kuraiza

Every parent should have an Ergo carrier – I love my Ergo. I bought it when my first child was about 8 months old and wished I had bought it earlier. It was so easy to carry him everywhere in the Ergo. With my second child…

I tried to use it with the newborn insert, which was ok but I found a simple pouch easier with a newborn. However, we have used our stroller maybe twice with the second child, she gets carried everywhere.

The Sport carrier is supposed to be cooler in summer or during activity (hiking etc) than the original Ergo carriers, however when you have a baby strapped to you, you're going to get hot on a hot day, there's really no easy solution to that.

My husband carries our baby all the time. That's a great feature of the Sport design is that it's completely gender neutral so no excuses for men not to share the load.

The best thing about Ergo carriers are the weight distribution takes the pressure off your shoulders and back and puts it on your hips, so you can carry your baby or toddler for hours.

I'm a size 8 and I did find that I was really too small to tighten the straps sufficiently to carry a tiny newborn. A friend once borrowed my Ergo and she is very tall and larger in size than I am, and her baby was huge, she just couldn't get the Ergo to sit comfortably at all. I believe larger people can buy extension straps, but for petite people there's nothing you can do but wait until your child fills it out. easy to use, comfortable, attractive, value for money a bit big for small people

Very portable personal computer – I vowed I wasn't going to buy another laptop because PCs are cheaper and easier to upgrade, but then along came netbooks and I changed my mind. The HP Mini is so cheap and is…

small enough to fit in my handbag. It has more memory than I'll ever actually need and is powerful enough to handle all my needs.

Being a netbook, it doesn't have a DVD drive, but DVDs are a bit outdated now, downloadable software and apps take care of everything, and I watch movies on my bigscreen TV, not my tiny computer screen.

The inbuilt camera works well, the sound is excellent and it comes loaded with good software. But speaking of that, it comes with Norton Antivirus which is a massive resource hog and seriously slows down the HP Mini.

The only real problem I've found is the spacebar isn't designed properly. You have to tap squarely in the middle or it doesn't work. I've researched it and it seems to be common across all HP Minis and isn't just a fault with mine. Small, light, powerful Spacebar doesn't work properly, installed software is resource heavy

Big screen, great smart phone – I had an ipod touch and I wanted to upgrade to a smart phone. After a lot of research I decided to ditch the Apple product and go with an Android. This was largely because I am a…

Google-product user so having an Android made sense.

My research uncovered the HTC Desire HD, which had just been released at the time. It had the largest screen, the highest resolution camera and a great graphic interface.

Battery life for such a big, bright screen quickly became an issue, so I turn all the functions off if I'm not using them. Vibration was the biggest battery drain, along with auto refresh. I have to charge the phone every night, but the battery lasts well as long as I have the screen dimmed all the time. I have noticed that making phone calls drains the battery more than internet usage.

One very positive thing about this phone is how hardy it is against the constant onslaught of my children, particularly my baby who is always chewing on it no matter how hard I try to put the phone out of her reach. The phone gets thrown, dropped, chewed on, sat on, stepped on etc and yet it barely has a scratch on it.

One pretty bad oversight in the design of this phone is the camera is only on one side so you can't use the phone for video chats, which was something I neglected to notice when I bought it that might have changed my mind. Large screen, easy to use, attractive design, hardy Battery life is not the best, camera is only on one side so you can't video chat.

Bad – I am an avid Ikea fan, so I flocked to Ikea when I needed to buy massive book storage for my apartment. The Besta units appealed to me for their generous depth and the adjustable…

shelves. I put my units together in a variety of creative ways. At first I was very happy with my Besta units, but after a couple of years the thin plastic veneer just started peeling away from the seams.

It's not like bookshelves get a lot of heavy use, they just sit there holding books so I don't know why the veneer would just peel away. I am incredibly disappointed and it has made me question the quality of Ikea products these days. Big, deep shelves. Adjustable height of shelves so you can put Besta together in imaginative combinations. Poor quality plastic veneer peels away at the seams after a few years. Looks horrible, cheap and tacky.

Good – I went looking for organic shampoo in my supermarket and was willing to pay extra, so when I found this I was surprised how cheap it was. I was worried it would be awful but I…

gave it a chance and I was shocked how soft my hair was after using the conditioner.

My sister came to stay and guiltily admitted to using my organic shampoo. I told her it was cheap and she was surprised. I think she thought she was using something special.

I really enjoy knowing my hair isn't gunked up with chemicals and it's safe for my children to use. Conditioner leaves hair really soft. Organic with no nasty stuff. Not tested on animals. Cheap. Nothing really.