threegee

I'm currently buying a little USB 3.0 Flash Drive to run another operating system from on my lappy, and for this the read/write speeds matter a whole lot more than gigabytes per buck. Suppliers are VERY poor at supplying this essential information, and you can waste a fortune buying them to test them yourself. But, here's a site that supplies objective comparisons so's you can make the best decision. Certainly one to bookmark on your smartphone or tab to spot bargains while you are out shopping. http://usb.userbenchmark.com/ What's particularly useful is the effective speed assessment - raw read and write speeds are not the full story! (S)He has also computed a value for money figure, and you can sort your list on any of the criteria by clicking on the column title. Remember that unless your computer has USB 3.0 sockets you aren't likely to see anything like the quoted performance on the faster products. USB 3.0 sockets generally have a tab in them that's colour-coded purple against the usually black USB 2 type.

I will go with Keith's scranchings, or maybe without the g. Aren't they illegal under EU law by now? Think I'm joking see http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22579896. You can pretty much guarantee that the med countries will ignore this, but it will be enforced by the gestapo in the northern parts of the Fourth Reich! But - could set up schranching speakeasies! The roaring twenties will be around again quite soon.

Whoops... spot the deliberate mistake? It's actually a dual-core! Full 64 bit, so it would be interesting to see if it is being used in 64 bit mode in this machine. Comes in at about 60% to 70% of an i3 - depending on i3 stepping - so that's pretty good.

Well the Celeron 2955U seems to come in at about a PassMark of 1550 which isn't at all bad on the scale of things. Find out what your existing gear has inside to get a performance comparison. The little SSD is almost certainly going to be faster than you existing hard drives, so it's worth a try, particularly if you are buying it from somewhere you can take it back to if you don't like it. Here's how it compares to a (likely much more power-hungry) i3: http://cpuboss.com/cpu/Intel-Celeron-2955U It's a 22nm device so not quite bleeding edge, but will have an impressive battery performance. It's single core dual threads by the looks of it, so that's doubly impressive. Someone you know has a little tablet with a 22nm dual core chip in it, and I'm amazed by the performance. AFAIK the 14nm stuff hasn't actually surfaced yet. Also impressive that a budget machine has Bluetooth 4 as standard, and a USB 3. The real irritation that I've found with current Intel based tablets is that they have no separate power jack. This means that you need to charge them through the microUSB port, and as they generally only have one, you are stuffed if you want to power them, and use an external drive or keyboard/mouse at the same time. This is truly daft! Make sure that anything you buy for serious use doesn't solely depend on microUSB power, or at least has more than one microUSB.

That's the first thing you should use it for! Download the free edition of Macrium Reflect and image your hard disk partitions right away. If you have a recovery partition on the machine then Reflect will show it and allow you to copy it. You only need copy the recovery partition once, and can store its image anywhere - on a USB stick for instance. When your drive fails or corrupts simply buy a new one and write the image(s) to it. Weekly backups of the working partitions are recommended. Macs are expensive to buy and have a high cost of ownership - especially in the UK where they are a rip-off. The best thing to buy depends very much on your existing software investment, how you intend to use the machine, and how good your on-line connection is. The trend is to cloud computing where you do need a decent Internet connection. If you are replacing a legacy XP machine, like many are at the present time, it may pay you to look at Google Chromebooks. They are amazingly good value, and there's a more powerful collection coming out from various manufacturers (using the latest 14nm Intel CPUs) over the coming months. All software is provided to you for free, without all this staged nonsense (to extract more money for more features), and the machine is kept updated quite automatically. In addition there's an ever-growing market in third party "apps" developing - just like Android. Most people just look at the ticket price when buying a machine, and don't consider the cost of ownership. I know that many educational establishments are moving their legacy XP stuff to Google Chrome as they do look at the total ownership cost. Over the next decade Chrome could easily eclipse Windows as the number one operating system - unless Microsoft wake up very quickly, and cut their fees to manufacturers and end users. Chromebooks generally have a smallish SSD and no hard drive which makes them quite compact, but you can buy them with hard drives too. You are right to consider an SSD anyway, as prices are currently crashing and they do deliver a lot more performance. They are pretty easy to retrofit, and knowing how to use disk imaging software will make this easy for you.

