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Same here - if I found one under the Christmas tree I would be very excited because, hey, shiny new tech! But I don't want it enough to actually put it on my Christmas list (there are other things I would rather have) and certainly not enough to save up the money on it.

I'm going to disagree with that. It's true, but it's also true that there can be too much personality and that if the personality manifests itself as terrible errors then those errors can obscure the article itself.

I had the impression that Stavros was on about him writing his articles with his ideas, his take on the subject, and the benefit of his experience on his specialist subject. That's where the personality should enter in. A blog post written by someone who knows their subject so intimately that they make a living from it, is more likely to be interesting and useful and accurate than a blog post written by a copywriter who knows nothing about the subject and has just banged out 500 words based on half an hour's research.

What he wants, then, is not a copywriter as such, but someone to just red-pen the most glaring errors that make written text look unprofessional.

With personality vs professionalism, there's always a balance to be struck, and really bad errors do look unprofessional. You need to present an image of all-round competence to your customers. If your home-written copy is unreadable, then it's not functional, and if it's not functional, it's got no place on your website.

It's like... it's like when you were a kid, and you made art projects at school to give to your mum, and no one minded if there were a few flaws, because hey, personality, this was not created on a factory line, it was handmade with love. But if you actually made something non-functional - a cup with a few holes in the bottom, or a shirt with the armholes accidentally sewn shut, or a keepsake box with a lid that turned out substantially smaller than the box itself - then your teacher would gently step in. He/she wouldn't make it perfect, but they'd make a couple of swift 'adjustments' like re-doing the base before firing, or showing you which stitches you needed to cut away, or suggesting that the lid and box could be two separate items, so that it still looked like your Glorious Artwork but your mum would be able to receive it and love it and appreciate it without sighing too deeply at her offspring's ineptitude.

I think that's where we're at - not completely re-writing blogposts, not writing blogposts for people, just patching it up for people who know that their writing is a metaphorical mug with holes in the base.

Well, I can't say that I don't have a biased opinion, but...

I think that any copywriter or proof-reader worth their salt has to be able to work to their brief. It's up to you as the customer to determine what that brief should be.

If the brief is "take this drivel that looks as if it was written by a drunken baboon and turn it into a grammatically perfect showpiece with excellent syntax, running themes, literary/classical references and beautiful artistic metaphors," then yes, that's cheating and any reader will be able to spot it.

However if the brief is "keep the copy more or less the same, don't worry about the grammar, just tidy up the most appalling of the spelling and punctuation errors so that it makes sense," I think that's okay. Too many errors in a piece of text does look unprofessional but it doesn't take a rocket scientist of a writer to understand and follow an instruction to keep the overall tone of the piece.

In summary - sort out things like their/there/they're, but ignore rules like the one about never using a preposition to end a sentence with.

In forum posts and blog comments you can get away with errors - it's conversational and, critically, it's not in a part of your own website and likely to be viewed by your average customer. An actual blog post that is supposed to contain useful information is a bit different.

It's the full moon, you know. I get fangs and claws and my patio gets increasingly lumpy.

I've had two laptops and they have both been Acers. The first (Win XP) lasted nearly four years of really quite rough treatment and heavy daily usage, then the hard drive gave up, but I've since replaced the hard drive and it's now my backup machine. However I used the breakdown as an excuse to upgrade and got this one (Vista). I have to say I hate Vista with a passion but the machine itself is fine and has ticked along for (tries to remember when it was purchased) maybe two years?

My other half has some sort of linux on an Asus EeePC which seems more or less indestructible, although he's still in mourning for his IBM ThinkPad. Personally I don't love the EeePC - great for portability but I can't touchtype on it and it's not much good for games either so for me it would be very much a supplemental machine.

No need for sadface, Max - there's plenty of us out here who will write whatever articles our clients want, and for very reasonable fees.

That looks amazing!

Although I fear that once the holiday season gets going, there's still only about 20sqcm that isn't taken up with kiddies practising the art of divebombing.

I'm sure you would. But you are asking people to give up their time, for free, and to create thoughtful, useful reviews of your product, for no better reason than you wanting them to do so.

You say you want "insight from the community". You may get a better response if you actually join in that community, rather than treating it as some kind of free market research resource. So far this is the only thread you've posted in and it appears to be entirely self-promotional. There are better ways of influencing people.

Agreed - all the images on my site were commissioned originals by RachelCreative.

Admittedly it was more expensive than "up to 250 images per week for $14.95". It was about

I am SO not biting.