AMLinington

@Theblacksheep raises a good point - I was thinking about that earlier actually - ultimately, a part-worn tyre may end up as a 'false economy' in that they might cost 1/3 less but you replace them twice as often. Another thing to consider is the grade of rubber you buy. Luckily for me my other half works in the service department at a well known dealership chain in Hampshire so he knows what's what. A cheaper, budget tyre is likely to be a softer rubber which gives a nice soft ride with little road noise but wears faster. You can get softer 'high end' tyres but you would have to specifically choose these for the 'driving experience' and in those circumstances I can't imagine money is much of a worry. A harder compound tyre tends to wear slightly slower but the trade-off is road noise. I tend to choose the harder compounds for my car (2001 Model 2.2l Vectra) - If the road is noisy I turn up the radio! lol Radio is free - tyres are not! Have a chat with someone in a proper tyre centre, not Quik-fit as they will be able to tell you which are harder, which are softer and which are in the middle - sometimes a more expensive tyre with a harder compound will last longer so you get more miles for your money. Another tip is to make sure you service your tyres regularly - keep them appropriately inflated, check them for nails, stones, bits of glass, bulges etc etc. Also make sure your tracking and balancing is checked regularly as diffy tracking or an unbalanced wheel will affect the life of the tyre. I'm pretty sure you can get free or very cheap tracking and balancing checks done - I know F1 near where my parents live tends to be quite helpful. My Dad is quite cheeky - he takes his car down for a check and gets a quote from them then my other half sources them for him from his contacts in the trade. I'd feel bad about it except if F1 tyres weren't so overpriced they'd get the custom. So it's their own fault really.

I'm with @tom_newton on this one - your tyres are the one thing between your car and the road. They directly impact stopping distances and don't forget that a part worn tyre may have an unseen weakness and you put yourself at an increased risk of blowout. Of course ALL tyres put you at risk of this if there is a fault, but if the fault exists in a part worn tyre then it has been under strain previously. I'm afraid that when it comes to tyres and brakes, considering I do a fair few motorway miles travelling between home, my family and my partner and his family I tend to err on the side of caution considering I'm hurtling along a motorway in a tin can... The price of a new tyre is never higher than my life is worth...

It drives me nuts when I see/hear users calling the desktop background the 'screensaver' ARGH. My mum does that. She also doesn't know the difference between 'My Computer' and 'My documents' - she plugs a digital camera in then goes to 'My documents' expecting to see all the pictures then throws a tantrum when she can't find them. She also calls USB Memory sticks 'Whizzy sticks' and similarly tries to find the contents in 'my documents'. I wouldn't mind but I've lost count of the number of times I have explained all these things to her and shown her where to go. I even wrote and laminated an 'idiot sheet' for her once but she lost it at work... *headdesk* I suppose I should be grateful - her work colleagues firmly believe that the base unit is the CPU Harddrive...

I use IE by choice and I'm not 'stupid'. I have all three 'main' browsers installed and the one that causes me the least amount of hassle is IE. Although it must be said that Firefox has it's uses - particularly where certain javascript applets are concerned. I loathe Chrome passionately though. The interface is horrible, the 'under the hood' settings are too 'generic' and not specific enough. Firefox at least has a good degree of customisable settings and in many ways outstrips IE in performance. But sometimes it's a bit of a pain - the addons in particular kinda irritate me. Personally I think it's wrong to brand someone 'stupid' by their choice of browser. The choice of browser is irrelevant - it's a personal comfort thing. Like a pair of tatty old shoes that are a bit rubbish but really comfortable. Just cos they're tatty doesn't make you a tramp...

Can you set websense to block any traffic that doesn't go through the proxy or does your firewall block outgoing 80/443 that is not coming from the proxy? Are you intercepting or inspecting https as a lot of students find that https sites get through little loopholes in filtering. Is websense inspecting the site certificate? If so it should block them as most proxy sites have invalid self-signed certs.

Same here. Lasted a minute before I felt too sick to continue watching it. I don't have issues with heights but bleurgh I feel sick now.