Back up to an external drive regularly. There's no excuse when you can get first class disk imaging software for free. Google on "Macrium Reflect". Once a week minimums if you are an active user! Also pick up a free DropBox or Amazon Cloud account to copy your current work to in the background. If you are a really serious user buy a cheap NFS with RAID. Most people have older hard drives lying around that can profitably be recycled in a multi-bay NFS. Also, buy a three quid 8GB USB stick and create a bootable pen drive for emergencies. If you don't use it you'll make a friend rescuing someone else with it. The time to do all these things is NOW; it's human nature to put off until it is too late! A failure will happen, it's simply a matter of when.

Yes, we're now up to 29! This has a completely redesigned interface which looks pretty good on my lappy and uses the limited screen depth more sensibly. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/29.0/whatsnew/ If you are still using MS Internet Explorer you really need to ask yourself why? Even the US Government warns against the risks you are running. There are other browsers of course, so, if you have a particular favourite, then please tell us all here what you like about it.

Now here you are being totally unreasonable! Without the extra tax revenue, how on earth are we going to pay the £8BN annual membership to the EU? That's not to mention the countless billions in foreign aid to fund, space programs, nuclear weapons, missile development, and all those other essentials that "underdeveloped" countries need to sustain life! And, there's not just fuel, there's the excess cost on most items we put on our tables.

Leaving aside the other farces which surround Eurovision, here's something else our betters have slipped under our radar:- The British public voted overwhelmingly for last night's Polish entry, rating it the number one. You wouldn't think that from the voting though - the official UK vote offered up zilch points to Poland! Yes, no votes whatsoever! The bearded Austrian "lady" - who couldn't actually sing, and delivered a song that immediately had you trying to remember which of the poorer Bond films it must have accompanied the title sequence in - rated the full twelve UK points! That "she" broke down in tears during "her" highly politicised speech about the world now being a better place for now caring about "her" sexuality came too late for the voting, but it left a warm feeling that the right thing had been done. Better songs, better presentations, were consigned to Eur-oblivion; other hopes from real singers and songwriters were dashed. But none of this mattered, because militant gays were now (temporarily) happy - they'd score yet another victory in their unstoppable cause. Wrongs had been righted, conventional wisdom had been overturned - consequential social damage has no place in the modern world! The "lady" looks like a man, talks like a man, "her" see-through sequinned top vividly illustrates that she is a man - in the chest area. Then there's the more subtle touch of that highly coiffured beard. Her real name is Tom, so clearly her parents thought they'd brought a male into the world. To the PC BBC none of this physicality matters one iota. She feels to be a woman, so must exclusively be described as "she" even if the audience is as confused as hell. Even dear old Graham Norton was confused as to whether the tears were genuine - but helpfully said he thought they were. ..but I digress from the main point here. How on earth did the UK public's choice of the politically incorrect busty Polish beauties receive zero points from the BBC? Simples! Our betters at the Beeb decided that we really shouldn't be seen to be so sexist, so politically incorrect, to the rest of Europe and beyond. In EU democracy fashion people who knew better than us swung the vote the politically correct way - on all our behalves. The Beeb's appointees, and guardians of our correctness, get 50% of the votes. They can thus divide and conquer in the well tried, well tested, European way. I'm immensity grateful for having any politically incorrect thoughts so carefully moulded. It's for the best, I'm sure of it. And, think of all those at-risk jobs which depend on the EU, people! And here, my fellow Europeans, are the figures to prove that we are just as PC as all the other PC fixes that comprise our wonderfully PC European "democracy". http://www.eurovision.tv/page/results?event=1893&voter=GB My humble vote: UKIP douze point!

