sonofsanta

Google Maps doesn't warn you about speed cameras, which is an annoyance. I'm habitually a slow driver, but if you're using maps it's because you're somewhere unfamiliar, and so you're concentrating more on the road than on your speedometer. Exit & lane guidance is in now, and very handy (my old TomTom doesn't have it), but it annoys me that the symbol it uses for an upcoming roundabout is often unrelated to what you'll actually be doing e.g. if your straight-ahead exit is slightly past the vertical, it'll display the "right at the roundabout" symbol. It shouldn't be that difficult for it to work out the actual angle and dynamically create a logo, and properly prepare you--because the other problem is it often zooms in too far when you slow down, like, say, for a roundabout, and you can't see which exit you're meant to be taking until you're on the roundabout... Anyway. Minor things. Definitely better than a GPS that doesn't know about the new A46 or the Peterborough bypass. The walking navigation is superb as well--"OK Google, navigate to the hotel", and if you have the hotel confirmation email in your gmail inbox it'll know what hotel you're staying at and walk you to it. It'll buzz every time there's a change in direction as well, so you can keep hold of your phone in your pocket without needing to hold it out as obvious thief bait. An absolute godsend when you're staying away.

I suspect this is the only reason why it became an issue. Sad that you have to consider every action from the perspective of a Daily Mail headline these days

I use mine all the time. It's marvellous for navigation (I'm not paying £80 for a TomTom "subscription" to update my maps, which are a good few years out of date now, so my phone is now my GPS) and a godsend when you suddenly catch up to an accident. A quick "navigate home" and you're off; and, like you say, the warnings about "there are delays ahead, do you want to divert?" that you can answer with a yes/no. Also brilliant for reminders: "Ok google, remind me at 6pm to check the oven", "set an alarm for ten minutes" etc. So much quicker than diving into the UI. I often use it for searches as well, because I still loathe touchscreen keyboards (I want someone to make the Nokia N9 again, but with Android & 1080p @ 5"), but I find it's not quite there for longer speech recognition if I'm trying to dictate story ideas, and it stops listening if I pause for a second or two.

Now I am intrigued...

I am still ridiculously full from that pile of meat. Meat was good. Cheers all for your company and such today, I'm only sorry I didn't get more of a chance to talk to more of you for more time. It were grand!

Meat feast barbecue basket please! --Matt

We were with WebAnywhere years ago... when they offered Overnet's MIS block. When Overnet moved to another partner, we followed them. When Overnet started offering direct support, we moved to them. I know you've made your choice already (and congratulations), but just adding another datapoint to the "yay Overnet" parade

The short numbers are usually shared, which is why you have to start them with a specific word--e.g. TPS in this case--so it can be directed appropriately.

One of many reasons to love CyanogenOS on my OnePlus One: it looks up any strange number, tells me who it is, and marks it as a nuisance call if the number has been reported repeatedly. And then lets you block it immediately from the call screen Incidentally, if anyone ever has a repair done on their insurance through AWS Repair Group, check the paperwork you sign. It seems likely that I missed a tiny clause somewhere and gave them permission to sell my details on to claim companies, all of whom seem incredulous when I tell them I really don't want to make a claim because I was in my office while my car was in the car park and there's no "mild discomfort" to fraudulently claim £X,000 for. Repair work from AWS was fine, but this is annoying.

I don't think I own a non-geeky t-shirt o_O Given that it was half-term I'd been planning on turning up in jeans + t-shirt anyway--I take it that's ok?

I've found Online Mode can be laggy, causing Outlook to hang (especially when going through the calendar); switching to Cached Mode has helped in that regard, although it has its own set of caveats.

Did not expect to find "heroin" on that list!

WHo's going to say LEGO BRICKS®? That's almost as big a losing battle as Adobe's rearguard action against "Photoshopped":

We've been on it 2 years and not had any problems with those alerts. They're always obscure. The problem you do get with O365 is when Microsoft implement "helpful" new features out of nowhere, like Clutter or defaulting to Reply All, and then wait a month or so before adding a PowerShell command that lets you disable it across your tenancy.

Run out of books! Given them all away to family now. I'll bring a Sharpie to sign people instead. Excitement aside, an actual question: is lunch provided or should we bring pennies for the café?

ONE WEEK

Lo and behold, just had to help a teacher with their laptop. Turns out this utility is very handy: https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Our Repro department has slowly moved over to all Ricoh devices. Very happy with them and their service.

Probably, but that's then a waste of my time and their time in dealing with a problem I was handling perfectly fine until Windows decided to upgrade itself--nearly, anyway. The ~5GB of unnecessary update files on my 128GB SSD didn't endear them to me either.