ARGH Don't talk to me about Home Delivery Network! I become enraged and begin frothing... I bought £200 worth of computer componants (can't remember where from - might have been overclockers or scan) and came home to a card pushed through the door 'Put in safe place - in recycle bin'. That would be the recycle bin next to the front door, about 3 feet from the kerb with no fence or wall. That would ALSO be the recycle bin that was due to be collected... I was livid. Especially when my dispatch notes specifically stated 'DO NOT LEAVE PARCEL IF NO ANSWER'. Crisis was averted by my narrowly arriving at my house before the binmen. Several months later I then bought some clothes from H&M - HDL were the couriers for that and left a parcel of KNITWEAR in a puddle UNDER THE FRONT WHEEL of a car on our driveway... *Headdesk* I cannot express my feelings about HDL/Yodel without copious profanity and raging.

Or if the hard drive is really really tiny you could use it with SLAX...

How are you implementing your blocklists? Are you making use of the Smoothwall default filtering categories at all as these are very comprehensive? In order to block .ru domains, please ensure that your block list contains the category 'Malware and Hacking' and that 'top phishing countries' is checked as this will protect you from a lot of suspicious domains. To block .ru specifically please add .ru to 'Domains and URL's' in a user defined category.

And that is assuming you work a full working week. That is also not taking into account loss of revenue from your car being used for 2 hour test windows. And damage repairs. I know a couple of people that tried to run businesses as driving instructors and they have both quit and found other jobs as they could not physically make enough money to live - people just weren't buying enough lesson time. You are also not factoring the costs of travelling from lesson to lesson as your learners will live in very different places and you will lose a lot of time in the day moving between lessons.

You don't need to spend £1500 to be a first line support engineer! If you have experience in IT systems, Windows, AD, etc you could find a job working in IT support for a company who will more than likely pay for you to do your CompTIA and MCPs. It means you'll have to be a phone monkey answering the phone to dumb questions from end users like 'my internet is broken' when they've not plugged in the network cable, and 'my printer is broken' when they've not mapped the correct printer etc etc but it's a step up. If you're already beyond that kind of work you should be looking at 2nd line support in the corporate environment and most often these interviews will involve a technical test appropriate to the job role. In which case your knowledge will be proven without needing to spend horrific amounts.

'Unfriendly'? Understatement of the year methinks... Since when are Snakes actively friendly? It's like describing a frothing rabid dog as 'mildly intimidating'!

Personally, I feel that allowing students to use their phones/cameras to record footage of other pupils and the school environment is inviting trouble. Not only are you condoning and sanctioning the use of mobile phones and ipods on site, but you are also opening yourselves up to potential litigation from parents who take exception to other pupils videoing their children. Not to mention the inevitability that this lenience will be abused. How long will it be before a teacher catches a pupil videoing something on their phone only to be met with 'It's okay miss, it's for Science/IT/Drama - Teacher/Firefox_2006/etc says it's okay. In my opinion the safest option is to ban them. If a teacher wants pupils to record things, why can't they use a webcam attached to a school PC and subject to moderation and parent permission slips? Alternatively, forcing staff to 'book' videoing equipment covers you from a child safety perspective as they will need to ensure that permissions are in place from parents and that the integrity of the device is not compromised. Similarly it also means that the resulting video is 'school controlled' meaning there is less liklihood of the video being edited to show things it did not show originally, or 'cut' to imply something it shouldn't. But that's just me.

As a first time buyer, the EPC hasn't really played a massive part in our decision as any issues with loft insulation (the insulation in our new loft is pretty much non-existent and shredded to oblivion) and double glazing (a few of the window units are blown and they are about 12 years old so they're not the standard thickness now) are points for price negotiation. So often the lower the EPC the poorer the insulation and the older the windows - the windows in the house we're buying are pretty much dead but the house is a steal at the price we're paying for it. The only thing I would say on the EPC subject is that if you have made changes to the house - re-insulated the loft, replaced all or part of the glazing or upgraded the central heating system etc etc this will have an impact on the EPC score so as a seller it may be worth you having another one done (but only if you have made any changes to the house that might affect it's energy rating) as if your house is MORE energy efficient now than it was when you bought it, then it means potential buyers have less to 'complain about' and less excuses to ask for money off. It works both ways. As a buyer, a lower EPC works in your favour, especially where things like UPVC windows are concerned, as a seller a higher EPC works for you. So I guess it depends what sort of rating the house had when you bought and whether you have made any changes that might affect it.

Sabatier are very good knives. Although we bought a lovely block of 5 sabatier in Robert Dyas for about £30 so it might be worth visiting them as sometimes they have some great stuff really reasonably priced.

This is not a Smoothwall question either and should really be posted in the general tech support forums. I will try to move it but if I cannot I will close this thread.