Didn't say there were any links with Guallists.. said I think he would like to. So AfD and Bepe Grillo's movement is "far right" too is it? They have a lot of support, are diametrically opposed to EU waste and corruption, and want their countries out! Looks like rather a lot of left leaning folk in Cinque Stelle from where I'm sitting - and I'm sitting quite close as I write! To portray UKIP as far right is a tactic of the establishment. The truth is that in a focus-group-driven bid for votes Labour moved sharply right and Cameron has now moved his party into the realms of the loony left. We all know that they are near indistinguishable and simply out for themselves; so why do we still buy into their divisive ploys? Supporting your country is not the exclusive province of the far-right, and being anti-establishment the exclusive province of the far-left. There's a revolution headed our way! That the dinosaur political classes are blind to it - and will try all the usual ploys to hang on to power - is a given.

No bloomin' way!!! It's true that Marine Le Pen has made noises, but she has been thoroughly rebuffed. I think Dupont-Aignan would very much like an alliance - I'm fairly sure it was him on TV the other day proposing something to that effect - but so far he has minuscule support compared to the Le Pen bandwagon. Take a look at these pictures and tell me that these people would support anything which was even mildly racist. http://www.ukip.org/ukip_fights_back_against_smears_from_the_extreme_left_and_the_establishment Yeah, OK, the event was managed to get African, Asian and Jewish faces up there on stage, but considering the massed ranks of the establishment spin-doctors trying every bit of innuendo in the book to indirectly imply that UKIP is racist - whilst of course denying any such thing - the party has no option but to demonstrate its breadth of support. It's actually very logical for immigrants to support UKIP. They have even more to lose than native Brits from continued uncontrolled immigration.

Hi willy j! I think we are seeing a revolution in our country, but the political classes haven't woken up to this yet. They've lost control of the media and they are about to lose control of quite a few other things too! The modern working classes, the people who produce the wealth, are about to consign the chattering classes to history. We've had quite enough of Old Etonians and Champaign Socialists telling us what to do and how we should think. Instead of rolling back their influence over our lives they've plotted to add yet another undemocratic layer of it - the EU! Nowhere is the waste and futility of big government more evident than it is in Brussels. As per usual this was sold to ordinary people on a lie. We were told it was a Common Market that would increase wealth, and the LD's still peddle this lie. When he thought no one much was listening Ted Heath even admitted to the dishonesty. The modern strategy to bury this lie is to pretend that the thinking masses don't actually care much about the EU - it's very low priority, we must see to other more important things first. Well, it's behind all of our problems people, and the lie needs sorting once and for all! Cameron lied about his "cast iron guarantee" of a referendum, and his current strategy (ably aided and abetted by Labour and the LD's) is to promise one at a future date. A date when he suspects that he won't need to deliver. His chums in the other parties will help him along on the cynically calculated 2017 date. If, by chance, he is in a position to deliver, he'll try to repeat the Harold Wilson trick of pretending that we now have a much better deal, so all is OK again. It will be a deal that civil servants have pre-negotiated so's he can return from the Reich in triumph, waving his worthless bit of paper! Brussels will moan about the UK getting special treatment, but the eurocrats will be secretly laughing all the way to the European Central Bank! Like everyone else I was duped by the political classes into believing in "the European project" and foolishly voted for it. It's up to our generation to flag up to our children and their children, the fact that they are being exploited. They must not repeat our mistakes! Only by voting against the political classes can the latest rounds of political musical chairs at our expense be stopped! But we mustn't stop with Brussels - that Westminster gentleman's club needs a very thorough sorting too! A vote for Labour, LD or Tory is to be duped once again. And... if you foolishly think that they are not all in it together then ask yourself what a Labourite ex-minister is doing chairing an all-party committee formed to try to discredit UKIP! If UKIP is simply taking votes from the Shire Tories then why is Labour helping them to combat this?!

