tmcd35

I had a play on eBuyer and agree AMD APU is the way to go. You can push the A10-5700 with 8Gb and still keep in budget will all other bits, not bad! Edit: Here's what I came up with... BenQ 18.5" monitor - £68.99 Logitech Keyboard & Mouse - £14.98 Creative 2.0 Speakers - £12.78 PS style gamepad - £11.00 Win7 Home Prem OEM - £72.36 D-Link USB WiGi Dongle - £7.96 Powercool 450W PSU (80+ Bronze) - £28.14 2xKingston 4Gb Ram - £57.58 AMD A10-5700 - £ 91.00 Asus A55BM mATX mobo - £39.76 LiteOn DVD Drive - £9.99 Fractual Design Case - £26.98 WD 1Tb HDD - £45.74 All in - £2.72 over budget delivered

What kind of question is that? and you call yourself a tech! Moderators - suspend this account General advise - spec the monitor, peripherals and OS first. That'll give you a budget for the actual PC. Don't cut corners on the PSU - 80+ Bronze rated, minimum. I'd start with a £100-120 GPU and then see what that leaves for other components after that...

I really, really hate shops that play Christmas music (that would be all of them then!). I went in to Sainsbury's the other day to do the weekly shop. Aw, the pain! No choice but to listen to the drival. Do they realise it has the reverse effect than they want to achieve? Far from envoke "Christmas cheer", it made me want to race around the shop as quickly as possible and just get away from it. It's the staff I feel sorry for. Used to work at PC-World. 4-5 weeks of the same 12 songs over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over... again. Arrggghhhh!!!!!

I don't know about Cisco routers but Windows DHCP server has the option to update DNS whenever it leases or frees an IP. I have my DHCP server set to dynamically update DNS A and PTR records. If something slips through the net then the aging/scaveging should clear it out. The way ours is set on an 8 hour lease means machines get a new IP registered with DNS when they first turn on. 8hours later DNS can refresh the record and DHCP will delete if the client doesn't renew the lease. 8 hours later, before the start of a new school day, the scaveging should kick in and delete any stale records that DHCP hasn't removed (which it should do) when the lease is deleted. Everything starts a fresh the next day.

Just checked my settings. I have both set to 8 hours and the lease duration for DHCP clients (on the DHCP server) also set to 8 hours. Seems to work well here. As I say, gives a daily refresh of DHCP and DNS. One of the reasons we do that here is because we don't have too many IP's available and don't want IP's to be tied up to a smartphone or tablet or something that has been taken off site or no other wise not in use today. At the last place were IP's got particularly precious I had the time down to 4 hours, although that got tricky with timing because you want to make sure DHCP is updating DNS and stale records are properly scavenged.

In terms of aging and scaveging, schools a pretty easy IMHO. They open for about 8 hours during the day, and then they're shut. So, 8 hours seems about right. Next morning all machines get fresh DHCP allocations for the day and DNS is updated with the new records.

Perhaps a little, but seems easier than finding a cheap router that supports dual wan and 1000mbps over one of the WANs and has a 1000mbps switch... Just trying to think of the worst case scenario. Would an iPad take mutliple static routes over DHCP? Since we don't know the number or types of devices it's hard not recommend doing the job properly which is a single gateway router on each network connected to multiple external routes and routing accordingly. Sounds like a job for a couple of mid range Cisco jobbies to me. Either that or follow @zag's excellent adivce. Drop on of the ISP's and join the two switches in a single flat network. By far the cheapest and easiest route.

Depending on the clients, that sounds like a messy solution to me. Better to have one gateway and have the routing done from there. I'd be tempted in building two linux boxes, one for each network. Plug the ISP routers into the new linux boxes as modems and have a 1gbps cross-over link between the two new linux boxes, joining the houses. That way it's a do and forget job and clients never need reconfiguring for two gateways.

