threegee

So... I go to research O2's T&Cs and I get: So let's say my credit is out (or stolen - read expired - by them), and I want to top up my account so I've got an O2 data connection immediately I arrive in the UK. Can't prudently top it up in advance from an overseas network because they block overseas IPs. Can't, it seems, even check my account in advance. Arrive in the UK and, to add to all the other travel hassle, I have to find a WiFi hotspot (or use one of their competitor's networks) for the privilege of getting their shaky offering functioning again. Is this company run by idiots? Vodaphone's high prices are starting to look more attractive. Update:

http://www.v3.co.uk/...service-crashes Which doubtless proves your point about all the younguns using them. Last time I had an O2 PAYG phone SIM they zapped all my remaining credit before I had time to use it. But that was a few years back now and maybe they've changed. Will check them out. So far it sort of looks like just about everyone except Vodaphone expire your mobile data credit in 90 days or less. I'd go with a £20+topup USB HSDPA dongle from Three if this wasn't the case. They seem to charge about 1/3 of Vodaphone for bandwidth. Three's next generation Skype phone with built-in HSDPA dongle for £70 looks a massively good deal, except I'm not in a position to get value out of it through the occasional use, expiring credit, thing, and I don't actualy need a Skype phone as I most often pocket a real computer. Though the actual deal breaker is that it's only for use in the UK. The price comparison websites aren't terribly helpful as they focus on all the wrong things. Nor are the suppliers who don't seem to want to tell you if their gismo is network locked or not. And, if it is, can it be used on their own networks outside the UK.

C4 are a wonderful company, who themselves put loyalty to their traditional audience before the petty detail of minor copyright issues - as many ex-pats will attest. Pity though about Big Brother. I'm sure they will tell us if the posting (for purely academic, critical, and research purposes) of an abstract from their program libeling our community isn't within their understanding of fair usage Often the "private" recordings of aware parties are the only way the public record is preserved.

Who do you invite if you haven't got any friends?

All time is an impossible call. 50 years has to be all you can aim at. Outside living memory and current culture is super arrogant.

Ah, well, we'll scoop the pros at the Journo on the next big Bedders story. Goodness! How did that happen? We just did!

It seems that Three are intending extending the free Skype - Skype calls for life even to unlocked 3G phones that weren't even bought from them. http://www.three.co.uk/Pay_As_You_Go/SIM_Only And the card itself is free; in fact they issue you with two: https://www.three.co...in_your_details The gotcha might be that you have to pay for the very first top up for it to get activated. (Credit has to be used within 90 days, but the free Mobile Skype continues for life.) Obviously they are hoping that once they get their SIM into your 3G moby you will appreciate that you can do better or your voice calls and SMS too. And, there's always the inertia factor that people won't be inclined to swap cards - a bet on human laziness seems a cert! Cue for one of those far-eastern squeeze two SIMs into one slot gismos? Anyway out comes the dusty (Three locked) smartphone that I was intending to flog (It's on their compatibility list). Will also try the service with non-three phones, and I'll let you now how I get on with.

Any opinions as to who I should go to for a PAYG UK SIM? They don't need to have the best coverage, just reasonable coverage and reasonable rates. I'm used to paying between 20p and 25p an hour on the continent (charged in 15 minute increments), and use as much or as little per month of the non-expiring credit up as I want. So I guess the top-up credit must be non-expiring, there mustn't be any minimum monthly commitment, and of course no contract! All three seem like deal breakers at the moment.

That's a .png I think that you might possibly still be right as far as .jpg goes. Jpeg used to be an OK extension, but it may have got lost in the upgrade. .gif needs testing too - not as popular as it once was but still a heavily used format. Back to the original prob: I'm now sure it's a dodgy WiFi module. Machine is going back for repair/replacement. It likely got past testing because it's generally OK to passably good for the first few minutes.

If you previously visited and you left chat in a tab - even though that tab is not visible in the foreground and you've never read it - then the board will register you live in chat because your browser refreshed that tab when you started your computer up. The board has no way of finding out if it was you or your browser unaided that requested the chat page. A 10 minute rule would cause much of that problem to go away.

