gavins38

Any idea where I might be able to get hold of a replacement cable and what it's proper name is so I look for the right thing? So far not getting the right matches searching ebay.

I've got a Fujitsu Siemens Amillo LI1718 which had a broken screen. I replaced the screen and all was fine when I tested it, however a few days later the laptop was returned to me and the screen wasn't working. I checked all the connections but they were properly seated, yet still the screen wouldn't display anything. I closed and opened the lid a few times and briefly got the display working. Figuring it wasn't the screen at fault I replaced the power inverter but still no joy. So I had the screen replaced again as I guessed it was faulty. However now I've got another new screen in I still have the same problem. Once again I opened a closed the lid a few times and got the display to work briefly, so I know that the screen does work. I've tested the laptop's vga output and this works fine, so it doesn't appear to be a graphics card fault. I thought it might be the switch that detects the lid is closed on the laptop but as the vga output seems to be working even when the laptop screen isn't, I can't see that to be the problem. That only leaves me with the possibility of something shorting out the screen. I'm getting really frustrated by this now. Does anyone have any other suggestions I can try?

What antivirus software is installed on the machine? My Vista installation kept dropping internet connection and this turned out to be related to avg antivirus. When I removed that and installed an alternative antivirus it worked fine.

I've had no problems with Yahoo! Mail this morning. Don't some of the other online mail providers allow you to access email from other mail accounts?

Never say no to genuinely free stuff. PM sent! Thanks!

I get the same error in IE7 but not in Firefox 3.0.6. Updated Flash and Shockwave but still get the error in IE7.

Having been in both private and public sector I think I'd go for public. There's definitely a lot more cash to splash in the private sector but having tighter budgets is more challenging because we need to get the best value for money and there's lot of interest/development in free and opensource solutions. It all adds up to quite a varied role for me, whereas I found in the private sector I ended up being pigeonholed into one 'speciality', which got tiresome quickly. Maybe it was just a bad experience but I'm much happier where I am now.

I've got a Vista laptop connected to a wireless HP 4580 printer and everytime I send anything to the printer it prints multiple copies. Not a fixed number of mutiples (so it's not a default setting gone screwy) but when I watch the print queue it continues adding more a more copies to the job. I thought it might be the drivers so I reinstalled them, but this hasn't made a difference. I read online that the 6500 drivers have been known to solve similar problems with other HP printers, but again no such luck. I followed some suggestions on the HP forums for changing the port settings from RAW to LPR, but this hasn't worked either. I would say it was a printer issue but I have another Vista laptop connected wirelessly with the same printer drivers, that is working perfectly. I'm running short on ideas. The only thing I can think is that a Vista update has been installed that caused the problem. Has anyone encountered this problem before or hav any ideas?

Didn't check the OS but misread the original request anyway, any more than £150 each machine wouldn't fit into the OP's budget.

Have you tried Ebuyer or Misco? Depending on what you're after you could pick up a cheap Atom based system for less than £200.

Argh!!! The page scrolls twice the length to the right!!! Who on earth thought it'd be good to put navigation links there?!?!?!? Is that 'painter' responsible for the site? No wonder it's a mess if you look at some of the artwork displayed!!!

Oh for the small pleasures of sealed plugs! I've PAT tested 2 schools for every little electrical item possible and each one took me a good week of solid working! Sometimes the cost savings of getting it done 'in-house' is outweighed by the actual amount of time that person loses from their regular work!!! And I agree with everyone else who's said that PAT testing kills brain cells. They should be a warning label on the box.

I had the same thing with a new Fujitsu machine - only supported Vista/7 drivers on their website so had to manually track down the XP drivers. Found a free piece of software called 'Unknown Device Identifier' that worked in the same way as the other piece of software mentioned above.

Just had a quick look at your site and I'm very impressed. Only one thing to report; I'm using IE7 on a WinXP machine and when I load some of the pages (Our Successes, for example) on the left hand side where all of your award logos are there's a blank white square between the picture and the first logo. This seems to change size depending on which page your are on. Otherwise, a very impressive site. Well done!

We use a combination of Dell SFF and uSFF PCs and haven't had any trouble with them. The only minor complaint on the uSFF models is that the mains plug and PSU connection can sometimes be a little fragile and easily disconnected - hence regular calls for non starting PCs only for us to push the power cable back into the PSU more firmly and get it going again. I suppose it makes us look good that we can 'fix' it so quickly!

Also for some pre-Christmas humour don't forget to check out Achmed The Dead Terrorist's version of Jingle Bombs!

ROFL!!! Now you've given me ideas! I'm 28 and someone bought me an advent calendar. Who am I to say no to free chocolate! Merry Christmas everyone!

Where can I get one of those t-shirts! Lol! This issue seems to come up time and time again, and each time it fizzles out because there's no solid evidence to link violence in games to violence in real life.

We bought Wii Fit when it was first released. Had months of fun with it. I'm glad to see they're releasing more games that use it.

I've found EASEUS Deleted File Recovery works really well and there's a free version of it if you don't mind just the basic features.

It's very true. I installed Ubuntu on my home PC and everything worked but the graphics card. I was restricted to 640 x 480 resolution. I had to spend a couple of hours browsing forums until I found a solution to the problem. Simple modification of the drivers file and hey presto! All working fine. I've had a try on the livecd version of Linux Mint and it is very impressive. I haven't tried OpenSuse yet but I'm keen to experiment with the various Linux distros as I'm looking for an alternative to Windows because the price of buying a Windows OS and software is becoming so high.

Don't they all just take the good ideas from each other and reuse them anyway?

I support the suggestions for RealVNC. It's simple, easy to setup and very discrete. However like you said, you have to install it on each machine. An alternative that I've used is Teamviewer. I suspect it would be better for accessing more remote sites in the same way as logmein does though.

Why not "IT". Then when "IT" goes wrong, you'll know what everyone is talking about!

Our oldest machines still in use are P4 2.6Ghz Dell GX240s. We're aiming to reuse these as thin clients in the classrooms to work alongside the new Core2Duo machines. We have got a big, clunky old P2 laptop sitting proudly on a shelf in our server room as a reminder of classic computing though!