COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

I spent most of the day finding pics for the kids, lots of big searches. FM2 is definitely running faster and without the 'staggers' I was getting before.

[Stanley]

I'm satisfied all is well so I have emptied the rubbish bin! As I mentioned yesterday, I have been finding pics for my daughters and this involved searches of well over 60gig of data and some search terms throw up over a hundred thumbnails. They are virtually instantaneous and it saves so much time. I think back to the three years I spent sat watching the blue dots creeping across the screen as I used OCR to read the text on the old carbon copies of the LTP transcripts. I've never tried OCR on the FM2 but I'll bet it would be a lot faster! I know that some people thought I'd gone over the top a bit when I got the new machine with the quad core chip and 8gig of RAM but I have never regretted it. Funny thing is that I sometimes get the urge to put a new board in and a faster chip just to see what the result is! I shall resist this as long as possible. Mind you, I have nothing bad to say about the old IBM 2171 Aptiva that sits upstairs with W2000K on it. Silent, rock solid and never given a minute's bother. It cost £1000 out of the box with 256mb Ram. It was the last domestic PC that IBM made. I think I got it in 1996 so it's 16 years old now, I wonder how long it can carry on?

[Stanley]

Doc called in yesterday for a cup of tea and a natter. He tells me he has picked up a virus which has locked him out of his laptop so I guess he's busy reloading Windows 7. I told him it was time he joined us on Ubuntu...

[Stanley]

A useful warning for you.... Doc found his way into his laptop and has cured his problem. It was a small .exe file that blocked opening and popped up a notice saying that the computer was locked and to unlock it send your credit card details and they would debit £100 and unlock it for you. Evidently it's a new beastie and McAfee and others haven't got onto it yet. Doc deleted the file and all is well again. He thinks he got it after inadvertently clicking on a pop up link in a site he was looking at.
Have a look at this LINK I think this might be the culprit.

[Pluggy]

Slightly more 'in your face' than the average ransomware I deal with, but there are a lot of them around. Its my bread and butter........

Most of 'em pretend to be doing a malware scan, coming up with a list as long as your arm and then blocking everything that you try to run. A lot of AV leaves it alone, its probably classed as a legitimate business model in Windows land. Which is precisely why I don't use Windows any more.

[Stanley]

I keep nagging Doc to get on to Ubuntu......

[Stanley]

Lords committee reporting on the government's high speed internet access says they are wrong in concentrating on low speed areas but should be installing fibre and high speed hubs to manage all UK computer traffic. This would raise speeds overall and be a better investment. Sounds sensible to me...

[Tizer]

I need a connection to mains gas more than I need a faster Internet connection. Doesn't matter whether it's high-speed gas or low-speed gas! Fibre optic cabling was put through our village about 10 years ago with much disruption to us all (they kept cutting through our electricity cables and water pipes) but we weren't connected to it. It was meant to link Bristol and Exeter but I'm not sure it ever got used - I've a feeling the company went bust. There is probably a gas pipeline through the village too, it's on a major trunk road linking to the south-west - but again, they don't connect us.

[Stanley]

You're right, far more important Tiz. BT has marked Barlick up again for fibre cables, will we be getting it now? They did it about 3 years ago but at the same time Balfour Beatty dug the town up to refurbish the water mains and the cable got put on hold. Orange haven't got round to restoring our 20mps service yet.

[Callunna]

E’s laptop (which was my Mum’s but she couldn’t get on with it) has thrown yet another wobbly. All the icons are appearing as IE ones and none of the programs will open properly. I’ve tried all the usual stuff plus advice from Windows 7 forums but nothing has fixed it.

The troubles started when she put in a memory stick with JPG images from a camera. I checked both computers (Mac & PC) and neither seems to have a virus). Sometimes when you click on an icon the screen starts twitching and this is only stopped by re-booting.

Needless to say E hasn’t done a backup. Ever. Which she knows is naughty but now isn’t the time to tell her off, as it may result in a very messy murder trial.

So my plan is to back everything up on to an external drive (hope that one of mine will suffice but they’re all Mac formatted so it might be a problem). I have a 16gb memory stick so that might do. Then zap the lot and start again ... if she can locate the original Windows 7 disc, that is.

Or can anyone suggest a better route?

[Tripps]

I think I'd be ringing Pluggy. 01282 505089. Especially as it seems to have happened before.

[Callunna]

Pluggy supplied it in the first place so maybe he should take a look, you’re right.

[Big Kev]

Pluggy supplied it in the first place so maybe he should take a look, you’re right.

Losing file extension association, in Windows 7 looks to be fairly common. There are a number of online registry fixes for it but you have to get the fix onto the machine first. Pluggy's your man, I reckon.

