flyinghaggis

Revolution Courier Race I've got one of these (£260). It's fantastic for commuting if you add mudguards. Slightly over budget but I don't think you'll find anything half decent for under £200 TBH.

Because mining new coins is easy to begin with and gets progressively more difficult it's what allows the early adopters and founders [con-artists] who started the crypto-currency [pyramid scheme] to own most of of the newly created 'currency'. That way they can cash out with the lions share of the stolen money before Ponzi scheme collapses and everyone else gets robbed blind wondering why they paid real money for a digital currency that isn't actually worth anything at all

Well, if Bitcoin is the future of currency you'd best buckle up cause it's gonna be a bumpy and volatile ride! The failure of Mt. Gox could be a mortal wound for bitcoin – Quartz Regardless of the maths and logic involved I still have doubts about whether a currency that isn't backed by a government/nation or some kind of commodity is really sustainable in the long term.

Just get them their iPads. Nobody ever got fired for following the herd and buying iPads In these days of BYOD I've given up trying to influence staff as to which device they should be using as everybody has their own personal preference when it comes to tablets/phones/laptops/etc. I think the key thing is to provide, as far as possible, a system behind the scenes that allows whichever device someone is using to access all of the required school resources.

Downloading the beta for Xbox one at the moment...

I just swapped out my faulty GTX470 for a new GTX 770 2GB (£230) and I'm pretty impressed with it. A GTX 760 is probably a good bet if you don't want to go over the £200 mark though. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-pny-gtx-760-xlr8-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-980mhz-boost-1033mhz-cores-1152

I'm not sure sure it really work as advertisment though. I mean they show a bunch of products/technologies from the 80/90's that I remember fondly but cringe at the idea of using now ....then they add Internet Explorer to that list. What exactly are they trying to say.

Thanks for the input everyone. Just placed the order for a GTX 770 so it should be here in a couple of days time. Most of the reviews indicate it's over twice as fast as the GTX470 I had previously so it should make for a decent boost in performance. It's definitely going to be better than the Geforce 210 that I'm using as a stop-gap I fired up a couple of games for a laugh and I'm getting frame rates in single figures!

Scan or Overclockers seem to be selling them for that just now. ScanFX GeForce GTX 770 OC 2GB Overclocked PCI Express Nvidia Graphics Card - FAMOUS BRAND - SFX/GTX770/2GB/OC - Scan.co.uk It says overclocked but the reviews suggest it's an MSI unit fitted with a stock Nvidia spec fan/cooling. Comes bundled with Assassins Creed 4 too.

After several system crashes over the last few weeks my PC is now displaying odd graphical glitches at the BIOS screen and won't boot to windows with my GTX470 video card fitted. It's looking like it's finally shuffled off this mortal coil and ascended to silicon heaven ( !) after 4 years of service. The question is what card should I buy to replace it? I currently have a stock i7-920 and, being a bit of an Nvidia fanboy, was contemplating either a new GTX 770 (£230) or pushing the boat out and going for a GTX 780 (£360). Is it worth going for the 780 or would it be bottlenecked by my CPU? Any other cards worth considering for that price? Price-wise I definitely don't want to spend more than the cost of the 780 and would prefer not to think about changing my mobo/CPU unless it's seriously going to hold back the video card! Would be especially interested to hear feedback from other first gen i7 folks who have upgraded to more recent video cards? Edit: Just to update after googling a few reviews I'm thinking that the 780 isn't really worth an extra £130 over the 770 so I'll probably go for that unless any one has any other options? http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-780-ti-review-benchmarks,3663-4.html

Looks really cool and I like the idea of it but I'm not convinced there's a market for it. Enthusiasts will still carry on building their own PCs (and will likely object to paying the premium that Razer will doubtless add to their custom components) and the more casual crowd will carry on buying consoles, tablets and laptops. Also I'm not convinced how upgradeable it'll really be in the long term as surely there are limitations when it comes to things like motherboard and CPU upgrades?

I reckon Microsoft will cut the price down to £350 in order to match the PS4 by Xmas next year. I think it's likely you'll have to wait another 2 years before you see any significant price cuts to either console below that figure though. They might start bundling free games with the systems though.

I got COD: Ghosts for Xmas and I'm really enjoying it. I wasn't planning on getting it as the reviews were kind of mixed but I've actually found myself playing more COD than battlefield 4 surprisingly. I like the variety in the multiplayer modes like hunted and infected. Reminds me of a slightly updated version of Counterstrike. My main criticisms are that the single player campaign is fairly dull and the graphics (textures specifically) don't look all that great for a supposedly next gen system. Seems like a common complaint on the PC version too so I don't think it's the fault of the Xbox1.

