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Posted

I think it was a few years ago he left the docks Triggs. He retired from the buses in October after a couple of health scares.

Posted
  Luxobarges_Are_Us said:

Why is that statement "sweepingly ignorant"? The mobility out of the public sector is going to be largely unaffected by the new law, because those people have been there for longer. Employee turnover is much lower in the public sector, both because of the type of jobs and because of the types of people working there. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. However, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that the change in the legislation is going to affect private sector workers a lot more than public sector ones.

 

This has just provided me with enough rant material to turn it into a blog post - cheers!

Posted
  M said:
This has just provided me with enough rant material to turn it into a blog post - cheers!

 

lnk-link-23712655-349-296.jpg

Posted

I am in total agreement with that post. A lot of people, including those in positions of power, seem to have a real problem distinguishing with what absolutely must be done by the public sector (e.g. courts, prisons), what should ideally be done by the public sector (e.g. healthcare), what can go either way (schools and uni for me, although I understand that many disagree) and what should never be touched by it (can you believe it that there are 4-wheel lawnmower drivers on 25k a year- why should the public sector even be involved in that kind of business, let alone pay them almost double what it pays admin staff?).

 

Being opposed to civil servants doing grounds maintainance is not the same as hating the public sector, but of course there are stupid people at both ends of the spectrum...

Posted
  Luxobarges_Are_Us said:
Being opposed to civil servants doing grounds maintainance is not the same as hating the public sector.

 

+1. A lot of Civil Servants agree too.

Posted
  autofive said:
  Pete-M said:
Got to go on a quick trip to Czech this weekend.

 

weather_c_ct24.jpg

 

When there's a hurricane due.

 

 

U.K covered in cloud as usual....

Posted

Re my former colleague who passed on. His name was Richard (Dick) Sawyer. I think it is a few years since he worked down the docks, but some of Trigg's workmates may have known him.

Posted

I may not be old but I can grump with the best of them so forgive me while I have a rant about HP and their fucking useless piece of shit printers, after trying to print one small doc took half an hour of faffing that shouldn't have been necessary. I acquired a HP all-in-one printer a while ago, plugged it into the USB orifice, found new hardware wizard popped up and all was well until I unplugged it. Trouble is, every single time I plug the bastard printer in now Windows can't understand that it's already installed, sees it as 'new hardware' and reinstalls it, often on a different virtual port, which takes an eternity and causes major grief. Weirdly plugging in the printer also kills the laptop's wireless connection stone dead so it can't even find any networks in range, which is frankly incomprehensible. HP couldn't care less and there is no known solution - GR0 customer service guys!

Posted

does the printer have wireless facility? if so, that could be the reason why youe wifi goes off - my mothers HP wireless printer caused no end of problems, until i threw it in the bin - problem solved

Posted
  autofive said:
does the printer have wireless facility? if so, that could be the reason why youe wifi goes off - my mothers HP wireless printer caused no end of problems, until i threw it in the bin - problem solved

Nope, no wireless, no other interfaces other than the cursed USB. I suspect its some sort of low level interrupt problem as I can't see any obvious reason why it should affect an apparently unconnected function. What's odd is that sometimes after unplugging the printer it will automatically reconnect itself to my network, but other times it flatly refuses to see any networks at all and only a reboot will make it connect. That's the lesser of the two issues, the constant reinstalling is a total PITA. One thing is for sure, my next printer will not be a HP.

Posted
  quicksilver said:
  autofive said:
does the printer have wireless facility? if so, that could be the reason why youe wifi goes off - my mothers HP wireless printer caused no end of problems, until i threw it in the bin - problem solved

Nope, no wireless, no other interfaces other than the cursed USB. I suspect its some sort of low level interrupt problem as I can't see any obvious reason why it should affect an apparently unconnected function. What's odd is that sometimes after unplugging the printer it will automatically reconnect itself to my network, but other times it flatly refuses to see any networks at all and only a reboot will make it connect. That's the lesser of the two issues, the constant reinstalling is a total PITA. One thing is for sure, my next printer will not be a HP.

 

Are you plugging it into the same USB socket?

Using different ones causes Windows to reinstall the drivers for that particular one.

 

After having HP printers for years I bought a Brother, which was OK but took an hour to install to Windows but never really worked well with Linux.

A few weeks ago I gave it away and plugged an HP all-in-one printer that had been sitting in a cupboard for a couple of years.

 

Linux seemed not to have spotted it so I went in to the printers folder and there it was, installed and waiting for print jobs. Twenty seconds from being plugged in.

Works a treat and the scanner part just works, no settings or intervention required other than to tell it whether to scan in mono or colour, depending on the original.

 

My first HP was a right bugger to install too, software first or it wouldn't work (Windows)

 

An HP arrived today for the wife and it has a seal over the USB port with instructions to install the software before plugging it in.

A she is using Linux on her laptop we won't be bothering with that.