Thanks for that John. Im beginning to suspect that the wireless module is faulty and that this is the dumb way MS handle the corrupted data. I was with a few feet of the WAP earlier and the signal strength was registering low. Not be the first time this has happened on a new Asus. An eee box last year had a dodgy module - noisy receiver I think - sometimes it was passable other times not working at all. Im sure that the shop had bounced it from another customer as the box was open when I got it. Anyway they never questioned me when I returned it and simply checked the box contents, probably to see that everything was there for the next lucky person they sold it to! Anyway will check out your suggestion and tell you how things come on. Unfortunately it has to go a long way back by post, and a return could take a while.

I keep getting these annoying pop-ups saying that MS IE 8 has stopped working on my new tablet. It's complaining about problems on the page - even the BBC homepage. Sometimes IE restarts the tab OK, other times it complains it can`t. Before I installed all the o/s and IE8 upgrades IE7 was closing completely. Now it's just highly annoying and very frequent. I'd have installed Firefox but on this machine (with all the Vista bloat) SSD drive space is at a premium. Vista takes up about 16GB before any apps are installed. Sold as having a 32GB SSD, there's in fact less than 10GB apps plus user space left!

Yes. it's back! The Beverley Sisters in living colour, c/w with George Cole, etc, etc. - magic! The channel found some more money from somewhere. Maybe they charged it to Visa? Someone really should update Wikipedia, and all those slowcoach satellite sites who will take days and weeks to deliver the story. Oh well, I see that at least Google got the news from somewhere. http://www.google.com...+from+the+grave

You've only got to check out this highly authoritative website to see the principal ones. It should mention Dr. Trotter though, even if WDC did (quite literally) sideline him from his place at the top-end. He may not have been famous outside the shire, but I think it's fair to say that many Bedlingtonians wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for his efforts to eradicate some of the cesspit of disease that characterised 18th Century Bedlington. One statue that does deserve its place. And one which should be rehabilitated to a place of prominence. Yet how many present-day Bedlingtonians have even heard of him? The Friends of the Legacy of Dr. Trotter maybe? A case of Trotter over Potter?

Having dealt with may on-line suppliers here's my personal ratings. Please post any suppliers you've dealt with and any impressions you've gained from dealing with them in the same general format. Maybe we can build a reasonably comprehensive resource. eBuyer Website: www.ebuyer.com Prices: Very quick to manipulate prices. Sometimes good value, other times you'd do better to look elsewhere. Service Level: Good to reasonably good; but they are not very flexible and upset more people than they need to. Best for: Smaller items like cables, PSUs and modding bits. Dabs Website: www.dabs.com Prices: Middling to good. Service Level: Rightly or wrongly they always give the impression of a quality supplier. Their product selector is a model of what other sites should have. Best for: Larger items, but I found them best for hard drives recently. Laptops Direct Website: www.laptopsdirect.co.uk Prices: On average really good. Some truly excellent bargains if you are fast enough to take advantage. Service Level: So far faultless. Best for: Laptops etc. Scan Computers Website: www.scan.co.uk Prices: Don't look very often but they seem competitive. Service Level: Limited use but a while back they were OK. Best for: Components. Expansys Website: www.expansys.com Prices: Above average but some occasional bargains. Service Level: So far faultless. Best for: Things you can't get elsewhere. That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds Website: www.That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds.co.uk Prices: Some of the best but watch out for hidden charges. Service Level: The twilight zone of the Internet - all over the place! Best for: Second hand goods and rip-off tales. Amazon Website: www.amazon.co.uk Prices: Sometimes the best buys, but at other times pricey - do your homework. Service Level: Direct from Amazon good; third-party suppliers a sort of upper-class That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds! Best for: The odd bargains. Far more support, far less risky, far less hassle, and quicker than That online auction site that is in no way as good as Free Bedlington.co.uk Classifieds Play.com Website: www.play.com Prices: They come up with some good bargains, and can be the best source some of the time. Service Level: Sometimes take orders for things they don't have, but are easily contactable by phone and refund without hassle. Best for: Whatever they are best for at the time Looking back at the above it's a ringing endorsement for buying on the Internet. It wasn't intended to be that!

