Dos_Box

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They are in a competition with desktop printers/MFD's.

That's interesting, any ideas why? Extra cooling, power demands perhaps?

Oooh, I've just thought of something(s) that have got larger over the years. PC speakers and gaming headphones!

It does seem a trend with smartphones that the designs have an accordian-like way of increasing and decreasing in size. It's almost as if after a couple of years the industry goes 'Hmm, that may be too small for some users needs' before swinging back to 'Our users are complaining that it won't fit in their pockets anymore'. I await the day they lean on the fashion industry to make pockets larger.

True, but far easier to move around. I had a second hand Silicon Graphics CRT before I got my first LCD and it almost took two people to lift it!

I'm on a micro ATX board and case. It's the smallest/lightest PC case I've had in a very long time. My previous case was a full tower and made me make a noise when I picked it up. @Zoom7000 had the same case IIRC and he can vouch for what a monster it was!

Sound cards have certainly shrunk. My first was a SoundBlaster AWE32!

A few eeeks back I'd finished making a PC from bits I had lying around and annoying me. This was a Ryzen 2600 on a B450 motherboard and all I needed was some RAM, PCIe SSD and a cooler and now I have a machine that I can work on slowly upgrading to replace my aging old i7 4770K. I primarily did this as the i7 was just stupidly power hungry and I'd had it 10 years (it alos started to have random issues powering up). I'd delayed getting a new PC over covid due to the silly prices PC parts were going for and by the time they'd come back to normal I had a motly collection of bits left over from upgrading my kids PC's. What struck me though was that the cooler, a Snowman (look them up if you are after a decent budget cooler) was far bigger than the one I had on my i7, and compared to my first self-built PC, a socket 7 AMD K62 450, it's HUGE! This really made me think that whilst some areas of tech have shrunk and got much lighter, so others have increased in size since they first emerged. Printers in the form of MFD's come to mind for some reason. A Socket 7 cooler My new AM4 cooler Is there any other tech that has got larger over the years (licensing costs notwithstanding) that you can think of? Oh, and PSU's! Not exatcly larger by much, but certainly heavier!

As regards video calls. We really noticed this when the financial crash of 2008 happened that pretty much overnight, business trips were replaced with Skype calls. No one had to travel at great expense (flights/trains, hotels, meals etc.) and everyone got to sleep in their own beds. I do think that this was one positive from the whole fiasco.

It would be interesting to see just what areas the cloud saves on resources. Large servers running 24/7 in schools, paper (although the thread the other week where some revealed just how much paper a school goes through in a year now was an eye opener), acessability of data and other areas do make the cloud a very good idea, especially, if like us, your work can be where ever you are, and it certainly makes setting up new machines a lot less of a grind than it used to be. It also means that you don't have to break servers when fixing or patching them as that is now someone elses problem and your time can be spent better elsewhere. Microsofts boo-boo last week showed that this is not a given though. I think that it's probably education or businesss that are reaping the benefits here, but a lot of the cloud will be spent storing the aforementioned cat pics, and other data that will just sit there, rarely looked at, that will take up a lot of power in servers just filling up its storage. I do think the cloud has more benefits than drawbacks though and I'm sure most of us can agree it's no bad thing when utilised correctly, although I do remember when 365 and hosted Exchange were coming along and thee was a lot of resistance in a 'You can have my Exchange server when you pry it from my cold dead fingers' kind of way.

What car do you have? I generally get the smallest one (dongle) I can as some ODBII ports can be quite hard to fit a longer one into. I would recommend for a car Torque Pro - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torque&hl=en_GB&gl=US&pli=1 - but often there are specific apps for brands. For my Mondeo I had ForScan Lite which was great and allowed me to do lots of things with it (resetting dash warning lights when I had a faulty sensor etc.).

I would also recommend one (or one similar) of these if starting from new - https://www.amazon.co.uk/SVBONY-SV135-Eyepiece-7mm-21mm-Telescope/dp/B07Z64NK65/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2KMABVG5Q2SA0&keywords=telescope+zoom+lens&qid=1675169968&sprefix=telescope+zoom+lens%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-3 They're not quite as good as single fixed eyepieces, but will enable you to locate and zoom into things easier than finding one in an eyepiece, then swapping out the eyepiece for one that gives you a better view then having to try and locate the thing you want to look at again, but this time much more zoomed in.