[Callunna]

I tried all the usual fixes plus quite a few off tinterweb but in the end resorted to creating a new user. What I would have done on my Mac, in other words.

This has fixed the icon and program-opening problems and all we have to do now is copy over the files and contacts etc from the original user.

Not out of the woods yet until I can see everything working as it should, but fingers crossed and a new day/new brain tomorrow.

BTW: Must credit an old friend whom I haven’t seen for over 5 years (but we meet up regularly on Facebook) who talked me through a lot of the procedure. He was baffled too, and he works in IT. It was his suggestion, as a last resort, to create a new user because nothing was making sense.

Later: Oh no! I just heard an anguished “Whaaaaaat???!!!” from upstairs where E is using the PC. I’m going to disappear under my desk and turn off all the lights. Nobody tell her where I am, OK?

[Big Kev]

I tried all the usual fixes plus quite a few off tinterweb but in the end resorted to creating a new user. What I would have done on my Mac, in other words.

This has fixed the icon and program-opening problems and all we have to do now is copy over the files and contacts etc from the original user.

Not out of the woods yet until I can see everything working as it should, but fingers crossed and a new day/new brain tomorrow.

Nice one, once the new user has all the files take a back up before you delete the old user

[Callunna]

From under my desk...

Ta BK - wise words.

[Tizer]

Time to convert E to Ubuntu Linux?

[Pluggy]

I'm hiding in North Wales........

[Callunna]

Time to convert E to Ubuntu Linux?

I’m afraid that came over to me as “Tid*% chjfd,k & Ummagumma dskjhsh@kjdshf Lhghjx?”

ie it’s all gobbledegook.

I’m afraid I’ve reached the stage with technology now where I simply want to press buttons and tap keys and the thing just works.

Getting me to work with a PC (H quickly rinses her keyboard with Jeyes fluid) might be disastrous...

[Pluggy]

Unfortunately, Calluna, the modern Mac is so close to a modern PC as to make little difference. They run Windows and Linux natively just like a PC because they basically are PCs. Apple put a little something in the firmware that OSX checks for when its installed to stop you installing OSX on a PC. Google 'Hackingtosh' for how to do what Apple don't want you to.......

[Callunna]

It's not simply a matter of zeroes and ones and silicon and plastic. A computer - like a car - is more than the sum of its parts to the individual owner.

I've no desire or qualifications to compare the sins and virtues of operating systems. If one's computer does what one wants it to do - brilliant. (Why did I just go all royal family then?)

I just prefer a Mac because it suits me, in the same way that someone might prefer a heavy rock song to a country & western one, even though both might be technically perfectly performed.

I make daft teasing remarks about PCs and expect to have retaliatory banter fired back.

Someone else explains it better than me, perhaps:

Macs are far more compatible now in terms of network compatibility and software support than they once were, but there are still certain things that are best accomplished with a Windows PC – especially financial apps, payroll programs, and billing and invoicing systems. There’s a good reason why you can walk into a typical firm and find Macs all around the creative and marketing departments, but non Macs on the desks of business and administrative executives, or accountants.

As far as creative goes, many people involved in graphic design prefer a Mac laptop. In fact, most do. Reasons cited for this preference tend to center around a Mac’s capability to offer true color matching within Adobe CS suite programs used to create print and Web documents. Web developers, however, often prefer not to use a Mac because of a lack of good coding applications and HTML editors, and clunky FTP.

Ultimately, your decision to buy a Mac laptop like the expensive Macbook Pro or a less expensive Windows powered laptop depends on your personal and professional preferences. But if you are looking for hardware that is well designed and built to last and don’t mind being upstaged daily by the latest and greatest new processors, a Macbook Pro is the way to go.

Author Bio
Melonie McLaurin is a technology blogger. In her spare time, she likes to check out the DirecTV Channel guide on her Android app to watch movies on the go.

[Stanley]

The attraction of Ubuntu for me apart from the speed is that it is free, fully supported and rock steady. It also gets me brownie points with my techie daughter because I am ahead of her with 64 bit.....

[Stanley]

I have a problem. I want to print 3x5 index cards on my new Deskjet 3000. No problems on the old printer, it did them automatically but this one won't. There is no template for 3x5 cards in the paper properties. Any suggestions?

[PostmanPete]

Good morning Stanley, you could try going into 'page setup' in the printer properties and choose 'custom'. If you then input 3x5 into the size required - it should do it.

[Tizer]

Re Mac versus PC. The computers that I and Mrs Tiz use were made by me from bits bought from Dabs. I wonder what that makes them? They're obviously not Macs, but is it sufficiently accurate to call them PCs? After all, Apple makes its Macs from bits bought in from other firms, so should I be calling my computer a `Tizer', or perhaps a `Tiz'? Or by analogy with `Apple Macintosh' it might be a `Tizer Raincoat'!