JohnMcL7

I'm a fan of the 7in size as I find it more usable giving a better balance of size and screen, the 10in tablets seem too big to me for holding one handed and given they are still just phones with big screens - up at that sort of size I prefer an ultralight laptop which is vastly more capable. I had the original Galaxy Tab which I liked until I bought a Note which has made the Tab redundant but it hasn't changed my views towards the 10in tablet particularly with what looks to be viable X86 10in tablets on the way. The price of the Nexus 7 is very good as is the spec particularly the processor and the screen although the lack of micro SD is a real shame, I can see why they have taken it away but I don't think we're at the stage where streaming everything is viable unless the tablet is rarely going to leave the house. John

The supplied Note charger is not a very high power one (only 700mA from what I remember) so I'd recommend getting a better charger if you want quicker charging as the Note is definitely capable of it. I charged the Note a couple of times from the stock charger then no more as it was slow and my charger had a very slight high pitched buzz to it. John

What are you using to charge it? I find the Note can charge quickly but it needs a decent amount of juice to do so, I use a Nokia N900 charger (delivers higher current than the stock Samsung charger), the 1,5A port on my emergency charger or a small adapter which disables data transfer on the USB port and increases the current (bought for my Tab, seems to work fine on the Note) all of which means the battery charges up quickly. It could mean I'm reducing the long term batterylife but I've had the Note since it was released in Germany and battery is fine so far, if it does die then it's easily replaced. I've kept mine on Gingerbread as it seems to work very well that way and doesn't suffer some of the problems you've mentioned, start and end times are set the same screen on the calendar and the text messaging is basic but functional rather than cluttered. As mentioned above there is strong community support for the phone if you want to change it. John

Yes, all my machines run off SSDs bar one old ultralight which can't take one. I enjoy the improved responsive of the PC with the only issue I've had with them up until now is the limited capacity and high cost but with 512GB drives now dipping under £300 that's becoming less of an issue. I've steered clear of the SSD's with known issues and so far have had no problems with reliability and lacking the mechanical complexity of hard drives I seriously doubt SSD's will come anywhere close to the hard drive rate of failure (which I've seen plenty of). My drives are backed up as they should be so unless they all start chronically failing it won't affect my choice of drive. John

The difference is that it's not emitted as soot with the intention that the burnt matter that's expelled by the DPF isn't as bad. What is the source for this post? There are a fair few DPF problems on this forum but then there's a lot of problems reported on this forum in general which is what I'd expect as people are more likely to report problems than good experiences on a forum. I find it hard to believe that the majority have problems with DPF because if it wasn't for this forum I wouldn't know about DPF problems, I haven't had any on my own car and no friends with diesels have reported issues either. I'm not saying DPF problems don't exist but don't believe that most people have trouble with them. Also the 'too many motorway miles' doesn't make any sense either. John

I've never found an AV product that is 100% reliable having supported most of them on a large scale, I've seen each and every one of them miss malware including Norton and Mcafee, also had to repair the damage from both of them when there's been no malware and they've screwed the machine up which is something I've not yet seen the MS clients do. I wouldn't count the fact MSE is free against it simply because the virus detection, updates and scanning system is the same as the paid one. John

I use Microsoft Security Essentials, even cost aside I find it's light on system resources and has a simple interface to tell you what it thinks needing doing without nagging you. It's difficult to test their ability to capture malware but I support the commercial version at work where it generally does a good job, not much malware gets past it (considerably less than the previous major AV product) and when it does, MS are usually quick with updates to stop the malware. John

The 'Vista uses too much ram' is one that amuses me because frequently people measure ram usage by task manager and point out that Vista is very inefficient because it's using so much ram at idle when in reality Vista is trying to make as much as use of the ram as possible, releasing it when programs are needed whereas XP wouldn't use it. It clearly makes more sense to have the ram in use rather than doing nothing but clearly some people prefer to have it doing nothing because it looks better. Similarly I used Vista from the beta (where it was better than XP was initially at its production release) and it's interesting to see the same comments about Vista being made here by people who apparently won't even use the operating system they're complaining about, as with most things these days image is everything. With regards to the topic, did you manage to load the graphics card driver ok? Is the machine showing any issues in device manager? Although I do find the interface a bit messy at the moment on Windows 8, I've been surprised how well it runs on older hardware. I'm using an old Dell XPS M1330 with a C2D 2.2Ghz processor, 2GB ram, 320GB 5400rpm hard drive and an Nvidia 8400m graphics card and the machine runs noticeably faster than it did with Windows 7 particularly with the new hybrid hibernate/shutdown system. John

