Bad Day!

[RobTurbo]

I've been to a party in Loughborough at the weekend, got back yesterday, 300+ mile round trip with no trouble, get in the car this morning to go to work to be greeted with an anti-pollution fault, turned it off and back on and it went, all good I thought, but no, car was flat as a fart, managed to get to work (about 2-3 miles, mostly down hill), on the way I notice my auto dim mirror is broken, the top is clear and the bottom is dark, with black stuff dripping on the gear knob. Must have been the weather, it was fine yesterday!

At dinner time I tried the car again, this time there was an anti-pollution fault that wouldn't go away so I phoned my dad and asked him to bring my laptop and pp2000 after work, which he did, plugged it in, air flow meter, pull the plug on it, still have the fault code but the light is off and it drives loads better, almost back to normal.

Get home, swap the air flow meter with the one from my old 306, perfect! Put a standard, non auto mirror in and fling the old one in the tool box incase I need the plug off it, take the kids for a drive out, go home, put the laptop on, arrow keys don't work, tried restarting but it didn't help, tried going into the bios and they don't work there either, so it's not a driver problem, tried pulling the keys off and clean underneath, no help, took the keyboard out to clean properly, still no help, so put it back together, put it back on and try using it, only to find when typing I keep getting random "v" and "n" all over the place, also the key to the left of x doesn't work, nor do either of the slashes and sometimes I can't scroll or click with the touch pad.

There's no sign of anything in the laptop that shouldn't be there, specifically anything wet! It's an old laptop but it's served me well over the years, I don't know if I should start looking for a replacement or just get a new keyboard for this one and hope that's all that's wrong with it, I have a desktop but that's in the bedroom so I can't use it while watching TV.

Anyhoo, rant over, I hope tomorrow is better!!

[lozz]

sorry to hear youve had a crap day.

ive had no luck with computers either, dog eat my laptop and my other pc keeps crashing,

just swapped over to a Asus or is it acer, cheap asda jobbie,- tablet, much easier less hastle but you get savage migraines off them

[Ares]

wow,you really had a bad day.
I think if you have cleared laptop and done all the work you can,its time for new one.
In my case is different,i destroy computers due to my impatient nature
Hope at least party was good.

Lozz...your dog ate your laptop?

[highlander]

My Mum had a Scottish Terrier who used to love stealing TV remote controls and running out to the garden with them. Little bugger, it's not like he didn't have enough toys of his own to chew - his favourite was the short bit of rope with a knot at either end - he used to love playing tug-of-war with us using that.

Indestructible dog toys are usually a complete joke, you got to get the ones that are dense solid rubber for them to stand any chance at all. The wee dug got fed up trying to destroy them though and ended up burying them in the garden (usually unearthing some of Dad's plants in the process ...)

[RobTurbo]

The party was great, well worth the trip, I'm glad the car had the courtesy to hold on till we got home before it broke!

Any reccomendations for a decent but cheap laptop? Netbooks are no good for me, I don't need it to play games, just the occasional film, I can't really afford one at the minute so for the time being I'll live with the broken keys and use my phone more!

My girlfriend has dogs but they don't go as far as eating laptops, just the cables for them!

[scotty73]

my dog don't chew anything and never has and he's not 3 years old yet, he does often bite through the tennis ball when playing fetch so the next step is to buy a solid rubber one but other that that he's been good he only likes chewing on people really.

[lozz]

The party was great, well worth the trip, I'm glad the car had the courtesy to hold on till we got home before it broke!

Any reccomendations for a decent but cheap laptop? Netbooks are no good for me, I don't need it to play games, just the occasional film, I can't really afford one at the minute so for the time being I'll live with the broken keys and use my phone more!

My girlfriend has dogs but they don't go as far as eating laptops, just the cables for them!

net books are crap,

iwas going to buy another laptop, but spotted the android tablets, theyre pretty good, 2.6 ghz prossesor and 512 ram,
dont think they will run stuff like lexia, but theres plenty of droid apps for free, im just waiting on a dongle and then ican hook it up to the cars,

99 quid with two year guarantee does the same job if not better than a ipad

[highlander]

dont think they will run stuff like lexia

They won't. Lexia / PP2000 is a Windows application and runs on Intel x86 processors. Your Android tablets are most commonly based on the ARM RISC processors (some budget Chinese tablets are starting to appear with MIPS processors and they are known to have compatibility issues). Since they don't have x86 processors, you can't just fire up a VM and run Windows in it - Windows XP doesn't run on ARM processors.

