COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Pluggy]

I've had customers roundly cursing Plusnet in my time (I've had customers cursing most ISPs come to think of it.) I was asked to help sort out an internet problem with a Plusnet customer and I was handed the phone. Got a real jobsworth, "we can't divulge that information because you can't answer our security questions" (the customer had had it set up for her by her daughter who had since emigrated and couldn't remember). I was only calling from the phone line in question, who the hell else could it be ?. In the end we left if for a while and rang again. Got somebody else who could see sense and we resolved it.

[Stanley]

David, that surprised me as well! Thanks for checking it out. Just goes to show you are taking a leap of faith every time you use Tinternetwebthingy..... Question is, is Pluggy a holographic entity and actually an adjunct of BT? Spooky......

[Tizer]

I've been with Plusnet for about 6 or 7 years now when I switched from Demon who couldn't get me better than 1Mbps and Plusnet got me 6Mbps. Other than a bit of a mix up in the first few days I never had any technical problems with them and all my enquiries were dealt with quickly, efficiently and and politely. In all those years I can only remember my broadband being cut off once or twice and then only briefly. My experience with them was all good. I knew they became officially part of BT Retail but they carried on with the same staff in the same offices in Sheffield and it didn't seem to affect my experience (and BT Retail is supposed to be distinct from BT Wholesale who own the lines). But recently Tripps, also on Plusnet, related how he had found a better deal on offer from John Lewis (I didn't know Plusnet was doing their broadband) and it prompted me to look too. The usual thing had happened, I was getting good service from Plusnet and hadn't bothered to look at how it compared with others on bandwidth. I phoned Plusnet and complained, and threatened to move and they offered me 5x as much bandwidth and a lower charge, which I accepted. But I wasn't pleased about the way they had treated a loyal customer (just like the banks and insurance companies!) and had a whinge at them about it. They also messed me about on the first bill for the new account - it said that the offer would expire in a couple of month's time, although they had told me on the phone it was for a year (shades of Npower's famous 10-month year). I got it corrected and an apology but it seemed like a cunning wheeze to catch out those people who don't check their bills carefully. Conclusion? I'm still getting a decent deal and reliable broadband from Plusnet but I'm very disappointed by their adoption of the cynical treatment of customers meted out by other companies.

John Lewis broadband being provided by Plusnet sounds like just one more of the same exploitation of brand names that is becoming so common. I first had a bad experience with this in the mid 1990s when, starting our own business, Mrs Tiz and I took out personal pensions. we looked around for something we thought should be trustworthy and found Marks & Spencer Financial Services was offering pensions so we started with them. Very quickly the pensions went belly up and an accountant (family friend) advised us to stop paying into them because it was wasted money. Eventually it emerged, in the newspapers, that the so-called `Marks & Spencer Financial Services' was actually HSBC, a company with whom we would never have taken out pensions (we had recently ditched them after bad treatment on our company bank account). More recently I looked for a suitable annuity from the remains of that pension and tried Saga, hoping it might be better than the big insurance companies. Guess what, it's really Legal & General, and not only that - I was offered a higher annuity by going to L&G direct than I was offered from Saga! A third example of this cunning wheeze is Co-Op Legal Services. We decided to try them for conveyancing when my Dad moved house because they make a big issue of being ethical and treating customers well. We signed up and everything but then found we were dealing not with Co-Op but with a big insurance company and they immediately let us down on some of the promises the Co-Op made for their legal services and failed to communicate in a timely manner. So always ask who is behind a service before you sign up to it.

[Steven Chorkley]

I've been with Plusnet for about 6 or 7 years now when I switched from Demon who couldn't get me better than 1Mbps and Plusnet got me 6Mbps. Other than a bit of a mix up in the first few days I never had any technical problems with them and all my enquiries were dealt with quickly, efficiently and and politely. In all those years I can only remember my broadband being cut off once or twice and then only briefly. My experience with them was all good. I knew they became officially part of BT Retail but they carried on with the same staff in the same offices in Sheffield and it didn't seem to affect my experience (and BT Retail is supposed to be distinct from BT Wholesale who own the lines). But recently Tripps, also on Plusnet, related how he had found a better deal on offer from John Lewis (I didn't know Plusnet was doing their broadband) and it prompted me to look too. The usual thing had happened, I was getting good service from Plusnet and hadn't bothered to look at how it compared with others on bandwidth. I phoned Plusnet and complained, and threatened to move and they offered me 5x as much bandwidth and a lower charge, which I accepted. But I wasn't pleased about the way they had treated a loyal customer (just like the banks and insurance companies!) and had a whinge at them about it. They also messed me about on the first bill for the new account - it said that the offer would expire in a couple of month's time, although they had told me on the phone it was for a year (shades of Npower's famous 10-month year). I got it corrected and an apology but it seemed like a cunning wheeze to catch out those people who don't check their bills carefully. Conclusion? I'm still getting a decent deal and reliable broadband from Plusnet but I'm very disappointed by their adoption of the cynical treatment of customers meted out by other companies.