I'm surprised Windows 8/8.1 uptake is still so low a year after release. Especially as they're now had 15 months worth of new PC sales and the gamers on steam are far more likely to upgrade/update their PCs than the average punter. I can see Windows 7 becoming another XP as people using it are obviously reluctant to upgrade to anything else!

I doubt you'll see any popping up within the lifespan of the consoles TBH. I suspect there's more custom hardware/design in the boxes even though a high end PC is undoubtedly more powerful overall. Even if it were possible and someone created one MS/Sony would bury them pretty sharpish. It only really seems to be tolerated for older game systems which the manufacturers are no longer making. If I had to guess I think you'll be waiting 5+ years before anything usable appears as AFAIK there still aren't any emulators available for the PS3/360 which play commercial games and they've been out even longer than that.

Just noticed it's reduced in the sale to £260. Good price if anyone is looking for a cheap bike for commuting to work on.

Forza 5 is epic (especially in online 16 player races). Definitely a must buy if you have an Xbone IMO.

Just picked up Xcom: Enemy Within for £10! Fancy playing through it again with the expansion pack.

Forza5 (which I got bundled in the day one pack) is still the only game I've bought for it so far! Nothing else has really caught my eye and I think I'm struggling to come to terms with the £50 price tag of the rest of the games! Hard to justify when you think how many games you could buy on the steam sale for that amount of money. Hoping it'll drop to the usual £35-40 after Xmas when the hype has died down slightly. I think I'll pick up Halo: Spartan Assault when it's released on the 24th though Other than that it's looking like the next game I'm going to get for it will be Titanfall in March!

I've been riding to work on a Revolution Courier Race for the last 2 years and I really like it. I find it to be a good balance of pace/comfort and 8 gears are more than enough for cycling around town. It's fairly similar to the Charge Grater actually in that both are 700c, 8-speed hybrids. You can often find it on sale at EBC reduced to £280 if you keep an eye on the website. Makes for a bit of a bargain if you get it reduced and then factor in the cyclescheme discount on top of it! I've not ridden it but I liked the look of the Focus Arriba I saw when I was in the shop last month. I also test rode a Whyte Portobello before I bought my last bike and it was fantastic but it's a bit pricey for commuting at £700 if you don't have somewhere safe to store it when you get to work.

We've got a problem with appears to be rogue Internet Explorer Group policy or setting being applied (see below). Every time I go into the LAN settings it shows "Some settings are managed by your system administrator". It's currently set to an incorrect proxy setting which is preventing users from changing it and updating to the correct proxy even though that's set in another GPO. I've tried moving computers/users out of all GPO's with nothing other than the default domain policy but the LAN proxy settings are being applied regardless of whereabouts I move the affected computer/user. I've checked local and AD group policies but can't see this being set anywhere? I've even tried logging on as a local user account to that computer but it still has the settings greyed out! I've checked all relevant group policies, local policies and I can't see where this is being set. Can anyone suggest other locations where it could have been configured? I'm starting to wonder if it's been installed as an IE managed install which has it hard-coded as part of our standard computer image? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

This +1 TBH It's frustrating that they've been awarded a massively above inflation pay rise when most of the public are lucky to have received any kind of pay rise but at the same time I appreciate the need to pay MP's a fair wage for amount of effort they put in. If you take the approach that we shouldn't pay them anything you'll end up with an even more corrupt bunch in charge who are only working for the highest bidder or their own self interest. Most of the management in our schools are probably on similar money so IMO an MP's pay check isn't excessive given the level of responsibility and duties. Especially given that many of the them will be highly qualified individuals who will probably be taking a pay cut to work as an MP! The 11% figure being banded around is just a Daily Mail style headline grabber as far as I'm concerned. A front bench of multi-millionaires aren't going to care about a few thousand extra in their pay packet at the end of the year! There are far more important issues in politics we should be worried about rather than whether we pay 650 people a couple of grand extra a year!

Epic

This is always the problem with 'gaming rigs'! You're never done spending money tweaking and upgrading them. At least with a PS4/XB1 you know you spend £400 buying the thing then you're set for the next 5 years. If you buy a gaming PC now for £700 it'll almost certainly need a new video card to keep up in another 2-3 years time! Intel CPU's FTW by the way!

oops, Typo. Should just be "deathhaggis" ?