Quillan

I am very saddened that they have voted to bomb, this will be another dark day in British history just like when we decided to bomb and invade Afghanistan and Iraq. I am also saddened to know that I have become a terrorist supporter, something I never knew myself. Apparently there are another confirmed 223 terrorist supporters in our very own parliament, the intelligence services will have their work cut out for sure. I am considering packing a small case this morning in readiness for when the come and cart me off to prison although I guess I am lucky in that my skin colour is not any shade of brown.   As you can see I am incredibly p*ssed off with Cameron's remark about a NO vote being support for terrorists. It is lucky that the only bit left of this forum software that continues to work is the list blocking expletives as there are a few names I would like to call him. It is also very odd to find myself agreeing with the likes of Corbyn and Salmond, two people I normally despise. At least Corbyn gave him a few seconds to apologise which he failed to do. I am staggered beyond belief that a British PM could say these things.   As to the effectiveness of the raids, well bearing in mind that the Royal Saudi Air force have exactly the same bombs and a shed load more money than use proves that this is not to give a military advantage but simple politicking on Cameron's behalf.   Still good news for those who have been working on the Chilcot report, they will have another job in the not to distant future.

The Prius+ has had some bad reviews as well.   http://www.whatcar.com/car-reviews/toyota/prius-mpv/summary/26105-7   In one of the reviews of the PHEV the guy only got 10 miles on electric only warning you not to turn anything on like radio etc.

The Toyota Prius also comes in a 'plug in version' which claims amazing mpg but it would seem like the Mitsubishi in the real world these figures are seldom met. Some claim that your be lucky to get 50/52 mpg with the PHEV in the real world. To be truthful that's about the same for Prius except Toyota claim 72 mpg where at the PHEV claim 156 mpg. Because somebody, I think it was Chancer, said about combining diesel with electricity I had a look at the Peugeot 3008 hybrid but again the claimed mpg is very different with what people got in real life indeed many of the user comments on the test sites were about this and however they tried they just couldn't get near it. I know this happens with 'normal' cars but lets be honest 156 down to 50/52 is one hell of a difference. You might find the following interesting, especially the first one even though it is about the previous model.   http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mitsubishi/outlander/87981/long-term-test-review-mitsubishi-outlander-phev   http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/mitsubishi/outlander-phev   for the latest model   http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/mitsubishi/outlander-4x4/2016-mitsubishi-outlander-phev-review/1367056   http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/mitsubishi/outlander-phev-2014/   There are loads more reviews if you go looking. To be honest when I came here to live I bought a Range Rover because I was living in the mountains so I needed one especially in the snow etc. The truth is that with the standard tires that came with it you are lucky to get 50 to 100m further than a standard car which cost half the price. When I looked at the 3008 the best bit I liked about it was the split back door which is like a Range Rover, very handy for the dogs or as a seat to sit on if your up in the mountains and stop for a picnic but then compare the price again and I could buy an awful lot of plastic fold up chairs.   My biggest concern in the guarantee on the battery. With the Prius it is 10 years providing you have a service with their dealers once a year. Also the way the battery is made you can replace individual cells unlike others that come in a big moulded plastic box.   Finally I am not sure if I would always remember to plug something like the PHEV in every night which sort of kills of the reason for getting one because of the difference in price with the Prius. Be a lot simpler if it had inductive charging. Of course at the moment there is a special offer on the PHEV that makes it the same price as the ordinary petrol one. Cars are a very personal thing as well so these are just MY reasons for not considering a PHEV. It might fit in very well with your lifestyle and it might be a great car for you. One thing I did notice was that with the professional reviews, taken on an average across all of them it does slightly less well than the Prius. Other than that I have not bought anything yet and I am still 'chewing the fat' as they say. If you do get a test drive please report back.