John Lewis broadband being provided by Plusnet sounds like just one more of the same exploitation of brand names that is becoming so common. I first had a bad experience with this in the mid 1990s when, starting our own business, Mrs Tiz and I took out personal pensions. we looked around for something we thought should be trustworthy and found Marks & Spencer Financial Services was offering pensions so we started with them. Very quickly the pensions went belly up and an accountant (family friend) advised us to stop paying into them because it was wasted money. Eventually it emerged, in the newspapers, that the so-called `Marks & Spencer Financial Services' was actually HSBC, a company with whom we would never have taken out pensions (we had recently ditched them after bad treatment on our company bank account). More recently I looked for a suitable annuity from the remains of that pension and tried Saga, hoping it might be better than the big insurance companies. Guess what, it's really Legal & General, and not only that - I was offered a higher annuity by going to L&G direct than I was offered from Saga! A third example of this cunning wheeze is Co-Op Legal Services. We decided to try them for conveyancing when my Dad moved house because they make a big issue of being ethical and treating customers well. We signed up and everything but then found we were dealing not with Co-Op but with a big insurance company and they immediately let us down on some of the promises the Co-Op made for their legal services and failed to communicate in a timely manner. So always ask who is behind a service before you sign up to it.

Wow that really surprised me..... I didn't know that a virtual network (john Lewis) be based upon another virtual network! Anyway I think that that is awful but I must say it is the way most ISPs have adopted their ways! It is really disappointing but there isn't much we can do! Anyway glad to help!

Steven,

[Tizer]

Right Tiz. Over to you! I want you to take all the risks, go onto 12.4 64 bit and report back to us. If it goes well for you I'll consider a change!

I decided to take the risk now. I've been hobbling about for a while due to a damaged ligament in the back of my thigh and so it seemed like a good idea to do something that required a lot of sitting down. Unfortunately it turned out to be a bad idea as related below.

I decided to go for the 32-bit version of the Ubuntu 12.04 upgrade as it looks like this can use all my 4GB of RAM without needing 64-bit and it would reduce the opportunities for problems. After backing up all my data and profiles from the Home folder I tried to do the online upgrade offered in the Update menu. The first problem was that it immediately told me the the root partition didn't have enough space. I exited the process and tried to create more space in the root partition with Gparted but couldn't find a way to do it. So then I went into Synaptic package manager and deleted the old Linux-image files - I don't know why they don't get automatically deleted after new updates of the images, perhaps keeping just the last but one as a backup. This allowed me to start the online upgrade but during `Getting packages' it stopped and asked for a CD with Pangolin (i.e. v.12.04)! Seems strange when it's supposed to be doing the online upgrade and is connected to the Internet. After cancelling the message it continued but warned again of low disk space and then failed.

I then tried again but instead of the online upgrade used an installation CD with 12.04 on it. Failed again, so downloaded a new 12.04 file to a new CD, checked mdsum for integrity etc and gave it a go. Same problem. Had another attempt and did the custom partition and made a bigger root partition than I previously had. It then ran through the process and flagged up a number of error warnings at the end. After downloading the latest 12.04 software updates it seems to be working OK but the warnings leave me a bit concerned. I can use my scanner, printer, camera, email, browser etc and loaded my data files and profiles to get my email messages and browser bookmarks etc.

That was Friday's job. On Saturday morning I made a start on Mrs Tiz's PC....and wasn't finished until after 5.00pm on Sunday! As her PC is essentially the same as mine I thought it would save time to use the CD route rather than get bogged down in the online route as happened with mine. Perhaps that was a bad decision - the install failed very soon in the process and locked up the PC. When I tried to reboot without the CD I couldn't get past the login screen and got a warning - `GPU lockup'. I then tried to boot from the CD which gives you the choice of using it as a `live CD' (software installed in RAM only) or doing an install on the hard drive. Every time I got: `Warning: installer encountered an unrecoverable error. Will start a desktop session to allow you to investigate the problem'. I would click out of this and continue but the process always failed at a late stage of installing packages.

