COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Wendyf]

Been looking for a smilie representing green with envy but can't find one...this will have to express my feelings instead .

[Pluggy]

As an extra service to our delightful members, if you're at a new computer and you can't be bothered with typing the full oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk you can just type ogfb.co.uk and it will arrive here. If you're trying it and you're already logged in on the full name site, you'll need to log in again on the short version as your browser doesn't recognise it as the same site although thats what it is.

[Gloria]

Ours is awful, probably comes from being at the end of the line down a country lane. Pretty much everything is poor here, mobile reception awful, electricity forever flickering----- the pain of rural living----I'd not swap it

[Stanley]

Tried Speed Test for the first time in yonks. 17 down and .85 up.
You're right Pluggy.... I'm so used to FM3 I'd forgotten that but in my defence, that's the only place I've done it.....

[Gloria]

Mine is 0.918 down and 0.565 up------how bad is that??? Dreadful???? We have pigeons sat on the wires passing letters from one to another to make up messages.

[Tizer]

Ours is awful, probably comes from being at the end of the line down a country lane. Pretty much everything is poor here, mobile reception awful, electricity forever flickering----- the pain of rural living----I'd not swap it

Gloria, have you got neighbours living nearby? If so, have you asked them what speed they get?

[Gloria]

Yes we have Tizer, our neighbours across the lane are the last on the wire and theirs varies a lot. They got an old computer from college and that worked well for a while, but was on dead slow and stop last week. iPads seem to work quicker but I have just checked the download on this and it is just the same as the laptop. I think our wire will be the last on their list of priorities.

[Tizer]

The more techie members of OG can correct me on this but I think your broadband download speed isn't affected by the type of computer. If it's slow then it's nothing to do with the computer. What about neighbours further away and `upstream' on the line from you? Do they get any better than you do? We're down a lane on the edge of a small village in the Somerset Levels but we get 6Mbps. (Sorry to have to tell you that!)

[Pluggy]

The connection speed isn't affected by the computer, the speed of rendering internet pages is though. The connection speed is governed by the ISP, BT's cabling, the distance to the exchange, your wiring inside the house and the router. From experience its usually BT's cabling that is what slows stuff down. Occasionally something called the profile which keeps a tab on the connection speed gets its knickers in a twist and its suddenly springs to life when its reset. Your ISP can do that, but you generally have at least an hour of to-ing and fro-ing with the call centre script monkeys (usually with thick indian accents) before you start getting sense out of them. Before you call the ISP, it helps to do the early checks before hand. If you have a crackly phone line that is inevitably part of the issue. Unplug the router and move it to the master socket if it isn't already there. If you have a later type master socket which looks like one of these :



You undo the 2 screws and pull the front fascia off, any extension sockets should be wired into the front fascia which are then disconnected, behind the fascia is another BT phone socket, connect the router with its filter into that socket (the so called test socket) and switch it back on. Give it a minute or two to start up again and then do the speed test again. If its no change then you try a new filter and ideally another router and cable, if still no change call the ISP and take to the next level. If your phone line clears and your speed increases, you've sorted it and you're spared the painful bit,

Be warned if your service provider isn't BT, you'll likely get a run around with the ISP blaming BT and BT blaming the ISP. Persevere and eventually you'll get sense. If its a BT wiring problem, it usually involves a visit from BT Openreach, and if they find the problem is with your stuff, they'll charge you for the visit (around £160 I believe). Sometimes, the fault is found outside your premises before they visit you and they fix it without telling you and without turning up for the visit. If the appointment time has passed, check the speed again before you start swearing at script monkeys.

If your master socket isn't one of the above (usually has the 2 screws equidistant between the top and bottom), you change the filter and router cable if possible and then go to the ISP, if you have the later socket and you call the ISP they'll talk you through the above rigmarole, but if you've already done it, it gives you an edge with the script monkeys. If you use http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ thats the official BT speedtester and that gives you a further edge on the script monkeys although its results are usually a fairly close match to the much more popular http://www.speedtest.net/ . The BT speedtester site has more checks,to consider.

Good Luck........

[Stanley]

I sympathise with you Gloria, nothing more soul destroying than 'communicating' via ISP agents.
I have my own issue this morning. You may remember I bought Susan an Ipad Air from Cybergame shop, HK. It was delivered with a bum cable, we got another that worked and a £10 credit on the purchase price. So far so good but this morning the seller informs me another Ipad Air has been dispatched on the same order number..... I have sent screamer mails to them and Amazon!
08:00 Quick action by Amazon. I have received mail telling me to disregard the email which is a rogue automated response.