It might be worth you enquiring of your ISP. Certainly with Orange because we don't have 4mb or faster we got a free digital satellite decoder. The only thing we paid for was a deposit on the card which was about 40 Euros and refundable on return. They used to give you 90 Euros if you had the dish installed by a supplier, don't know if they still do that. The new Orange decoder, which was delivered yesterday as part of a nation wide rollout, is vey good. It's faster than a Sky box to come on unlike the one before that seemed to take hours and the general 'Original Language' default feature really does work where as before it only worked by going to the channel and selecting it. Best bit is the warranty which is for as long as you have a contract with them because you never own your box (bit like the Livebox). Any problems (like the cat weeing on it in my case) you simply get a returns number and swap it out. It has 'on demand' like BBC IPlayer but French of course and you can rent films through it plus you can have Canal+ if you pay for it although it is free for a couple of hours each night. We are in a similar boat to you except there is a mountain in the way.   Of course if your line speed is above 4mb they will give you an ADSL version which does exactly the same thing and that's free as well.   PS. I never thought about 'wind mills' before, I take it you mean for electricity. I would have thought EDF might also help assuming peoples TV's worked before they put up their windfarm. Alternatively had you thought of a big metal angle grinder. [6]

Being ex military I don't have a problem with defending something that is ours. I went to the Falkland Islands and fortunately didn't have to fight anyone although (as if I had a choice) I was quite willing to do so. I never agreed with the Iraq war, indeed like many Falkland veterans I returned my Falklands campaign medal in protest. More than 26,000 Afghanistan civilians have been killed since 2001, over 100,000 seriously injured (loss of limb etc.) and as many as 2/3rds of the civil population are allegedly suffering from PSD. In Iraq there is no exact number but it is a currently held opinion of the US government that since 2003 some 165,000 civilians have been killed by US and allied military action. It is thought that this figure can be doubled if you add in the people who have died because of the destruction of infrastructure such as the ability to produce and deliver medical treatment/drugs, food and clean water. When you look at these countries now what improvements have the population gained, none. On the 15th January 2015 the UN estimated that approximately 220,000 Syrian civilians have been killed although other sources have given estimates of between 143,150 and 340,125.   One would like to think we would learn by our mistakes and I believe that ISIS may well not exist as we know it today if the US and it's allies had not been involved in these countries. Likewise I also think that should we get involved in Syrian ISIS will grow and as I mentioned in another post it would seem that the current bombing has had no moral effect on ISIS.   The UK should not be bullied by the US, it should not be morally blackmailed by countries already bombing there including France even if we do have a great deal of sympathy for those killed in the terrorist attacks and their families. Going to war, which is what effectively we are doing, is a very grave decision.   I would have liked to have thought that MP's would have spent their weekend talking to constituents seeking their opinion which I doubt happened anywhere. I would like to see a referendum but that is not practical so we are left, in my opinion,  with only one course of action which is to have a free vote in parliament across all parties yet somehow I can't see that happening either. This goes way beyond party politics and I hope the vote to bomb will be NO.

If you wrote in plain English, which I can read, it wouldn't be a problem rather than trying to decipher the way your brain works.   I take it you never read about Kristallnacht then nor remembered what it was about?

If it's your own money then wait till the end of January (it's when people get rid of their unwanted presents because it is a 31 day month and they are broke after Christmas) and buy proper one of Ebay. That's what I do for my 'toys' and there are some really good bargains to be had for things that are unwanted presents. I bought an 8" Samsung tablet for next to nothing which when it arrived I checked with Samsung and it had 23 out 24 months warranty left to run. Last year I got a Delonghi coffee maker, the 800 Euros type where you put the beans in the top and expresso etc comes out the bottom for 90 Euros. It was a Christmas present and used only once. My guests love in the morning when they have breakfast. I wouldn't dream of paying full price otherwise, not for the guests anyway. That's the sort of bargains you can get if you spend 30 minutes or so looking.