Nope, Manuel stops at the white cliffs of Dover! A torrent of ex-pats returning from Spain who thought the EU meant easy jobs in the sun. Record unemployment there, especially youth unemployment. Only fools put other nations before their own! Things... can only get tougher... can only get tougher! You know the tune - or d-ream on with the LDs?

Ah - they are all at it! At what, you ask? At bleating on about squeezed resources. There's Millipede bleating on about the squeezed middle, our friends up North West in your article, and a member of my family who can't make a choice between embellishments that aren't actually needed! There's even an article in the Telegraph bleating on about people on £120K p/a not being able to afford to dine out! We'll... message to you Mr Morpeth CoT Treasurer; Mr Potential Economy-Wrecker II; Ms Judith Woods of The Telegraph, and lastly my family member: Life is about making the right choices! Not the things it would be nice to have, but the things that ensure a better future. A choice between enjoying it now, or ensuring that come a rainy day you - and the people around you - have, what will by then, be regarded as the essentials. The globalisation - much beloved by Gordo - means that things can only get tougher as there's more competition for available resources. Things rating high on my current non-essentials list are: eating out, Sky TV subscriptions, and fancy gates! 'I make £120,000 but I can't recall the last time we went out for dinner' P.S. If there are any local people still of the opinion that New Labour is for the workers, then think on that squeezed middle sound-bite. They may well be for the workers, but their idea of work isn't remotely yours! It's distinctly non-manual work, and the North East no longer features in their plans - always assuming, since Blair, it ever did! If you really want to join in (21st century) class war then vote UKIP, they are for manual workers, and our country!

My memory may be out by yards, but it's sure not over five miles out! And... I probably only walked/rode/drove past their sign less than 10,000 times, so how am I supposed to remember foot high letters?! http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smails-6 Interestingly, it's not just me that was confused by the appended "s" - seems like the family itself was!

I guess you mean: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.128386,-1.588501,3a,75y,43.6h,91.81t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1ssDWwl61C2xJJM_1GmrOQpw!2e0 The name Smail or Smails rings a bell here, or have I got the wrong shop? Excellent quality building but the stonework is a bit neglected where the water has been splashing off the pavement. Hope it has been re-pointed since 2009 to prevent further damage.

Those who the gods wish to destroy... Sensitive material - in a mutual?!

That's awful lot of zeros, and no benefit whatsoever to the North East. We only have vague promises that sometime somewhere we might see a few crumbs from the table. Now you'd have thought that the Labour Party would have opposed this vast public spend, or at least insisted on some balancing project to benefit their loyal supporters in the North East. But, they trotted into the lobbies last night like sheep to support Cameron. Why? Because they know that their support in Birmingham is a lot more tenuous than it is here! The North East is sucker bait for New Labour - that middle-class elitist party still trading on its working-class origins by pretending to be working class! If Labour had held out for the North East they could very easily have swung a major infrastructure project bringing much needed jobs. There were easily enough green-suburb Tories opposed to the mega-spend (ones who's constituents didn't want it in their back yards). Labour didn't because they have cynically calculated that they can get all the mindless support they need from working-class people in the North East, without doing anything at all for the area! UKIP is the only major party opposed to HS2, because it believes that the spend is unjustified, and that there are far better things to do with such a vast sum of public money than shave minutes off the travelling time of wealthy business people who'd work on the train anyway. http://www.ukip.org/aylesbury_s_tory_mp_bottles_hs2_vote This is what Ed Balls thinks about HS2: Whoops a "blank cheque" from Labour then! But, it's fine to wave it through as it buys some extra votes in the Midlands where Labour will really fight the next election. Mindless voting is the sure route to self-impoverishment!

