COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[PanBiker]

Depends where the nearest fibre cabinet is in relation to the premises, as opposed to copper all the way back to the exchange. I think Gloria is in a fairly rural location a long way from the exchange. The fibre cabinet maybe a lot nearer.

[Big Kev]

Good point Ian, I forgot she was 'rural'

[Stanley]

You will be amazed at the difference Gloria. They are right about it taking a few days to dial itself in..... Persevere with it and don't get downhearted if there are glitches, it's worth it in the end.
I suspect leaving you on the dial up speed is a good sales ploy for fibre but what the hell, it will be like a miracle.

[Gloria]

We are miles from the exchange and the cabinet is about 200yds down the lane. It is costing us another £6 for fibre, bringing it up to £31 including anytime landline calls, I don't think that is too bad.

[Big Kev]

We are miles from the exchange and the cabinet is about 200yds down the lane. It is costing us another £6 for fibre, bringing it up to £31 including anytime landline calls, I don't think that is too bad.

Sounds good to me. I pay £32 for ADSL (17mbps) with unlimited calls, caller ID and an answering service. I may have to look into fibre.

[PanBiker]

It's on a par with what I pay Gloria and I get 39Mbps solid. You are about the same distance as I am from a fibre cabinet. 200M of copper is negligible according to the Open Reach guy who I had the other week, the test gear they use is ineffective on shorter distances. I still made the point that it was the number of connections in-between the house and the cabinet that made the difference not the actual distance. You should be good to go at that though Gloria, no doubt they have done reverse tests to ensure you will get good bandwidth, welcome to the 21st century.

[Tizer]

We've all been `trained' to expect everything to be as cheap as possible but when you think about it broadband is now so very, very important in our lives that it would be worth it at twice the price (but don't tell my broadband provider I said that!). And anyway, no pockets in a shroud, eh?

[Stanley]

My philosophy exactly Tiz. Think of what some people pay for things we would never consider..... How many 'ready cooked convenience meals' would £30 buy? Fibre looks cheap when you consider the improvement on dial up speeds.
You'll be amazed Gloria!

[Tizer]

Just the thing if you start finding it difficult to tie your shoe laces...and you can look trendy too! LINK
`Nike's phone-controlled self-lacing trainers'

[Stanley]

That's tech gone mad! See what I have posted in another topic. Being able to comfortably bend down to lace my boots is one of my key measures for weight monitoring. Being able to do this (And wipe my bottom. Yes, that's a key indicator, just think about it!) easily lets me know I am OK. Mind you, I will admit that having short legs helps with the laces......

[Tizer]

Mind you, I will admit that having short legs helps with the laces......

I have that advantage too! Mrs Tiz can reach a higher shelf than me but I always tell her it's because my the heels of my shoes are thinner than hers.

[Stanley]

I've always seen it as an advantage Tiz, lower centre of gravity so more stable..... And very handy in coal mines with low roofs. The foreman of the drift mine at Cliviger once told me I was the ideal build for a miner, the roof was only 4ft high. Mind you the day after I spent 5 hours down there I had to walk backwards to come downstairs at the Toll House at Barrowford, it played hell with my back.
Ask Mrs T if she heard Woman's Hour two days ago when they discussed the decline of high heels. Evidently posh glamour trainers are the 'in thing'. Even acceptable at the Palace!

[Tizer]

Eric `Winkle' Brown claimed that he survived aircraft accidents because he was shorter than average. Some of his colleagues were killed due to their head being closer to the cockpit canopy.

[Stanley]

[Pluggy]

I'll put it here and not in the forum discussion.

OGFB is presently in the hands of 'the man' for upgrades. Needless to say its problematic. The gallery is a bit up in the air at the moment.......

[Pluggy]

Later. All now seems to be well. I had an email from our ISP saying they'd be slapping a surcharge on our bill unless we updated PHP Ian and I agreed to let Mark who has done work for us in the past do it. Its now done. Invariably there are issues with getting software to work with updates. Officially the gallery doesn't work with this version of the board software, but nobody told the gallery and it still seems to work......

[Wendyf]

[Stanley]

All seems to be working well up to now....

[PanBiker]

Officially the gallery doesn't work with this version of the board software, but nobody told the gallery and it still seems to work......

Officially the gallery doesn't work since we upgraded to 3.2 five years ago actually. I remember the potential issues when we were doing the LTP back in 2013.

[Gloria]

The new router has arrived. The fibre is being switched to on 24th Jan at 12oclock midnight, when this is done, they will then send me an email to say I can set it up. Then, as I said before it will be two weeks before it settles down to how fast it's going to run. I will report back.

[Stanley]

Good luck with it Gloria.... Be patient in the early days, it will come right.
The Gallery.... I posted 6 new pics this morning with no drama at all......

[Tizer]

Pluggy and Ian, thanks for your efforts to keep us afloat in choppy waters!

Perhaps the chickens are coming home to roost for the social media/tech companies...
`Amazon, Apple and Google face data complaints' LINK
`Google hit with £44m GDPR fine over ads' LINK

[Stanley]

Only one glitch noted after upgrades, when I logged in yesterday afternoon to post Bob's Bit my view had gone onto large text. Soon corrected and it hasn't happened this morning when I logged on.
Tiz, I noted those reports and it seems to me that the world is gradually beginning to realise that opening Pandora's Box doen't always give uniformly good results.
I bought some underwear and shirts off Damart online and yesterday I got the follow up, a catalogue dropped through the letter box. Once more the automated response system had slipped up, it read mr s graham as mrs graham and sent me the Lady's catalogue..... This happens quite often, the algorithms aren't perfect!

[Tripps]

Advice from iPad owners or others please.

I bought an iPad two days ago. It's the 2018 Sixth Generation. 9.7" screen 32 GBs storage.

I don't like it.

I did the set up as best I could, gave it my credit card details a bit against my instincts, and let it track me . I still can't get it to do anything useful. I looked in the App Store -thousands of apps and but most of them seem to be childrens' games, and most are paid for. Not a patch on Android.

Tried to install a free app - Wikipedia. I am told that since this is my first visit to the store, I need to 'review' my settings and again enter a credit card details. Why? they already have them. I tried but failed.

I tried to install Spotify. I haven't heard any music yet - it is only interested in getting me to pay the monthly subscription.

I packed it up last night to send it back, but then ebay would not let me complete the process. I have a few days yet so no panic - and it's from Tesco Outlet so there will be no problems.

Am I the only person who can't get on with an iPad? I believe Apple are quite a big and successful company.

[Tizer]

Why did you give it your credit card details, Tripps? Or does Apple operate differently? On our Samsung we thought at first we were going to have to put in the card details at the beginning when it asked for them and wouldn't let us proceed otherwise. But then we looked more closely and found that we could bypass it. It still tries now and then but we always find there's an alternative way through. They're doing the usual trick of trying to make you think inserting details is obligatory or making it tedious so most people will just enter them anyway. One trick is to throw up the notice instructing you to enter the card details and then something like ENTER to click on. But then you find there's a way of closing it and carrying on with the process. Can you delete the details now?