* Posts by SidF

15 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jan 2015

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

SidF

Car dealers are slow to keep up

Four years ago I bought a Focus from a Ford main dealer. It was an ex demo car with almost no miles on the clock. But it did have details of phones that had been paired with it by the dealer's staff. One of the phones was called " Fxxx Off, I'm Busy".

Ex-MI5 boss: People ask, why didn't you follow all these people ... on your radar?

SidF

She was talking about the Security Services of Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Cairncross, Blake and others. This organisation did not serve the citizens of the UK at all well.

Internet of Sh*t has an early 2017 winner – a 'smart' Wi-Fi hairbrush

SidF

More marketing opportunities

I might have missed this suggestion above from marketing types. The software and some of the hardware could easily be modified to install in an intelligent wifi enabled dildo. With sound recording as well, it would be a simple task to record effectiveness.

Microsoft quietly emits patch to undo its earlier patch that broke Windows 10 networking

SidF

Re: precise symptoms of failure ?

netsh winsock reset catalog and netsh int ipv4 reset reset.log worked for me with a machine that was the same as yours, showed unidentified network on the wireless connection and had the 169 address.

SidF

In my experience with one machine, the wireless and ethernet adapters couldn't get an IP address from the router. I used the netsh script to fix the problem. How does a Microsoft update fix the problem if you can't connect to the update servers? A user with a single machine seems to have a serious problem here.

You go fast, but we go 'further' and 'deeper' – Voda tells 'Speedy' EE

SidF

I'm going to contact Ofcom....and everyone who has posted on here about poor signal problems should do the same. Just keep yelling at them until they do something.

SidF

No signal

Out here in the Brecon Beacons, O2's coverage map says I should get 2g in the house. Apart from holding the phone against one window, I just get emergency calls only. But at the least they have the rather flaky TuGo app that routes the call through my land line broadband link. So I'm paying for the fact that O2 don't have enough masts to give coverage outside of central London. The coverage in this area is worst on EE as they shut down a lot of the Orange masts at the time of the merger. Vodafone also very poor.

Better geographical coverage is what is needed in the UK, I can't see the need for very high speeds when I can stream most of what I want at 10 Mb/s.

Microsoft's Windows Phone folly costs it another billion dollars

SidF

I really like my Nokia Lumia 735 WP8.1 phone and at my age, it could be my last. Here Drive + is excellent as are the Track my Walk/Bike ride apps. Bluetooth music/phone in the car works well. Getting data off the phone is easy. It also has a better than average antenna which is essential when you like out in rural UK like I do and only very weak 2G signals are available. The camera is OK.

If this ever fails, I'll probably be in the market for a second hand one. I haven't tried a Windows 10 phone but I did set one up for a friend. The only downside I found ( I didn't look very far) was that the setting to mail self when sending mail from the phone has been discontinued and you have to add yourself every time you send a mail from the phone.

I suppose I trust Google less than I trust Microsoft. I'm also a Linux user and might just take a look at Ubuntu phones if they ever drop into the below £100 price range.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update draws nearer with Inky preview

SidF

Classic Shell is the W10 add on of choice for me as a keyboard and mouse user. My UI is then very similar to W7 and PC Settings and Control Panel are very easy to navigate. What problems are there that Classic Shell doesn't fix? With Classic Shell added, W10 runs very smoothly on my core i5 Samsung laptop.

Virgin Media spoof email mystery: Customers take to Facebook

SidF

I've been getting spoofed emails from a contact with a blueyonder address for about 6 months now, at the rate of 1 or 2 every 3 months. I understand the person has changed his/her bluyonder login password several times and this does not stop the spoofed mails from being generated. I'm not sure how blueyonder is part of Virgin Media's stable of email domains but previous reports in the internet say that it is housed/run by Virgin as is ntlworld. Presumably if this was just a one off leak of some addresses and contact lists, then there is no way of stopping the spoofing in the future should the spoofers still be in business?

WinPhone community descends into CANNIBALISM and WOE

SidF

I have to agree on the Windows phone 8 on Lumia 735 and 630(wife's phone). Good operating system, very good at picking up the incredibly weak O2 2g signal in the Brecon Beacons( big internal antenna?) and good interface with a PC to copy stuff on and off. Here drive and offline maps ( all free!) are excellent, the sat nav worked very well indeed in the French Alps. Offline maps are essential in most of the UK outside the cities as the 2G connection is useless with the Google/Android navigation app. If Windows 10 phone messes all this up, this could be the last phone I every buy. Or perhaps I should buy a spare W8 phone as a back up?

France will flog off 700MHz to boost mobe broadband while UK dithers. Thanks, Ofcom

SidF

Out here in rural Wales, the only mobile phone signal is 2G. Voice connections are very poor to unintelligible and the 2G data connection is less than 1Kb/second when it does connect which is hardly ever. I'm told by my network that the 2G areas of Wales will never be upgraded to any faster service. So if 2G is turned off, 25% of Wales could be come mobile not spots.....and spot isn't right word....something like anamobilephonic areas perhaps?

Smartphones merge into homogeneous mass as 'flagship fatigue' bites

SidF

Networks and Coverage

For those of us who live in rural Wales or the rest of rural UK, the only thing that matters with a handset is whether it can pick up the -101 dBm 2G signals which not all of the networks broadcast here. With most handsets that can make a 2G voice connection, the data connection at 2G and low signal level doesn't work so there is no email access.

I would estimate that only about 70% of the UK surface area has any kind of mobile signal at all and perhaps about 30% has a 3G signal.

The logic seems to be that the bigger the handset, the bigger the antennae and more usable the phone is.

Commenters thoughts on phones with best weak signal performance would be welcome. I'm ditching my HTC Desire X which has been hopeless and getting a Nokia 735 when O2 have stock. Fingers crossed that I have made the right choice.

You'll get sick of that iPad. And guess who'll be waiting? Big daddy Linux...

SidF

Desktop

With the awful W8 or 8.1 user interface modified by Classic Shell to make it look like W7, W8 is fine for this low power mouse and keyboard user and is much faster than Windows 7. I can't imagine what new features W10 could would bring for me except for a better back up system to a network attached drive.

Like a lot of commenters here, I have not enjoyed the Android experience on an HTC Desire X from O2 and I am seriously considering joining my wife on MS/Nokia windows phone if I can find one with two cameras and a flash.

As for some of the very useful Android apps, a budget tablet with a mid sized screen will probably do the job, mainly to run fancy astronomy simulations.

And for the very little and simple computer work I do, there is always Ubuntu running flawlessly on a 7 year old AMD desktop.

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

SidF

W8.1 seems OK once it has been customised.......

Keyboard/mouse users all seem to agree that the W8 user interface was hopeless and the 8.1 update is only a little better.

But once Classic Shell or one of the other interface add ons (Stardock) is installed, W8.1 seems to be excellent. I did a full install of W8.1 on a three year old Samsung W7 i5 laptop and it is now much much faster. My take would be that MS had for the first time(with W8) to design an operating system for the underpowered touch screen tablets that W8 was supposed to work on and couldn't rely on faster and faster machines as they had done when going from XP to Vista. Just a thought....