Posted

HP = HoPeless. This HP laptop keeps developing wi-fi problems. It just seems to lose the wi-fi card. Thankfully, it usually comes back with a reboot but it's bloody irritating and gives that feeling we often get with a shite car - nervously awaiting a sudden and complete failure. My previous HP laptop (this is my wife's that I've commandeered!) suffered sudden and complete motherboard AND hard drive failure. My wife's now using an elderly Toshiba which seems like a small-engined Toyota Corolla. Just keeps going but isn't very quick.

Posted

My HP all-in-one refused to scan when it was attached to the PC, though it would print happily enough. I eventually fixed it by uninstalling, deleting every reference to HP from the Registry and reinstalling.

Posted

HMG in NI is no longer buying HP non-server stuff (or Dell). Quality is A BIT SHIT, many aspects being outsourced. I set up a brand new HP lappy for my mate's wee girl on XMAS Eve. Flimsy as fuck, two different manufacturers on the SODIMMs! Lots of HMG here use Tosh or Fujitsu-Siemens (now FDS), as do I for my laptop, although I get 40% discount on gear as ex-crew.

 

Acer stuff has gone up and up in quality, and don't come preloaded with nearly so much interface branding over Windows as even 2 years ago. eMachines is an Acer brand. Sony Vaio stuff, you're taking a chance, good and bad production runs.

 

Epson printers: cheap ink FTW, and pretty sturdy.

Posted

seems that HP is a computershite brand and the quality is going downhill fast. I work in IT so I've tried all the obvious things plus some that aren't so obvious and there's just no way round it, the thing has a mind of its own. All they ever say for any problem is to reinstall the printer driver which does sod all to help.

Posted

I know what you mean, been in IT 16 years myself. You see lots of ill-thought out stuff, but it makes you appreciate the good stuff (Cisco gear for example) even more.

 

 

Have you tried turning the printer off and on again? :D

Posted
  ashmicro said:

Have you tried turning the printer off and on again? :D

That's the root of the problem, if I could leave it on all the time it would possibly work ok. I hate printers, they are hideous contemptible devices that take great delight in making simple jobs difficult. If the ones at work weren't too heavy to lift I'd have happily thrown them out of the window several times.

Posted

People who use the rolleyes smiley too much should be drowned.

Posted

RE: Printers.

 

Have you tried hammering a ............slump.......drool......

Posted

I had an Epsom printer that went ronnied quite early on through lack of use, and when using pattern carts, would never print right.

Posted

^^ Here's a tip from an IT Pro - turn it on for an hour every now and again. You don't need to print anything. Ink goes to stage 1 of the heat cycle ("Prime Pens" mode), in case you do want to print. Keeps it fluid. You've been very unlucky if pattern carts fucked your printer. I've never had an issue, and I fit a LOT of them.

 

Try this guy (Darren). Top Qual. http://www.hornseainkjets.co.uk

Posted

To the resident IT bods - what brands would you recommend in general?

Posted
  Captain Mainwaring said:
People who use the rolleyes smiley too much should be drowned.

:roll:

Posted
  Negative Creep said:
To the resident IT bods - what brands would you recommend in general?

 

 

Printers?

Posted

Printers and PC stuff in general. My mega shite desktop needs to be retired, although not for a few months

Posted

Printers: colour ink, low volume: Epson all the way. Cheapo ink : Pro-jet (eBay, comes in orange boxes)

 

laser (monochrome) HP (yes!) or Samsung. Avoid : Brother. Bloomberg reported today that Kodak are circling the drain. Lexmark ink is more expensive than the printer in many cases, likewise Canon.

 

Desktop PC. VERY dependent on what you want it to do. Personally, I use an Alienware Area 52 ALX II, as I need a lot of grunt. Alienware is owned by Dell, but the Alienware systems are hand built and mine has a guarantee for as long as I own it.

 

Min spec these days in the real world should be roughly Core2Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz) 4GB RAM. Avoid nVidia graphics as there are issues with nVidia not keeping up properly with driver compatibility, and have been since Longhorn (Vista dev. name)

 

500GB hard disk. The actual "make" is relatively unimportant.

 

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/lenovo-h4 ... 7-pdt.html is very decent. Monitors, even big ones, are dirt cheap these days.

Posted

Well, if you are buying a desktop it's probably better to just mix and match various bits.

 

As for printers, the advice I had been given here is "either buy the cheapest one you can find and treat it as disposable, or spend a couple of hundred quid on something decent", and I can't find a reason to fault the logic in that.

Posted

I bought a pair of HP laptops nearly seven years ago and took them back two days later, both cabbaged in different ways (different models)

Swapped them for the Toshiba's that I had gone for but were out of stock.

 

Both still going fine, used daily (using one now).

 

My son and son-in-law both bought HP laptops at the same time. Nine years ago. SIL's died a couple of years ago and son's is on a shelf here awaiting repairs, DC input broken on motherboard. Will get round to it one day. He replaced it with a Dell that he thought was great until he bought an Acer for his girlfriend's parents for Xmas and realised that the Dell wasn't that hot after all.

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