Evening Star

Ladies & Gents. I'm looking to buy myself a new motorbike, I need to borrow about £6½k for about 2-3 years, not sure on the length as I maybe able to repay it quicker, anyway Zopa a name I've never heard of before keeps on popping up on the comparison sites with about the best interest rate I can find for that amount of loan. Have any of you had any dealings with this company? If so what were they like? Good, Bad or Indifferent? Your opinions would be appreciated. ES.

You're slightly incorrect there, as a fellow train driver. Two work colleagues have been tested as positive for dope aka opiates, but were subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing because they could prove that they had eaten quantities of bread/bakery products & poppy seed cake in one case, which caused it to prove positive. I could be shown as positive as I have anti-migraine medication (Solpadeine is the initial treatment), which I have special authorisation to take at work if I start to suffer bad headaches. I along with several others can declare it, as the tablets contain Codeine should I be involved in an incident or screening. It has been picked up before with me that I took some the night before, along with Loratadine or cetirizine hydrochloride at the time, it also picked up the Diclofenic cream that I used to treat a sprained knee! All I do now is just tell them that I'm going to take my anti-migraine medication, if they object to it, I just say fine.... Cover my train then, I'm going home. If I don't treat a headache quickly it will rapidly develop into a full blown migraine and that means taking prescription strength migraine stuff (Imigran - which is actually sumatriptan). That will knock me out in around 90' for at least 12hrs, I can't then drive for at least 24hr afterwards. I have taken Amitriptyline before it was for Chicken Pox, I was suffering some severe pains in my head & face and it worked wonders, however I was off work for several weeks as I was classed as too infectious to return & I wasn't allowed to drive whilst under these tablets either.

Idea for the Ducati dropped when I worked out the total cost of bike, security & insurance came in at £24½k. :(

The SGS3 is soooo overrated.

Don't tell me you're another domestically challenged man, who would burn water!

I've had that from Privilege, for my Octy. In fact last year I did three new quotes back to back and the got cheaper each time so I took the 3rd one which was £100 less that the initial one. I don't rate LV, they've tried to quote me exorbitant prices each time.

May that teach you one of the most fundamental lessons of life... Get her, her own car, if she prangs it, it's her insurance that gets done.

I await my insurance with increasing dread. I've just tried to get a quote for a Ducati 1198 Panigale S, the cheapest quote I got was £925 with a £1000 excess!

Been there done that. It's still doing it and I simply cannot be ar$€d to keep reinstalling all of my apps, all 60 of them.

I think you do. The amount of complaints about this so called upgrade is growing all of the time. Seriously unhappy!

If you have a Samsung Galaxy S2 and it is running Gingerbread as it's OS (2.3.4) then LEAVE IT THERE. DO NOT do the so called upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, it's highly bug ridden, loads of people are having problems with its implementation. I lost Bluetooth connectivity between my PC & phone, only getting it back by buying a new dongle & buying BlueSoleil 8 software, it took ages to get it to connect to the cars BT system, Wi-Fi is temperamental sometimes switching on when its not wanted, sometimes it won't switch on at all without a reboot. The browsers are patchy at best, battery life even with the official Samsung extended battery is disgraceful, whereas with Gingerbread it would last all day & ¼ of the next, now I struggle to be left with 33% during the day, it's regularly less. I get regular lock ups/freezes when changing screens, regular SD card scans & the list of problems goes on & on.

I have done it.

If you want to root your phone you can use Odin (Google it) and if you look at xda-developers site you can find the firmwares for most variants, you don't need any special tools to root your phone.

I have an SGS2, I bought the extended battery for it + a 64Gb SDXC card, so I have a phone with around about 72Gb of memory when it's empty, however it's now about 45-49% full at the moment, I made the mistake of upgrading my phones OS from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich and have been beset by bugs & gremlins ever since. The SGS2 is a great phone don't get me wrong, just don't do the "upgrade". As for the SGS3, completely underwhelmed by the specifications of it, unless you're prepared to wait for the 32 or 64Gb versions, the case is plastic which doesn't bode well for longevity! The HTC One X is meant to be very good, however you have no expansion capability whatsoever, you can't upgrade the memory with a card or even change the battery. You may want to consider waiting until the autumn for the forthcoming Iphone 5 (or whatever Apple call it!) however you can bet that Bluetooth usability will be restricted (no swapping of music or files!) & lack of memory expansion or additional batteries.

Just a word of advice & from experience. I bought a New Trent backup charger from Amazon about 18 months ago, which was returned PDQ, because when I charged it up and then went to use it, it started to get very hot and then started to smell of smoke/burning at which point it was dumped in a sealed container and unceremoniously dumped outside in the garden in case it caught fire, When I went to it in the morning, it was dead and cold. I wouldn't put it back on charge or trust it again. So it was returned. I'd never trust another one again. I've got a PowerMonkey Explorer, which I bought for £50, it has a solar panel & mains charger, they say it will charge a Iphone twice off of one charge, however it takes a good 12+ hours to charge off of the mains & even longer via the stupid solar panel. That's £50 wasted. So don't bother with a Power Monkey either they're just a crap. Best thing buy several batteries, charge them & take them with you, less hassle.

Unless you're prepared to use some software called Odin (you'll need to uninstall Kies first, it doesn't coexist with Odin very well), you can then find alternative software to use on the SGS2. The flipside of this is you will void any warranty.

New Address is... Colbornes Skoda Astolat Way Old Portsmouth Road Peasmarsh Guildford, GU3 1NE T: 01483 462500

Now £80...

Just a small point in that if you have a HDMI equipped monitor you can either use a DVI to HDMI monitor adaptor or better still make sure that the GFX card has a HDMI output, like mine, that allows both sound & vision through a single cable. I'm running at 1920x1080 resolution it's as sharp as anything on a 23" LG monitor/TV.

You go careful, you big spender.

Perhaps this Donut should get a new phone...

I've lost audio streaming via BT to my PC, after much hassle of connecting & disconnecting with the car, that seems to have stabilized and works perfectly. Battery life with the extended battery has gone through the floor. You can do a flash yourself, you need some software called Odin & your USB cable.

Well with my car coming up for renewal in October/November (possibly earlier) it will be almost perfect for me as it's just 5½ miles from home & ½-¾ a mile from the park & ride into Guildford, so a 10 min walk.

A tad late.... Already got a thread under way here: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/235149-ics-has-just-become-available-for-sim-free-sgs2/ And I wouldn't touch it with the proverbial barge pole as it seems to have caused people no end of "fun & games" with battery life being demolished, Bluetooth problems, phones freezing & going blank. Guess how many symptoms I have got with my formerly perfect working SGS2? All 4!

Using Cyanogenmod is all well and good if you know what you're doing. If you don't know precisely what you're doing then there's every chance you'll end up not only losing all of your contacts, photos, music etc on there, but you will also end up with a very expensive BRICK! It's a bit like VAGCOM/VCDS, in that if you don't know exactly what you're doing you'll be paying for someone to fix your car, or in this case with Cyanogenmod a phone.