If you can’t even contemplate starting your day without a cup of coffee, then you’re probably thinking of buying a coffee espresso machine for home or the office.

There are several different types available, depending on your needs and budget, as explained in our coffee machine buying guide below.

Manual coffee machines

Manual coffee machines are the cheapest available - you should be able to pick up a basic one for less than $200. However, as the name suggests, all functions are manual so you’ll be doing most of the work (including frothing the milk - there’s art to this). Cheaper manual coffee machines are likely to be made out of plastic, however if you spend a little more cash you will be able to get one with a better build quality, possible made from stainless steel.

Semi-automatic coffee machines

The next step up from a manual model is a semi-automatic coffee machine. These cost a few hundred dollars more (but usually under $1000) and have some automated features. These could include programmable control panels, an LCD screen for viewing the temperature or an in-built coffee grinder.

Automatic coffee machines

If you’re looking to buy at the top of the range, then you need an automatic coffee machine. As the name suggests, everything about this machine is automated so you should always be able to prepare the perfect cup of coffee to your liking. With the touch of one button, your milk will be frothed, your beans ground, your coffee brewed and poured.

Another bonus of automatic coffee machines is that they clean themselves - cleaning a coffee machine manually can be quite a tricky process, considering all the small parts and crannies.

Of course, for this kind of quality you are going to have to pay. The most expensive automatic coffee machines can cost anywhere up to $4000.

Capsule coffee machines

Capsule coffee machines are newish to the market and offer an alternative to their traditional manual and automatic counterparts. These are very small and compact machines that use pre-packaged capsules of coffee, which come in individual serves. You simply load the capsule, fill the water tank, press a button and out comes the coffee. Most come with a manual milk frother.

Unfortunately, these capsules usually need to be ordered online so if you run out and forgot to stock up, you may be without your coffee until replacements can be delivered.

Best coffee machines

Popular brands of coffee machines include DeLonghi and Saeco. Nespresso is the best-known brand of capsule coffee machine.

Buy a cheap coffee machine on sale

By Caroline Warnes

If you like to keep in touch with your friends and contacts through social media messaging rather than old-fashioned phone calls, then the new Nokia 6760 Slide is the mobile phone for you.

The Nokia 6760 Slide is well and truly aimed at anyone who communicates via text messaging, email, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging and the like (basically, everything except phone calls). It comes pre-loaded with apps to access MSN Messenger, My Space and Facebook, plus you can access Nokia’s Ovi store (the equivalent of Apple’s App Store) to download anything that’s missing.

The design of the 6760 is decent, but nothing overly spectacular. It features a 2.4-inch QVGA screen plus a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back. The phone slides open to reveal a decent QWERTY keyboard, which is of course a necessity for anyone who messages a lot. Unfortunately, the headphone jack is only 2.5mm rather than the standard 3.5mm, so if you want to use your own headphones rather than the ones Nokia has supplied in the box, you will need to purchase an adapter.

The Nokia 6760 Slide is available now with an Australian recommended retail price of $479 through Vodafone and 3 Mobile only.

Buy a cheap Nokia phone on sale in Australia

By Caroline Warnes

Unless you are Demi Moore and have a picture of Dorian Gray sitting in your attic somewhere, ageing is an inevitable (and depressing) fact of life for all of us.

One of the main “visible signs of ageing” is, of course, wrinkles - and while many of us pay attention to fighting the wrinkles on our faces, one of the biggest giveaways to a woman’s age is actually the condition of the skin on her chest.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should extend your facial skincare to your chest, but there’s a new product on the market that offers a little extra help, which I am determined to try in the new year.

While my chest wrinkles aren’t “mission critical” yet, I’d like to get in some preventative measures before I begin descent into my twilight years. Apparently sleeping on your side can make the situation worse (gravity always wins after all), and as a dedicated side-sleeper I have to admit I’m beginning to experience mild flurries of panic.

Anyhow, Decollete Pads (sold online in Australia at Skinvigor8) are 100% medical-grade silicone, a substance which has been shown to assist greatly in the healing of scar tissue. Basically, you lay the pad on your chest every night when you go to sleep and it will work its magic while you’re asleep. Each pad costs $55 and lasts somewhere between 30 and 60 days, which is kind of expensive but the product is attracting a lot of buzz so it may just be worth it.

By Caroline Warnes

OPI is usually my nail polish of choice, but I recently tried Chimera, a brand that is fairly comparable in terms of price, and am so far pretty happy with the result.

While OPI retails for around $20 per bottle, Chimera sells for $14.95 per bottle and although the price is cheaper, the performance seems to be just as good.

I tried shade 129, Bronze Me Up, which doesn’t come out a true bronze, nor is it similar to the photo. It’s a very pale gold with a hint of silver. I don’t usually like metallic/glittery polishes, but this one is quite pleasing and doesn’t look too out there. Keep the rest of your jewellery and outfit simple and you can get away with it. I also notice it’s reduced to $7.50 on the site, which is a bit of a bargain.

In terms of longevity, I painted my nails on Sunday night and they’re still going well today, with only a couple of chips at the end. This is pretty good for someone who spends a lot of their day on a computer.

You can buy Chimera nail polish online, or alternatively find stockists in selected Australian states (also available at the website).

By Caroline Warnes

We are giving you the chance to win one of five copies of the new book “Save It: Easy Ways to Save Money” in this week’s free competition.

Queensland author Esta Hammond has compiled her best money saving tips in the one book, and there are some great ideas here. Everything from planning a wedding to maintaining your car to staying beautiful on a budget is covered. (The book can be purchased through the website.)

Also handy is the budget planner at the back of the book so you can keep track of your incomings and outgoings.

