[PlaneMan]

Does it need to be Windows? If not a refurbished Chromebook would be what I would look at. Even a 2 odd year old one would fly along compared with the Windows equivalent.

[PlaneMan]

Thanks Richard.

I was in the gym as soon as they opened this morning, hoping to be there tomorrow at the same time. Already knocked 3 minutes of  my 3 km hand bike time. Happy with that as it’s my 3’rd trip there.

To quote Aerosmith ‘always getting stronger never getting weaker’ that’s from Young Lust.

[PlaneMan]

The lack of support is bowlocks, that’s just them covering themselves.

Regardless, if that suits you and the wifey, fine. I still use my now ancient (in phone terms) Xperia Z2 occasionally, particularly when the weather is rotten as it’s waterproof.

[PlaneMan]

Thanks both.

W.O.F, I will. ?

[PlaneMan]

Thanks JCD.

The car will be a kind of belated present for myself. If the one I looked hasn’t gone in a few weeks I expect a call from the salesman. They want £15k. To me it’s a £13.5k car at best.

[PlaneMan]

Few years to go yet Dave!?

[PlaneMan]

Thanks all.

(And Ryan)

[PlaneMan]

Tippon wrote:

Drezha wrote:

I had one briefly but it didn’t play nice with Android Auto

The Honor 9 is the same, at least in a Ford. Sometimes it’s great and other times it will just sit there trying to connect forever. Apparently it’s down to a conflict between Android Auto and third party launchers like EMUI.

Android Auto works fine in my Swift, Mate 20 Pro, sometimes the car has issues connecting to the phone, that can take a minute or two. Usually it’s a few seconds. I’ve figured out the best way to get it to mostly work quickly, ignition on, plug phone in, start engine.

No idea if that’ll help but worth a try.

[PlaneMan]

Drezha wrote:

The Pocophone is very good. I had one briefly but it didn’t play nice with Android Auto. Other than that, it was a cracking device.

Totally agree. Mum still has hers and loves it.

[PlaneMan]

It all depends on your tariff. If it allows tethering then you can hotspot from your phone. Some tariffs like the Smarty £25 one have no restrictions at all on how you use the allowances.

If your home phone has the right socket (rj 11 IIRC) you can plug into the router and make calls. I believe texts need an app installed on your phone. I went for this router because I want to try out all the options available at mum’s place as well as she is also sick of Virgin but needs some kind of ‘home phone’ that her fella understands. If it works as it should I can just plug their DECT phones into the router and there’s nothing new for him to learn (apart from the new phone number).

[PlaneMan]

Bog standard SIM. You can use whatever one you want.

[PlaneMan]

I’ve just ordered a B525 to see what kind of speeds I can get at home an hopefully get shot of the muppets that are Virgin Media.

If it improves my signal on Smarty (3), I’ll go for the 3 deal and either flog the supplied router or send this one back to Amazon. The one I went for was a refurb with 2 external aerials supplied by Amazon for £99. My signal should be better than it is (I get anywhere between 2 and 20 down and 0.5 to 5 up depending on where I am in the house.

I’ll report back when it arrives (due Wednesday).

[PlaneMan]

Bob, mum’s car is an 18 reg, same engine size and nearly the same power output as my 2012 Swift I had before. What a difference in how they drive though. The Swift could hold speed through corners and it didn’t feel like you were thrashing it as it revved much quicker.

I found the 500 very awkward to drive, especially for the first few miles as it has a strange habit of still revving a bit once you dip the clutch to change gear.

Is your grand daughter after a well cared for (some paintwork issues due to idiots in car parks) 2017 Swift? I might have one for sale soon. ?

[PlaneMan]

Unless you need them within a week or so I’d hang on.

The trumper might have done you a favour. Apparently loads of clueless idiots are selling Huawei phones to the likes of Music Magpie for not a lot. All because of the law that trumper passed which affects Alphabet and therefore Android. Alphabet can’t give Huawei early access to new versions of Android and some other stuff but as Android is open source and Huawei have their own skin it makes little difference. The security patches and so on will still happen.

There may well be some cracking deals about soon.

That said it looks good for the money.

[PlaneMan]

Finally made it to the gym for the first time this afternoon. It was deserted. For about 55 minutes of the hour I was there I was the only person in it. That suits me fine.

Managed 35 minutes on an exercise bike, 15 minutes on a hand bike and the other 10 on a machine I don’t know the name of, some kind of rowing type machine where you stay static and your arms and shoulders do the work. All are adjustable resistance or weight.

Knackered now but it’s a good knackered, feels nice to get some proper exercise.

[PlaneMan]

Only thing that I have of use is a packet of 10 thumbscrews and some thermal paste. Thought I had more stuff but either I’ve tidied it away to well or binned it. ?

[PlaneMan]

I’ll have a look in my drawer of bits next week, if you don’t hear anything from me please feel free to remind me.

[PlaneMan]

What I really like is the choice that’s out there now. Years ago it was what the bank offered and that was it.

Lloyds wanted £15 a month rental, minimum of £50 a week sales (if that wasn’t met it was an extra £15 a month) and 3% of every sale.

With SumUp the setup costs including the Pixi 4, the card reader and postage was £32. They take 1.69% of every transaction. Unless you’r doing mega amounts of sales and can then negotiate with the bank you must be barking mad to accept their terms.

[PlaneMan]

Steve, I looked at them. And loads of others.

Realistically the card payment turn over won’t be huge, it’ll take a while for people to actually believe they take cards!!!

It should build as the weeks and the summer skittle league go on.

I can’t recall exactly why I went with SumUp over any of the others but I think it was the cheapest cost per transaction.

I’ve also bagged a Twitter account, I may well regret that one…….

[PlaneMan]

Les, I’ve had DSL work very well on older kit than than what you have, Pentium 200 overclocked to 233 (via motherboard jumpers) and IIRC 64 MB RAM. Granted that was an older version of DSL but it’s truly amazing what it can do on very little resources.

Enjoy it, if you can have it hooked up the internet when you do the live session or install, it’ll help a lot.

[Author]

Posts