Off the top of my head I'd say... The two routers (assuming they are configurable and have spare ports for this) need to be connected via the joining Cat7 cable. They then need routing rules set up for each others network. So Router A needs a rule to route 192.168.23.x traffic to router B, and router B needs a rule to route 172.16.254.x traffic to Router B. Both networks will also need DNS correctly configured to resolve hostnames on each others network to the correct IP addresses. All other traffic should then go out through the relevent internet connections as normal.

It's true what "they" say - "Every cloud as a silver lining".

I think it's a question of what server OS, what client os and what connection protocol you are using? Best results (assuming Windows Remote Desktop) would be had from Windows Server 2012 and the lastest RDP clients. Assuming your T510 is a Windows 7 embedded model then HP's download page: Drivers, Software & Firmware for HP t510 Flexible Thin Client - HP Support Center gives some options. Looks like their is a HP accellerator (Velocity) that can be installed on the server and a new RDP (version 8) for download. No doubt similar downloads are available for other T510 client OS's that could also potentially boost performance.

I'm grumpy every christmas - why should this one be any different?

Not seen it yet, not sure when I will to be honest. I knew they were streatching it into three films and trying to get this trilogy to link up better with the original trilogy (than the original Hobbit standalone story would have allowed). That said, (without wanting spoilers), cliffhanger!?! How does this film relate to the final two or three chapters of The Hobbit (which is about all that wasn't in the first film)? I take it they resolve the original book/story then set up a cliffhanger for film three to continue the story towards Lord of the Rings? or have they not resolved the original Hobbit story yet and have streatched it in to three films with lots of filler?

Thank $diety for that! I've just ordered one! (I thought - "£10, got to be worth a punt").

+1 This is the one I remember from my childhood: (note: it both my grandparents had these!)

Marvel Superheroes! - and thankfully a demo available so I can see if it's worth £££'s before I buy. Not sure, might be a recent update. Did look like there was an option in the store for a PS3 download queue. First time I've used it. Just think it's a brilliant idea.

So, I'm sitting at my desk thinking - "I need a co-op game for my PS4" when I discover there is a Demo of Marvel Superheroes available in the PSN Store... I've just logged into my US PSN account and "bought the demo". My PS4, at home, has just started installing it!!! I love technology

Pah! Still missing a robot...

I have three filling cabinet draws full of IEC, figure-8 and cloverleaf power cables...

For those who haven't seen this yet: Rockstar Teases First Story DLC For GTA 5 - Forbes New single player DLC coming next year Haven't played GTA since I completed the story a couple of months back. Looking forward to some new missions.

Another Plex user here. PS3 pick's up via DLNA, PS4 works with the web interface. More interestingly, sky have released a version of the Roku LT for £9.99 as part of their NowTV push (http://www.nowtv.com/box) and it's apparantly possible to sideload the Plex App onto it...(http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/av-distribution/now-tv-10-minute-hack-10-wireless-plex-media-player.html)...I'm VERY tempted to get one.

I need some quiet time alone now...

I've got all the Free2Play and PS+ games and AC:IV. AC:IV was worth the price of entry alone as a single player. Problem is I'm not into things like Killzone or Knack enough to want to lay money out on them. I'm really missing something like DriveClub that'll enable me to properly show off to friends and family when they visit. At the moment it's a choice of watch me play AC:IV or play a 1980's remake (Resogun aka Defender). Certainly a few games I've got my eye on over the next year or so...Watch Dogs, The Division, Hitman 6, Sleeping Dogs 2, Mad Max, possibly The Order. And of course, DriveClub will eventually come to PS+. Saw a trailer for The Division the other day - wow! The difference when not developing with last gen compatibility in mind (AC:IV) is amazing!

I got to say, got it at launch and love the console - but - I am getting a bit impatient for games. AC:IV, Resogun and Contrast are all very good but without Watch_Dogs and DriveClub the console feels a bit barren for games Not the must buy I thought it's be this year. Roll on next year with The Division also.

Really, really silly question (which I'm not sure actually matters too much given the current state of Linux Steam games) but... Is VirtualBox's OpenGL 3D support going to up to the job? Surely this should be dual-booted on a rig with a reasonable GPU/CPU/RAM combination rather than run in a VM?