[quote user="nomoss"]Makes about as much sense as bombing Tower Hamlets [url]http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100060304/labour-london-borough-becomes-islamic-republic/[/url] This lot bring a new dimension to stupidity. [/quote]   Indeed if I suspect if I trawled through the Torygraph or the DM I could find something that's five and a half years old to prove some point or another. Perhaps we should make all Muslims in the UK register on database and carry ID like Trump wants to happen in the US. Better still why not make them wear an armband with the letter 'M' on it and the 'M' written on their backs as well. We could all get together one night and burn the Koran and firebomb the mosques. As a Jew it brings up memories of how the Germans treated Jews in November 38. The only difference is the Kippers don't have uniforms, the public would be DM and DE readers and the Jews would become Muslims. This is exactly what ISIS wants, why spend money trying to attract fellow Muslims to their cause when you can get the indigenous population in a country to do it for you. ISIS are not stupid, never, ever, think they are. Just think about where these bombings and attacks have happened then look at the effect they are having. They have a well thought out plan.   "coalition air strikes have not yet had an impact on the morale of the Islamic State" -Peter Neumann heads the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

[quote user="andyh4"]Q To suggest that bombing in Syria suddenly makes the UK a target holds no water, given that we are trying to bomb the hell out of them in Iraq. Unless of course we think that terrorists only come from IS in Syria and not in Iraq.[/quote]   IS does not see countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, the land they "own" in all these countries is joined into one caliphate (country if you like). It is a different concept to how we view countries. At the moment as you rightly say we are only bombing in Iraq or to put it another way 1/5th of their caliphate. We have already seen bombers caught and prosecuted in the UK over the last couple of years thankfully without any bombs actually going off. Likewise we don't know what the intelligence services know.   I would also like to remind people about Spanish PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who won the 2004 election which was held after the Madrid train station bombing by Islam terrorists. They said they would carry on bombing Spain if Spain did not stop their participation in the Iraq war. Zapatero said he would do exactly that and three days after the bombings, when the election took place, he won. Within a month all Spanish troops had left Iraq and they have not had an Islamist terrorist attack in Spain since. Whilst there may be some debate on how big an effect the bombings had on the election it is true to say that there were no more bombings after the troops came home. Does make you wonder who keeps their promises and who doesn't.

With so many different countries out there bombing this and that there is going to be more than one aircraft shot down. Therefore my gut feeling is to stay well away. This is for me nothing to do with Corbyn more about why put our guys in the firing line to get shot at etc. when others are more willing and more capable than us. There is also the matter of retaliation by ISIS on British soil to consider. The UK is very lucky in that it is not part of the Schengen agreement and as such still maintains a border control. Now it seems othe EU countries are regretting being a member of Schengen and have put border controls back in place. My guests tell me that there is a border control on the main road crossing from France to Spain and also France to Andorra. We are seeing many other EU members putting their borders back. The UK also has an excellent intelligence service, police force and military and have been able to stop several attacks on Britain over the last few years. If there was the will and the time I would love to see a referendum on the issue so the people can decide but it can't and won't happen. Also, as some may be aware, the RAF is part of a joint task force with the US and Canada and as such, although not directly under UK control, is already bombing ISIS targets in Syria as well as carrying out recon.

I watched that and as I thought it is not just VW. Interestingly the Vauxhall/Opel was, what was it now, 6 times more than the spec although they didn't try to hide the results by software unlike VW. Also interesting was the list challenging the validity of the test and that Vauxhall/Opel were right and the tests were all wrong. I bet they would have a field day with the French cars as well.

Seems according to your link I have the 'superior' [:)] with two sets of connections and you have the 'inferior' with only one set of connections. [:(].   The thing is compared to mine there is also another change in that if you look at the photo above each pair of connections I have a fuse. Just goes to show, as you said, they are all standard, well sort of. Also note that the connections are marked differently, on yours it is C1 and 2 whilst on mine they are marked A1, 2, 3 and 4, no wonder the EDF chaps get confused.