It's here tomorrow and I'm certainly not bothered about seeing it, kind of had enough of the Olympics already and it's still some time from starting. John

I find the VRS cheap to insure at least for my set of circumstances, it doesn't seem to be considered a sports car and instead is priced as a standard car so my insurance is cheap. I was surprised when getting quotes for a Mazda MX-5 which was worth less than the Octavia and would lose out on performance (at least I reckon based on the paper figures, hard to compare the feel in such different cars) that the cost was two to three times as much and that was for insurers that would cover me, some refused. I bought my 56 plate VRS TDI when I was 29 a couple of years ago, my first Octavia which I bought when I was 24 was a mk 1 1.9 TDI GLX with 90 bhp - couldn't justify anything more at the time although I had been tempted by the mk 1 VRS the garage also had. John

I had exactly the same on mine as well although I never found what the cause was as after a couple of months it went back to normal, curious to know if anyone managed to fix it and find what was causing it? John

It isn't, with Sony you get what you pay for so while they are expensive you're usually getting cutting edge technology which can take years to come to other brands including Apple. Also Sony don't currently fix their prices as rigidly as Apple which means bargains can be had, the Vaio Z5 was £850 when a maxed out Macbook was about £3,000 and still didn't even come remotely close to the Vaio's spec (dual SSDs vs single SSD, hi-res screen vs low res screen, two graphics cards vs one graphics card, blu-ray writer vs DVD writer). Similarly I managed to get a bargain on my older Vaios (11.1in Ultralight and a 4.5in UMPC) through voucher codes and cashback offers. John

It doesn't sound like you have much experience of laptops then, I don't find Macbooks particular portable and in addition their spec is usually pretty basic. My current 13in machine is a Vaio Z5 which at 1.5kg is quite a bit lighter than its equivalent Macbook while its spec is far better than any its rival Macbook could offer, in fact it was better than even what the bigger Macbooks could offer with dual SSDs in RAID 0, 3Ghz processor (the 13in Macbook models topped out at 2.6Ghz), 1600x900 screen (no high res options on the equivalent Macbooks), integrated and discrete graphics plus a blu-ray writer. The Z series that came after went further by offering quad SSDs, an i7 dual core processor and a 1080p screen at a time when it was claimed it wasn't possible for Apple to fit an i5 into the 13in MBP - Sony not only managed that but they were able to do it in a smaller and lighter package with higher performance parts and more components. John

No, the requirement covers both replacement boiler systems and new installs - there is an exemption system when replacing a boiler but in practice it seems difficult to meet, certainly my circumstances didn't even though it was a fairly pricey install to get the condensing boiler in.

I live in a five bedroom house and last year the boiler originally fitted in the house died (early 90's) so spent a long time researching boilers and trying to understand them before making a choice about installing them. When getting quotes, no-one advised a combi-boiler for the size of house so didn't check out how it would work money wise nor do I know if that's solid general advice, it's going to depend on how you use your hot water. Impossible to say as there's so many factors that govern the cost outwith the boiler, the problem in my house was that the boiler was fitted in the 90's and since then a lot of the gas regulations have changed which caused a lot of headaches. A like for like boiler wasn't suitable as you have to fit a condensing boiler now (with only a handful of exceptions), for the size of boiler we needed that meant a wider gas line needed to be fitted going to the boiler and it needed a condensing pipe fitted. The other problem was the flue, the type fitted to the house isn't allowed any more and wasn't working properly so they had to fit another one going to the roof, this meant the cost was pretty high on top of the boiler itself. For some boiler installs none of that is going to be a problem so the cost will be much lower but in other cases it will be. The bills for gas are quite a bit lower but it doesn't look like the boiler will ever pay for itself, as mentioned above the condensing boilers don't seem to last that long as due to their complexity they can be pricey to repair, I haven't experienced that side of it though and hope not to for a very long time. John

