It is all sorted my wife had left her card from her camera in one of the slots and when i took it out its gone,so thanks for your help.

Anyone used the websites that offer design of websites, programming java etc alot of these poeople seem to be from India or Pakistan etc. Basically you put up a request for someone to do the work for you and get bids for the work, you then put the money into a Escrow acount, which is then paid when the work is complete to you satisfactoin.

Or can anyone recommend a good reliable cheap website designer/programmer

Mega

OK. Glad it's sorted.

Rich, I know some people on here have used rentacoder and been fairly pleased with the result, not too expensive by the sound of it. anyone interested in doing the work makes a bid based on the spec you set out. A lot of Russian and Indian programmers I believe.

One firm that does software for our line of business use Indian programmers exclusively.

I've used Rentacoder. I think I mentioned it on the Automatedtradingwotsit thread some time ago and there's a list of other similar websites on that thread too. It's probably quite high up the thread, so there's no need to trawl through the rest of the gobbledegook.

My work was specific to trading and nothing to do with web design (why don't you buy FrontPage or similar and do it yourself?). The Rentacoder concept and website are good though. I used a guy in Rome whose English was perfect.

Richgit

I think it would depend on the type of website that you wanted. If it is a simple project then give it a go, you should save significant money and have little to lose.

If you want to find a freelance local programmer then I suspect that there will be plenty around in a couple of months.

If it contains commercially sensitive details then you have to be sure that any information that you give them will be secure and dealt with in confidence. You also have to be sure that there is nothing in the code that would steal comercial information from you once the website is running.

Also, make sure that modifications can be done easily.

The Rentacoder contract specifically gives copyright to the buyer, and it was an issue that I was concerned about at the time.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't trust one of those guys in a far flung place, but it would certainly be more difficult to pursue him from afar if he started pirating your wares.

And don't forget you can use the Browser's Tool Bar on a web page you like and select 'View' and 'Source' to get a few ideas.

This stuff can then be Copied and Pasted into a Word Document or similar and played around with before inserting it into Front Page.

Hilary, Excelline Optimist and Seymour thanks ;-) Rentacoder was one of them first ones I spotted ;-)

Got a AMD Sempron 3100+ 1.81GHz thinking of upgrading from XP to Vista will it be fast enough and what hardware/software problems will I encounter?? or should I just stick with XP until Windows 7 comes out

Why do you want Vista? I'm looking at getting another (refurbished) XP machine. There's nothing wrong with XP imho, and most large businesses won't touch Vista. My PC / network man says don't touch Vista. He finds it a pain to work with compared with XP.

I use Vista on my main laptop and it is not as bad as many make out but I still query why you want to upgrade an existing machine.

Many things in Vista are meant to be easier for the inexperienced user but power users will have to learn new ways.

File copying though easier to do is significantly slower.

Vista requires more RAM to work well - my laptop has 2GB but I wish it could take more.

Stability in Vista is not as good but not as bad as some would have you believe. I reboot my laptop about once a week, but other machines can run for months at a time.

The bitlocker HDD encryption system on Vista Business and Ultimate works very well and IMO should be on every laptop.

Optimst, Seymour I've heard Mircosoft will soon stop doing updates for XP so thats one of my main reasons

I want to stream my videos, music files to my tv by wireless thinking of getting either a Netgear EVA8000 or PS3 any other ideas???

Looking at either upgrading my Acer Aspire desktop AMD Sempron 3100+ to a Core2 Quad Q6600 which would be cost effective new motherboard cpu and memory or new pc

Any good deals at the moment 250-450

There is only one choice for good hardware, the Intel I7.

It's still in short supply and a bit pricey but coming down already. I can't remember when a new proccessor offered such a performance advantage over ALL it's predecessors.

"Any good deals at the moment 250-450"

I used ComputerDoctors on the recommendation of Exec.

I have no idea whether they are the ultimate in megs per buck - but that was not my priority. I wanted good solid guys you can trust and having been twice to their base near Northampton I feel comfortable with the two PC's I bought from them.

What I took was essentially their basic offer - but I'm sure they'd add bells and whistles if you asked for them.

TP

My tuppence worth: Vista is slow compared to XP & not really worth paying the extra, imo. I will certainly wait now for a new operating system, but that could be years before all the bugs are ironed out & the price comes down to a realistic level.
If you buy Vista now how long will the support continue when a new system is released? If you are happy with XP, stick with it. I think you will be disappointed in Vista, which as Optimist says, is user friendly for the novice.

With regard to updates on XP, I can't imagine that MS will stop security updates for several more years.

Anyone used or has views on the Brother MFC-235C printer?

Bought myself a PC on ebay and I want to copy the HD before I use it so can clone it if the HD fails. The software is fully kosher but no install discs, so I want to protect my investment. What's the best software to do this, and would it be best to back this up to my portable HD as it only has a CD r/w drive?

Thanks

SC

All that you need to reinstall the OS on a new disk are the product keys as you can always get hold of a setup disk. The best way to record all of the product keys is to run Belarc advisor and save the output to your printer and an external disk. It may be that the install files are hidden on the hsrd disk.

To make a backup of the hard disk, use a program such as Paragon Partition Manager which will make a copy of your entire disk and save it to an external HD. You will end up with a file of several GB so it will not fit on a CD but may fit a DVD. In any case, save to a hard drive first.

Some versions of Paragon Partition Manager are availible free, although the latest one looks so good that I may buy it.

After you have a backup of the PC, it may be worth rebuilding from scratch as you don't really know what is on it.

Cheers Opti, that's superb and very comprehensive answer.