Idun - It seems from photo's I have seen there are basically four different types of meters that have been used over the years. Within each type of meter type there have been different manufacturers supplying them. The type I have are made by Sagem and I think Siemens is another manufacturer but don't quote me on the company names and there may be a third and even forth manufacturer for all I know. The type I have which is the digital type (as opposed to the mechanical type with a disc that goes round and mechanical tumblers with numbers on) has two covers one at the top held in place by a screw and EDF seal the other at the bottom that can be simply pulled off. We have white days which are the same price as the normal day/night tariff. The there is blue days which are incredibly cheap.   Chancer - Sorry about that, I am not 'having a go'. To be frank I am p*ssed off with this forum software. It would be so easy to put a picture up so you could understand but I can't even do that since they have changed things. Archant seems to have lost total interest in this forum now and even though as a moderator I have complained, pointed out the posts in the Tech Support section from the members nothing has been done and not even a PM to say it is being looked into. I shall try another browser today.   Right now I have got that of my chest and kicked the wall a few times lets move on. You may or may not remember I had a long run in with EDF because my Tempo meter would not register a red day but stayed on the night before. On the face of it you might have thought it was a good deal but it's not because your stuck in night mode and all the water heaters are on 23/7. I had four meters replaced in two years, paid a lot of money for a proper registered electrician to test my house out and be on site when the EDF chap came and it all turned out to be the 'tone' repeater for the village. I did get something like €2k back for them getting wrong on their estimates and the inconvenience which I guess was a result.   Now I know there are two different manufacturers of the meter because the first time it was changed I got one with no, lets call it connection, for the heating, only one set for the hot water. He had to come back with another meter that had the second pair of contacts for the heating (I believe they refer to it as a pilot connection). What he did was connect the heater control wire along with the hot water one to the single terminal that is for water. I can't recall exactly what happened but it didn't work the way it was supposed to with regards to the heating. It turned out that whilst the meters look very similar from the outside they are made by different companies and one has the extra terminal to control the heating and the other doesn't.   Now because of the Linky system they are not buying in any more of the digital meters, they are using up the stocks they have which must be several thousand or hundreds of thousands throughout France. My EDF man had to source my replacements from a friend of his in a different region because our region had used all theirs up and only had the ones left with a single terminal. Probalt because everyone had the same problem and they swapping meters out so quickly in huge amounts.   Now if you go back and read the OP's original post she had EJP. My neighbour has this and her meter looks the same as mine. My house had EJP when I arrived but was changed to Tempo because I had to have a new contract and EJP was no longer available. I can't remember what they did to change it over but I suspect they simply came and reprogramed the meter.   I removed this text because I can put pictures in now.   Even with you meter you can control/program if the water heater comes on all day or just nights as I explained. However it is not a timer in that you can't set the time in hours that it comes on and off as this, as you know, is controlled by a signal sent to the meter from a central control in EDF. This is also the problem the OP seems to have or it could be that the EDF man has replaced the meter with one that only has one control connector like yours and did what he did to mine and join the two control wires together. On this we are saying the same but differently because I am using English and (probably rightly so) you are putting in French words.   Before I finish my post I am going to try to insert a photo again using a different browser.   [URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205701.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205701.jpg[/IMG][/URL]   Wow look at that it works, that's my meter.   Now then this will help, this is a photo of the one fitted last year and my guess is it looks different to yours.   [URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151128_162612.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151128_162612.jpg[/IMG][/URL]   Now mine was fitted new last year.   That should now clear matters up, sorry for the cross wires and me being wound up by the Forum software, deep apologies.   Now I can put up pictures this is the one of the timer and relays we had installed to 'zone' the house. The timer can control up to four 'zones' but we use just two.   [URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205712.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205712.jpg[/IMG][/URL]  

