Bob T

Cute.

I know of someone who has been looking for a cheap property to renovate for about 10 years now. Since he started his search he has visited the Dordogne twice a year, without finding the one he wants. House prices have gone up in the 10 years and sterling has gone down, but he still dreams.

[quote user="Mr Coeur de Lion"]I love my nook :)[/quote] This is getting a bit boring. A thread about the Kindle, which many people are happy with, and you keep telling us the same thing about your nook. Our Kindle is fantastic and we have no problems downloading to it.

Strange, My RAF pension always appears in my French CA account on about the last working day of the month without fail.

If you are going in the campervan then send me a PM and I'll give you a great place to stop. Beware that crossing the border into Spain takes you into coastal towns and villages where they don't want campers in the town at all! I did this tour in the camper last September, from near Perigueux, and had a fantastic time.

Whatever you do, don't miss Collioure, or Port Vendre. Collioure is worth a days visit to see most of it, but it is very busy in the summer. PV on the other hand is still a working port village with much fewer tourists.

I have asthma, but prefer to light the wood burner and wheeze a bit rather than not light it and freeze to death!

Can't help with that one Sue, my Garmins are a Streetpilot 3 and a 296. Neither use SD cards. I would only be guessing that the problem may be the USB or serial interface with the PC.

Can't understand that Sue, all standard SD cards are the same physical size. The manual for your GPS states "Memory card slots on units may be equipped for an SD card or a microSDTM card."

[quote user="Sunday Driver"]Wouldn't an ADSL TV package come down your ADSL internet connection rather than a dish?    [/quote] Not if you are in a slow ASDL area, they just supply a satellite decoder box instead.

You may have bought a micro SD rather than an SD. You can buy an SD that has a slot to fit the micro SD into it, and then you fit it into the GPS. You could also copy the contents of the micro SD onto an SD with a PC providing that there is no copy protection on it.

Made my day, this Kindle stuff. Not only do I love using the Kindle, but my wife has just published her second book on it, see here. This one is a true romantic adventure and will appeal to most women who have ended up in France, just as the story tells it.

Coops, I would say that Ubuntu Linux is capable of everything. My wife has nothing else on her PC and she is a user rather than a guru. She edits photos, plays music and has written two books on it so far. I have a windoze 7 dual boot on my PC, but never boot to windows these days.

Or you could buy a system without Windows (cheaper) and put Ubuntu Linux on it (free). Something like this here.

Me too. When I was a civil servant with the MOD I spent quite a bit of time at BAe Warton, where the employees that had the same status as me earned around 50 to 60% more than I did.

[quote user="just john "]This should make the voisins sit up  -EX-RAF-4-SQN-Harrier-Jump-Jet- [:D][/quote] Makes me feel old now, but I am pretty sure that I have worked on that very aircraft!

Companies, whatever they manufacture, are there to make money and their primary aim is not to provide jobs to local areas. It has to be up to the company to decide where they want to restructure to make their business more profitable.

We have no problems with downloading since we bought the Wifi Kindle. We order the books from .co.uk online and they appear on the Kindle. We live full time in France and hardly ever visit the UK.

[quote user="g8vkv"]When I had a similar problem (machine locked when starting XP) I loaded a "live CD" version of Ubuntu Linux. I was then able to see the files on the hard drive and save those I needed. I then re-formatted the disk and re-installed XP. You need to know a bit about Linux though. [/quote] Same as I do, this is a sure way of getting your data off a machine that won't boot Windoze.

Have to agree with you Coops, but while I have been posting on this thread, I have kept in mind that people with many abilities are reading it. I will back away from further posting as I may cause the standard windoze versus Mac, or Sata2 versus IDE wars if I go much further.

[quote user="cooperlola"]Did you click on the link, Bob?  Sorry, Teapot, I was responding to Bob's post.  However, I still reckon I'd rather buy new and have some sort of guarantee. [/quote] I have clicked on it now Coops. My observations are: The Athlon II 630 is an AMD processor that was a budget one and is no longer made. It is the bottom end of the quad core market. A 380 watt power supply is also very budget, I would be looking for at least a 500 watt these days. The memory is good and fast. The hard disk is a decent size, but this size is about €45 a time at the moment. The motherboard is old stock and is being sold to make way for the latest version with faster hard disk and USB support. I would not pay that much for this machine when I know that I could save around £100, buy all the part and end up with a better PC. I would also not spend money on Windows for this machine, but would put Ubuntu Linux, Open Office, GIMP and a whole other load of free software on it.

[quote user="Théière"]Not quite that easy Bob as this chipset won't work with that video card etc etc. Easier to buy a second user PC from someone who chases the lates spec. Dell dual core 3.2 mhz 3gb ram, 500 gb storage £160[/quote] I would not buy a make name like Dell for a desktop PC if you ever want to extend its life or upgrade it. Dell often use parts that are not industry standard and would prefer that you buy another Dell rather than upgrade. All of the latest (for the past 3 or 4 years) graphics cards are fitted to a PCI-E slot and will work with a motherboard that has this slot. Bundles tend to have decent graphics cards built into the motherboard, but also have a PCI-E slot should you want to fit a better card for hard core gaming.

Yes and no Coops, the £320 (€380) PC will be something that is probably not anywhere near as up to date as the cheaper motherboard bundle or PC kit, so will have a shorter life in the long run. At that price I would not expect a decent sized hard drive, for example, I would expect an old stock small one. Many motherboard bundles or kits these days have the graphics card built in with the option of adding a second better one at a later date. I have found that the newest motherboards tend to use quite modern built in graphics cards which cope very well with the majority of users needs. Only if you need to run the very latest games would a top end graphics card be needed.

Going back to the origins of this thread, how to save money without buying a new computer: If you have a PC which is getting a little slow then upgrade the memory, from about €25 if you do it yourself. If you have an old CRT monitor, then invest €100 in a newer 19" flat screen, this can be used with any PC at a later date. If you have a small hard disk and it is getting full, then buy a bigger one and fit it alongside the existing hard disk. 1000 Mb (1 Gb) around €45 and can be used at a later date. When you have the above and the PC is slow and a few years old, then consider buying a motherboard, processor, memory bundle and fit them into you existing case. These can cost as little as €250 for a quad core processor and you will be able to use your flat screen that you bought before, and the big hard disk that you also bought. There are also places where you can buy the complete tower kit in bits that needs assembling, it is not very difficult, but can save a fortune. I have just put one together for about €220 for a friend who had a screen, keyboard and mouse, we used his old Windows disk saving having to spend an extra €80 or so, and he ended up with a PC that is bang up to date.

If I were you I would never use them again. That should leave more space for those of us who have read and understood the T&Cs and never have a problem. You could book with an expensive airline next time and pay for them to be nice to you.