One day they'll be fast enough to emulate an IBM PC compatible and run Windows 95/98/XP - at which point they should be compatible with Lexia. But not yet.

[V6Exec]

One day they'll be fast enough to emulate an IBM PC compatible and run Windows 95/98/XP - at which point they should be compatible with Lexia. But not yet.

That day might arrive sooner than you think - success has been reported with Win 95 on this -> http://code.google.com/p/limbo-android/ ... mboAndroid

[lozz]

One day they'll be fast enough to emulate an IBM PC compatible and run Windows 95/98/XP - at which point they should be compatible with Lexia. But not yet.

That day might arrive sooner than you think - success has been reported with Win 95 on this -> http://code.google.com/p/limbo-android/ ... mboAndroid

excellent find mate,

ive downloaded a few app's. just trying to work out what dongle iwouid need for the car,
any ideas?

[trufflehunt]

Up till about 3 months ago I had used an oldish Mac iBook laptop for a few years. When it died on me, no big disappointment, as it
had only cost me £120, and I'd had my money's worth.

I never buy new computer devices, and would certainly never fork out for , say, a new iPad.

I looked at what else was around, decided that 2nd user tablets weren't yet 'work' devices.., still consumer things.

So in the end, I looked round eBay. Bought a 4 or 5'ish year old Sony Vaio laptop as they usually have good quality screens. It
had an unimportant key-cap missing, and also the OS turned out to be corrupted.

Total cost: £75 + £15 for a legit Windows XP re-install disc.

£90

Very pleased. When I come to replace it eventually..., will probably be with a tablet.

[gumby6371]

I see more and more people ditching pc's and laptops for tablets, i have to agree they're handy, portable and relatively cheap if you go for android based machines.

however.......

the lack of optical drive and limited storage make them (in my opinion) useless as the sole computing device.

Ipad owners should be taken to one side and slapped for spending stupid money on a device you can update your facebook status on and little else. If you have a decent digital music collection you can't even get it all on!!! (mine currently stands at 48 Gigabytes)

I don't think we have many pc gamers on here but trust me you can't play black ops 2 on a tablet - nuff said

[lozz]

There is no problem with storage on android tablets
just throw a decent size memmory card in and away you go,

The one ive got iexpected it to be crap for its money, but its very quick,
compared to the pc its alot less hastle,


http://direct.asda.com/Acer-Iconia-B1-T ... lt,pd.html

[RobTurbo]

I have no interest in tablets, an iphone and a laptop are all I need, with the desktop thrown in for fun!

The zoostorm laptop on ebuyer seems like a good deal, I don't imagine it'll be the best build quality but it doesn't have to last forever, once I get my house finished and get moved in I'll be ditching the laptop in favour of my desktop through the telly.

[RobTurbo]

Quick update on this, I thought I'd take a punt on a new keyboard for the laptop before I splashed out on a new one, £9 delivered, brand new, it came today and now the laptop works perfectly!

I know it'll sound daft but I'm so happy to have my old laptop back again, especially considering it's age, it's still not exactly what I'd call slow, it's not as fast as my desktop (i5 3570k oc'd to 4.3ghz, 8gb ddr3) but still does everything I need from it at a reasonable speed, and seeing as though it's back from the dead and I was prepared to buy a new laptop I've decided to upgrade the processor from a core duo 1.6ghz to a core 2 duo 2.16ghz, so in the near future it'll be even more comfortable to use!

So that's the good news, bit of bad news, the 406 started making a knocking and occasional grinding noise when moving the steering wheel, it's already had new top mount bearings, so after a quick bit investigation I've found I need a n/s/f ball joint and could probably do with a front wishbone bush while I'm at it, so a bit of a job for the weekend.