On the Open Office thing, as far as I know it's not being updated any more (Oracle have discontinued support of the project). New versions are now released as LibreOffice.

Harry, wifi often has a problem with solid brick wall. Have you considered Homeplugs(networking over the mains cables). It might be a workable alternative.

WiFi signals (which are microwaves) rely on reflection and wave-guide effects in cavities for propagation, they don't actually travel through walls, brick or otherwise. Leaving doors open often helps. Also, signals may go out through a glass window and be reflected off objects outside the house back into other rooms.

Interesting jonuk. Have you tried them?

So, MM, if I equip the house with lots of mirrors I should be able to improve performance then? ;o)
Do the waves travel through plaster & lathe and between joists?

Homeplugs are great so I'll give them a plug, so to speak:

Connect the Broadband line into Homeplug A. Plug Homeplug A into the mains socket. Now the mains is 'broadband live' so to speak.

Take Homeplug B and plug it into the mains near where your want your PC. Connect your PC to it with an ethernet cable.

Go upstairs to any bedroom. Plug Homeplug C into the mains(or B if you aren't using it elsewhere) where you might want say, your laptop. Connect the laptop to the Homeplug with an ethernet cable.

There are basically two speeds of Homeplugs, namely 200mbps and 85mbps (in fact there may now be even more) so go for the fastest.

Exec, presumbly you still need a seperate cable four port router? (as opposed to a seperate ADSL modem router)

Also have found this:
"Powerline adapters cause chronic radio interference and came to market in the UK via a loophole in the law. Many 'battles' have appeared across the web between radio users, enthusiasts, EMC Engineers and users of PLT products, & the fact remains that PLT / PLN / PLC in its current format does not comply with the essential requirements of the EMC Directive: 2004/108/EC and therefore the UK Electromagnetic Compatibility Regulations (2006) - which states that devices MUST NOT prevent radio equipment from operating as intended. Current Powerline adapters do not and cannot comply with EN 55022 for Conducted Emissions; all Powerline products which have been subjected to lab tests thus far, have failed the limits set by international agreement by a huge margin. The adapters belong to two main categories governed by the 'alliances' of various manufacturers and principally comprise the HomePlug Powerline Alliance (HPA), the Universal Powerline Association (UPA) "

Wifi wave signals also get attenuated (reduced signal) when they go through glass (the same way that microwaves do and that's why they don't hurt you when standing in front of one) .

I live in a victorian house with thick walls as well. I was using a Netgear router which worked very well. I am now using a Thompson Tg585 (supplied by my ISP BE) and that works well as well.

If you are having specific problems then you could use an ethernet cable plugged into a port to take the signal to another part of the house and plug it into a WiFi satellite station booster. They are pretty cheap.

HARRYCAT: You're right about Powerline adapters. I won't have them in the house - I'm a radio ham.

Sorry Harry, had to go out hence late reply. No I haven't tried the plugs but have been considering them as I've been told they work well. I didn't know there was controversy around them TBH.

I'm in a newer house and using a Wifi router (a Linksys Wireless N ADSL router) but have been having trouble with wifi deadspots. Basically, connection in other rooms can go from excellent to terrible, in some cases just by moving the laptop a few inches. Sometimes it gets very 'flaky' for no apparent reason and changing the wireless channel (frequency) seems to improve it at times. It's a pain TBH hence looking at the plugs.

It may be worth your while taking a look at this site:- http://www.devolo.co.uk/#

I use 3 adapters (200 Mbps) and have no problems, they are brilliant.

From the FAQ section on the Devolo site is this :-

"Does dLAN interfere with amateur radio or broadcast radio reception?"

The answer is No. dLAN adapters transmit data in the frequency band from 2-30 MHz with an extremely low signal strength, amateur radio frequencies in this range are not used by the dLAN adapters.

Mine are 200 mbps Develos too. They are also brilliant and are also about 5-6yrs old. No problems with radio interference either.

Couldn't manage without mine. The adapters that is of course!

Thanks all for the info. Lots to think about & a quick glance at the devolo site looks interesting. With the WiFi router option it looks like it is just a case of buying the product & hoping for a decent reception all over the house, which I am pretty sure is going to be hit & miss. But the mains socket option still needs a modem router ayway, so might try the WiFi option (as currently only have a single port router) and then add the socket option if necessary.

Thanks also for the link on the Devolo plugs. This 200 mbps Zyxel kit looks a reasonable deal too. As far as I know you could just add them to any wireless router setup as long as the router has a spare Ethernet port.

Jon, yes that is correct.

FWIW I've bought a sony vaio with an i3 processor. Spent the day transfering stuff, installing software etc. Office 2003 went on without a hitch as did my even older quicken accounts package. No notable problems so far. I've ignored the free microsoft security essentials and uninstalled the supplied macafee in favour or a reinstall of my avg. Not quite so sure about the win 7 backup though. That looks good enough to me??
Thanks for the advice I received.

Decided to treat my PC to a memory upgrade (4Gb to 12Gb). Don't really need it but at 30 for 8Gb of DDR3-1600 figured it might come in useful at some point :) Also ordered some of the Zyxel 200mbps powerline adapters at the same time.

Win7 backup seems to work OK to me but it uses up a lot of disk space.

jonuk, with RAM upgrades, the limit seems to be what the motherboard will recognise, so presumably 12gb is max for your motherboard? (also I assume Win 7 needs this kind of memory now?) [I remember when 256mb of RAM was considered to be top of the range!!!]

Harry yes it depends on the motherboard. On mine there's four slots - and already have 2 x 2Gb, so the 2 x 4Gb modules I just ordered will fill it. It could take 16Gb - if I discarded the old memory.

Really Windows 7 doesn't *need* that kind of memory, it was more a case of it being the right price. It runs perfectly well in 2Gb for most purposes, although I do use some apps that need a lot of memory so 4Gb is better. Only 64 bit OS's can address anything over 4Gb (32 bit versions will just not see the higher memory). When I bought my 4 Gb (last year some time) I paid roughly 4 x as much per gigabyte.

[My first PC was a 486 with 4Mb and cost a small fortune!!]

You boys - 386 @25mhz - 1mb. @1989/90 and it cost 1200 from memory (no pun intended).

Best machine I had was a 486 dx4 100 with 16mb - in its day the dogs doodars.

Back in the 80s, we ran a factoring application (banking) on a Unix-based Ingres DB. That system had 16 MB of RAM and was considered great!