bobwils

I have just started using a free anti-spam programme called Cloudmark www.cloudmark.com and have found it great. Very inobtrusive and a very good 'hit rate'. Simple to install and certainly worth a look.   Bobwils    

As Sky have now messed about with the numbers for the digital satellite channels, could anyone point me towards where the local regional BBC 1 channels which used to be around 954 area have been moved to.   Bobwils[*-)]

They should try www.pezenasproperties.com properties in The South of France, Languedoc region.

We ask for a direct bank transfer, it does cost the guest but not you, not with Credit Ag anyway. Alternatively if you have a UK account get them to pay by Sterling cheque. Bob

We have been involved in a gite rental agency here in the South of France for a number of years. Our experience is that gite complexes (more than one gite) are not popular, especially with The British. Most people want their own private villa with a pool and they are willing to pay for it, price is not the overriding factor. The principle concern is sharing, most families looking for 2 bedroomed accommodation will accept sharing a pool with the owner of the property but no-one else, those looking for 3 or 4 bedroomed accommodation normally go for the private villa. There are some people who will accept a complex, a few who actively seek them (others to play with the kids) but they are few and far between in our experience and you will have a fair amount of competition as others have already set up complexes and are now desperate to fill them. Hopefully others will comment and, maybe they will report differently, these comments are just what we have found. We wish you well in your endevour.   Bob    

We are with Wanadoo started with a 'Livebox' or 'Deadbox' as we ended up calling it. Nothing but trouble. We run two laptops, one wi-fi one ethernet. The solution for us was a Netgear DG834G which cost about 100 Euros. We have never had a problem with it, no crashes just super service. You can pick one up on the net or at most good French computer shops, we got ours locally here.   Bob

We had the same problems. We changed modem/router from the Freebox and now use a Netgear DG834G, best thing since sliced bread, never dropped the connection once, and I use my laptop all over the large farmhouse with very thick walls. Unit costs about £60. [:D]  

Having been responsible for starting this topic I would just report that I took Iceni's advise, signed up with www.smtp.com and it works fine. I took the economy package which was about 35 Euros and have sent lots of E-mails to NTL addresses and they were all received.   Bob Wils

We had the same tar residue problem with our log burner for the first year then, it stopped and has not re-appeared. The only thing I could think of was that a 'coating' had built up on the flue-pipes which stopped the condensation. Also we turned the piping around as the other respondant suggested and this stopped the leaks.   Bob Wilson

I use a small transmitter plugged into the digibox. This transmits whatever channel you are receiving on the digibox (radio normally) around the house/gardens, this can then be picked up on an ordinary transistor radio or hi-fi unit.  It needs to be tweaked so that the signal does not go too far and should be set so as not to interfere with anything else transmitting, I use 108FM.   Regards   Bob 

Having recently signed up with Wanadoo ADSL I have found that it is not possible to send E-Mails to any NTL world address. The messages comes back saying 'user not recognised' or similar. Has anyone else had this problem and does anyone know a way to overcome this problem without resorting to sending from a 'Hotmail' account or similar.