To enter to win one of five copies of “Save It”, valued at $24.95 each, tell us in 25 words or less using the form below your best money-saving tip. The best answers will win. The competition closes next Thursday.

Competition terms and conditions

The new TomTom Go 950 GPS unit is billed by its manufacturer as “the ultimate GPS for demanding drivers”, although it is missing some of the added extra features we’ve come to expect from devices in this price range.

With an Australian recommended retail price of $649, you would expect the TomTom Go 950 to have just about every feature imaginable. Luckily, those features it is missing, such as an MP3 player and FM transmitter, tend to fall on the “nice to have but non-essential” heading rather than “must-have”. Luckily, features such as Bluetooth, text-to-speech, voice commands, lane guidance and junction view, speed and red light camera alerts (via an audio alert) plus dead reckoning are all present and accounted for.

The TomTom Go 950 isn’t going to win any awards in terms of design, though it is equipped with an above average window mount, at least when compared to some of TomTom’s earlier efforts. It’s a fairly chunky device and features a 4.3-inch touchscreen with resolution of 480×272, complete with on-screen QWERTY keyboard.

This device would be ideal for anyone who travels a lot, since TomTom has loaded it with maps for not only Australia and New Zealand, but also the US, Canada and Europe. Overall this covers 39 countries.

Buy a cheap TomTom GPS on sale in Australia

By Caroline Warnes

This one is coming a little bit late for New Year’s Eve parties, but you should keep it in mind if you have any events coming up in the new year.

A few of us here in the Lasoo office recently discovered online designer dress hire site Dressed Up, which lets you hire party dresses from some of Australia’s top designers for a fraction of their retail price.

I know I said in the past that hiring designer bags and shoes has a little bit of the bogans about it, I think hiring designer dresses for an event makes perfect economic sense. When I buy a special dress for an event, I always tend to wear it only a few times before it outlives its usefulness - whether I’ve paid $500 or $50 for it. Bags and shoes on the other hand are meant to be used on a weekly if not daily basis, so hiring them does NOT make sense. It’s the old cost-per-wear ratio.

Anyhow, Dressed Up has dresses from the likes of Wayne Cooper, Nicola Finetti, Camilla, Illionaire, Manning Cartell, Natasha Gan and more. The frock is delivered to you in a cute little package, you get to keep it for a week then you send it back in the supplied satchel.

Plus you can buy some of the “gently worn” hire dresses once they’re retired from the site’s rotation. If you’re lucky you’ll find something that’s never been worn at all, but is still reduced to clear. I’ve been eyeing off this Camilla Riviera dress and plan to buy it if it drops in price any further.

By Caroline Warnes

And the winners are:

M. Ward, 3039; S. White, 3029; I. Hawkins, 3013; V. Greaves, 2120; K. Mendoza, 3076.

Australia has gone crazy over the movie Avatar and if you’d like to take some of the magic home from the cinema with you, James Cameron’s Avatar The Game has been released across a range of games consoles.

Unfortunately, many gamers have been disappointed with the Avatar gaming experience, with many feeling it fails to live up to the epic movie.

The first-person shooter is set on the planet Pandora, just like the movie. You play as Ryder, a member of the RDA (Resources Development Administration), a group of humans with rights to all of Pandora’s products and natural resources. You need to make a decision to either stick with the destructive RDA or join the native Na’vi population and play as an avatar. The beauty of making this decision is that once you’ve exhausted one storyline, you can come back and replay the game via the alternate storyline, which extend’s the game’s value.

No matter which storyline you choose, you are soon immersed in the visually stunning world of Pandora, complete with a variety of native beasts. Obviously your missions and the associated dangers and enemies change depending on which side you are playing for, as does your arsenal of weaponry. If you’re playing for the human RDA you’re equipped with the standard array of guns and artillery, but things get more interesting if you’re playing with the Na’vi, with primitive weapons such as a spiked club on offer to dispatch your foes. Each side also has an array of special powers.

Unfortunately these missions become somewhat repetitive after a while and once the fun of exploring Pandora wears off, the gameplay begins to wear a little thin. Thankfully, a mini-game called Conquest has been included to relieve the tedium. This allows you to capture territories to get ahead in the main game. Multiplayer also offers something different from the norm: up to 16 players can compete at once in a range of modes.

To finish on a positive note, the makers of Avatar The Game have included 3D technology in the game to try and simulate the movie experience. However this feature has somewhat limited appeal, given that you need a high-definition TV with stereoscopy to experience it.

Avatar The Game is available now on PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and PC.

Buy a cheap copy of Avatar The Game on sale in Australia

By Caroline Warnes

If you haven’t totally overspent yourself on Christmas yet, no doubt you’re planning to in the Boxing Day sale and here’s another one worth checking out.

Leona Edmiston is one of my favourite local designers so I’d be all over her Boxing Day sale like a cheap suit - but unfortunately I’ll be in Canberra on the day, and being the back end of nowhere, our nation’s capital doesn’t have a Leona Edmiston boutique within cooee. (Just kidding. I love you Canberra.)

Aside from the gorgeous frocks in the main collection and Leona by Leona Edmiston collection, handbags, heels and Little Leona will also be on sale. Little Leona is so cute and a must-have for stylish little girls - I made sure my newborn niece had a Little Leona dress hanging in her closet before she’d even exited the womb.

In summary:

* Up to 50% off all frocks
* 50% off all Little Leona
* 50% off all heels
* 50% off all handbags
* Leona by Leona Edmiston frocks all under $100.

The Leona Edmiston Boxing Day sale will be in all boutiques, Myer concessions and online.

By Caroline Warnes