I like how the thread views statistics now works. It doesn't register topic starters viewing their own thread; it doesn't register checking back to see replies; and it doesn't allow deliberate bumping of the stats. So many boards display totally bogus stats - particularly the number of active members when 98% of their reggies can't be arsed to post - that it's refreshing change to see some fairly honest software. Every time some reporter comes out with web hit figure for this or that site I think to myself: There are lies, damn lies, and reported web-hit figures!

Possibly another global news scoop for Bedlington.co.uk? Amazingly, Simply Movies old transponder is transmitting a "THE HOME OF GREAT ENTERTAINMENT" caption together with the website address www.simplymovies.co.uk as I type right now. Amazing because the venture had been written off by all in the industry (see Wikipedia link below), and coming after weeks of blank screen followed by a "Trailor Park" (sic) caption purporting to mark the start of another new service from some Pty company or other. On the other hand the SM website doesn't reflect any new developments. A last vain flicker of protest from some soon to be out of work technician, or a rescue just cobbled together? Stay tooooned. The technicals are here: http://en.kingofsat....ory.php?ch=6863 and of course it's a free to air transmission else I wouldn't bother with it - don't have/want a Sky box. Commercial details here: http://en.wikipedia....i/Simply_Movies

Great performance Neil! Lots of changes going on at the moment and I understand Andy removed the link in a recent edit. He's PM'ing it to you now so make sure you add it to your bookmarks.

Haven't we already got one - right here by the looks of it! Either way the local politicos will still ignore it - until election time, of course! Try gathering a crowd at the Market Cross and you'd probably get arrested for disturbing the peace. A quaint term which often meant simply upsetting the local squire. Anyway the only ones that would gave the guts to use it would be the BNP (complete with minders). So in current thinking that sort of rules it out completely.

http://www.expansys.....aspx?c=samsung Told you the market was awash with 15" ones, so they're giving them away! The answer is: C) Windows Vista Home Premium Wouldn't bother with the vouchers/mailing list myself. Expansys are often quite expensive (except when they have a special) and you're unlikely to be able to use them smartly. If you win you must post the fact here though - fair do's!

Sound advice from JohnD. What's the name of the critical file? <rant> This is what happen when you patch patches to the n-th degree. All in the interests of selling you the same code again - which you happily pay again for in order to break free of the mess. The service pack concept must have made countless billions for MS. Issuing sub-versions of the entire O/S would have done the World a favour. But, MS isn't in the business of making things easy, it's in the business of screwing the World for every last buck! Meanwhile the regulators focus on all the wrong things - like browser choice, where no one makes any money out of browsers anyway. </rant>

On the right of the main forums page you now have a bit of "white-space". Don't waste this valuable screen space; other's would have crammed ads in there, but not on super-user-friendly new Bedlington.co.uk! In part it's there for you to fill with your Watching short cuts. Next time you visit a particular forum that interests you then click on the black [Watch Forum] button up top right. It's that simple - or almost. And in a similar way there's a [Watch this topic] button up top right on every thread. Try it right now and Watch it grow into a useful habit.