[quote user="Chancer"] So are you saying that you can have both Tempo and HP/HC Quillan?   Are they not mutually exclusive?   In any case I have no knowledge or experience of Tempo and if Angela has Tempo plus HP/HC then please ignore my comments.   A modern Sagem or other make of compteur electronique does not have contacts for eau, just a single pole non changeover HP/HC contact plus data and ground for the téléreportage, they must be different ones for Tempo which in any case is no longer available, maybe when you change from Tempo to HP/HC they leave the existing meter and you can still use the functionality.   Thanks for the link re the tempo programming but as my head is full of enough stuff at the moment and its unlikely that I will ever encounter Tempo I havn't read it, sorry [:(] [/quote]   No your wrong again. From the link I gave. There are seven different setting controlling which colour day and then ether night, night/day or nothing, the same is for the water. It is still available and it is displayed on the new EDF website. The reason it is hard to get is because people down south can run their A/C in the summer for the price of a 40w lamp bulb. In the summer (blue days) we pay just 0.09 per unit. HC/HP is 0.11 and of course standard is 0.14. Seeing as we are at home all summer it saves us a fortune what with all the washing, water heating, laundry etc. Our bill is around €1,700, down from €2,600 since we install air heat pump units and when I did a spread sheet two years ago just going to the HC/HP tariff would take us up to just over €4k and a plain standard tariff would mean we (well me really) would work for nothing. EJP was even cheaper which is what the previous owners had but we couldn't get it. I think the OP may well be warm over winter but her pockets will be a lot lighter when she out her first 12 month bill. Personally I would have stuck with EJP like Idun said and spent my first years savings on a couple of paraffin heaters. Problem is you can't go back to EJP which was by far the best tariff.   By the way you don't have to change the digital meter to change tariff, all the technician has to do is break the seal, re-program it and re-seal it. With the exception of Tri-Phase it is 'one meter fits all'. There is nothing physically different between them. That's another reason why I think it is the programming but as you say even EDF technicians can be stupid at times.   Easy to spot the difference when you look through the window of the box. If you see a LCD digital display then it is what we are talking about. If you have counters, like you used to get in the UK in the old days, then it isn't and you can't program it. If it is yellow then it is Linky and something I know nothing about.    

[quote user="Chancer"] Quillan, you cannot "program" a compteur to alter anything on HP/HC, I can only assume you are talking of an EJP compteur which I have no knowledge of and I assume that if Angela has moved to HP/HC then she has a new compteur electronique (not Linky).   When i say they cannot be programmed the EDF engineers with their access code can change from standard tariff to HP/HC and also choose the plage d'horaire, the Customer can only scroll through the meter readings, settings, the PDL number etc   It seems to me that Angelas disjoncteur jour/nuit is incorrectly wired and she hasnt replied as to whether she got an electrician in or whether the hardwiring is still the same as for EJP, in which case if the contacteur has double throw contacts (common, normally open and normally closed) all that needs to be done is to change the wire(s) from the N/O contact to the N/C one or vice versa. [/quote]   Sorry but if your assumption is correct and she has a none Linky digital meter then she can, I know because when they changed my meter they set it to HC/HP and when I tried to program it how I wanted it there was only option for HC/HP and not Tempo..   I cannot give a direct link to the PDF version but if you Google "Programmation compteur EDF HC/HP Paramètres" there is a link to a PDF file which is really for the technician and how to program it but it also explains how the user can determine if the water and heating comes on all the time, just on nights or not at all. If you have Tempo you can program it further for each individual colour both night and day. Not even the technician can program the physical time (Hour) of when the day finishes and the night starts because this is activated by a signal sent by EDF.   If we are talking user manual and not the technicians manual the it explains that it is done by the blue buttons. If you press the top button it steps through the functions, when you get to the one that says EAU. Now press the bottom one and you can step through the two choices which are EAU 1 for water on at night or EAU 2 which is day and night. Once selected press the top button again and it saves and moves on to the next function. The next function is heating which is displayed as CHAU. This can be set to CHAU 0 for all heating off, CHAU 1 for nights only and CHAU 2 for night and day. Press the top button again to save and move on. Because she wants the heating on beyond 22:30 she should get a timer and relays installed then set the meter to CHAU 2. The alternative is to set it to CHAU 2 then if each heater has a manual switch on it to go round and turn them off at night. The problem is in the morning when she will have to manually turn them on. We used to do that before we bought the timer.   My guess is that the technician never set up the meter when he changed it and the hot water (EAU) is set to EAU 2 so it is actually on all the time. I say this because the Technician won't touch the consumer side of the meter other than to reconnect the wires. Seeing as the older, mechanical meters have the same relay system as the new ones even if he swapped the wires round the wrong way being only a relay contact it would still work. If however he touched the consumer panel he could have changed the wiring like you said but it is highly unlikely I think unless he was trying to be 'helpful'.    

