Lurch

I just read most of that whilst thinking 'seems awfully familiar'!

Er, yeah, I'm good thanks.......

Must admit that's the way I've always preferred forums to work as it can take me ages to read a days posts when I'm trying to do many things at once. Also means I can refer back to a thread I have read but had a thought on later and wish to reread easily from the new posts list. Suppose it depends what you're used to though, that's just the way the forums I started on worked and I suppose it's etched in as being the norm.

I've generally tested a PC and mains lead as 1 device, but only when I've been in control of what goes in and out and what ends up where. On sites where anyone could move anything anywhere whenever they wanted then I'd test everything individually so it can be 'mixed and matched'. In the case of the testers that are the subject of this thread, they are either incompetent, cowboys or rip off merchants, or all 3. You can't fail a laptop as it isn't mains powered. If they are doing them FOC then great, leave them to it. I PAT tested several sites once after another company had done it and the owner wondered why I was more expensive. Out of 200 odd items in the several sites the old company had tested about 20. They just did kettles and vacuum cleaners as 'computers don't need testing', and they failed a few items that had nothing wrong with them.

Just got it, read it many many times though.

In only 6 Months you could have finished your contract last year and have BT paying you a healthy wage for having unlimited gigabit broadband.

26 lines?

I've had problems doing that before with KVM's not switching to inputs with no keyboards or mice in as they use the voltage from the keyboard or mouse port to mark it as active.

Boil kettle, add coffee, sugar and milk. Saves on washing up, and therefore the environment.

I'd be highly annoyed if someone did that to a fire alarm link I'd just installed for several reasons, possibly including but not limited to - alterations to the calculated spacing factors of the containment, damage to the fire alarm cables and segregation of cables. Easiest way is to drop a seperate duct in the trench solely for data cabling between the buildings, saves future buck passing and is actually future proof as cat6 or fibre isn;t really future proof as such, just a bit less non-future proof than cat5e. As mentioned previously, before connecting earths together between buildings have a word with the electricians looking after the site as exporting earths via the armouring of a cat5 cable can be very dangerous if done incorrectly and can make things worse. There are correct ways to earth armourings.

Must be nice to have someone who cares about you so much though.

Sorry if the simplicity of my reply offends but you have hit Ctrl-F5\cleared the cache? Caught me out a few times.

You'd be better off using them to power something you already use. If you have a fairly decent heating system heating the tank atm then switching to using the immersion heater would be a bit pointless and a waste imo. You'd be better off using them to power something that you already use, like all the heating and lighting. I'd connect them to a storage bank of some sort (a UPS would do) and then you don't have to turn all the lights off when it goes dark!

Not a lot you can do really, other than running them through a UPS which you're doing anyway. If they're going to go they're going to go. Depending how old they are I'd have a go at sending them back but failing that they will most likely be a fairly easy repair, cheaper than new switches anyway.

Hmm, pinning me to a sector or job role is always tricky. I\we have been mainly involved in the network and comms installation side of the industry and also electronic security. I have been involved in the IT industry in a small way on and off for a while in SME environments but more recently we are merging these skills as most of our equipment is IP based in some form or other nowadays. We are also in the process of becoming an ISP to tie in with our off site monitoring\archiving IP based CCTV solutions.