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Odd-size drives have always been a bit questionable. Samsung's 750GB drives were nothing like as good as their same-technology 500GB and 1TB drives, for example. I could think of several other cases if I put my mind to it. What happens, in my view, is that with (say) a 2-head drive, you choose...

I don't have any special favourites areas. I don't use Youtube a lot as a rule but I have binges on some theme from time to time. Last month I spent an evening on Youtube (can't even remember what topic it was now) and managed to blow my entire month's bandwidth in a few hours. Spent the next...

By the way, Tea isn't always 7. I probably shouldn't tell you this but she's usually 8 from the 1st January each year until whenever she remembers to log in and correct her profile. You heard it here first.

Nope, clearly not a Monty Python inspired answer. But very possibly a Douglas Adams inspired answer. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/03/douglas-adams-42-hitchhiker http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/42-the-answer-to-life-the-universe-and-everything-2205734.html In my...

Probably not 42.

... sorry to interrupt dear. It was an interesting machine: Baby AT desktop case and PSU (haven't seen one of them for a while), IBM 6x86L-200, 72-pin RAM, and best of all, a hard drive I didn't have in my collection! Quantum Pioneer SG 2.1GB. Very cute looking thing with a deeply sculpted body...

This is very sad. Mark was one of the good guys, a class act all the way. He is missed. Merc, thanks from all of us for following through on this.

Well said, Doug. That is exactly my experience and my view also. I'd add a couple of extra essential UI tweaks: Explorer ++ to replace the horrible default Windows Explorer (this applies equally to 7); a search function that works (by "works" I mean "actually finds stuff" - radical I know, but I...

But they are selling fewer cameras. The size of the market is shrinking and will shrink further. But your comment about a disruptive technology, absolutely, I agree. Mind you, the biggest single reason the camera makers are selling so few new units these days is a disruptive technology - it is...

Fair point Stereodude, but how are they going to fund the R&D in a shrinking market?

Massive egg on face for Lenovo. I had one infected machine, but Bullguard picked it up before it left my workshop. I assumed it was a false positive at the time - you wouldn't ever get spyware pre-installed on a Thinkpad, the sky would fall first, yes? - but I let Bullguard remove it 'coz it...

I rather suspect that the big manufacturers are looking hard at niche markets now. The massive sales party is over; people aren't queuing up to by the latest SLR the way they were 5-10 years ago, volumes are flat and margins very tight because of discounting. If you can come up with a niche all...

No. They expect to be shafted by big companies like Microsoft, and they know I'll always do my best to find the best answer for them. But it isn't only Athlons - of which I sold a truck load - it's a hell of a lot of dual core Intel chips as well. All those customers, shafted. It's no skin off...

They are bricked. Windows 8.0 support ends October 18th, 2015. People bought Windows 8 because their Windows XP support was ending - and then got shafted with this disgraceful scam. And they didn't have to explain diddly squat. All they had to do was refrain from wiping out major slices of the...

Bah - as if 32-bit Windows is any good to anyone these days. There are millions of perfectly good, fast modern machines out there which have been effectively bricked by this stupid change. Now if MS has announced a brand new Windows version and said it wouldn't support chip X, that's one thing...

That is interesting about IE, Merc. I never push Chrome past a half-dozen tabs or so, the UI just isn't built for it. If I'm doing something serious (lots of tabs) I go to Opera or Sea Monkey first, or sometimes Pale Moon. Never Chrome. And yes, Chrome is a right bugger to clean up after...

That is my reading of it too. Minor? It was a very serious change which crippled a great many perfectly good, fast systems. Microsoft lied: they said it would only cripple a handful of 10-year-old systems because the very first CPUs and chipsets with appropriate support came out ~ 10 years...

I never use IE. Maybe it's safer now than it used to be - it could hardly be worse - but who cares? I see just enough of it when installing machines, debugging websites, and so on to know that I'd rather be using something else, and there would need to be a compelling advantage on offer to make...

FWIW, my Acer netbook is still going strong and has been a brilliant performer for many years. Given that it's a netbook, I couldn't be happier with it. Very solid build quality; can't break it with a hammer.

7D II looks nice. 5D IIIs looks nice too. 11-24 is more of a showcase lens just to prove that they can do it (a bit like the old 50mm f/1.0), but will doubtless be more tan useful to those who need that and can afford it. The only new kit that really has my interest is the new 100-400 Mark II...

The UI is pox but it runs Classic Shell. It has no new features of any interest. It seems to be about as fast as Windows 8.x. Yawn. The big worry is the "free" upgrade. There is some nasty-looking vagueness in their language; I very much fear that the purpose of "free" Win 10 is to get as many...

1: Opera. (Real Opera, not that rubbish Chrome clone they call "Opera" now.) Won't go for much longer now, the web is very slowly changing. 2: Sea Monkey 3: Pale Moon I use all three of those a lot. ............. daylight 4: Firefox with Classic Theme Restorer and one or two other...

There are three sorts of battery: 1: Good expensive ones with brand-name badges (Lenovo, HP, etc. 2: Moderately priced ones which come out of the same factory, off the same production line, using the same materials or better. The likes of HP and Lenovo don't make batteries, they buy them in...

Now I am really angry with these morons. Firefox 31 has deliberately and maliciously disabled important tab usability preferences, in particular, the single tab close button functionality, which is vital to anyone who uses it for serious work with any large number of tabs...