Ok then, have you seen your meter and does it look like any of the meters in the link below and if so which one (if it is a mechanical meter like the ones on the left the case may be black)?   French Electricity Meters   If you rent your house out for short periods especially in the winter do you expect the renters to register with EDF and pay the electricity bills or are you going make a guess at what they have used? How can you see what electricity you have used? If you think you can estimate their usage then be careful because they might leave you wit a hefty bill. As an example of how people think when you do this the electricity supply for our boat is fully inclusive with the mooring fees. When we have a really cold spell we go to the boat because we have about four electric heaters we can leave on 24/7 and the boat almost glows in the dark. It's cheaper than being at home and the way we look at it is free electricity. People who live on their boats there often run an extra cable from the pontoon in the winter because each connection is limited to 16A so they can 'double' it up to 32A. So you need to think quite carefully about how much of the rent you are allowing for electricity because they will think of it as free but that's another issue.   If the meter is outside in  box you are still allowed to have access to it. If you don't have a 'key' then you can buy one from most Brico places. It is a 'one key fits all' and the idea of locking the outside cabinet is to protect the meter from the elements. You have the right to access the meter for readings (and to program it if it is more modern). The meters have a seal over where the cables enter from EDF. Breaking that seal is an offence and there is an alarm that is triggered (on newer meters) if you attempt to open that part of the meter. Where the cables come out of the meter to your house is just covered by a plastic plate, there is no seal nor alarm. It also has the relay outputs for controlling both hot water and heating. You or your electrician have access to this part of the meter.   Anyway the rest of your problem will require an enhanced modification to your system to get it to do what you want. The question is do you spend the money now or wait for possibly four years before the new Linky meter is installed which will work differently to all the currently installed meters. Having said that the type of system I have does not rely on the meter (with the exception of red days in my case) and it does save me money because I have zoned the house (living and sleeping areas). No point in having the heating active in the bedrooms during the day and doing it this way means I don't have to think about if I left the heaters on or not.   Just a slight note. The Linky meters I am told are very 'Smart'. We have the meter that is next to the yellow one in the photo with a separate 60A EDF breaker. We can get a little extra out of our breaker before it trips, probably about an extra 6A. With the Linky meter you can't do this because the meter is super sensitive and controls the tariff. Best way to explain this is if all out heating is on with that extra 6A we can boil a kettle. When we change to the Linky we won't have the extra 6A and any attempt to boil a kettle will trip the house electrics out if all the heating is on.

Works in preview but not when it is saved. This forum software is getting to be a right pain and nobody will do anything. The meter is a very light grey unit with a display in the middle and two blue buttons, one above the other to the right of the display. The buttons are for the consumer, in other words for you to use to set the way it works. You cannot do anything wrong and EDF expect that you use them hence they should have left a manual for it. Tried bottled gas, big problem with condensation so we changed to those clever paraffin heaters, they are wonderful but then they are around €200 a throw. We only get 22 red days a year. We leave a hot water bottle and a box of condoms in the bedroom, they soon work out how to keep warn (wink). Actually we have reversible clim which works very well and is very cheap to run in the bedrooms. In the living area we have a massive insert log burner that can throw a lot of heat out some of which is piped round the house. Doesn't heat the bedrooms right up but only to about 16 deg so you only have to raise the heat another 4 to 5 deg. Then we have the trusty paraffin heaters. The house also keeps the temperature inside quite well (it's double bricked with cavity insulation - keeps it cool in summer as well) so we only switched the heating on this month and it will go off in March, sometimes earlier. Funny enough because Tempo predicts when it's a red day on the whole of France it is the north that decides when it is a red day and you have a 50/50 chance that down here in the day it will be 18 deg plus so basically with a bit of luck we muddle through. Anyway as somebody else said it is probably the way your meter (if it is the one I think it is) is programed. EDF won't program the consumer side for you, that's up to you, they just leave it as it comes out the box which does you no favours.

