Call for spring-clean of household gadgets

Jan 19 2008 by Katie Campling, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HUDDERSFIELD people are hoarding up to £3,000 worth of gadgets each, according to a new survey.

But researchers for Virgin Media found that many people have no idea how to maintain or take care of their expensive items.

The survey showed that £10bn worth of gadgets are hoarded in UK homes – with one in four people in Huddersfield admitting to owning £3,000 worth of technology.

However, 47% of people spend less than an hour every week maintaining their technology.

One in 10 people said they had no idea how to perform basic checks such as deleting emails and old phone numbers.

Virgin Media says this lack of care for gadgets means many are under-performing or running too slowly – wasting two weeks of our lives waiting for them to function and £500 each year in unnecessary repairs.

James Kydd, managing director of marketing at Virgin Media, said: “A lack of TLC means laptops and phones are overweight, with useless photos, emails and information piling on the pounds and slowing them down. January is the time to give our toys a seasonal trim.”

The biggest gadget crime was cluttering mobile phones up with unnecessary or old numbers, with 47% of people admitting to this.

Just behind, with 46%, was storing too many songs on MP3 players. In third place, with 13%, was saving too many emails or unwanted documents on computers and 2% of people said they let old TV programmes take up memory space on video recorders.

One in 10 people said they had lost important documents, emails and photos because they failed to back up files.

Virgin Media want people to detox their gadgets in 2008 and, working with technology company Shiny Shiny, have produced a free factsheet to help people.

You can download the factsheet at www.virginmedia.com/digitaldetox