COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

No printer, no word back from Yodel or Dabs. I hate these automated systems. I had to go to the find a number site to get a telephone number so I could speak to someone. Dabs closed till 9 tomorrow morning, Yodel site put me on hold at 10p a minute but 'all our agents are busy'. I am not a happy customer..... Never mind, I can have a day off today as it's Sunday. Old printer chugged out the hard copy of the latest article with no trouble..... Not good quality but did the job.

[Pluggy]

I use a Microsoft gaming keyboard bought as a present. There is back - lighting behind the keys so that if you wish you can have the letters glowing bright red.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Sidew ... 903&sr=8-1 Nolic

Many moons ago Nolic posted this (well the 5th of April anyhow). I dropped a few hints and my daughter bought me one for Fathers day. Fabulous bit of kit, now I don't have to have a light on just to see the keyboard when I'm on the computer at night. Most of the fancy keys work straight off in Ubuntu. The calculator button is a good idea......

[Stanley]

Glad you managed to get it delivered! My world is governed at the moment by a courier who won't respond to me..... Yodel will be under attack today.....

[Nolic]

Hard to believe that I can recommend something to do with computers and Pluggy takes it up!!!!
Great keyboard and brilliant if you have eyesight issues. Nolic

[Stanley]

Thankfully I am still able to function with my bog standard black keyboard with white letters. I shall bear the super keyboard in mind.....

[Tripps]

Even more remarkable that Pluggy found himself able to buy something from Microsoft.

[Stanley]

I am happy to report that I have spoken to a nice lady at Dabs who was not at all surprised by what has happened and is pursuing the matter for me. I have fingers crossed!

[Pluggy]

I didn't buy it, my daughter did, with her money. I also have a couple of Microsoft mice, but they are old ones and aren't used very much. I saw Nolic's post and I thought a backlit keyboard would be useful in my quest for energy savings, it saves the 36 watts used by the room lights and since USB can only supply a couple of watts tops, its not going to use that much itself. The room I have the computer in doesn't have a window of its own, it borrows the kitchen's light so I often struggle to see the keyboard when its dull outside as well as night time. I'm too mean to buy an expensive keyboard myself so I dropped some hints and it worked..........

The delightful thing about it is it doesn't need Microsoft software (which I do have a serious downer on) to make it work.

I buy most of my gear for my business and for customer's from Dab's business arm and they don't often let me down, but I get an account manager I can abuse when it does.

http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/ - they were called Dabs@work before BT bought Dabs.

[Tizer]

The keyboard wouldn't help me - if the room lighting is low I get eye strain from the glare of the screen and need a desk lamp.

Hey, Pluggy and Nolic will be buying those computers with transparent cases and flashing coloured lights inside! Time for a cool icon!

[Pluggy]

Hey, Pluggy and Nolic will be buying those computers with transparent cases and flashing coloured lights inside! Time for a cool icon!

Nahh, I draw the line at that. My desktop case is original beige circa 1998 with a Windows NT4.0 (the forerunner of Windows 2000) license sticker still stuck on the back. Its gizzards have been upgraded several times since then. It does look a bit out of place next to my black 20" widescreen monitor and my black backlit keyboard though....

[Stanley]

You could upgrade to a Sequoia...... On the other hand Microsoft has marketed the Circus. If it's as efficient as their OS I foresee certain insuperable problems.
The nice lady at Dabs.com smacked Yodel's bottom yesterday and tells me my delivery will come this morning, we shall see... So nice to talk to an agent who called me love instead of an inscrutable automated system which still hasn't responded to my original query or any of my other communications.

[Stanley]

I am no longer a prisoner of Yodel! Delivery at 12:30 yesterday. Not as they promised, morning delivery but I said nothing, signed and closed the door on a problem.... I shall install it today.
Investigations into the massive loss at J P Morgan's London office reveal that the cause was a mistake made in the algorithm that ran their Value at Risk programme. It raised the threshold where the programme kicked in by about 10-0%. Tricky things these computers!

[Stanley]

You will not be surprised to hear that I have got stuck installing my printer. All went well until it came to installing the software. I have shouted for help, Pluggy will be here this morning.

[Pluggy]

Sorted, thank you for the trade.

[Stanley]

Resolution. I must read the instructions for Ubuntu and find out how to use whatever it is Plugs goes into to make changes!

[Tizer]

Is it the System | Administration menu at the bottom of your screen Stanley? That gives access to most of the stuff. Or you can use the Terminal (Applications | Accessories | Terminal) but you need to gen up on the commands.

[Big Kev]

A while ago Stanley and Tizer were discussing a Raw converter. RawTherapee 4.0.9 released on june 4th with Nikon and Canon compatibility. Might be worth a look. Check your Ubuntu Software Centre, Stanley, it's a free download.

[Tizer]

Thanks for mentioning it Kev. It isn't listed in the Ubuntu software but I'll have a look at the details sometime (I'm going away for a week so it will have to wait until I return). I've tried Ufraw in the past but it seems a bit too opaque for my liking. RawStudio is also listed in the Ubuntu software.

[Stanley]

Thanks for the heads up Kev. I think I'll allocate time to the terminal before complicating my snaps!

[Tizer]

Here's an Ubuntu guide for using the terminal:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal
..and this page shows some dangerous commands which we should never use!
http://ubuntuforums.org/announcement.php?a=54

[Pluggy]

The command line is very useful in Windoze when you repair computers for a living. Back in the days when I maintained a network, wholesale things like changing permissions on 1500 kids home folders could be achieved inside a couple of minutes, it would take several days doing it in Windoze clicking everywhere. I could often write a script from scratch in an hour or two, to save many hours / days work trying to do the same thing with a mouse

Many of my linux scripts write to a block device, so saying it should never be used is seriously going to cramp my style....

[Stanley]

Nat West seems to have been having its share of the agony of computing.......

[PanBiker]

My 19" LCD monitor went up the swanee a few days ago. Having spent 20 years of my working life in electronic repair I decided to have a go at it despite not having the back off a video display for the best part of 15 -20 years. I am pleased to report that my skills in this area have not left me yet although the replacement of a dozen components took a tad longer than it used to when my eyesight was 20/20.
Said 19" monitor is now back in place with a new lease of life to it's power supply/ccd driver board.

Winner

[Stanley]

I have a question. When Pluggy loaded the FM2 we included a virtual box running Windows and it woukld appear that I am running dwx20 which is the error reporting programme for Msoft Office. I am not using the virtual box at all and so working on the principle that the less I ask the machine to do the faster it will perform, I want to delete the virtual box and the windows system running on it. Quetsion is how do I do it. Answers on a postcard please!

[Stanley]

Cancel that request. I had a funny turn and decided that I should do something about it myself. After all, if I cock it up I have the luxury of Pluggy at the end of the phone line! So I went furtling, found a user forum that was very helpful, and I have put Oracle Virtual Box and the DW20 file in the rubbish bin. I have restarted and all seems well. If anyone can see any flaws in this let me know. I shan't empty the rubbish bin until you lot reassure me! Thanks Lads.
PS. I think I did good. Unless I am just being optimistic the FM2 is now a faster machine. It seems to me that it's loading faster and responding better once I am in there. Am I kidding myself?
Another PS. The thing that has been bugging me for a while is that when I go to have a relax on Solitaire there was a delay in it, I was having to wait for the next three cards to come up. Despite my age I'm a fairly swift kiddy with the mouse so I went back to the game and tried to beat it on speed but couldn't, it's back to instantaneous response just like it used to be. I'm not imagining it, definitely back to previous form. I'd still welcome comments.....