Dalo Harkin

I am waiting for Bonnies input on this one lol :D:D Maynard - we all know that your missus wears the trousers in your relationship :p As for us all being crazy - thats what having a missus does to you :D

Try disabling McAfee when you run the updates. And when you install office (it does say upon installation to disable AV and Firewalls)

lol - I will leave that one to you mate - I would no doubt get a right hook followed by an uppercut :eek:

Really?? - mine does - it's only when I shout over her I can't hear anything lol

the best thing is when you say I was listening and they say - 'go on then what did I say'' and you repeat it word for word lol

The correct reply would be the walls will be painted red woman if you interrupt me again :D (For the sake of your own health/life I would not say this aloud :o)

There are pro's and con's to both- Take into account what I use - Microsoft Live OneCare - It's a suite, but is much stronger than any other solution I have seen whether its a suite or seperate AV, Firewall and Malware apps. People use suites as they dont want to have to fork out loads of cash for seperate programs (Free ones are good but are not updated as often) and they want to just click one button once a week to do a full scan and checkup etc. And there is nothing wrong with this - like i said there are pro's and con's to both setups

Take your pick from here Scan Computers UK: Computer Hardware - All - Memory but I would recommend the Corsair 2GB set. and it costs less than PC World would charge you just to fit it. ;) This is from the Dell website in terms of fitting memory Documentation

Installing memory is the easiest thing to do in terms of PC Building - PC World will charge you around £40 to put it in - we can show you how to do it for nothing, well obviously the price of the memory. please list the motherboard that you have and I will recommend some RAM for you

Vista minimum requirement is 512MB but 1GB is preferred and 2GB is recommended (by myself anyway)

The red light you are referring to is normally on the front of the case and indicates HDD (hard drive) activity. sounds like the hard drive is dead or dying.

I do agree Seth - but the fact of the matter is they keep churning 'new' versions. I know that some people are naive to the fact that they just choose the ones that get advertised (Norton) and the flashy menu that they use and the rotating globe in the task bar etc. (it's basically just eye candy that slows the system) But on the flipside I used to use Sygate firewall from Symantec and I was very impressed - I cannot believe the differences between that and the 'new' Norton solutions. Sygate was basic but extremely strong and was user friendly but still had all the advanced features, the same can be said of the business AV programs they are excellent - so why do they tone them down so much for the consumer market, I understand they make lots and lots of revenue - but surely they are at the point now in terms of numbers where service should be their number one priority.

I personally would not touch Norton with a barge pole - it is resource hungry and basically takes over your system. Norton is still widely used throughout the world and I am amazed that people still buy their products.

Today over at Symantec some news for the safety-conscious were released. The Norton team has been working on a new product called “Norton Safe Web”, which is pitched as a website rating service that will let people easily see what sites are legit and which are malicious. It will also be a proactive service, warning users before they are able to open a malicious site that could compromise their system. Norton Safe Web is currently in Beta, and as such they are looking for feedback from users. Considering the accusations of bloat that Norton products have received in the past, it's no wonder that they are claiming this piece of work is in-line with Norton 2009 products that are “fast and light”. The software itself is available only for Norton users, but they are also offering a manual service in which you can submit a site to see if any information is available on it.

Firefox does try and make itself accessible to the net but some firewalls will still block its access- make sure the permissions are in the firewall rules also ;)

One of my HDD's stick every now and then and has been doing so for well over 1 year, I am 99% sure thats all it can be - you have too many things stuttering - mouse movement - video and audio - unless the CPU is not working properly

Glad it's all sorted :)

It wouldn't as far as I am aware, there is no reason why it would. unless you put it to hibernate and you walking on the floor moved the pc??

Lol - Doug did your missus see that before you posted - lol

You can not build a PC with a monitor of 20" really - I could tell you the components but you would have to build it yourself and it will be a much better spec than Dell or HP could offer you. for the amount you have available, I would look on Ebuyer for a laptop

Sorry to say it but - glitches as you have described are down to the HDD dying. If there is 'clicking' then thats the HDD.

Taken from Custom PC:- The music piracy game could soon be up for illegal file sharers, as a new deal has been announced between the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and six of Britain’s major ISPs. The aim of the deal is to crack down on piracy, while offering better music download services. The ISPs in question are Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BT, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse, all of which are now listed as a part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the BPI. The idea is that the music industry will make its music available online in a ‘user-friendly format, while ISPs will send out letters to known prolific file sharers, telling them that their activities have been noted. Adam Webb from BMR (British Music Rights), which helped to negotiate the agreement, explained to Custom PC that ‘the ISPs have agreed to educate people about downloading – in essence that means that the others are going to replicate what Virgin Media have been doing [sending out letters], and BT started doing the other week. Then the record industry will take their side of the bargain by voluntarily agreeing to make available their music online in a wide range of user-friendly formats.’ The BMR sees this as a positive step in the battle against music piracy, which has often seen a hostile attitude between ISPs and the music industry. ‘ISPs and the music industry haven’t necessarily had the best relations in the past,’ said Webb, ‘so this is a really good starting point.’ He also stressed that this was a ‘voluntary agreement’ on behalf of the ISPs. So how would the system work? Webb explained that ‘If you go onto BitTorrent, everyone else on BitTorrent can see your IP address. That’s essentially what the BPI would do - they would go onto BitTorrent, find out an IP address and ask the ISP to send a letter out. It’s not some great conspiracy where the BPI goes rifling through someone’s personal records.’ Webb explained some of the reasoning for the decision, saying that ‘the BMR commissioned some research from the University of Hertfordshire. It was really concentrated on young people, aged 14-25, and around 65 per cent of them admitted that they downloaded music form file sharing websites illegally, but 80 per cent of those said that they’d pay for a legal service.’ The BMR sees this as the start of a new generation of digital music services, where people are given what the music formats they want from the music industry, while the music industry gets a crackdown on piracy in return. ‘There’s obviously a way of making this work; monetising what people are doing and developing new business models,’ said Webb, ‘but you need an ISP on board in order to make that happen.’ Orange says that it ‘welcomes the industry-wide memorandum of understanding with content owners around improving consumers’ access to legitimate online download services.’ The ISP also said that it will ‘work with content owners and alert customers if they are allegedly in breech of any copyright laws.’ However, Orange also stressed that it will ‘not disconnect internet accounts for alleged copyright infringement or disclose customer details to content owners without a Court order.’

You are in good stead with Nod32 - as you have Windows XP Home I sound like an MS fan boy but if you have Vista I would consider buying MS live OneCare - It really is amazing and you can get OEM versions for sub £20. I dont like MS as much as the next PC person but it really is worth considering.

you can buy a draft N wireless card or USB dongle BUT - there is no point unless you have a draft N router, and even then:- Note a Draft N router is more for distance - it will not be faster, it supports a faster speed but seeing as though only Tokyo has 100Mb internet :eek: and 50Mb is not due until next year from Virgin there is no point.

I do have a spec for £400 which includes suppliers - do you want to include a monitor in the £400 or not? are you keeping your existing speakers, keyboard and mouse etc. let us know and I will post the info ;)