I bought a few different LED bulbs to try out. One hates the switch, another one seems to work fine on manual, and works fine on auto when the motion sensor is ON, but goes spastic when it's off. OK, sure, the switch/sensor is 20-30 years old and should be replaced with something better, but I...

Tea meant to say "senior moment".

Might as well use this thread for a new question for the LED gurus. I have an exterior light on a sensor switch. I can set it to function in the ordinary manual way, or to turn on automatically when the switch senses movement. I've had the sensor/switch combo there for 10 or 20 years and it...

Cheers Chewy. These are not, repeat not "older motherboards". We are talking about brand new still-in-box motherboards, current models, two different manufacturers; three different models, five different boards, every one of them bought on or after the same day the as the CPUs. From David's...

Yes it is Intel's fault. Unquestionably. When you introduce a new part, the onus is on you to make sure that it will work according to spec. If your new part doesn't work with the existing stock of industry-standard components, it is your responsibility to make sure that this is well-publicised...

Here is my epic. Note that this is with Socket 1150 Apparently Intel have screwed up everything they make, not just an isolated single part. Bought 2 MSI motherboards & 2 CPUs, 1 x i5, 1 x i3. 1: Built i5 system. Started installing software. Error: system will not warm boot under any...

It is a massive, massive stuff-up by Intel, Dave. Intel have introduced new generations of their existing CPUs and are shipping the parts in volume but they FAILED MISERABLY to either (a) make the new parts compatible with the old, or (b) co-ordinate with the motherboard manufacturers to...

I try to keep my add-ons to a minimum. Most of them are little better than bling anyway. But there are two or three or four important ones and they get broken about ... oh ... I guess one of them breaks about every third major version. I hate it whenever that dreaded "please wait, Firefox is...

^ There you go Dave. Fixed it for you.

I'm sorry, I don't have ten minutes to spare right now. :( (Well, it seems as though they have a new version every ten minutes. It's really annoying. Nobody minds on-the-fly bug fixes, but this new major version every month caper really sucks. If you have multiple machines to administer, it's a...

I have never used it. There are very few ads on my simple system. Well, very few that I ever see. I have become so used to ignoring them that I really just don't see them. Every now and then some particularly intrusive thing crops up and even my heavy-duty, professional-grade ad ignorer fails...

This might be the reason you are seeing a problem that so many others have never had any issue with: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/182428-ironic-iframes-adblock-plus-is-probably-the-reason-firefox-and-chrome-are-such-memory-hogs

I still have an Athlon XP in service. Also, Athlon X2 245 and Athlon X2 265 in my other desktop machines. All three work just fine for what I need. Woops! The X2 245 isn't! I just checked and it's Pentium G630 2.7! Now that I think of it, I vaguely remember swapping the 245 out for some...

Cheers Doug. Don't forget that most Firefox plugins work equally well with all of the Gekko browsers: including the excellent Sea Monkey, Pale Moon and Firefox ESR. So, if you want to, you can switch but retain your plugins.

Yes Chewy, thanks. I only discovered them only the other day, and they would make a good short-term solution, but it seems a bit pointless going tht way as they will switch over to the rubbish new UI soon enough anyway. Pale Moon, on the other hand, has stated that it will NEVER switch. Also, it...

Both of the major Gekko browsers (Sea Monkey and Firefox) were near-crippled by that issue years ago, Howell - apparently it had Flash as its major root cause, which would be no surprise to anyone - but after a long time - way too long - they finally fixed it. The Gekko browsers can't stand up...

No. That's not so bright, Dave, certainly not in the context of web browsers. For years I used Opera, by far the the most innovative browser of all, and eagerly awaited each new improvement. Most of the now-standard features people like and take advantage of in a browser were invented by Opera...

In another place, I quoted another user: "this whole Australis interface on their latest version made me see red. (Where did those IE back/forward buttons come from? Why is the bookmark star joined at the hip with the Bookmark editor, and out of the URL bar?? Why is the refresh page icon at the...

You were a good browser once. Sad to see another once-great product drink the let's-bork-all-our-users cool-aid. Hello Steve, is that you? Opera is on life support, with the just-released 12.17 virtually certain to be the last version ever released. Thank God Sea Monkey still exists. Pale Moon...

The inevitable arrival of desktop Linux. ^ FTFY

That's a good system, Dave. Bozo's point is a very good one. With data which remains important over any length of time, it becomes crucial. I lost the photographs of an entire day a while back. Somewhere along the line I'd accidentally deleted that day on the primary storage and didn't wake up...

Keep both sets, Lunar. In different places, of course.

No, not Tea. :) Tea is brilliant. Not that she'd say so herself, of course. Well, not more than two or three times every ten minutes.

Hiring a technical assistant by the name of (I had better not say).

Bahh. Utter nonsense. For starters, you are backing up near-live data. You have four near-live datasets: in other words you have four different ways to back up the primary data disaster that might be happening to the system right now. One undetected virus, one subtle corruption, one attack by a...

Yuk! (Dave's solution.) I mean, seriously, yuk! That's a dreadful way to go about data protection. There are way, way, way too many things that can go wrong with it. Sure, power-on, power-off cycles are hard on drives. But constant wear isn't good either (even though drives generally are very...