My desktop workhorse is an Alienware Aurora R4 with the six core i7 3930K and dual 6950's, DTR is a Dell XPS M1730, photo laptop is a Dell Studio XPS 1645 with the 1080p RGB backlit screen, portable laptop is a Vaio Z5 with the 1600x900 screen and dual 128GB SSDs in RAID 0, test laptop is a Dell XPS M133,0 my ultralight is an aging but still capable Vaio Tx1HP/W and my servers are an HP N36L Microserver and Dell Studio Hybrid. John

I was very disappointed Maemo died with the N900 (which to be fair was Nokia's excellent work, Intel joined in later with Meego) it makes IOS and Android feel so basic as its window manager was much more advanced and the widget system superb. Also i liked that you rooted the phone by typing 'root' and nothing was hidden allowing to you dive in as you wanted although you didn't have to it, it still worked well out of the box. The aging hardware and Nokia dropping the platform meant I moved onto Android but I still marvel at how much more advanced Maemo was despite being much older. Most of my computers run various versions of Windows as it works well for my use and it has the software support for the slightly more exotic hardware configurations. John

I generally pay straight away unless there's a unexpected problem (such as my CC company kindly blocking my card because I bought a PC and not telling me), if that does happen I mail the seller to let them know which they seem fine with as I've usually got it sorted promptly. My friend was pleased to get her car sold on ebay last week but the buyer never got in touch, no deposit nothing so she ended up filing a non-paying bidder notice, you'd think if someone has changed their mind they'd have the courtesy to send a message and let the seller know. John

Surely only if you want a specific socket, the cable gives you a 3.5mm jack so that could go straight into the headphone jack. John

Would that mean no soldering, just slide out the stereo, plug it in and route the cable?

It's good to see so many positive recommendations for a hybrid bike, I was wanting one last year and everyone seemed to be recommending against them as they were too poor a balance between an MTB and road bike. I went ahead anyway with a Trek Soho Deluxe as I wanted a bike that I could take out every day without issue particularly through the winter when the roads would be covered in salt, this bike stood out for its carbon belt instead of a chain (no oil, no rusting) which has worked out well. The heavy rear end with the gear hub and more limited gear range isn't great for climbing lots of hills nor long range cycling at speed but as an every day bike it's been great, it's the first bike I've had with thin tyres rather than MTB tyres which are so much less effort. John

Have you seen there's a couple of Windows 7 hotfixes that are meant to improve performance by handling the Bulldozer core design better? They don't make for a big difference but still worth having.

I was amused that when Ars technica reviewed one of the rubbish cheap tablets here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-ever-ars-reviews-a-99-android-tablet.ars they got a reply from Best Buy with some examples of good uses for the tablet: https://bbyopen.com/2010/11/maylong-android-tablet-more-versatile-than-you-think John

That seems a good plan, at least if I could get both insured up to the end of the current policy then look at swapping them around as quotes I've tried with the NCB on the MX-5 are low although in turn the Octavia will be higher but I expect the increase not to be as much. sdenny - that sounds like the type of policy I need but I can't seen the Mazda coming up as a classic as it's not that old a car. John

I'm selling my motorbike and I've seen an MX-5 locally I really fancy but the problem I'm having is the insurance because strangely MX-5's seem to be disliked by insurers. I can't seem to get a separate policy for the MX-5 as the no claims bonus is on the Octavia's policy and that seems to be fatal for getting the MX-5 insured and a multi-car policy seems pricey as well although I've only been going by online quotes, not actually phoned my insurer. It seems a bit odd that the MX-5 is around twice the cost to insure of the Octavia and also twice as much as the motorbike, the Octavia is no slouch and the bike is both substantially faster and a lot more dangerous. I find insurance a bit strange in general with this idea of separate no claims bonuses when it's me that owns and drives both cars so I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on insuring a second occasional car? On one hand the total cost for both cars isn't actually that bad I guess at around £600-£700 as I know there's people paying a lot more to get a lot less but it's hard to stomach nearly tripling the cost as well as the additional tax, servicing, MOT, tyres and all the other parts the MX-5 will need. I'm seriously tempted as I've been to have a look at it today (two litre 2005 model) and it's a very nice little car, I've always had sensible cars (bar the motorbike) so fancy something not so sensible given this may be the only time I can have one. (single, no dependents, no points etc.) Any thoughts appreciated. John