[Dave Rice]

Knew I forgot something – the drives ?

An SSD for sure, 240ish GB is a sweet spot @ £75. I believe both of the Asus motherboards linked to have an M2 slot, so something like the WD 240 GB M.2 SSD – Green

If more storage is required a 1TB 3.5″ spinner is about £40, 2TB is £60.

[Dave Rice]

Looking at these specs for COD WW2

GTX1060 £185

Kaby Lake Core i5 7400 3.0Ghz (Turbo 3.5Ghz) CPU, ASUS Prime B250M-A Motherboard & 16GB 2400Mhz Crucial DDR4 RAM Pre-Built Bundle £380 at Amazon

or Kaby Lake Core i5 7600K 3.8Ghz CPU (Turbo 4.2Ghz), ASUS Prime Z270-P Motherboard & 16GB 3200Mhz Corsair DDR4 RAM Pre-Built Bundle £490 at Amazon

450 watt+ PSU £40 case £40

[Dave Rice]

I’ve been using ToDO Backup (free)

You can create an emergency USB / CD / ISO based on WinPE or Linux to boot from.

[Dave Rice]

Putting up cameras today on a farm converted to storage units. Managed to do 6 dodging showers but bloody hell it was windy. As you can see from the test shot, it’s flat fields on every side and in the middle of a long valley.

On camera 7 out of 8, got to wiring the Ethernet plug when it started spitting with rain. You can’t leave this to get wet so had to keep going and it absolutely pissed down. We were both soaked so camera number 8 will have to wait for tomorrow.

[Dave Rice]

I’m with you John, but just a point. The smart meter comes with an internal reader so you can see your usage in real time. I believe some of these readers are truly portable, but I think father-in-laws plus into a mains socket. Any way, you can put them in a convenient place inside the house and never have to read the meter for the power company again.

However from what I’ve seen they’re a nine day wonder. You’ll still be shouting at the kids to turn that bloody light off!

[Dave Rice]

John, you will not personally be paying £215 upfront for the smart meter, the power company will. That’s the estimated contribution we will all be making via our bills to pay the suppliers back, and that’s whether you have we smart meter or not.

You do NOT have to have one, I won’t be. It’s not because of any tin foil hat reasons, it’s because on a very sunny day my meter will actually run backwards when the solar panels produce more than we’re using ? That doesn’t happen that often ? It may be in the future that the cheapest tariffs may only be available to those with smart meters, I’ll deal with that if it happens.

There’s probably no reason for you to refuse one – but it is your decision not the suppliers – and you will not be charged. Indeed you’re already paying your contribution via your bills. If you decide to go ahead ask if it’s SMETS-compliant. If it isn’t refuse it.

There’s a good article from Citizens Advice Getting a smart meter installed

[Dave Rice]

It’s a managed wireless access point. Unfortunately it need a Sophos “UTM” appliance to control it.

UTM stands for Unified Threat Management. It’s a box that sits on the network providing firewalling, anti-virus and lots of other security bells and whistles.

I don’t believe you can use it without one.

[Dave Rice]

She has two older brothers so unlike some of her peers, “boys” hold no terrors for her. She knows exactly how to deal with them and if that includes a swift kick to the happy sacks, so be it.

She is absolutely loving Bangor and being at Uni in general. At the open day, Dwynne Hughes was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the area so we found out about all the hills. She was home last week and has definitely lost weight.

The phone arrives here today so I’ll be having a play with it before it gets shipped off. I’m interested to see just what the 23mpx camera could do in my quest for a pocketable camera. Generally I don’t like the handling of a camera phone, but I think this one has a dedicated shutter button.

[Dave Rice]

You’ll have to go to Bangor University and fight my daughter for it ?

[Dave Rice]

Daughter decided she wants the Xperia.  One will be winging it’s way to North Wales.

As a language student she will be spending time out of the country, so the dual sim will come in handy.

[Dave Rice]

Moto G5 3GB dual sim for £150 or Xperia A1 dual sim for £175.

[Dave Rice]

It coped with H265 on my new camera so files sizes should be very acceptable.

[Dave Rice]

Those old cards are real power guzzlers.

[Dave Rice]

It works a treat. Not tried the motion detection but I’ll set it up on the workshop PC that has a second spinner in for recording to and can be left on 24 / 7.

Personally it’s of no use to me as I use only Hikvision products and their free software does a lot more. Indeed for 1 – 4 cameras I’m not now using a dedicated recorder but cameras with SD cards built in. The cameras themselves have the Hik Connect software in firmware to allow secure remote access via a PC / Android / iOS app, including to the recordings.

[Dave Rice]

What card did you put in? If it’s low spec and or old it may be inferior to the i5’s.

[Dave Rice]

Got interested until I saw it’s a smart plug and not a smart switch ?

[Dave Rice]

It’s drivers. The clue is “standard VGA graphics adapter”.

I suspect you will need Windows 10 as Microsoft and Intel (and probably a few others) are not supporting new hardware on old o/ses.

The i5-7400 is definitely new hardware.

[Dave Rice]

Just look at this comment from the Free Software Foundation.

Next year, he said civil servants would require more training and could delay citizens receiving help – the move “is a cause for failure”.

I never heard that said about the move from Windows to Linux.

Having moved the charity from Linux back to Windows the extra training was nil. People know how to use Windows & Office from their home machines.

[Dave Rice]

I love my G5 and wouldn’t hesitate to get another.

[Dave Rice]

I believe it’s a combination of motherboard & CPU. I wouldn’t be confident to “bundle” Windows 10 with either or even both together.

Given that W10 Pro can now be bought from E-Bay for £4 http://tinyurl.com/yd2nqsxb it’s not worth the risk to you (I’ve bought loads of cheap W10 Pro and Office 2016 Pro+ from EB this year with no issues).

[Author]

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