APJ

Sold after 3 days on Autotrader - certainly the way to go to sell a car

Bump again. Not on autotrader yet, will be shortly.

Bump again - will be on autotrader this weekend

bump!

Octavia II VRS TDi CR 5 door hatch in Candy White - £7950 First registered 23/07/2010, owned by myself from new, with a full main dealer service and repair history. All the usual VRS refienements, including 18" alloys, cruise control, DRLs. Optional extras include maxidot, auto lights and wipers and mirror, spacesaver spare wheel, Skoda rubber boot mat and a set of fitted UV privacy shades for rear windows and hatch. Genuine 86600 mainly motorway miles, always serviced by main dealer in accordance with schedule. Recent dealer work has included new cam belt and water pump, and front and rear pads. All receipts retained as proof of work. 4 new Goodyear Eagle F1s fitted 2 months ago. Current MOT expires 31/07 but will have a new MOT before selling. Car is located in south Gloucestershire, a few mins from J13/14 M5. Leave a message or text 07858 635835

When is this meant to be available in the UK? Any news on pricing?

Doh. Good idea, Miz, I should have thought of that. COnfigurator actually only allows selection of towbar prep or towbar, so it seems the whole thing is £550. I assume it comes with electrics!

For a complete luddite on towbars . . . do I need to specify both the towbar preparation @ £175 and the the towbar install @ £550 from the option list on a new VRS order, or does the towbar install include the prep? Any cheaper options available??

Got round to fitting the Osram Nightbreakers over the weekend - didn't realise it was going to be such a job with having to remove the headlamp units. Still, followed the how to guide so took about 30 mins all in. Could probably do it in 10 now! The Osrams seem quite a bit brighter then the standard fit. but then I have got 2 working lights instead of 1 now! Cant really see how it's 130% better though. Still, they seem to do the job ok.

Thanks TZ. Do you know what resolution it scans at?

Yeah, I should try scanning at different resolutions, really, and see what's best. They'll only be viewed on screen, but then I do like to zoom in to see the whites of people's eyes!!

Thanks for posting one of the originals there, Loz. Now call me old-fashioned, but I happen to like the natural unprocessed look of the shot - it feels real. Now that's not to say the final HDR is not good - far from it, it's fantastic, especially as an artistic shot - but I do also like unprocessed reality!! You certainly know what you're doing with HDR. I'd love to experiment more - but I'm still getting to grips with all the knobs and buttons on my D5200. Apparently it can auto-bracket different exposures . . . somehow!!

I keep meaning to start scanning the 1000s of 35mm negatives I've kept from the 80s and 90s. I've also got around 25 APS carts from the days just before digital. I'll probably send the APS carts off to a specialist scanning service, mainly because I'd have to break the cart to get the negative out and do not have a film holder to fit. Seems there are 2 resolution options - 1400dpi (1968x1312 pixels) and 2800dpi. Given the small APS negative is there any benefit at scanning at the higher resolution? As for the 35mm, I'll scan these on my Epson V330. OK, not a specialist film scanner but seems to give half decent results. IT'll scan upto 4800dpi but it's obviously painfully slow at this resolution. Just wondered if anyone has experience of scanning their negatives and what resolution did they find best?

Wow, fantastic photos, Loz, well done. The HDR really certainly makes the detail stand out and creates a much more artistic image. However, I'd also quite like to see the non-HDR holiday-snap version!! Fascinating location - would love to visit. Would just need to try and forget the Chernobyl Diaries film!

Thanks folks - HIDs sound good, but can't be doing with the hassle of getting them coded and would worry at MOT time. Gone for a pair of Osram Nightbreakers. At just over £15 delivered for the pair, almost the same price as standard bulbs.

One of my dipped beam bulbs (H7) has gone, so I might as well replace the pair with uprated bulbs. Any recommendations? I see the Philips bulbs seem to get good reviews with Autoexpress but interested to see what's around.

Used Blade last month for an MOT and replacing one of the LED running lights which had stopped working after hitting something. Had a loan car whilst mine was in - a new Rapid with a rather nice glass roof. MOT found a leaky damper, so ended up having a pair replaced, but I was able to keep the loan car until the following day for the work to be done. Car was returned washed and partially cleaned inside. Overall, nice, courteous service, Craig the service manager seems to know his stuff and was very personable. My favourite is still Sinclair Skoda in Swansea, but probalby not worth the drive over Blade in Gloucester.

I had the misfortune of bumping into some wild animal one dark night a couple of months ago. The knock smashed the fog light grille and stopped the DRL from working. Now I'm coming upto MOT, I need to get the DRL working again. Anyone had any experience of replacing a DRL unit in a facelift VRS? How do you access the DRL? What's the replacement part number and any idea on price? Any info greatly appreciated!

I'm meant to be getting FTTC later this year - what speed increases does this bring?

Thanks jrw - but my source disk is 2TB across 5 partitions and the SSD only 250Gb - don't want to have to remove programs and data on the source disk to re-partition and get under 250Gb.

Thanks for your comments everyone, makes interesting reading. In the Tiscali days, I remember TalkTalk had a terrible reputation for service but there do seem to be a few more people sticking up for them now, However, seems the vote out of the two is for Plusnet. I've been with a little Exeter based ISP, Eclipse, for 8 years now and can't fault their customer service - on the two occasions where I've had to call TechSupport I'm through in under a minute and talking to an English person with intelligence. However, service is capped at 50gig and I seem to be using most of that these days. BT also seem to be ramping up their line prices all the time, so whole package is now costing quite a bit. I'm a little out in the sticks, so suppliers like Tesco want to charge loads. I discounted Sky as I'm just not comfortable going with a company where the Murdochs are the major shareholders. TalkTalk and Plusnet seem to have good value offerings. Just need the reassurance that my choice will be the right one!!

Votes for the better of the two for speed, service and reliability, please! I'm looking at either of these two suppliers for a broadband and phone package but continually hear bad reviews about both. Limited choice where I live and no fibre yet. Only BT wholesale and TalkTalk boxes in the local exchange. Both are offering speeds of around 18Mbps although I suspect this is unrealistic - current supplier achieves 8Mbps. Email is important to me and I konw Plusnet offer pop3 email accounts with addresses in the form [email protected]. I can't find any info on the TalkTalk website - can someone enlighten me?

Thanks for the further info folks. I;ve got a bit bored with it all now, so the SSD is installed, but not being used. The process outlined in hacker seems sensible, as I think my issue is about where the MBR sits. Really don't fancy a fresh install, so if I can get the partition clone and MBR bit working, then all well and good. Will try when I've got some time over the weekend.

Tesco's Blinkbox certainly allows you to download a film, but when it comes to playing, it does need a live internet connection to validate the DRM licence. Personally, I would put lots of my owned films onto a portable USB hard drive and pop it in my suitcase. That's over 100 films on a £40ish 500Gb drive.

Thanks sOniX I download a Win7 Home Premium installation disk image from Digitalriver (genuine software but without product key) and burnt it to DVD. Booting from the DVD does indeed initiate the installation process, but then halts asking for drivers - although it doesn't specify drivers for what! Where should I tell it to look for drivers? Or would I be better off booting from the recovery disks made when the PC was first delivered? Only concern there is that it;ll have lots of unnecessary dell stuff on it and unsure whether it would be a "clean" install.