Eventually I decided to revert to v.10.04 from a `live CD' but this installation failed too. While in a live CD set up I then deleted all partitions on the hard drives and tried again but to no avail. Looking at the drives using the Disk Utility, drive sda was `healthy' but drive sdb showed `some bad sectors' - I don't know how significant that is but I then tried disconnecting each drive in turn and trying the install from CD. It kept freezing at a late stage of the process but eventually, with drive sda, I managed to get one through to the final stage where it gives the option to restart or to keep working and restart later. After restarting I got only a black screen after the usual motherboard screen. After another attempt at installing I got to the same final step but chose to `continue working' and set it downloading 10.04 updates. This has resulted in a working version of 10.04 but that will only be safe to use until April, so I'll be looking for my local equivalent of Pluggy to sort all this out for me!

[Pluggy]

I'd backup your /home and /etc folders and reinstall it afresh from a CD after selecting 'Run without making changes'. That verifies the integrity of the CD before you get to the dangerous bit. I've installed it on about a dozen PCs of various types, never had a problem, other than the CD misreading. You can reduce that by forcing it to burn at a reduced speed when you make the CD. Maximum speed is the quickest and is default but slowing it down makes it more reliable.I usually go for 24X. If you can burn the disk on the one you're going to install it onto, it helps as well. Having a /dev/sda and a /dev/sdb means you have 2 physical drives connected in the machine. I would disconnect the one you don't want to put the OS onto and reconnect it again afterwards, it saves confusion if nothing else.

[Tizer]

Thanks for the advice. I always burn CDs at a slow speed because I don't do many and don't need to rush, so prefer to go for safety rather than speed. I think these were burned at 8x. When you say to "reinstall it afresh from a CD after selecting 'Run without making changes'" I'm not sure what you mean - where does the `'Run without making changes' option appear, is it to do with the install? I usually boot from the CD, wait for it to offer `Try out Ubuntu' or `Install Ubunbtu' and then choose the latter. I don't recall seeing a 'Run without making changes' option.

[Pluggy]

Doing it from memory, Run without making changes is probably on another version of Ubuntu. - Try out Ubuntu.

When you do that option, does the machine work doing other things before actually starting the install ?

[Stanley]

Good men on here! Well done Tiz and keep going! Once you have it going and report I shall throw money at Pluggy and sit there glaring at him! What interests me is how it all looks compared to 10.4. I have a seperate 1tb HDD for the data and my preferred route would be for Pluggy to tell me what to download to CD and then start the install after formatting the 1tb HDD which carries the OS. My blank CDs are old ones and I think only write at 4X so no fast downloads for me! I'll add this years data to the external HDD so that I have a complete back-up available there as well. In any case I'll talk to Pluggy first.....

[Stanley]

PS. Sorry to hear about the leg. Lots of rubbing with scented oils.... Cue Mrs Tiz and a warm room....

[Tizer]

`Try out Ubuntu.' When you do that option, does the machine work doing other things before actually starting the install ?

Pluggy, I can't even get to the `Try out Ubuntu' screen on Mrs Tiz's PC - when I boot from the 12.04 CD it chunters along for a bit and then the screen colours up, but not as it should do. The top third is the normal red-brown background colour but the bottom two-thirds are pixelated with some random dark pixels on a mainly light background. It seems to freeze like this but then switches to black and shows text lines stating a number, then `nouveau', another number, then `failed to idle channel 2'. It keeps switches between the pixelated screen and the black screen and the latter accumulates a list of alternating text lines but with channel 2 and channel 3. I have to switch off or reboot into the HDD drive.

With the 10.04 CD it chunters along and then I get the usual coloured screen but with the `unrecoverable error' warning. Clicking OK flashed some unreadable text on a black screen and then I get into the CD's normal screen.

Stanley, these troubles are probably mine only and I expect you'll get along OK with the install, especially with Pluggy to hand. As for 12.04 in use, I don't have much experience yet but it is a bit of a culture shock. Some of it is just a case of learning different ways of doing the usual jobs but it's not always obvious and you have to furtle to find out. What has troubled me most so far is that the menus we are used to having along the top bar of application windows are no longer there. They are always in the top bar of the desktop screen, no matter what application (or how many) you have open in a small window. Those menus always reflect the window which has the `focus', but I find it can be confusing at times. I often work with several application windows open, dragging and dropping files, and in some cases (such as the File Manager) I use two windows of the same application. You have to be sure you have the focus on the right window when you click on the screen's top bar menus or you end up in a right muddle!