If you kept your old meter and it looks something like the photo below then if installed correctly you may just need to program it. [URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205701.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205701.jpg[/IMG][/URL] If you don't have a manual for it then you need to ask EDF for one. Go to an EDF shop is the best bet but you can try phoning their helpdesk although I wouldn't hold my breath. You are stuck with the hours to automatically switch unless you have a timer and relay(s) installed. We have such equipment installed and a photo is below. [URL=http://s134.photobucket.com/user/ckenway/media/20151127_205712.jpg.html][IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q99/ckenway/20151127_205712.jpg[/IMG][/URL] The timer is the bit with a display and buttons. We have two relays controlling the electric radiators, one for the 'living' areas (lounge, kitchen) and another for the bedrooms. With this system we have the heating come on all the time* on the EDF meter and allow the timer to control when it comes on and off. Because we are here all the time the living areas come on at 06:30 and go off at 23:00. We also have a wireless thermostat in the living are. The bedrooms come on at 06:00, off at 09:00, on again at 21:00 and off at 23:00. There is enough heat stored in the radiators for them to still give off heat for about an hour after they are switched off. I can't remember how much these cost including installation but I think it was around 200 to 300 Euros. If however they replaced the meter you may well have a Linky meter (this is a yellow box with a LCD display about the size of the average mobile phone screen). We are all supposed to have one of these by 2020 and they make life a bit more complicated mainly because they don't have the control that old meter has unless you attach a special box/interface. The problem is the box/interface, I am told is going to cost you a few hundred euros plus installation (done by your electrician, not EDF) as EDF does not supply them as part of the Linky meter. You can't even control the water heater from the meter without this interface. Hope that helps a little. * We actually have Tempo so the meter is set to allow the heating to be on day and night for both blue and white days but not on red days or nights. However the meter can be programmed by the technician to work on the HC/HP tariff and you do not have access to this part of the meter hence the need for the technician to do it.

The thing is so much information is gathered by so much software, one only has to look at browsers. Then there are programs like Facebook, it's only till you decide to use it on a mobile device where you have to agree to what it wishes to have access to that you can see. The most alarming is of course your contact list and your document folder which may have some very private or commercially sensitive material in it. If somebody asked me for the email address of a forum member, or a friend I would always aske that member of friend if it was OK to give it to the person who asked, Facebook does not do this, it just looks at your contact list and compares it against others to suggest friends you may wish to talk to. I am not suggesting that Facebook will access such actual documents but if hackers can get in to the Facebook servers and retrieve names and passwords they can use it to get access to your device and what you have on it. It transpires also that the only way you can completely get ride of Facebook is to wipe your device (do a factory reset) even though you have run the un-install program otherwise it keeps accessing your data. Also everything wants to connect you to 'the cloud', Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the list goes on. Keeping in mind that at some time or another all these sites have had their users email accounts hacked why would you ever store anything across the Internet. The logic of course is sound, your data will never, ever, get lost but their is a price and that is your loss of security in that it might be hacked. So Microsoft is one of many and should not be specifically singled out. Of course some 'smart *rses' will say they are using Linux and are therefore safe, same can be said of Apple users but the truth, if you go looking for it, is that the only benefit they have is that they are minority operating systems and a little more difficult to hack but not impossible. The same can be said with viruses for such systems.