All the fake psychics and conspiracy theorists are crawling out of the woodwork now, but that doesn't mean there isn't one! Knowing a tiny bit about Carlyle and Freescale there's certainly mileage in this particular one. You could go on to speculate that if you wanted to bury this one for good you'd arrange the searching to go on in the Southern Atlantic, and send a few misleading sonar signals to reinforce the belief that the aircraft must be there somewhere. That might seem crazy to most mortals, but anyone who has any inkling of the vast resources that Carlyle commands wouldn't have any difficulty believing that. How this company has accumulated so much wealth in so short a period beggars belief. That they have all the "connections" can not be in doubt. It surprised me that the Aussies were able to zero in on such a relatively small area so quickly on such tenuous data. This having happened, and the signature being so unique, then why all the subsequent confusion? Normally the sonar can take you there quickly and with reasonable precision.

LOL I'm going to have to look up insouciant! It's kick Nick time it seems: Now that sounds personal! I do think he should stop trotting out the three million jobs at risk garbage though. His source was back in 2000, and the academic he plucked the figure from says his figures are being misused - they don't mean that at all! So why keep repeating this when it's not actually true? It's rather like his claim that only 7% of our laws are made in Brussels - which he picked from a HoC document which specifically pointed out that it didn't include "orders in council" - how the mass of Euro diktats are promulgated. The true figure is well over 50%. Nick seems to have a way with the truth that doesn't involve reading past the first few convenient words into the inconvenient ones. An interesting book that serious LD's will need to read if they think any of their ideas will stand up to scrutiny. The guy seems to think the EU may be redeemable, but I'm not convinced. Certainly if Cameron goes to re-negotiate it will be a pre-arranged fix, and he will try to pull the same con trick as was pulled the last time by Labour. That a real (non-politicos', non-federalist) Common Market can be formed I've no doubt, there is plenty of will among the more democratic parts of Europe if the UK were to set the lead. And, it would rapidly see off the EU in terms of GDP growth - but that's not at all what the political classes want!

I tried to ignore it, honestly I did! But every time I went to iPlayer it was there staring back at me, and only three minutes! Curiosity overtook me and I watched - I am a politicoholic - there I've said it! Was it instructive? Well... yes, but not in the way intended. I've learned that however much all reason points the other way, it's still possible for a small group of individuals to ignore the overwhelming negatives and cling to a core of outdated, and positively self-damaging, ideas. Fresh from his drubbing at the hands of common sense and the real facts, personified by Nigel Farage, Nick was back reminding everyone that his is ONLY party that fully supports the EU - "we're the party of IN" he chirps, without giving any solid reasons why, or addressing any of dozens of reasons why not. Sure, they'd strung out an almost subliminal 3D graphic down a shopping street saying "3 MILLION JOBS"; a sort of paper mache religious icon, so true believers have a real-world instantiation, lest they start to disbelieve the immaculate conception. But here was a near-exclusive appeal to the heart and not to reason. That word fairness is creeping back into the LDs claims too. Yes, the UK electorate have short memories, but not THAT short Nick! This was the month that Danny Alexander was seen claiming that the recovery was as much his success as George Osborne's and positioning himself as the new party leader. The LDs sure need one, and quickly! But it's not going to happen until the inevitable drubbing at the polls. I strongly suspect that a new incarnation of the LD's will take a far more pragmatic approach to the EU. Danny won't want to remind us about his being "the party of IN", and will quite likely secretly wish that it was the party of OUT!

It should be called "non-intentional debt": - lender has no intention of charging reasonable interest, and borrower has no intention of keeping to the repayment schedule - or even repaying!

It's the debt that is personal not the data! "Anonymised" data they calls it. My theory on the Alnwick and Coldstream lot is that it's a result of all the fuel they charge to their credit cards in the desperate effort to get their 4x4s to the Metro Centre. A massive opportunity for Bedlington to promote its charging point I think; those country gents will be swapping their gas guzzlers out for electrics in scores! Anyone up for a green-wellie cleaning biz?