SONY PLAYSTATION VR $400
If you can wait, it's an economical choice

Sony's virtual reality headset, which is launching in October, is comparatively cheap, and it works with the Sony PlayStation 4 ($350), which may be sitting in your home now. Even if it's not, it's still far less expensive than the $1,000-or-so computer that you'd need to run some of the PS VR's high-end competitors. And with Sony behind the wheel, you can probably expect that there will be good things to play and watch coming soon, thanks to Sony's long-standing relationships with game developers and moviemakers.

There are a few cons. First, it's coming out a little later than some of the other big headsets, meaning that you may grow impatient while waiting for your device to ship. It could also deliver a slightly lower-quality experience compared to its pricier competitors. In testing it last year, Sony still had some kinks to work out when it came to motion sickness — something Sony itself has acknowledged.

Still if you already have a PlayStation, it's an economical investment.

WASHINGTON POST

SYSTEM MECHANIC $40 to $55
Decluttering software really does deliver

At first read, IoIo's claims about its System Mechanic software promising to clean clutter from my hard drive, boost my Internet surfing speed, trim unneeded entries in the Windows Registry, help me determine which start-up programs I needed and more — much more — seemed suspect.

But the System Mechanic, now in version 15.5, delivers. Consider it an elixir for your Windows PC.

With 20 gigabytes of clutter on the hard drive, a registry loaded with entries left over from deleted software, the hard drive was creeping. (One warning: Make sure it isn't counting downloads that you need as clutter.) The software had a noticeable effect on how fast my PC booted up. System Mechanic works in the background — if you let it — to defragment your registry, hard drive and memory.

In this latest version, you can turn off all data sharing between your computer and Microsoft. That alone is worth the price, which is $40. A Pro version costs $55, and has a powerful hard drive scrubber and data recovery feature for accidentally erased files.

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