Sirbendy

Even so..my first port of attack would be to borrow a thermometer from somewhere and independently verify the temps..MB temp chips I always take with a pinch of salt. I think I'm right in saying P4's throttle in an overheat condition..is it running slow? I know when I've pinged the fan off our Dell SFF P4s they tend to grind after a bit until I refit it.. I've got a p4/3Ghz running stock on an ASUS, running our CCTV and a VM..constantly thrashing 24/7..it's quite toasty in the case, but as it's running fine I don't worry.

I had enough, not of the lack of speed (I'm a light user, and it was never too awful for mail), but of the incompetence, attitude and unhelpfulness of the lot of them. The forums are a joke, the support is overworked and almost certainly narked off (I would be), as well as fighting on all sides to get info. They seem to have no "interbusiness communication"..each section seems to not communicate with the others, and it seems they have lots of different "internal systems" that deal with various aspects that they're all segregated into and can't traverse...such as general accounts, and billing, and line management. There are 2 admins on there - "MKPJ" and "MrTibbs" who are good..the rest..well..sigh. The fact I got banned 3 times for trying to help people, or just stating my dissatisfaction was the tipping point, along with the register article that disclosed their chairmans "Profits before customers this year" attitude and his determination to "make Tiscali profitable for the first time". As I say..my new ISP was a revelation. Calls and mails every step of activation, calls on a sunday at 7pm from helpful english/irish staff just checking on details, speed sync at no lower than 6.5, usually 7.8mb, a great forum, and the ability to increase the usage cap from a control panel if needed for a small charge...all at the same cost as Tiscali 2mb..more than happy with that.

We disable USB on the workstations. If kids want work transferring, it goes through me, Steve or one of the IT Teachers..that's a pretty good screen.

Now then, now then..hows about that then? Good luck matey..heh. I agree with the interesting bit...however, I've stayed through 3 mass staff exodus', 2 new heads, 2 new entire department staff changes, 3 heads of department, a federation, and at least 1 threat of closure...interesting times are ALWAYS happening here..

We use either MovieMaker or Photostory, or the powerpoint viewer thing. We have premier, but haven't used it in anger yet..

One word - RUN. 3 users here including me have now done so, and having escaped Piscali I'm more than happy with Plus..

Yes, I damn near crippled myself moving a Laserjet III. Short of that..dust/toner maybe, but I'd say no more risky than some of the muck in the air, and it's considerably less lethal to breathing than cleaning a projector filter.

I find a pillar drill, followed by "footie down the stairs" tends to do a good job. We do strip our rigs down though..boards go to art/DT for spares, cases to the scrapyard up the road.

I see comedy value, and nothing offensive.. ASCII rocks..

We have several HP 6715's...Excellent units. I like the Turion anyway..I have the same chip in my desktop (Well, an Athlon 3800+ SFFEE, which is the same thing in a different package). We tend to buy them by default at the moment.

I ran XP RC2600 for..ooh, a few years with no SPs...no problems emerged. I bypassed SP1 totally and went straight to SP2. Until I made a slipstream CD, I still installed RC2600 as standard.

Wii fit will wait for a drop in price before my missus gets it..heh.

really? Such as? (and more to the point, how?) I really would love to play Blood1 again..heh.

My point indeed... I have an MP3 player hitched to some 9v creative speakers and a 12v Sub..that's my entertainment centre. I have everything as low powered as possible, everything on timers, and the only thing that is always on is the fridge. Which is why I only use £4 electricity per week, including cooking. Heh.

I thought of that before..heh...or small scale windpower maybe.. Solar I like...I have a solar radio, a solar torch, and a solar triffid at the sec...5 balls on sticks coming out of a stainless steel arty base thing..marketed as a garden light but makes a great low-level dining room lamp. I'm very tempted to get the £20 4.8w solar panel from various places on the net, hitch it to a scrapyard car battery and use it to power an LED lighting grid in my garage, as well as providing an emergency boost if I can't get the car started. As a bonus, I have a spare stereo unit I could wire to provide me with tunes while I work on it, and a cheap "in car" 12-240v inverter could provide some scope for playing with the system. Such things as the "Mintyboost" 2xAA battery to 5v USB charger intrigue me as well..we really do use 240v for convenience..most electrical stuff only knocks it back down to low level voltages again anyway. I still thing this idiot government's insistence on nuclear power is stupid...go wind, invest in hydro, encourage home takeup of solar/wind, and encourage low energy product manufacture.. Look at TVs...the MILs Plasma uses 800 watts at least..my 21", 15 year old CRT based Tosh uses 60 watts...I could easily run my entire corner AV/Entertainment stack off a 12v inverter. Sorry, I'm dribbling. EDIT: This is the site I quite like...they have some interesting ideas you might like to browse.. Renewable Energy UK

HAH! The status section and indicators are pointless..they never get changed. As to the support forums..good luck. I only had a couple of issues in several years with them, but by gods they were a unhelpful, up themselves bunch of knuckledraggers, with one or 2 exceptions. And the phone support? Laughable. IIRC, last time I had a mail issue with them it was a port issue..I had to change to SSL port 443 (I think) and it worked again.

I have a few bebsites at home that might be of use..I'll dig them out..

Reminds me of a friends Pug 605SVE..bought for a few hundred quid, going down the A5 towards telford and had someone tailgating and trying to overtake..got to 130ish before he bottled it. That was a real tank of a motor. One of Jems colleagues has an Alfa..newish one. Parked on a hill, handrake failed and it enthusiastically tried to mount a new escort at the bottom of the hill. Messy..the Alfa's been in the shop for a week now..

On the Arsetrap? 50 litre, officially. I just see so many manuals with the 1.8/1.6/1.4 that owners complain get through a tank in 300 or less..I know I drive gently, but..it's an auto, and doesn't hit converter lockup until 50 (so never on the work run).

Blood1 RULED...Doom(s), Quake 1, Duke3D, Carmageddon, Space Ba$tards..all are good, and I'm working to try and get them back in a VM. Well...most work "as is", but the danged build engine is a 'mare. I've got Shadow Warrior running under a win32 port though..

Nope..we're running as usual. Just like last time. I can't see us having any staff out..last time there were 10 or so, and they've all left now. Didn't affect us at all..we just worked around it. It'll annoy the kids, I know that..just like that last idiotic "snow day" where all the schools panicked and shut, yet we stayed open through the nice sunshine. We had kids swearing and all sorts..

Don't even get me started on Piscali, please. Never been so glad to leave an ISP! The final straw came when I was TOLD that I was on an unsuitable package at home and needed a "business class" package just because I do VPN into here.. Such an entire bunch of knuckledragging peanut munchers..and I can't say as I'd touch any of their subsidiaries now either.

I will admit to having a rudimentary external 3.5in 80gb disk enclosure with USB2 and Ethernet for mine. About £20 not including disk. Good enough for light backup over 'net, heavier backup over USB and more than enough for file sharing over wifi when plugged into the router. Also has DHCP and FTP fuctions in the firmware, so I can in theory access it from here if I feel the need. Fat32 again though.

30-33mph?? Stuff me..I mean, I know it's an Alfa and all, but... Still impressed that I get at least 400 miles out of a 1.6 petrol auto..

We use Netsupport school (local 'net lock, machine lock, quick checker), RAdmin (LEA Supplied, used to check/intervene in more detail) and PolicyCentral Enterprise (again, LEA) that does the screen watch/shot/store/report/warn malarkey.....between those, the kids just don't bother anymore.. As we tell them.."watch you? Oh NO, WE don't NEED to watch you..the system does it all the time anyway..LOOK..."...and their expressions are priceless.