Rory's Christmas Shopping: Followit tracking

By Rory Reid on 20 December 2005, 3:00pm

Spending my left-over Christmas money is proving difficult. I've already splashed out on a PC that is both cheaper and faster than an Xbox 360, and built the most obscene multi-monitor set-up outside of an aircraft simulator, but I've still got £1,154 burning a hole in my virtual pocket.

Trawling the Internet for inspiration, I stumbled across the Followit Personal Tracking Bundle (£640) -- a GPS tracking system you can use to keep tabs on just about anything.

I can come up with an almost infinite number of uses for this thing -- like sewing it into the lining of your child's jacket to find out whether they're actually turning up at school. Better still, you could secrete it amongst the lip-gloss, makeup and other miscellaneous junk in your girlfriend's purse to see if she really is going to the hairdressers and not nipping off on a sordid weekend with some rich banker she met while highly inebriated at the office Christmas party. The floozy.

The best part is, you don't have to chase your subject in a Land Rover and shoot them with a tranquilliser dart. Unless you really want to.

But I digress. The Personal Tracking Bundle must be used with a GSM SIM card, so I've opted for the O2 pre-pay card (£4.98) from www.ebuyer.com. Once up and running, all you have to do is text '601, status' to the mobile number of the SIM card and the tracking devive will respond via text with its exact latitude and longitude, to within a few metres. To get the most out of the setup, I've also decided to buy the Followit Locator PC software for £75.

Okay, so Christmas isn't supposed to be a time for paranoia and distrust, but I'm sure you'll agree there are worse ways to spend £720. -Rory Reid

Rory has bought these items:
Followit Personal Tracking Bundle
O2 Pay-as-you-go SIM Card
Locator PC Software
VT8 4x2 touchscreen stand
8x BenQ FP931 19-inch TFT
Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX 512MB graphics card
Asus A8V-E SE motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ CPU
512MB DDR SD-RAM
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 60GB hard drive
LG GCC-4521BB 52x32x52x16 CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive
Belinea 102005 20.1-inch TFT screen
Ebuyer Extra Value MG-415 ATX Middle Tower Case
Call of Duty 2 (PC/DVD)
Ezkey Black Office Keyboard and 3 Button Value Mouse

He has £434 left to spend before Christmas Day. Click here to find out more about Crave's virtual Christmas shopping spree.