[Gloria]

Thanks All for your help. We have had problems on and off for quite a few years now. Last time we did the unscrewing rigmarole to no avail, BT man came out and put us a new, more modern, latest gadget, which our router comes out of, and charged us nothing---good man. We are 2miles from Leyland Exchange and I haven't asked the people back up the road how they find theirs, but I will.
Thanks again for your input.

[Tizer]

A very informative reply from Pluggy, those of you near Barlick are very lucky to be in his catchment area.

[Stanley]

His home-brew computers are pretty good too!

[Pluggy]

Microsoft have just announced they will no longer support versions of IE (Internet Explorer AKA the big blue 'e' aka 'the internet') other than the latest from January 2016. Backhanded way of devalueing Vista (which can't run the latest) before its time IMO. If you're still on XP, I'd have stopped using IE months ago. Firefox or Chrome is the way to go.

[Tizer]

His home-brew computers are pretty good too!

I know, I too use one!

It's amazing how so many people still use Internet Explorer. I suppose the reason is that its embedded in Windows and most people don't even realise they can get a free and much, much better alternative very easily. It just goes to show the hold that Microsoft has over so many folk around the world - not to mention the vast number of companies and governments that are wedded to it. With that amount of gullibility and indifference it's no wonder that it's so easy for fraudsters to scam people over the phone and by email and for others to sell empty boxes as bomb detectors and make vast sums of money.

[Steven Chorkley]

Mine is 0.918 down and 0.565 up------how bad is that??? Dreadful???? We have pigeons sat on the wires passing letters from one to another to make up messages.

Seems the same as at my friends house... he lives off the main road opposite Whitemoor approaching Foulridge.

My parents address has always had 16mbps, and it seems okay. Latency is very minimal, I never have any issues unless I had a few friends over. Swapping my router to a RT-N66U sorted all issues, however fibre is soon going to be needed as IPTV and IPPhones are cheaper and will take over. Also the UK are pushing for the fastest broadband speeds, that is why schemes such as superfast lancashire have been established. I praise them, as the internet is the future. Mobile connections are becoming increasingly faster, with 4G due in Barlick before the end of the year, however the redundancy and speeds between cable and wireless are unmatched.
When streaming 1080p as advertised on sites such as YouTube, it is seriously compressed and the bitrate is heavily impacted. Rates of Bluray (True HD) approach 40mbps. As 3D (Dual stream) and 4K increase in popularity over the next few years, the demand for bandwidth will greatly increase.

I like how the UK government are pushing for FTTC (80/100mbps) technology, with most houses within a suitable distance from the exchange (Exchange only lines) able to access FTTP (300mbps). This is because it is much easier to run fibre from a cabinet into a property therefore using the existing network infrastructure reducing costs when speeds over 80mbps are required. This is offered at few cabinets as standard, however anyone can purchase FTTPoD and pay for fibre to be rolled into their property.
This is where Virgin Media are failing, and where most cable companies across the pond in america are going to struggle with. They are able to achieve speeds well over 150mbps over coax, however to roll out higher speeds when required they must bond connections. To have the capability of delivering more speeds efficiently they must roll out a new backbone, with this costing thousands / (more realistically) millions of £££.

Over here in the UK we should be grateful of companies such as BT and ISP"s using this network. It is fantastic for competition as we know that we get the same service, so we go for the lowest price. The difference is that we have a national provider, they use the same technology across the country. Smaller companies that use wireless and cable connections do have their own networks, but there are very few places in this country where you can't get access, if you can't its £70 a month for an unlimited 20mbps satellite connection with government grants available. Few countries have a central communications provider, (I'll use the states as having personal experience). Access isn't mandatory. Companies simply provide access in locations they choose. DSL broadband isn't widely used and isn't always supported by local exchanges. If your not in the city, you will have a slow DSL connection. Upstate New York, broadband access isn't even available. To enable access we had to use an expensive satellite connection and we were about a 3hr drive outside the city. America has super fast broadband in certain locations, but in others has none available. People complain about BT and other ISP's with slow connections, but the UK rolls out new technologies across the country at once. Although a slow process, it avoids issues such as the example I gave.

[Steven Chorkley]

I sympathise with you Gloria, nothing more soul destroying than 'communicating' via ISP agents.
I have my own issue this morning. You may remember I bought Susan an Ipad Air from Cybergame shop, HK. It was delivered with a bum cable, we got another that worked and a £10 credit on the purchase price. So far so good but this morning the seller informs me another Ipad Air has been dispatched on the same order number..... I have sent screamer mails to them and Amazon!
08:00 Quick action by Amazon. I have received mail telling me to disregard the email which is a rogue automated response.

