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Richard Patterson who’s the marketing director for Broadband-Expert.co.uk claims that British consumers seem to be addicted to new technology. Following a market study from Ofcom which stated more and more of us brits were turning on our TV’s and laptops during our free time.

“The findings show that the UK population has been quick to adopt new technologies and has a love of gadgets, there may be more of a premium on high end broadband services to recoup investment made by the providers,” he added.

So is this due to a drop in the price of tech? I don’t think so; I think it’s due to the usability of new tech. Take the iPod for instance, possibly one of the most widespread MP3 players on the market, so popular due to Apple making them desirable as well as functional. Then we have the devices that take the sting out of everyday life, my sense of direction, geography (not at all hot on capitals for countries to be honest) and the ability to find places is, well, rubbish so my little TomTom one is invaluable to me.

Can’t not mention the mobile phone, I don’t think I know anyone without one. I personally have a HTC HD2 and despite having mixed reviews to both extremes I think it’s an exceptional phone. Not sure I see where people are coming from when they slate the windows OS that’s on it but again its personal choice. Blackberry seems to be the ‘weapon of choice’ for a lot of you but I’m personally not a big fan of the styling but again we’re back to that personal choice aspect.

You guys have digital cameras? Sure you do. Remember the hazy days of taking a random film to be developed not quite sure as to the contents, waiting a week for the prints only to find out that there are only 3 good snaps out of 30 on there and paying 8 quid. Well now you can zap away to your heart’s content review the pics then do as you please with the digital images; upload them to Facebook, burn them to disc and give them to your Nan or just bore everyone who comes to your house with 200 pics of your last trip to Italy.

Then there’s the popularity of the games console. Sure they’ve been around for years but up until the last few years they’ve been kind of exclusive to hardcore gaming fans. Not any more though, who hasn’t sweated whilst playing on the Wii? Nintendo played a blinder with this console – inexpensive, adequate graphics but more fun than a barrel full of monkeys! They also, in a roundabout sort of way, got gamers of the couch and doing exercise but more than that it gets the whole family involved. Good work Nintendo bods.

How about something much smaller, something you probably use all the time but take for granted – the USB pen drive. These marvels of the modern age are fantastic. You can put whole operating systems on the and allow PC’s to boot from them, use them for ‘Ready boost’ to speed up Vista/Windows 7 (although I don’t know many sane people using Vista – sorry Bill) or just something as simple as transporting data around.

I’m almost certain people reading this will have at least one of the above, you addict you…     

I thought I’d stumbled onto a great piece of tech in the Powermat but digging a little deeper I’m not so sure. So what is the Powermat? Powermat is a device that allows you to wirelessly charge devices like mobile phones and portable gaming devices on a magnetic ‘board’ which can take up to 3 devices at a time.

Now as long as you have an iPhone, Nintendo DS or a Blackberry this is true but for most other devices you have to use something called a ‘Universal Powercube Receiver’ which is basically a small box that contains lots of different adapters for various devices. Ok so looking at this there are only actually 3 types of device which are fully wirelessly supported – 4 Blackberry phones, iPhone/iPod touch and the Nintendo DS lite/DSi so if you have to plug in a device to then place on the mat using the Powercube couldn’t you just save yourself a ton (£69.99 for the home and office Powermat and a further £29.99 for any of the charging devices) and use the provided cable?

I’m struggling to see where it has merit but also I don’t want this article to sound like a drubbing. Say there are 3 people in your office all with iPhone or Blackberrys (all be it limited on the Blackberry models) and you all chuck in for the mat and 3 charging cases then you’ll all pay around £63 for the ability to charge your device wirelessly. Alternatively I did look how much a second charger for each of these units would be; it’s less than £15 for an iPhone charger and for a compatible charger for the Blackberry and DS its £4! So again where’s the merit? To me it just looks like a big boy’s toys.

Personally I feel if they had waited a year or so and spoken to manufacturers about incorporating the technology into the devices it would be a far superior product. At work myself, having a HTC phone, I can use a bog standard USB 2 A to mini B lead directly from my PC with the added bonus of being able to plug lots of other things into it also. This type of cable comes with lots of modern devices and if you work in a tech environment I’m sure you have a bunch knocking about the office.

Hopefully a couple of years down the line it will be a larger part of mobile devices and I can see Powermats on boardroom tables throughout the world after all the ‘jet set’ businessman would breath a huge sigh of relief, I’m sure, if he could go into a meeting and just drop his phone onto a Powermat to charge without having to look for the correct attachment. If you still like the idea you can pick one up from here