Yes, with a suitable adaptor (I've recently misplaced mine), however the small scope is far too light to hold it steady for decent pics IMO. I would also recommend (if buying the smaller one) buying a sturdy tripod as it can move in the wind with the one it comes with.

I just use Google Sky, there are other apps you can use (usually paid for), but I've never really bothered with them.

It may also be worth your running SFC /SCANNOW from the command line as well as perhaps doing a repair install (without removing apps). Let's face it though, there comes a stage when the only alternative is to flatten the thing and begin again. It does sound like the teacher has been running this for some time and just like human DNA, the laptop will develop faults that can't easily be fixed over time.

TBH, I'd recommend a decent pair of bino's as they will prove far more flexible. You can always buy them with a tripod mount too. If you are after a scope then you can't go wrong with a Celestron for a starter scope (I have 2!). I have this one (which is nice and light) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Celestron-21035-Travel-Scope-Telescope/dp/B001TI9Y2M/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3IKKRM4IZV1N3&keywords=celestron+telescope&qid=1675155880&sprefix=celestron+telescope%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-3 And this one that makes me make a noise when I carry it outside - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Celestron-31045-AstroMaster-Reflector-Telescope/dp/B000MLL6RS/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3IKKRM4IZV1N3&keywords=celestron+telescope&qid=1675155937&sprefix=celestron+telescope%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-4 I'd keep an eye out for deals though as I paid nowhere near those amounts. Admittedly it was a while back, but the Travel Scope can be had for about £70 when on offer.

I often can see the ISS go over from my living room window, but I'm pretty gutted we've had cloudy skies for the past week as I want to see the green comet! - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64252258 IIRC, it's closest point to Earth is the 2nd Feb. I have my telescope on standby!

Ouch! I'm quite safe, I don't have a JD Sports account and I'd never stoop so low as to shop there. I'm a Sports Direct person

This is Spinal Tap 2 is coming - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/12/this-is-spinal-tap-sequel (this slipped us all by I think). Not much other news about it atm, but by all accounts this is happening, I shall keep an eye out for more news when it pops up.

Ryan George nails it again:

The problem is with these that time is very limited, a pre-recorded session may take up more time for the speaker than they have to spare, and then it would take us even more time to edit this into a decent format. As regards audio quality, this is often down to the internet connection and devices the speaker is using. Whilst most have acess to a decent webcam, sometimes they are restricted to what their laptop has onboard. One speaker this week was working overseas and for us to ask them to cart extra kit around with them would be unreasonable I feel, especially as they already had a full day. We do, where possible, take them through a test session to ensure that they are familiar with how we are to do these webinars (and many thanks to NetSupport for sparing the time to show us some StreamYard tips and tricks) and try and sort out any video/sound issues beforehand, but as I said, they are sometimes limited by the hardware they have on the day. I can see what you are saying and TBH, this is pretty much the same format as you would see at any conf or seminar. I suppose a long form chat type pre-recorded session might be useful, but you have to remember that we'd have to get all the questions you want answering in beforehand, but would then it would be difficult for you to get answers to questions about what the interviewee talks about on the day once it goes live. As I said above, it's been a big learning curve for us and we'll certainly look at options for future sessions once we've got our breath back.

There will be, once we get the final webinar, the National Cyber Security Centre, completed today we shall create one (we may need a new forum for these perhaps) and can then notify the speakers (if not already members) if anything gets asked. It's been a lot of work this past week and a HUGE learning curve for us. What you don't get to see is @ZeroHour working like the clappers in the producer/director role in the background making it all look easy!

There is a very nice chart here - https://peakup.org/blog/windows-10-edition-comparison/ - comparing Windows 10 versions and what surpised me, is that the Edu version is pretty much the most fully featured. What has happened though (as has been commented on earlier in the thread) is that Windows now comes with serious bloat, not in regards to necessary facilities, but random features such as games etc. And I'm not sure Cortana would ever be useful in a school. I think this started to set in with Windows XP, but more obvious from Windows 7 (Windows 2000, you still have a special place in my heart) and I'm pretty sure many in industry would also like a 'bare-bones' version of Windows they can easily manage and deploy that they can put everything else they need onto afterwards.

Subtle, very subtle