[blacklion1725]

Thanks Dave – mine has turned up and is a lovely looking thing. Have a slight concern as the fan seems to spin up a lot – even after all the updates have been done. Flipping the back off, the interior was clean but not spotless (notably fan) so will give it a day or so before I decide to keep it and load it up. If it goes back I’ll probably get another from a different seller as it really is a lovely laptop – footprint not that much bigger than the 11.6″ it will replace. I’m hoping it is just really busy in set up mode and the fan will calm down.

[blacklion1725]

Good sport Boris – forgot about that – checking again if you order anything to take the order to £50 or over you can get free delivery – but yeah for this on its own not such a good shout – and it is only a couple of quid dearer on Amazon with free delivery.

[blacklion1725]

Just seen this one on Ebuyer – Integral 240GB V Series v2 240GB at £34.97.

[blacklion1725]

Happy Days Bob – Up The Forest and all the best!

[blacklion1725]

Great shout – thanks Dave. My curent card just shows up as “AC7620” – not sure of the variant till I open it up (not too bad on the Asus S200e but not 5 minutes either). Would be great to have the HP with AC – not the end f the world but use the laptop to shunt biggish video files round my home network so faster the better. Out of interest and not at all urgent – did yours turn up “bloated” or is it resaonably “lean” windows? thanks again.

[blacklion1725]

Thanks Richard – was thinking/hoping along those lines. First order of business will be to see how it goes “as is” – then if needs be try the internal AC card from my Asus, then (if 1 and 2 not a success) try a USB adapter. Luckily the new machine looks very easy to work on so easy enough to try all this.

[blacklion1725]

Took the plunge and ordered one (Amazon – £2 more for prime delivery tomorrow). Regards the Wireless, I’m sure I can suffer it if needs be, but have a bit of optimism as the service manual includes several variants of the Intel AC7260 in the spares – have that in my current laptop so hoping I can recycle it. Worth a pop anyway.

[blacklion1725]

Cheers Dave – appreciate it. Its a bugger about the Wifi – do you know if that would also apply to a USB adapter? Still very tempted especially seeing a it has a nup/nipple as well as the touchpad. £273 seems a steal.

[blacklion1725]

Back on Dave’s original post I am in the market and having a gander on Amazon and ebay looks like there’s a fair few variants of this. Dave would you have a link to the one you got (even if it is a different seller/price). It would be replacing my Asus S200e (doesn’t owe me anything and will itself replace our communal laptop). On the WiFi – I move a lot of large media files around between devices so really want/need AC at a decent speed. If the WiFi upgradable (internally – i.e. a card swap).  Have the Intel AC7260 card in mine and would ideally like similar – but I know in the Lenovo refurbs they won’t stand for a non-standard WiFi card (well my old X220 didn’t anyway). Ta!

[blacklion1725]

Sky analogue will be a bigger dish with and LNB that only has one F-type connector, if your dish looks like all the others you see around (smaller, mesh, dual/quad/octo  LNB) then it is almost certainly digital. I’d give it a go, even if you just trail a cable across the floor before you run it in.

[blacklion1725]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

My new TV has a freesat input on the back. Outside my back window is a sky dish that was there when I arrived 8 years ago. The dish looks complete but its not connected to anything except about 3 feet of coax. Would it work if I cabled it to the TV ? (if its not broken of course).

It should do – assuming (a) that the dish is still aligned (not been knocked) and the LNB (box on the end of the dish arm where the cable connects) is still working. Possibility the dish is pre-Sky digital in which case you’d want to replace the whole lot (very cheap and not too hard to align yourself).

[blacklion1725]

Alan Wood wrote:

You will also need a broadcast license

I think you need one anyway these days for iplayer etc even if you are not takiing a terrestrial or satellite broadcast signal.

[blacklion1725]

The Humax boxes are very good. The backwards planner is (I think) called “FreeTime” (equivalent to Freeview Play/YouView). A slight abstract suggestion – one of these. Live satellite (FreeSat) – can record (via USB), has ful Android as well as IPTV middleware (thinking 3pms Duke). I have one that I bought just to play with when there was a £20 ebay code and am very impressed with it. I don’t need it at all but it is no nice I’ve kept it.

If you only want the free channels then I would go Humax with two inputs and the FreeTime play or whatever it is called.

[blacklion1725]

Is the bluetoth dongle at the back of the PC – maybe affecting the range if it is in between a PC and a wall. Maybe worth connecting to a frnt USB slot (I know they are liable to get knokced there) or get a USB extension lead and extend the dongle from a rear usb port to a better location. The headphones themselves vary tremendously too. My taotronics and soundpeats will comfortably do 200 yards at my gym including through a set of thick double doors. My little hearing-aid style bud I use when walking will struggle at more than 15ft with line of sight.

[blacklion1725]

Ah thats a shame mate. For the speed cameras if not already using try TomTom Speed Cameras – free and can be used as a stand-alone app or in Overlay mode with Google Maps or any app – hovers a speedometer anywhere you like on the map – and warns you about fixed and average speed cameras. Been using it a few years with Google and works very well. I agree Waze is very fully featured – I found the UI annoying but it is very popular and I believe owned by Google.

[blacklion1725]

I wonder if it may have auto-updated and the new version is either flawed or doesn’t like your phone? If so a roll back (rather than uninstall) or sideload an older version apk (auto-updates disabled for a while either way) might confirm if it is related to a particular version. Otherwise you’ve already done everything I can think of!

[blacklion1725]

The only downer of FreeSat is the lack of HD channels – I only get BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, CH5, BBC4 ad S$C. I watch a lot of CH4 and CH4+1, 4Seven – all on Freeviewbut not on FreeSat. Not the box’s fault but a shame.

[blacklion1725]

Yeah my prescription went up and down a few times and then settled down in my late 40s (52 now). I was short sighted (-1.25) and asked about laser surgery. Optician recommended that as I didn’t need reading glasses I just get one eye fixed leading to something they call monovision where distance is great (not as good as 2 fixed eyes) and close up is OK (not as good as no fixed eyes). Will probably need reading glasses eventually at which point will get the other eye fixed. For now though no bins at all – happy days. My prescription went from -1.0 right down to -2.0 before creeping back to -1.25 (the unfixed eye is still -1.25).

[blacklion1725]

Yeah a lot of programs want to arrange your music, photos, whatever how they think best rather than how you do. For a quick work round after it has already happened just search the parent folder for

*.mp3

and then cut.copy all the results to your USB. There are a few other annoyances, example in my car (pioneer head unit) the songs by default play by order of the age of the file/tagging so the song you have labelled “001 – Artist – Title” may not play first. There’s a few programs to sort this out – I used one called FAT Sorter – not sure where I got it (maybe here) but there are several links if you google it. On the wider issue of tagging – the program Mp3Tag is a life saver – you can easily get tags to match titles. My head unit will only recognise one level of folders, so I just keep around twenty albums and leave all my favourite all-sorts in the root directory. If I have a passenger then they play DJ and just bluetooth from Spotify.

 

[blacklion1725]

Hope so John – only one way to find out!

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