Most common questions our readers ask our experts

Front-loaders use less water, saving you money on heating water. They also remove a lot of moisture from laundry, reducing drying time and cost. A typical new front-loader would save an average household about $100 a year over an older top-loader and dryer. Because you seldom use the dryer, your savings wouldn’t be very much.

Is it better to get fish oil from eating fish rather than from supplements?

It depends on how much fish oil you want. The American Heart Association recommends a weekly intake of about 2 grams (2,000 milligrams) of omega-3 fatty acids, which you can generally accomplish by eating several servings of salmon, trout, whitefish, or other fatty fish that tend to be low in mercury. If you have heart disease, you practically have to take fish-oil capsules because you couldn’t eat enough fish to get the recommended 1-gram daily intake of omega-3s. If your triglyceride level is very high, you might need up to 3 grams a day, which you can get from multiple capsules or a prescriptionstrength fish oil.

What do you recommend for a Verizon Wireless customer who wants to upgrade to a decent texting plan but doesn’t want to pay for Internet access?

If you send and receive more than 100 text messages per month on an individual plan or more than 150 on a family plan, pick a Talk & Text plan, which provides unlimited texting. That will add $20 or $30 per month to the price of an individual or family Talk plan, respectively. If you send and receive fewer than 100 individual-plan or 150 family-plan texts per month, the à la carte fee of 20 cents per message will cost you less than the bundled price.

I’m thinking of buying a teleconverter for my SLR lenses to shoot close-ups. Will it affect my aperture and shutter?

Yes. A teleconverter can give you a longer range, making an 85-mm lens similar to a 120-mm lens, for example. But it will also make the lens “darker” (f/3.5, say, instead of f/1.8). With less light coming in, you might need a flash or slow shutter speeds, especially indoors. That could result in blur from hand shake.