I did a quick Google search for 'Virtualvillage.co.uk reviews' and the general consensus seems to be 'steer clear' but there are few reviews out there to gain a proper idea. What are you trying to buy? If you're buying something big and/or expensive I would run away from a site I'd never heard of. Good sites generally get a shedload of reviews and mentions and a google search for reviews would bring in plenty of feedback. The very absence of feedback in this case would send me running. They trade on ebay apparently so it might be an idea to look up their user profile and have a look through the user reviews.

I'm a female support engineer in an all-male team. It's quite nice actually. The way I see it, you can't work in an environment like IT if you are a sensitive type that can't take a joke and cries sexual harrassment every time a man mentions installing his hard drive into your spare bay! It's absurd! Political correctness gone crazy. I used to work in an office where everything you did and said was monitored and people 'raised concerns' about everything. It was so stressful and tiring that it's quite refreshing not to have to constantly examine everything I say for implication. Working in such a 'man-orientated' environment means you have to be thicker skinned and in a way 'tougher' but similarly men are simpler to work with. As for language, tbh it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not exactly a 'clean' speaker myself...

My father has a VW Passat with an electronic handbrake... It's ridiculously compicated with different sets of conditions leading to a different outcome hand-brake-wise... I guess the old adage 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' doesn't apply to the tried and tested trusty handbrake...

I looked at getting the 5450 and read some reviews online that said performance was very poor. I would avoid the 5450 too. If money is tight you will definitely get a better value/performance ratio out of a Radeon card - more for your money! I found that benchmarking site really useful for comparisons when sourcing the new Gfx card for my partner - I was able to shortlist several in my budget range, check their reviews and check their benchmarks. Ultimately you will always end up having to compromise price over performance but you can make sure you spend your £50 on the best possible card for the money.

Only problem with buying a low end card is that as WoW is patched and expansion-packed the minimum requirements go up and up. I bought a Radeon 4770 a while back and WoW plays fine on that at between 20 and 60 fps on medium graphics settings. Foolishly thinking that it is quite old I googled the 4770 and it's still priced at £85! My partner recently bought a lovely beefy Radeon 5830 for £83 too and it's fantastic - huge but fantastic! Unfortunately from what I can see from benchmarking etc The Radeon Cards have a better performance/value ratio - the NVIDIA tend to be very pricy and for the same cost you can get a ridiculously high specced Radeon that performs about a 1000 times better. Take a look at the high end graph on PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmark Charts to get an idea of the kinds of cards you're looking at. Have a look at where the Radeon 4770 is on that list and look at the 5830 knowing that both of these retail at £85 - you could perhaps look at the Radeon 5670 Asus do a 5670 for £54.99 Asus ATI Radeon 5670 HD 775MHz 1GB PCI-Express 2.1 HDMI (EAH5670/DI/1GD3) - dabs.com I tend to prefer XFX but they are quite pricy. Then again all my XFX have been really good cards. But I'm sure someone will reply and say 'NOOOOOOOOO XFX ARE CRAP!' - everyone has different experiences of the brands. Generally I tend to look at Asus, Gigabyte, XFX and PNY. I don't know what Sapphire are like as a brand but if you've never heard of the brand I'd probably steer clear - especially the budget brands. A.

Another place to check is your file download rules - it might be worth trying disabling the entire file download policy and see if the same error occurs again as it might be one of the settings there.

Try adding the following domains to the 'Do not require authentication for these domains' list and ensure that 'Unauthenticated IP's' are allowed to use the proxy (filtered): windowsupdate.microsoft.com update.microsoft.com c.microsoft.com download.windowsupdate.com genuine.microsoft.com It's probably an NTLM incompatibility thing. Microsoft updates are like that :-7

In my extensive experience with Dell and HP Support, I find that if you phone HP it's like banging your head agasint a brick wall. Logging a ticket online is usually the best and most efficient way of getting the response you need. HP Home support is worse than useless. Never phone HP if you can log something on an online automated system otherwise they find excuses to get out of honouring the support contract (such as 'you need to install XYZ and send us this log and that log etc etc) Dell on the other hand have always been excellent where business support is concerned. I'm not 100% sure about the home user level support as I have had mixed experiences, some good, some bad where the home support is concerned.

Distributed Denial of Service : 'Accidently' unplug the WAP that just happens to be located in your area in order to charge your personal mobile. Possession is 9/10's of the law : Refuse to allow ICT to upgrade/reinstall your computer on the grounds that you know how to use it in its current state and don't want it changed.