Computer Problems.

[RDR]

Been using AVG for years and currently have the 2012 version installed but has anyone noticed it seems to slow the laptop down a fair bit when it's updating or scanning? Never used to.
Laptop has a pentium dual core chip with 4GB RAM so it should be able to run several tasks at once without any bother. (processor speed is 2.1GHz)

[Bridie]

Aargh me heads nippin. I thought I would "enquire" about changing the whole Talk/Tv/Broadband package.
I won't go into the whole emotional rollercoaster however the man at BT said that with my Option 3 Broadband I already have BT security included in the package.
Is that a pretendy security or the real deal?

[BrigitDoon]

BT at heart have a bad attitude. Customers are a right, not a privilege. Do at least have a look elsewhere. I moved to O2 for phone/broadband.

[BrigitDoon]

Anyone tried buying a hard drive lately? Seems the floods in Thailand have wiped out supply of Western Digital and Toshiba and I can't get near a Samsung Spinpoint 2TB for sensible money. £60 two months ago, and now eBuyer want £160. They can poke it up their exhaust. I may have to put the latest project on hold. Again

[Vinegar Tom]

Yes. I didn't bother after seeing the price.

[BrigitDoon]

Next problem, so I've read, is that the grey market is moving in. Oh joy.

I've seen a batch of said drives on offer this morning even cheaper than they were before the flood. Website looks good. However...

Google company name + "review". Nothing. No reference to company on fora at Micro Mart or PcPro
Companies House report has only one director and no company secretary. Office on second floor of old office building in a northern city side street. Director on a new-build estate of tiny boxes 50 miles away. Council-house Ferraris and missing hubcaps in evidence.

Website domain name registered to a private individual, whereabouts withheld. Nominet don't allow this.

Looks like I bite the bullet and pay full whack and check with Samsung that any vendor is an authorised reseller.

[BrigitDoon]

Checked in the spares bin last night and found a couple of drives that I didn't know where there. There's enough to cover what I wanted. OK, I'd much rather have that 2TB Spinpoint so that all the storage is on one drive, but this will have to do.

I ordered a load of goodies at 6pm last night from eBuyer. Five past nine this morning and Parcel Force are at the door. As ever, it's properly packaged, all present and correct. They're better than dabs.com were while they were behaving themselves. They'll be getting first dibs when I need to place my next order.

Now to see if I can build something today...

[jodieohdoh]

I could be way off here, but it appears to me from Brigit's posts on this thread that she's building a James Bond villain-style lair replete with supercomputers for launching missiles and taking over the planet. No?

[BrigitDoon]

Bugger. Rumbled. Please, pretty please, don't make EK disappear in a mushroom cloud this lunchtime, OK?

[jodieohdoh]

I can think of worse things that could happen to EK

I'm developing a paranoid conspiracy theory about the purpose of the big silver bollocks at the Whirlies now...

[BrigitDoon]

If we stole some pylons and cable we could turn them into a giant Newton's cradle. Come to think of it, why haven't they been stolen and turned into Chinese fridges?

[BrigitDoon]

Top 10 improvised laptop stands (Lifehacker)

I need to use my laptop in bed, comfortably and without it overheating. Any advance on this lot?

[DickyHart]

can someone help me

my Missus is getting me a new laptop for xmas, ive saw the one i like, tesco have one for the same price as pc world but they are slighty different, can someone please tell me which one is the best of the two, thanks in advance.

The tesco one has Intel Core i3, 3GB, 320GB, the pc world one has Dual-core AMD E2-3000M processor, 4GB, 500GB

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.212-1067.aspx

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavili ... 0-pdt.html

Thanks folks!

[Boxer6]

Unless there is some issue with the AMD processor (and there are many others here eminently more qualified to comment on that than I), it seems the 1295 version has more going for it re Ram, overall capacity etc.

I bought an HP for my daughters Christmas last year, and all seems good so far, so I hope you enjoy whichever one you end up getting.

[BrigitDoon]

There's some doubt about the spec on the Tesco offering. They say Core i3 whereas the HP datasheet says core i5. Maybe the Tesco version is older than current spec. They do say it is "no-frills"...

The other has the larger hard drive and given the premium for these at the moment, it's probably going to be the better bet.

The processor in the PC World offering is 1.8GHz and that's less than the other, whatever's in it. I've never upgraded a processor in a laptop and I'm not sure if it can be done.

I'd go for the PC World version. If processing power is the prime consideration in whatever you're doing, then you're better off having a desktop with an i5 or i7 processor or one of AMD's top line processors which are excellent value.