Thanks Excel - I'll be looking at your solutions.
Re: CDs - I've sometimes had a belt to go with the braces but it soon falls by the wayside due to laziness. Likewise I have a usb sync. stick - supposedly so you can take all your files with you for use on another PC and update your main machine on return but it's just too clunky and slow imo. plus again it takes effort to remember and act.

A website I am updating keeps putting strange charactors when I put an apostrophe or

Any ideas how to stop them.

Edit
This is how it displays even though I do not add the additional charactors in the editor

Fee of £100

client’s individual

Leo has the answer - which is bit complicated

Declare the character encoding in your HTML header, Jeffie. For instance:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Clever Hiltops

That worked a treat

Cheers

Smarty pants :-)

skinny: I expect she has ;-)

Probably Agent Provacateur.;-)

Not a great lover of Smarty pants, but I don't mind the sugar candy ones from time to time.

Oh my God!

Alright if you need a nibble! :-)

If we've all recovered from Hil's pants, I offer this to those who may be having problems with their hard drive.

It seems that a failing hard drive, if chilled in a fridge or freezer, can be recussitated long enough to recover data.

http://www.kempa.com/2006/10/02/adam-is-there-a-reason-your-laptop-is-in-the-fridge/

How can I identify a powerful powered usb hub.

It is for my photographic pc so I need seven or eight sockets.

My old one died and I got the most expensive one (around 22) that my local Maplin had in stock. I now get repeated 'your usb device is faulty' messages and one of my usb hard drive disconnects itself from time to time - but works fine when powered down and up again.

My instinct is that the only thing that is powered on the jobbie I have just bought are the little lights. Googling does not seem to produce much real info about how these things perform.

Any pointers, chums?

TP

TP: I have never had a happy time running a USB hard drive through an external powered hub.

Many of these hubs have brand names you've never heard before. The last one I had seemed to be for gaming machines and had more little coloured LEDs than you could shake a stick at. It didn't work properly, failed completely after about a month, but enhanced the Christmas decorations for a while.

The one I'm using now is called a 'Link-it' and came in a package branded Belkin (of whom at least I had heard). It works well, but the USB disk will still only work reliably when connected directly to the laptop's USBs.

What is the power rating of the power supply for your hub?

MM

Thanks MM,

According to the Maplin spec " Supplied PSU is 5 volt @ 3.8A" I'll double check that when I'm next in my studio.

It seems daft that nobody wants to market a properly amplified one. If you run a PC to support photography you need ports for masses of peripherals (including hard drives that fill all too quickly) and no tower unit is ever going to be built with enough sockets. So this makes a mockery of the 127 USB devices Windows can support!

EDIT. Yes, I have checked and that is the power supply. The comic thing is that all the lights, including the red power light, remain on when I remove the adaptor to read the spec!!

TP

Something odd is happening on my monitor, which is hard to describe. The picture appears to surge forward, as though it is going to switch off, and then resumes a normal display. Is this the gypsy's warning that something is about to fail? I've also experienced a couple of instances of Blue Screen of Death just after boot up. Help please. TIA TOK

Is there a loose video card in your PC? Or is the video supply on the motherboard? Either way, I'd suggest you try the monitor on another PC, but I'd strongly suspect your PC. Have you dusted out the PC recently - if you get an accumulation of dust it can melt the processor, which may be related to the blue screen problem you mention.

Thanks SC. We are a one PC household so option one does not apply. The PC was in a repair shop earlier in the year having a new power supply fitted. I think I'll let them have a look at it.

Take the case cover off and blow to clear the dust. Or, take your monitor round to a friend's house & try it.

TP: Sounds like a fairly meaty power supply, sufficient to power all 7 ports - but maybe it has failed. The USB hub will remain powered from the computer if its own supply is removed - hence the lights stay on.

However, a single USB port has a maximum output rating of 500mA which means that the hub would only support a maximum of 500mA across all its ports if the external supply fails. To diagnose, try disconnecting the hub from the computer, connect the hub's external supply, then see if the lights stay on.