Here's another aspect to think about: I delayed the update because I knew I was going to build a new machine, and I didn't want to waste my retail Windows 7 licence key updating an old machine to Win10. And yet I had the Windows 10 update sneak into "will install on next restart mode" and only noticed it last minute when I went to shut down, thanks to the little yellow !. That actually made me turn off automatic updates on my Win7 machine, so good job, Microsoft. If I hadn't noticed it, my licence would have been tied to that old motherboard, and I've have had to spend another £70 buying a new Win10 licence for the machine I just built. I always intended on updating, but I had my own reasons for delaying, and Microsoft very nearly stole that agency from me.

It's not Microsoft's place to tell me what software I run on my equipment. It's not Apple's either, which is why I don't buy Apple kit personally. I want to be in charge of my own configuration. If they were forcing it for XP and Vista users, citing security concerns & support, fine--but they're forcing it on Windows 7 users who have three years of support left. They've pestered, they've annoyed, they've banged on about the upgrade incessantly--I guarantee you that users know about it, and if they haven't taken them up on it yet, it's because they don't want to. Forcing it like this is wrong on every level--wrong for users, wrong for Microsoft's reputation.

I dunno about the OS bit Windows hardware specs going up for the first time since 2009 | Ars Technica -- 1GHz, 2GB RAM, 20GB storage. Though I wouldn't be surprised to find some school kit failing to meet that, I'd hope anything new would be fine! For rooms where Photoshop is used more regularly, we've got the i5s. But whilst Photoshop etc. is installed everywhere, it's probably never opened on most machines, and if it even is you're talking differences of seconds when running through a barrage of filters--so over an hour's usage, you'll probably save no more than a minute on a pricy i5. As much as teaching staff may disagree, I don't think their time is that valuable (I also think RAM makes more difference than the CPU to most of what Photoshop does e.g. in handling large files). K series i5s are even more money spent--the i5-6600k is literally twice the cost of an i3-6100 (£200 v £100 inc VAT), and it's not twice as good for a school's use case IMHO. By the time VAT and bid pricing is taken into account, you're probably talking £50-60 minimum price bump--the equivalent of getting a 7th PC free for every 6 you buy. I'd rather replace 140 with i3s than 120 with i5s, personally, or save the ~£7,000. Your K processor at home--is that on a decent motherboard, with proper caps and good VRM cooling? That stuff all gets stressed, and it's an easy corner to cut on a cheap motherboard to keep prices down. And you need a mroe expensive Z170 chipset to overclock as well--and at a quick glance, the cheapest Z170 on eBuyer is £90 inc VAT to the cheapest H110's £45, so it all starts to add up. Of course, in an ideal world I would have i5s everywhere but alas, I don't live in that ideal world--I live in the world where "education funding protected in real terms" translates to a school budget that's down by a six figure sum next year. Sacrifices have to be made, and whilst an i3 obviously doesn't have all the performance of the i5, I'm happy to take 90% of it (in school usage terms) for 50% of the price. In summary: I blame George Osborne for why we can't just have nice things.

We only just replaced some Core2Duos and honestly, once they were upgraded to SSD + 4GB RAM, you couldn't tell the difference between them and newer i3s. I only changed them because they were seven years old and I couldn't bank on their reliability anymore. If you're concerned with running things for a long time, then I'm not sure overclocking as a matter of course is necessarily the safest route to take in that regard :/ The only difference between the i3 and i5 is the 2C/4T nature of the i3 vs. true quad core for the i5. The i5 can boost its frequency--but often to where the i3 sits anyway (e.g. i5-6500 boosts to 3.6GHz, i3-6100 is 3.7GHz anyway). So given how single threaded most desktop software is, it doesn't make a difference to 95% of what's used by staff, and I can't see Office suddenly becoming multi-threaded and giving the i5s a longevity boost over the i3s. Apart from the Photography/Video room, I only ever go for i3 here as tops, and we have a 5 year replacement plan in place (though it's more like 7 at the moment). A good SSD would make a bigger difference IMHO. My tuppence, anyway! I'd also ask why you say "reputable vendors like HP/Lenovo", because I've always had better support from Novatech & Stone than I have from the big multinationals, along with better pricing and better spec. Nowt wrong with the reputation of any supplier here on the 'geek and believe me, we like to moan hereabouts!

I honestly think an i5 is a waste of money in a school except in specific circumstances (e.g. photography, media). They cost so much, and PowerPoint and IE are barely going to register on those chips :/

Yeah, the Ninja Theory one. Rather a fan of their games in general, it seems, I enjoyed Enslaved too. There's enough flow and challenge in the DmC combat to keep it finely balanced on that "one more mission" knife-edge, and I love the swinging about as well. It's just a satisfying game, even as the story is predictable sub-Buffy* bobbins. . *I love Buffy. This is trying to be like that but "edgy", and it's just silly. So very sincere and 13 years old.