Replies

I hope that non-UK readers realise that this video is Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson sending themselves up and not typical of English cuisine. “The two ladies were as well endowed with humour as appetites, even at their own expense” is the clue!

They are “politically incorrect”, very much against health fads, very pro “hunting shooting and fishing” (of foxes, pheasants and fish – not people) and have a huge liking for traditional food.

So yes they will fry chips (US=fries) in lard (they are lovely like that – as an occasional treat) but roast fillet of lard? No – besides it would not work!

Anyone know what what they did this video for – might it have been Children In Need or Comic Relief (UK Telethons)? I had not seen it before.

I was recently told that doctors have imbedded Windows 10 computers into patients.

Question would you allow a computer with a new operating system to be embedded in your body?

I dread to think what might happen if a masseur should accidentally Ctrl-Alt-Delete whilst trying to ease some muscle?

Onboard cameras and computers can now prevent unsafe lane changes,

So I see a roadside tree falling in my path, but the software stops me swerving because it has seen the car behind me already swerving out (as if to overtake – but possibly because its driver has seen the tree).

Consequently I am hit by the tree and am killed.

Should my life insurance pay-out, should the software developers of my car have their liability insurance pay out (because it was incapable of choosing the lesser crash), or possibly should the other car’s software developers’ liability insurance pay out (because they inhibited my car from pulling out by reacting too fast)? Or should the owners of the tree pay out for not fitting a “rot sensor” to their tree?

I think I am going back to school – law school. I will never be out of work again (assuming that tree does not get me first).

Seems that you need to “go Nexus” purely because of the need to know that Android will be updated.

But if instead of merely being unlocked from your telecommunications company you could also be unlocked from your operating system perhaps there would be more ports of non-Apple, non-Android, non-Windows operating systems. (Thinking Ubuntu Touch, FirefoxOS etc.)

Then we could control what gets put on the computer in our pocket. If we can do so for our laptops and desktops why not for our phones?

Two replies pointing at USB, thanks

But I wonder: if it is a USB problem why is the keyboard affected but not the mouse? (I use a plug in USB trackball – as the trackpad on my laptop failed about a week out of guarantee – just like my previous laptop!)

Thanks, I have set both options to disabled – and will wait to see if the problem recurs.
(With an intermittent issue it will be a matter of time before I think “Oh I have not had that problem for quite a while – must have solved it”!)

Presumably there is some other as yet unidentified factor that causes this to sometimes be a problem.

Thanks, I will have a look at this when it next “misbehaves” – at the moment there are no device manager issues.

The laptop uses a dual core Pentium and with an SSD its pretty snappy.
Jerry

Presumably Hybrid drives speeds things up because of the most frequently accessed file being on the SS bit. The most frequently accessed file however is likely to be the pagefile especially if you have insufficient RAM. So should more RAM come before you go SSD/Hybrid?

David

David,
…
Some other thoughts:
I definitely do not recommend Norton, @ all! For one thing it is a huge resource hog!
Recommend not running “Add-ons” (period)
Nor any so-called “browser helpers”
Have nothing or almost nothing running @ start-up.

Cheers,
Drew

Not sure that current Norton (NIS v21) is the resource hog that it used to be. I think my major resource user is Firefox.

From Process on TaskManager Top 5 Processes by Memory (Private Working Set)
(Win7 Home Premium x64)
Showing: Memory, Page Pool, Handles, Threads, USER object, GDI objects

Mem PgPl H’dles Ths Obj GDI Process
760M 872K 1199 061 131 193 Firefox
173M 730K 1106 104 139 121 Thunderbird (also running RSS reader Bamboo)
129M 197K 0698 026 000 000 svhost.exe
053M 530K 1278 013 000 000 SearchIndexer.exe
055M 450K 2945 056 000 000 Norton Internet Security

David

David,

If you’re waiting for Win10 you might also wait for Intel SkyLake processors due out about the same time. When I searched for the link I found an article that says they may be delayed to August 15.

