops with obsolete OSes? I'm actually quite happy to buy from those little geek outfits where they custom build something for you, but only if it comes recommended.

I know I can get a perfectly respectable, powerful as I can imagine needing, laptop for £350 if I am ok with Win7, or £500 if I insist on XP and getting it from Ebuyer, whom I trust. I have found cheaper, for example this, but I am not sure buying a computer from eBay is a good idea. My eBay radar isn't very good, but this looks legit and not too cheap to be true; any thoughts?

Do any of you happen to have a photo of me in which I look relatively professional and sensible? I need to add one to the department website, and all the photos I have are either dreadful passport photos, or photos of me at a party, with loose hair and bare shoulders. I'm not embarrassed by those, but they're probably not the thing for an official work website. This is awkward cos mostly people take photos of me when I'm dressed up and having a good time, not just sitting around looking normal!

The usual question: any advice on broadband? I will probably need to get some kind of package deal with a landline as well, but this is not absolutely necessary. I want unlimited downloads, but don't care about speed at all. Cheaper is better than expensive, but I am willing to pay something of a premium for reliability. I don't need TV, but I'll take it if it makes the internet / telephone thing a lot cheaper. A joint deal with mobile broadband as well would possibly be attractive, but I don't care about stupid freebies like games consoles or netbooks.

Since Orange have mucked me about with my mobile phone account, and lied to several other friends just to get them to sign up for a contract, I'm somewhat averse to Orange. My preliminary enquiries are causing me to lean towards TalkTalk; any experience with them? I have tried using online comparison sites but found that they confuse the issue by quoting the "special" price for the first three months rather than the real price, or quoting the price difference between landline only and landline + broadband, which is no use if I don't already have a landline with that company.

Comments

[liv]

Thank you. It looks like they're Pentangle in the UK, and it was Pentangle that I'd already identified as being the most helpful and appealing looking shop.