COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Pluggy]

Microsoft have announced that Windows 10 will be available 'in the summer' and that for its first 12 months it will be a free upgrade from the much hated Windows 8/8.1. Probably something to bear in mind if you're suffering Windows 8 now. Having used a Beta of 10, it is a big improvement on 8. Its a lot more like Windows 7 but with shades of the later operating system.

[Stanley]

Not really Kev, first post is instantaneous if single recipient, multiple mails take longer but are faster than they were. All my settings are OK , I reckon it's Talk talk and I'll put up with it....

[Stanley]

Over the last two days the lads at Canonical have given us a new Firefox and Linux kernel. No difference to email as yet... I still think it's a Talktalk issue....

[Stanley]

Later... Something I have never come across before. We got a new Firefox download and this morning, while it was open in the background while I was sending mail I got strange audio clips being played.... When I came out of Tbird and went to shut Firefox down, at was open on One Guy and when I hit the kill button I found there was a web page open I had never asked for, when I deleted that there was another one underneath it. I had noticed that OG was running slowly. Has anyone come across this? Any suggestions?

[Tizer]

Very odd! What was the content of the audio clips? What, if anything, was on the background web pages you found, and what was the URL web address showing at the top of them? I've never seen or heard of anything like that. Perhaps the events are unrelated and happened to occur at the same time by pure coincidence - that sort of problem can be very confusing. Did you have any other software open that you'd forgotten about? I sometimes forget that I've been using an application and it's minimised and therefore not visible but it catches me by surprise later.

[Pluggy]

I've had the recent Ubuntu Firefox upgrades and I've nothing untoward here. If its a one off, I'd put it down to a erroneous click somewhere. If its misbehaving after being restarted then its time to think there is something amiss. Its pretty much normal behaviour on a fair percentage of Windows boxes I see (before I delouse them), not so on Linux.

[Stanley]

It's not happened again and I suspect you are right. I have inadvertently allowed a page to automatically open in Google and from what I could hear it was advertising. As I say, when I closed Firefox these two pages were there underneath. Could have been from Youtube.....
I am not going into a decline about it...

[Stanley]

Over the last couple of days the Talktalk SMTP server developed a habit of, apart from taking a long time to send a multiple recipient mail, coming up with an error massage saying that sending had failed and it was because of a dodgy email address, a different one each time. However, the mail had actually been sent. Very peculiar. This morning all my mails have gone normally at the usual fast speed. Too early to start cheering but something is definitely going on at their end.
By the way, there are two different routes to sending, one is the POP server and there is another later method. When I check my connection I am running on POP. The advice is that the other method is better if you are setting up a new account but existing accounts like mine are told not to alter the setting....
All quite confusing but as long as they go that's all I am bothered about!
09:00. I'm happy to report that the problems with the SMTP server at Talktalk seem to have been resolved. I am sending multiple recipient messages this morning as I write articles and they are now going out instantaneously.... Fingers crossed!

[PanBiker]

Sound like your mails are clearing the TalkTalk server and there may be a problem with a later mail hub. No real point changing the protocol, that's only the method used to handle the mail. You are not using multiple retrieval methods so IMAP which is the other protocol you are eluding to would probably make no difference to your particular problem which seems to be a routing issue.

Here's a How To Geek that explains the the two protocols.

Email: What's the difference between POP3 and IMAP?

[Stanley]

See my edit above Ian. Whatever the problem was they have fixed it. Mail going out as fast as usual....

[PanBiker]

Good, someones probably rebooted a router somewhere down the line.

[Stanley]

I agree. It's not a flash in the pan, the system is working perfectly now.....

[Stanley]

Having said that, the system threw a wobbly this morning and informed me that all servers were off line but then immediately opened and worked perfectly.... There's a bug in there somewhere lads that you have missed.....

[LizG]

Dad liked to keep up with technology and we all knew that. What we didn't know was that pretty much every time Microsoft updated their operating system he bought a new computer. He also had a complete suite of Apple stuff as well.

So as we have been packing up we have found homes for an enormous iMac, a Mac Air laptop, an iPad, and yesterday we found his iPod. Most of his great Grandchildren have received laptops or tablets, I found a laptop with a 500G hard drive with next to nothing on it; it runs Vista, I don't think he liked it! Yesterday we opened a shed and there was another networked desktop PC that he used for editing photos. Should I say that he had 5 printers including an A3 photo printer.

He always made sure no-one in the family went without technology....... Would anyone like to guess what his hobbies were? God love him.

[Stanley]

I am not surprised..... I often wonder how my kids will cope with the contents of my house.....

[Stanley]

Thanks to the lads for a new Firefox delivered with no fuss this morning......

[chinatyke]

The imminent demise of Internet Explorer.

read about it here

I was using another computer last week which had Internet Explorer browser installed. It was a nightmare, always jumping to different Chinese websites when it encountered the slightest delay. I installed Firefox and the problem was solved, it was like using a new computer. I won't cry over the loss of I.E.

[Pluggy]

It'll be IE12 with a different name.

In defence of IE, your stated behaviour is not standard for said browser, but is typical of a machine infected with c*ap. Unfortunately the cr*pware authors are well aware that not everyone uses IE and other browsers attract it with equal gusto nowadays. The present version of IE (11) is on a par with any browser for security. If you're still using Windows XP or Vista, you're stuck with IE8 or 9 which is a can of worms security wise. Do not use IE on XP or Vista in other words.

If you're going to use another browser, be careful where you get it from, there are hijacked versions of all the popular browsers around. There is a particular evil bastardisation of Google Chrome I've met on more than one occasion. Its web page is here http://www.getspeedbrowser.com/ but it finds its way into search engine results, DO NOT download it, you have been warned. Its only available for Windows, whereas the official versions of Chrome and Firefox are available for most platforms. Firefox has similar hijacked versions.

Official version of Chrome : http://www.google.com/chrome/
Official Version of Firefox : https://www.mozilla.org/en-US

[chinatyke]

Yes, the machine in question is almost certainly infected with Chinese malware and adware, though it didn't appear on the new download of Firefox, but I suppose these insidious little programs will surface eventually. I use a Mac when I'm in Nanning and I'm very careful with what I download and don't open anything I haven't requested, and then only after I've scanned it. I like to thing my Mac is as clean as I can keep it. Sorry, I was wrong to blame IE but I still won't miss it and its vulnerabilities.

[Stanley]

Pluggy, just out of interest. Is Linux 24bit still unlikely to pick up infections?
Later. Like clockwork, a new Thunderbird upgrade. 40mb with no problems.

[Pluggy]

Linux 64 bit (or 32 bit) is still very low profile. and not a serious target. Windows (as always) and Android are the big targets these days.

[plaques]

It looks like Windows Internet Explorer is going to bite the dust. Windows 10 will have what they are calling "Project Spartan".
I'll stick with Chrome.

[plaques]

Not strictly computers but getting very near them. The video recorder went on the blink, literally. Lots of flashing lights but absolutely no control over it. It appears that Humax have been sending software updates that are not working. The answer is to plug it into the router and let it update via the internet. I haven't tried it just yet, too busy writing this blog.

[PanBiker]

My Humax Freesat box chucked a wobbler yesterday as well, just froze completely. None of the controls worked and had to unplug from the power supply to force a restart. Mine is permanently attached to the router for the on demand services and for media that we have on the home networked computers. I'll have look at the service menu to see if there have been any updates next time I have it on.

[Tizer]

It sounds like the trouble Panasonic have now and then with their hard disk recorder updates which I've related on these forums. The Panasonic web site has a forum where people express their anger and ask for help.