gangzoom

Lease hire/PCP is very popular now, I can see why, drive around in a brand new M135i for £300 a month. Sounds great, but remember most will require a upfront payment, and at the end of 2-3 years your have no car so will be forced into another lease deal, pay another lot of up front payment, and in 2-3 years time the cycle continues. Where as if you buy the car outright at the start you have the option not to change cars at 2-3 years, therefore saving quite a large sum of money. If you have any intent on getting on the housing ladder spend some time looking at the property market and work out your finances around the house before anything else. Remember mortgage Interest rates at the moment are unbelievable. If you got a big enough deposit 2-3% fixed!! Compared to 5-6% just before the market crashed or nearly 10% back in the early 1990s. Monthly repayment on £180k mortgage at: 2%= £760 ish 6% = £1200 ish 10% = £1600 ish That's nearly £10k extra per year on mortgage payments alone if interest rates were to go from 2% to 10%...but hopefully that will never happen. I got burnt by the last housing market crash (and it will happen again), the value of my first house dropped and I lost £20k overnight, luckily for me things worked out OK in the end, but I know quite a few people who are still stuck with houses in negative equality even now. These days I watch the property/mortgage market like a hawk, we're likely to move again in a few years and am doing everything possible to make sure I don't get caught out by the changing house market again. So for me spending 1/2 of your total post tax income on a depreciating asset like a car is crazy, unless you have a massive income. House and family comes first, a fancy car is a luxury, and certainly not something worth getting into debut for. The Z is the still the most expensive purchase I've made after houses, it's the only thing I bought on finance (apart from houses) and it's a mistake I'll never repeat (buying on fianance that is).

I wish I has a 599 Just trying to offer some advice on and help OP from 'wasting' money. I've been through 5 amp/speakers set ups in the last 10 years or so and have learnt that the words 'budget' and 'sound quality' go as well together as the words 'economy' and '350Z' But anything is better than the rubbish speakers built into TVs these days.

Not all TVs will play nice over HDMI controls, but a £30 Harmony remote will consolidate all your remotes into one and well worth the investment. Also don't believe everything the staff at Richard Sounds tell you, they have knowledge (more than Currys etc) but often talk rubbish (ask their staff about speaker impedance and most will not have a clue). Interms of AV gear most stuff in Richard sounds is in the budget end of the market (But they do have some nice HiFi stuff), it's still a lot better than the speakers from your TV, but don't take their advice as gossiple. Go for either a 2.1 or 5.1 set up, I've yet to hear a sound bar that can creat proper sound staging. Do also bear in mind your surroundings, and usage. As others have said there's not point in getting a expensive setup if you cannot actual use it for fears of disturbing others....a good set of headphones is not a bad option, especially when you consider a good set of headphones will last you years (I have a set which are 10 years old and still get used weekly), where as a £200 5.1/2.1 set up might be OK for your room now but wouldn't be anywhere near good enough 3 years down the line when you have the option to build a specific cinema room in your own house.

Cannot wait for the new season. New rules look interesting, energy recovery and fuel saving looks like new/bigger elements compares to last year. So drivers are going to have to adapt/change their driving style mid race even more compared to last year, can honestly see one man benefiting the most from the new rule changes....youngest driver to win 5 world championships, personally I wouldn't bet against it!!

Worked last 2 xmas, but got this one off ....but still will be at work till 5 today and than back 9am sharp on Friday .

Had my Retina MacBook Pro for about 6 months now, loving it, only wish I had bough the 750gig SSD upgrade at the time, cannot see my self going back to traditional HDs and 'non-retina' displays Have been looking at the MacPros, specced one up with a 4K display....£11k..even with man maths I don't think I can justify that kind of spending on a computer

Photos looks fab, as does the car Just out of interest, is there much outside the city apart from desert?? Have half thought about emigrating to somewhere like Singapore but always a bit worried I would miss the good old british country side

Say a Z in the car park the other day, have to say they have aged really well and still looks much better than most things on the road.

Say a Z in the car park the other day, have to say they have aged really well.

Sounds like a great car, cheap too!! Though I have to say if I lived somewhere with cheap petrol I wouldn't consider driving anything with less than 6 cylinders and a couple of turbo chargers

Sounds like it went well Good luck with your recovery.

I used my Z day in day out for nearly 4 years, snow/rain/ice (only ever had summer tyres), never had any problems, Z is a great every day car regardless of the weather and one of the reasons I kept mine for ages

It's not all that bad on the roads, though yesterday I saw 2 cars run through the same red light in the space of 30 seconds. May be we should stick up speed cameras every where that way anyone doing over 30mph in a 30 zone can be prosecuted instantly, after all no car driver will ever think about breaking the traffic laws ever. Once that happens as a cyclist I'll happily pay tax/insurance.

Had a little play with Forza on the Xbox one this afternoon whilst my wife was doing some shopping (on Holiday in NewYork). Bad points included just how ugly and big the unit is, but actually that really doesn't matter because it'll be hidden away most of the time. The graphics on Forza are noticeably better than the current gen, but less of a step up than I expected and still a long long way off been any where near photorealistic. Plenty of good points though, the controller is lovely and better than controller I used before, that combined with better processing power meant the handling of the cars in Forza felt fab...you could really 'feel' under/over steer with just the normal controller. Even though the overall graphics didn't blow me away the actually car models are very detailed. But the best thing is though in the US the price of the unit is $500. The guys at the store weren't sure if the units in the US were region locked but I may well be tempted to pick one up next time I'm in the states, unfortunately I'm leaving the States before launch day

Looks awful, goes to show money doesn't buy good taste!!..Am sure it will get attention much in the same way as this guys does.m ..

What have they done to a lovely car

Have previously bought iPad, Laptops, and iPhone over in the states, always a decent saving compared to buying here in the UK , but the current iPhones probably will not work properly here in the Europe due to the various different LTE/4G frequencies used by carriers http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/

Don't bother with either, Wattbikes provide the most realistic feel to riding on the road/hills but they cost a fair bit. My local gym has some and I can manage 30min max per session on them before it becomes too boring. Turbo trainers have a really artificial feel. I bought a fancy one years ago, used it for 2-3 times and its never seen the light of day since.

If you want the best picture, be patient and wait a bit longer for OLED to become cheaper....the reviews of the 1st Gen OLED TVs are simply amazing, essentially these the OLED panels are the best displays anyone has every seen...and these are only 1st Gen devices!! But at £7K a pop clearly not mass market yet, but rumours are Panasonic have found a way to make OLEDs cheaper, and now that they have given up on plasma tech I expect they are investing heavily into OLED, whilst sub £1K panels are probably 3 years away its going to be worth the wait!! http://www.avforums....-tv-review.9369

Only those with 100" TVs will really be that bothered about 4K really Sent from the golf club... I said the same about having a 'Retina' display on my phone/tablet/laptop, now that I've got use to it 'normal' lower resoultion screens just look so horrible and outdated....3D was a gimmick, but you can never have enough resolution, abit like you can never have enough BHP in a car

Forget 1080p, I hope these new consoles will have enough GPU power to drive 4K TVs which are coming....

Aweason looking car, looks so much better without the massive wing on the back!!

Your all be gald to hear even as a BMW driver I still get BMWs tailgating me and generally been a nuisance, presumably because my car is debaged so must be a lower model in the range and how dare I hold them up!! Most of the time I couldn't care less but I do love it when a 320D etc pulls up next to me at the lights plastered in M badges.....Gives me and excuse to give the engine a little workout