Mr Springs Millennium Survival Kit

1. A Panasonic L-10 Portable DVD Home Cinema
DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) is the latest format we are all going to have to re-buy our record collections on in the next century. The discs are not recordable yet, and only Phillips has a design of a recorder that will be compatible with home players (go figure!), so you might ask: why get one?
Well, how does CD-quality 5-channel sound and broadcast quality - buzz word alert - Digital movies with shed-loads of extra stuff like director's commentaries sound? Add the fact that you can enjoy all this on the go, or at home, and be playing all the hottest stuff - be it pre-cinema release DVDs from America, pre-American release CDVs from Hong Kong, or the most obscure (usually banned and/or uncut) crap from cinema's chequered history - and it's all available better ... cheaper then ever before.

2. A Dolby Digital 5.1 compatible amplifier
Soon Dolby's AC3 system of delivering sound will be the norm, so get with the program now, and be astounded before we all take it for granted! These amps (5.1) allow you to decode DVD audio's magic five channels of digital pleasure and boom it about the gaff. This does for music and film sound what colour television did for snooker!

3. A Widescreen multistandard 100Hz TV
Panasonic currently have the edge here with the flattest, brightest tube about - which MUST be 16 x 9 ratio to appreciate those extra inches on the sides that you miss with a normal 4 x 3 screen - and the 100Hz means the TV Picture refreshes in twice the time that a normal 50Hz TV takes. Detail is scary. You can see things that are missing from 'normal' TV pictures. This is another one you will soon have no choice in, so, like, get with the programme now, baby.

4. An Account with DVD Express
The suppliers of all of the top gear for the entertainment junkie of the future. Software and hardware and cool stuff like Warner Bros. leather jackets are only a click away at http://www.dvdexpress.com

5. A Bank Of Scotland credit card
The cheapest and best looking card about. Cash is becoming a pain in the bum as borders fall and tastes diversify - cut the crap and put your life on plastic, but don't pay for the service! Silly charges for spending your own money are finally to be questioned thanks to Bank Of Scotland.

6. A Mr. Freeze
A lovely device that prolongs the life of your cybercash. For legal reasons I can't reveal any more.

7. A DVB Satellite Receiver
Digital Multiplex TV is coming. Through your aerial or via cable you will soon get 6-10 channels of TV in the space you used to get 1, using a 'magic box' that 'unpacks' the compressed signals into individual channels. So turn your attention to the Sky - there are already 12,000 TV channels up there, all waiting for you to decode them. Thai News anyone? The 14 channels we are being promised may seem like a lot, but with my (admittedly dog's bollocks) set-up, if I was to spend 10 seconds on each channel, it would take me 13 days to check what's on. A basic set-up of an FTA ("free to Air") digital receiver to connect to your already existing dish can be got for a one-off cost of about 1p to 50p a channel, depending on which satellite you are pointing at (Hotbird having the best selection).

8. A Vestax vinyl cutter
Records are dead, huh? More lies spread by ill-informed electronics giants to get us to spend more money on binning our lifelong possessions! Well here it is - cut your own records in your own home! This little baby cuts on real vinyl, not wax acetate layers like old vinyl cutters, and the finished product lasts forever! At a cost of 30 quid for four double-sided blank discs, this slightly oversized record player/maker is now the No.1 most sought after device in Japan, besides schoolgirl undies.

9. The entire James Bond collection
On American DVD - of course! All re-mastered, blah blah blah . . .

10. Linux
The computer operating system that killed Bill Gates. Oh, sorry, has he not been told yet?

11. Training in BeOS
A computer operating system aimed at musicians. This will allow the likes of you and me to write our own music software. Trust me.

12. A Neo Geo PC
From SNK Japan comes the best hand-held games console since the Lynx (which was a spectacular failure for Atari at the hands of the cheap and shitty Gameboy). It's colour, fast and the games are direct ports (yeah, right!) from the Arcade machines. The killer application is the pocket puzzle bobble game - more addictive then Tetris!

13. A Nokia glow stick
A replacement mobile phone ariel that glows when your mobile is in use. Honestly.

14. Different food
For Christ's sake, visit your local Asian food-market and vary your diet a bit. Have you noticed how European food is getting too close to American food, which could leave us all hormonally challenged if we don't introduce some variety into our diets. Get the picture?

15. MP3 players
Pocket music players with no moving parts that run on the sweat of a pixie and fit up your arse for a week! Don't bother touching one until the next generation comes along. The current generation 32MB models hold only an hour, and this Xmas sees the 64MB "limited edition" RIO 2-hour from Diamond, which seems a silly hype when you learn that 5GB players holding days of gear for launch next winter. You have been warned!

16. Speak Esperanto with William Shatner
The only movie ever made in Esperanto (the language of the gods) was Succubus. It's out now in DVD. Why put all your eggs in one basket sticking to English or French or any other established international language. Go for the sure-fire 'impress your friends at parties' language that nobody (even a latin-based linguistics master) can suss. Yes, now you can tell your favourite cop to "piss up a rope" and live to tell the tale.

17. Tube Socks
Socks that don't lose their shape and generate an even swing when filled with pool balls or coin rolls.

18. Fractint
A free computer programme which will explain everything about life, nature and Paul McCartney's musical skills. Ever wondered how Mother Nature remembers everything?

19. An AMD-powered personal computer
Intel have got two things going for them next century, Jack and Shit, and Jack just got a job with AMD. Even IBM (the inventors of everything useful this century) has abandoned Intel (makers of the Pentium chips) in a corner at the party we call Personal Computing in favour of trying to get off with AMD, whose new chip pisses all over the laundry of Intel's best Pentium, and at half the price.

20. Play More Chess
The only game in town that still can't be fixed! Soon it will be the only thing to measure yourself by - worrying about money and your knob or tit size will become a thing of the past as we all search for someone we can mate in 4 moves! n