Some things have eluded me, e.g. where has the Package Manager (Synaptic) gone? Also, we used to have the Preferences and Admin menus but these seem to have disappeared into a Systems Seyyings window with fewer options. I guess it'll all work out OK in the end but I'm sure some of the convenient, useful features of previous versions are being ditched to suit the neds of the `mobile device' fraternity!

[Pluggy]

I'd suspect the CD drive on Mrs Tiz's machine or possibly another hardware fault.

Synaptic Package Manager has been replaced by Ubuntu Software Centre. Its a bit 'iTunes' but it does work. You can always put synaptic on with Ubuntu software centre or even 'apt-get' at the command line.

You get used to the differences. If I fire up 10.04 now, it looks very old fashioned. Have you caught onto 'Dash Home' and typing search terms into it's box ? Its a quick way of running applications you don't have on the launcher.

[Stanley]

"useful features of previous versions are being ditched to suit the neds of the `mobile device' fraternity!"

I suspect that may be right. Ah well, it will keep my brain active!

[Sunray10]

BT Internet has gone down in Pendle tonight but not sure why. Many people reporting no internet. Is it the same over in Barlick?

[Big Kev]

BT Internet has gone down in Pendle tonight but not sure why. Many people reporting no internet. Is it the same over in Barlick?

EE (Orange) dropped out just after midnight for 10 minutes.

[Sunray10]

Ummm, not sure what's going on. I'm using my Ethernet cable otherwise wouldn't be commenting - even this went off just after midnight.

[Stanley]

I must be missing something here. If your service is down how does the sort of cable help?

[Sunray10]

Your guess is a good as mine Stanley. It kind of by-passes something ?!

[Pluggy]

If the external internet goes off, what you use to connect the computer isn't going to change anything. It makes a difference if your internal wireless decides it doesn't want to play (assuming you're using wireless to the router in the first place), but not if its anything else.

My phone line is on the blink again, my internet has been up and down all day. Openreach booked to come out on Monday.....

[Sunray10]

BT Internet is now back on thanks to the help of expert technical help over the phone. It was off over a wide area but had returned today. It seems I had pressed the antenna ( 'A' ) thingy top left of keyboard. Its something so simple. Will know next time. Thank you Pluggy and Stanley.

[hartley353]

Switched on the laptop yesterday to find my capslock reminder had disappeared from the screen. I did the usual google search to see if others had suffered similar occurences and yes many had. Plenty of solutions but very convoluted, so after very little thought the solution was to live with out. Pretty sure problem caused by an upgrade I accepted,so now on no more upgrades,my laptop is getting to old to learn new tricks.

[Sunray10]

My keyboard, luckily, has a green light letting me know that capslock is still on as well as the pop-up blue reminder on the screen, so if I loose one at least I have the green light there to remind me.

[Stanley]

I've never, ever had a reliable caps lock warning on any system.It's a conspiracy to favour touch-typists!

[Tizer]

I mentioned earlier about the `bad sectors' showing up for one of the hard disks in Disk Utility on Mrs Tiz's PC after trying to upgrade Ubuntu. Well, shortly after, the other disk showed the same. And now mine (more or less the same as her PC) is showing one of the two disks as having `bad sectors'. I did an internet search and found some folk saying they get these warnings but a more rigorous disk check shows them to be incorrect and the disks are fine. If I click the disk check button in Disk Utlilty when set to any of the `bad' disks it immediately comes up with a message saying `Disk clean'! Can it do a check in seconds I wonder? All very puzzling. (My attempts to find a local equivalent of Pluggy, with experience of Ubuntu, have all failed so far.)

[Stanley]

"(My attempts to find a local equivalent of Pluggy, with experience of Ubuntu, have all failed so far.)"

Another advantage of living in Barlick! Perhaps we should clone him....
Re. Caps Lock. It struck me that there is one place where Caps Lock warning is active, accurate and polite. If you try to log into Ubuntu with it on you get a helpful message, "You have caps lock switched on". Nice! So much more human friendly than the Msoft 'ILLEGAL ACTION!'.