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CLEVELAND – Taking proper care of your appliances will help extend its life and also help cut back on repair costs. Angie’s List, the nation’s premier provider of consumer reviews, asked highly rated appliance repair companies for tips and advice on checking that your appliances are in shape for the busy holiday season.

The oven:

The cleaner your oven is, the more efficiently it will burn gas or electricity. Don’t allow heavy grease buildup on the interior. Bake in batches when you can, rather than heating it up for one-time use several times over the week. When you can, use the microwave rather than the traditional oven.

Check your oven’s performance by getting a basic cake mix and following the directions exactly. If the cake isn’t perfect in the time frame set out on the box, your oven’s temperature might be off.

Self-cleaning cycles cause the oven to run at extremely high temperatures. If you choose to use the self cleaning feature on your oven, use it about twice a year after the holidays or at least two months before the holidays.

The refrigerator:

Clean the condenser coils at least once a year, more often if you have pets – to keep your fridge running efficiently. If you have a built-in refrigerator, hire a service company for this task.

Before you stock your fridge with holiday leftovers, make sure the seal on the door is tight. This is an easy test, close the door on a thin sheet of paper and if the paper slips, your fridge is wasting energy – replace the seal or adjust the door latch.

The dishwasher:

Clean your dishwasher’s filter at least twice a year to remove particles and debris. The filters location can vary depending on the model so be sure to check your owner’s manual.

Choose the right detergent for your dishwasher. Using less soap is beneficial over the long term. Often, homeowners use too much soap, or the wrong kind, which can lead to problems including locking up the pump. Powdered soap tends to work better than liquid because liquid can clog up the supply lines.

Washer and dryer:

Inspect the hoses on your clothes washer. Look for any cracks or leaks.

Avoid overloading the washing machine. This can damage the tub and cause belts to break.

Clean the lint filter on your dryer before each use and have the dryer vent inspected and cleaned once a year by a professional. In addition to being a fire hazard, a clogged dryer vent requires the dryer to work longer and harder to dry clothes. Energy is also wasted and the heating element and blower in the dryer wear out quicker. A clogged dryer can take two-to-three times longer to dry clothes.

Angie’s List tips for appliance repair:

Maintenance required for your appliance will depend on the manufacturer. Always check with your model’s manual. Whenever you perform extensive maintenance work on your appliances, take the necessary safety precautions. Shut off electrical and gas lines when working on them. Consult an appliance repair professional for major maintenance/repairs.

If you find there is a problem, you need to give the appliance repair company plenty of time to order the appropriate parts from the manufacturer. If you find the repair costs more than you’d like to invest, allow yourself enough time to go out and shop for a new appliance before the holidays.

Beta version of Firefox 8 from Mozilla includes new features to better manage Web browser add-ons and handle tabs, as well as under the hood improvements.

Much has been made lately of Mozilla’s decision to move to a rapid six-week upgrade cycle for their flagship Firefox Web browser. But regular users can be forgiven if they’ve wondered about all the fuss, given that the recent new versions of the browser have featured mostly under the hood changes and no new visible features for users.

But that looks to finally change with Firefox 8, which was recently released in beta. While the new features in version 8 of the browser can hardly be considered major or groundbreaking, at least there are some new noticeable capabilities for users.

One of the main complaints of the rapid upgrade cycle of Firefox is the possibility that new versions of the browser will break add-ons and extensions that users rely on. A welcome new feature in Firefox 8 displays a special add-ons window the first time the browser runs after the upgrade.

This window displays the add-ons currently installed in Firefox and gives the user the option to disable or remove unwanted or unused add-ons. I found this to be a nice touch, and useful not just for removing unused add-ons but as a reminder of just which extensions and add-ons other applications had added to your browser. By default, Firefox now disables all of these third-party add-ons at upgrade and in this window, users can choose which ones they want to re-enable.

One of the more noticeable changes in this new version is the addition of Twitter as an option for the default search engine in the browser’s search bar. In tests this worked fine and is nice as another option for integrated search.

Also in this version, Firefox now uses a more visible animated tab action when a user drags and drops tabs to reorder them on the tab bar. This is a feature that Google Chrome has had for a while now and is a case of Firefox catching up with its competitor.

Possibly my favorite new feature in Firefox 8 is the option to set the browser to not immediately load tabs upon startup. This is nice both for users who use a tab group on startup and for recovering from crashes. Now, instead of the browser wasting resources trying to load several websites at once, a tab will only load once it has been selected in the tab bar.

Like most other Firefox upgrades, this version also includes under the hood engine upgrades and improved standards support. Included in this version is support for HTML 5 context menus.

To try out the new beta of Firefox, go to here.

If you’ve already seen the Xiaomi M1 announcement about a month ago, well, forget it, because Xiaomi has already made some significant changes since then. What we’ve just learned from today’s Beijing launch event is that the M1 — now officially “Xiaomi Phone” — no longer packs a 1.2GHz dual-core chip; instead, it’s been given a bump to a Qualcomm MSM8260 SoC, thus becoming the first Chinese phone to sport a 1.5GHz dual-core chip. As part of the Snapdragon package, the phone is also powered by a powerful Adreno 220 graphics processor, which will no doubt make good use of the phone’s 1GB RAM and a staggering 4GB ROM. Oh, and that ¥2,600 (about US$410) price tag? It’s now ¥1,999 ($310), and will be available for pre-order on August 29th for October delivery. Read on for more surprises!

Unlike most phones with a 1400mAh or 1500mAh battery these days, the Xiaomi Phone gets a ginormous 1930mAh cell instead, and we’re promised to get two days worth of real-life usage out of it — CEO Lei Jun emphasised the “real-life” part, so we shall see. Another surprise — albeit an odd one — is that this phone supports both GPS (with A-GPS) and Russia’s GLONASS, meaning President Medvedev can navigate around his country just fine while updating his Weibo Twitter.

As for the rest, you get a 4-inch 480 x 854 LCD courtesy of Sharp (LCD for better outdoor performance, and 4 inches for Asian ergonomics), three touch buttons below the screen, a customisable “Mi key” (camera shutter or Weibo; long press for home screen), an eight megapixel camera with an F2.4 lens, and a dual antenna design that plays well with any kind of grip (obviously a little wink at Apple). Dimension-wise we’re looking at 125mm x 63mm x 11.9mm, weighing 149g or 5.3 ounces — just a tad heavier than the iPhone 4. As for accessories, we’re told that there will cases in at least seven bright colors, along with spare batteries of the same set of colors (that’s how awesome Xiaomi is).

Of course, let’s not forget the real star here: the MIUI (pronounced “mee-you-eye”) OS, which is a low-level custom UI based on Android 2.3.5. There’s no question about MIUI’s rapidly increasing popularity in recent years (Xiaomi quoted a user base of about 500,000), but if you insist on trying other Android flavors on Xiaomi’s hardware, then you’ll be pleased to know that this phone lets you flash whatever firmware you like.

If you’re starting to doubt the Xiaomi Phone’s reliability, you shouldn’t — we’ve been told that this phone’s been thoroughly torture-tested in the lab, simulating two years worth of usage. “This is why we take much longer than shanzhai factories to make a phone,” said the CEO. We’ll see about that in two months time, really looking forward to it.