Just noticed the Nokia N810 price slashed to £130 - less than half the £280 odd it was selling at a few months back. This generally indicates that Nokia has a new model entering production. In this case a "Maemo 5" one with a much faster CPU and graphics support in hardware. Worth Buying at £130? Is the tiny tiny N810 worth buying at this price? It depends what you want it for. Nokia launched it with the slogan "It's what computers have become". But the truth is that it's what PDA's have become, because the ARM chip at its core is little more than powered the PDAs of a few years back. Although it has WiFi and Bluetooth it needs to connect through a phone for Internet on the move - there's no 3G or HSDPA module. It's far better than a smartphone or PDA fo pocket internet browsing and e-mail, and the slide-out keyboard is almost usable. It also has built-in GPS and you can get the maps over WiFi for free. But the GPS takes just as long to acquire as the average GPS featured mobile phone - often five minutes or more to lock in. In my limited tests of this feature I found the indicated position to be spot-on; as good as anything I've ever used. Instead of a Netbook? To use it effectively day to day you need to invest a lot of time, and if you have room for a small netbook in your bag or case you'll get a lot further a lot faster with email, word processing, etc. Like all Nokia devices of this generation it is short on RAM memory and this can't be expanded. This can result in long pauses in response, and sometimes it's just alltogether quicker to reboot it than wait for it to sort itself out. It has one flash ROM memory socket (unlike the larger keyboard-less N800 which has two), and this does support High Capacity SD flash cards. But the bad news here is that they chose the miniSD type rather than the now much more common microSD. miniSD can be hard to find at the right price and in the larger capacities. 4GB is all I've been able to find recently, and they aren't anything like as cheap as standard or even microSD. As a Personal Organiser It's not the best personal organiser as there is no one bit of (free) software that does it all. And so, if you want more than a basic address book you'll probably need to install more than one utility. But then it was never meant to be a pure personal organiser. That said this isn't App£e or Micro$oft, and so the software (and updates thereto) are all free! Battery and Connectivity The battery life is quite reasonable considering the size of it. Like Nokia phones it seems to vary enormously from day to day. But it's not the same battery as used in the N800, E61 phone etc. being much smaller. A mini USB lead lets it plug into your computer and you can transfer user files without transfer software on most modern operating systems; just like an mp3 player really. Yes, it will play mp3's, and there's a nice little utility that you can install to download YouTube videos so you can catalogue them and carry them around with you. If you are in to Linux you can hack into it, even home network over WiFi to make it visible to your other computers. Most users won't want to break into the operating system, but this isn't frowned on, and lots and lots of technical information is availabe for the so inclined. Extras It comes with a car holder and car power lead. There's an acceptable slip cover that's good enough to protect it from scratches in your pocket, but not from being sat upon. A spare stylus - they're not easy to get - a disgrace for such a high profile manufacturer as Nokia! The Bottom Line(s) In summary if you're thinking of using one instead of a portable computer (however small) then forget it. If you want to carry something around in your top pocket for occasional access to the Internet and email that beats your smartphone hollow - indeed that works with your phone - then grab one at this price whilst they last. It's also still has a high cool factor to impress people that have never seen an Internet Tablet before. Link to Offer: http://www.expansys....18&sbadd=158518

Got a model number? 2.6GH/z is not at all slow (unless you are running Vista). 40GB is more than plenty if you are not collecting HD movies. I'm using a 1GH/z CPU on this pre-netbook at this instant and it's plenty fast for what I'm doing. It probably pre-dates yours by a year or two. Wouldn't swap it for the latest cheapo notebook. Anyway at first viewing it looks like a bad case of Windoze bloat rather than a hardware problem. Bring it up with -FREE- Ubuntu and it will rock. Ubuntu will run OK with 512MB or even less, and even with all the freeware take up about half the disk space of Windows. You'll also learn that you don't need to keep shelling out for O/S upgrades, and buy (or steal) application software. You know it makes sense! Viri will be far less of a problem too. Virus writers seldom target Linux users because there's no mileage in it.

Some really great bargains of recent weeks. The Aspire One netbook has been on sale as low as £120. A price-cut I simply couldn't resist was a brand new one of these for £390 all inclusive from laptopsdirect. Spotted them last weekend but they seem to be sold-out now. Full review coming of the R50A coming. But I won't write one on first impressions, and need to use a machine daily for at least a month before I feel able to give an honest opinion. One thing I'm likely to be changing is the Vista o/s though. May leave it on - less a lot of the bloatware - and set the machine up for a dual boot. I'm anticipating driver problems with Ubuntu, due to all the gismos (like the fingerprint reader, TV, and GPS). Will be interesting to see if these can be worked around, and probably the strongest reason to leave a Vista boot option available for just now. The market is awash with unsold 15" machines, so if you really can stand something so large then shop around - a lot! I think the netbook has done for this class of machine, and although it might not always be the same customer base buying them, netbooks make laptops this big look like dinosaurs. So 12" is becoming the new 15" - unless you want a bargain!