HTH :cheers:

Oh, dear another processor architecture to try and compare!
Pentium, Celeron was difficult.
Intel i3, i5, i7 is moderately self explanatory, but
Intel vs AMD?
And now Skylake vs i7?

But I guess that Skylake may make i5s and i7s cheaper so (provided Win10 works well on them) thanks for the head-up!

I bought a whole new machine with I5 and 8GB RAM for £370, excluding SSD which I nicked from the old machine. I do have to put up with Windows 8, but it’s a small price to pay for blistering performance.
If you want the details….

cheers, Paul

I will probably buy new this year; but I am tempted to wait until Windows 10 comes out, get a view on what people think of it (i.e. not a turkey) and what hardware specs are required for effective performance (and see if the price of touch screen laptops drop as a consequence). Touch at the moment seems to be the main reason for sticking with Windows rather than going Linux (probably Ubuntu or Lubuntu). If I go Linux my current hardware is perfectly adequate.

I guess your new machine is unbranded? What are views on reliability and effective matching of components – which are meant to be the benefits of buying big brand? (Having said which my last two HP touchpads gave up a a year and a few days after I brought the associated laptops!)

David

To ‘dsf’, … I do agree, check for unnecessary or unwanted programs running, even, in the background. Also, check for any malware that may be causing issues. Aero does consume resources so cool to turn that off. I am a bit concerned when you mention widgets or Gadgets. These should no longer be used. This has been the case for quite a long time, now. …

Cheers,
Drew

I have been through the startup programs and pruned the “obvious”. Malwarebytes and Norton are also hopefully keeping on top of any unwanted stuff. Some I am not sure about (e.g. 3 instances of “Intel(R) Common User Interface”, 4 instances of “Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN” – v2.0 and v4.0) and some (e.g. Lightscribe – which I don’t use and has been “stopped” in msconfig/services) are hard to shift.

I turned off Aero at the same time that I ditched the gadgets (when the security issues were raised “quite a long time” ago). I actually prefer the non-Aero experience. I mainly used gadgets for monitoring system performance – the sort of stuff that Resource Monitor can give. It also significantly reduced the core temperatures!

The other area that I periodically review are add-ons for Firefox and Thunderbird; it is very easy to add one that “looks useful” but which you never / rarely use. I am also looking for a way to prune my bookmarks which I think impacts on the performance of Firefox (an add-on that allows me to group my bookmarks by work-type and then swap “groups” in or out would be useful!).

David

To ‘dsf’, I will just add to the above that the ‘best practice’ is to put in RAM sticks in matched pairs. Also, have a hard time to call RAM “pricey” these days. Of any component in a machine, RAM is, usually, the inexpensive piece. Additional RAM can help but, that Pentium is not fundamentally all that fast but, again, more will help that. …
Cheers,
Drew

Thanks, however

In UK 2x4GB DDR2 PC2-6400 • CL=6 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 1.8V • 512Meg x 64 • (Series: Crucial) costs £185.99 ~ $300 (US). At that price I wonder whether the money would be better spent towards a new laptop (i5 or i7?) and leave Ubuntu on the Pentium (I already have a bigger disk on it and dual boot – it works fine when booted to Linux).

David

What are the comparative merits of Windows 8.1/10, iOS, Android, Ubuntu and FirefoxOS in respect of security and privacy? (See for instance recent reports of tracking Android phones merely by monitoring power usage!)

I keep getting the [Not responding] temporary hang. Resource Monitor shows that my RAM is maxing out so I suspect upping it to 8GB may have more effect than anything else. But 2x 4GB of RAM is pricey!

Component Details Performance Subscore
Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4300 @ 2.10GHz … 5.4
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB … 5.4
Graphics Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family … 3.5
Gaming graphics 1695 MB Total available graphics memory … 3.3
Primary hard disk 151GB Free (400GB Total) … 5.6

I found turning Aero off and clearing the desktop of widgets significantly improved speed.