Well personally I have never had a problem with Orange and have always been dealt with very quickly and efficiently. In general the only time you hear about things like ISP's etc. is when somebody has a bad experience. Nobody normally seems to bother to say how good a company is. I believe they are still the only company that has a dedicated English speaking sales and helpdesk with regard to ISP's etc. for those that need it.

Wouldn't know cause I never give them, or the postman, anything and they have stopped knocking now.

Just to say, and I know this is off my topic a bit, "Windows 10 is available free for the first year". This means if you want a copy after 29th July 2016 you will have to pay for it. Those that have already updated will pay nothing even after the first year till it's "end of life". Windows 10 is the last and final version of Windows as we know it and a brand new product will replace it. The next operating system will be what is called a "servicing " product which means you will pay an annual subscription to use it and a lot of it's features will cloud based, a bit like Chromebooks. So it may pay to turn back on your updates in Windows 7 and get the update (if your computer can support it) before the end of July next year.

[quote user="EuroTrash"]That's worrying. Are you saying that even if you have disabled automatic updates, it's still going to keep hassling you? My partner is technical dinosaur with a fairly elderly pc, and I don't think either of them could cope with W10. I dread to think what will happen if it manages to sneak in.[/quote] It may have already turned up in part as it is a massive download. It could take days for it to become active as the file gets assembled on the PC. It depends how long the machine is on and connected to the Internet every day. Likewise if the computer is not capable of running Windows 10 then it won't activate and try to install. Turning off udates is really not advisable. Windows 10 is actually smaller than 7 and runs faster I have noticed. booting, which I have timed on my machine, is 20+ seconds faster. I have never had Windows 8 or 8.1 so I can't compare As said if your computer can't update then Windows 7 will be supported for some time to come although it left "mainstream support" on 13th Jan 2015. That means ther is no free support, no software ugrades etc but there will be things like security patches until 14th Jan 2020. "Mainstream Support" for Windows 8.1 (you should have already updated from 8 to 8.1) ends October 2018 and like 7 will have security patches available till 2023. If you have Windows XP then all support ended in 2014 although some products that run under XP like MS Office 2007 continue to be updated as does Security Essentials.

If like me you have been forced into upgrading to Windows 10 you will find that the default browser is now MD Edge which does not have a compatibility mode unlike IE11. IE11 is also shipped with Windows 10 but you have to look for it. IE11 is the last release of IE as we know it and will probably be removed from Windows 10 at some stage. The problem being is that because you don't have the compatibility mode you get all the problems that you had in IE11 before you switched on compatibility mode. The most annoying of all is that you only get a small text box but the good news is you don't get any of the text formatting problems. It's bad enough having the adverts taking up a quarter of the page width but the text box being only a third of the width of the page it leaves a big area of white nothingness right in the middle of the screen which do not look very professional. Google toolbar does not work with Edge so there is no translation plugin although Edge does have a built in spell checker. So now I have three Internet browsers on my PC, IE11 which I no longer use, Edge (which I like) and Google Chrome (because it has a built in translator). Fortunately Edge and Chrome are very similar to use and look at so you don't have to think very hard about how to do things. Of course Chrome still has the problem of a small text box unless you activate compatibility mode. Seeing as Windows 10 is to become a 'forced' update for Windows 7 and above (this means you won't be able to stop the installation, just re-schedule it every time you log in) this is something the forum owners need to sort out.

For humble plebs like us it is highly unlikely that anyone will bother to hack your router but that's not to say they can't. You might find the following interesting although it is aimed at UK routers but it gives you the gest of it all. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/network-wifi/how-reset-your-router-rid-it-of-malware-3595477/ There is other stuff on the web about Router Viruses and their most common effect is to change the DNS server then lock it. I know with Orange they can check your router remotely and if required help you 're-flush' the operating system and if that fails they just give you returns number and you can swap it out at your nearest Orange shop. I guess that is one of the benefits of renting your Livebox, it stays under 'warranty' for as long as you have it.