Honestly, you should always go directly to Apple. Fantastic support, and literally no issues. I've had a trackpad issue, and rather than wait for it to be fixed they just offered a replacement and handed over a brand new laptop in store.
Probably worked out cheaper for them, but I was certainly happy.

His home-brew computers are pretty good too!

I know, I too use one!

It's amazing how so many people still use Internet Explorer. I suppose the reason is that its embedded in Windows and most people don't even realise they can get a free and much, much better alternative very easily. It just goes to show the hold that Microsoft has over so many folk around the world - not to mention the vast number of companies and governments that are wedded to it. With that amount of gullibility and indifference it's no wonder that it's so easy for fraudsters to scam people over the phone and by email and for others to sell empty boxes as bomb detectors and make vast sums of money.

The latest versions of Internet Explorer don't seem to bad, I use in on servers as I try to keep 3rd party software to a minimum. It's as fast as any other browser, it's actually very efficient although other browsers completely beat it's performance.

I'm saying that whilst I wouldn't use it day to day, it isn't an awful browser and for most people who just wouldn't care as long as google loads, it's perfectly fine.
That said... the metro version is utter ****

[Pluggy]

IE 11 is probably as good as the alternatives, There isn't much to choose between them for security. If I were in the market for an Apple device, I probably go direct. I'm sniffing around getting a tablet, but business isn't good enough to buy an Apple, toss up between last years Nexus If I can find one or a Tesco Hudl I think. The Amazon alterntives are a bit over branded and a no name from Ebay is a bit thin on support I feel.

[Steven Chorkley]

IE 11 is probably as good as the alternatives, There isn't much to choose between them for security. If I were in the market for an Apple device, I probably go direct. I'm sniffing around getting a tablet, but business isn't good enough to buy an Apple, toss up between last years Nexus If I can find one or a Tesco Hudl I think. The Amazon alterntives are a bit over branded and a no name from Ebay is a bit thin on support I feel.

A new Nexus 10 is well overdue for an upgrade. I purchased an iPad 2 32GB a few year ago. It still works perfectly, however I stopped using it about 6 months ago. I never found a use for it. I either needed something more powerful such as my laptop, or for gaming / reading on the bus I use my phone.
I won't be buying a new one, I just have no use for it :/

[chinatyke]

Recently, say the last month or so, I've noticed peculiar things happening when I go into Hotmail. The in-box page loads as normal. I click onto an unread mail and start reading it and after a few seconds the page refreshes and goes back to the in-box main page. Worse still is that if I have started to write an email all is lost when it refreshes. It's annoying that the first page re-loads and I put this down to slow international connections, but wondered why it needed to reload anyway. Last night I searched the internet (Google is virtually useless here, the Chinese censors have crippled it) and found I wasn't alone with people complaining of the same problem from early 2013. Various fixes like clearing caches or changing browsers were suggested but didn't seem to be permanent solutions. Change to Outlook seems to have got some blame.

I use a Mac with Mavericks OS and Firefox as the browser. I went into Firefox and checked my settings. It was set to update automatically. I forced an update and Firefox updated to v 31.0. Why didn't it do an automatic update? Anyway I've noticed the Hotmail page still refreshes but a lot quicker than it did before and before you have a chance to select a mail. I suspect it is a bug in Hotmail and only apparent on slow connections, or is it something more sinister like your mail is being sent or examined by a 3rd party, NSA, Chinese censors etc?

I've just realised that the problem has gone away and Hotmail is back to normal. Not sure when it returned to normal and what happened to solve the problem, but I'm happy again.

[Steven Chorkley]

Probably the firewall, causes all-sorts of different teething problems

[Stanley]

Over 70mb of new Linux kernel downloaded and installed. As usual, no problem at all....

[Stanley]

Got mail purporting to come from Talktalk telling me they were having difficulty processing my account and asking for my details. Guess what I did with it.

[Tizer]

My Ubuntu updates are now offering me the opportunity to upgrade from v.12.04LTS to 14.04LTS. I was tempted but when I look it up on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases
v.14 doesn't sound much different from v.12, and 12.04LTS still has 3 years of security updates to go before it stops.

[Pluggy]

More or less what I said here http://oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk/viewtopi ... .04#p55885 in May. If 12.04 works, stick with it. I have 14.04 but theres little real difference from 12.04