WHAT IS TECH FOGEY?

Consumer electronics advice for the technically challenged.

A website for those in digital denial.

Making complexity comprehensible.

Reviews, views, information and buying advice that’s clear and concise.

Opinion you can trust, advice you can believe, jargon-free information you can understand.

There are several websites that review the latest tech and gadget products: TVs, cameras, phones, sat-navs – that sort of thing.  All these sites seem to presuppose a degree of informed understanding.  Tech Fogey only presupposes that its users are smart and curious.  And we’re the Fogies.  You don’t have to be one.  And liking what you read doesn’t mean you’ve become one.  Unless you’re happy about being cynical and disillusioned.

Other websites talk to early adopters – the kind of glassy-eyed nerds who’d buy a turd if it had the Apple logo splattered on it.  Tech Fogey talks to reluctant adopters – consumers who want to make a good, well-informed buying decision that you won’t come to regret six months down the line when the next generation of that particular gizmo is launched, which is better than the one you bought, and cheaper.

Right now there are three principal elements to the site:

Fogey 5:  The five best products in their category.  Buy any of these and you won’t regret it.  More on the Fogey 5 here.

Buying Guides:  For each category there will be a concise summary of what to look for, which questions to ask  and how much to pay when you go shopping.

Category Overview: Background information that might be useful and/or interesting.

The site will grow to cover over 40 product categories, all of which will be regularly updated.

Also:

Fogey Freecycle, whereby you can liberate equipment from your attic and give it a new life in a new home, will be added to the site.

Fogey Essays will be first person features by quality writers on any number of tech-related subjects.

Fogey Forum will act as an information exchange whereby users can ask any tech-related question and have the nation’s Fogies answer.

And much more.

Tech Fogey will help you avoid pratfalls such as this:

In 2001 I bought a 42-inch Panasonic plasma monitor.  Not a TV.  Just a monitor.  Like you have with your PC.  I didn’t find out until much later but the screen resolution wasn’t even as good as the standard cathode ray tube TV it was replacing, let alone ‘HD Ready’.  It only had inputs for connections from a PC.  I had to buy two separate bits of insertable kit to take a SCART lead and red/blue/green ‘component’ inputs so I could plug a Freeview box and DVD player into it.  I also had to fork out for a bracket to fix it to the wall.  Oh, and it weighs a ton.  Total cost: over £2,000.  And at the time that was a bargain.  I kid you not; a steal.

Fast forward to today and it’s still on the wall of my office, taunting me with its utterly obsolete crapness.  I hate it.  No one else wants it.  I’d be hard-pressed to give it away.  When I think what £2k would buy me today it only confirms what a hopeless muppet I was back then.  It may well be that very little has changed.  That I’m still a moron when it comes to buying the right thing.  And that’s why this website exists.  I don’t want to be the mug who wasted his cash and, I suspect, neither do you.

What Tech Fogey is not is a price comparison website.  If price is your only consideration TF is not for you.  We aim to keep you informed of the best price for the products we recommend but ‘best price’ doesn’t necessarly mean ‘cheapest’.  Buy a TV from most electrical superstores, for example, and staff will try and sell you an extended warranty as an extra.  You will also lug the TV home yourself and set it up.  John Lewis, on the other hand, give a five year guarantee on all their TVs and they will deliver and install it.  And since their motto is ‘never knowingly undersold’ the price you pay will be competitive.

So there’s plenty to do.

I’d better get on with it.