Thinking of buying a new PC? Decide v. soon

[Hornspieler]

One nifty thing about Firefox is that you can easily increase/decrease print size ad lib with each web page by pressing Control + the Plus/Minus keys. Chrome is faster than Firefox, I think, but they seem to have a thing against bookmarks/favourites, which are surely absolutely essential in a browser.

A very useful tip, JFLL, and it works for me, using Windows XP Pro on my computer when reading these message boards.

HS

[Tony Halstead]

Using 'Chrome' ( which I do) you can easily get to 'bookmarks' by clicking on the little spanner icon in the top right hand corner.
This opens a drop-down menu with bookmarks quite near the top.
Also - I'm not sure whether salymap means 'see the print' - as in 'the text size is too small'?
This is VERY easy to alter ( in Chrome) if you have a mouse wheel: click on the screen, hold down the 'Ctrl' button on the keyboard and use the mouse wheel to change the text size.
if on the other hand 'see the print' means 'see the print menu' - once again this ( 'print') is available in the drop-down menu under the spanner icon.

[Don Petter]

One nifty thing about Firefox is that you can easily increase/decrease print size ad lib with each web page by pressing Control + the Plus/Minus keys.

As does IE!

[JFLL]

Using 'Chrome' ( which I do) you can easily get to 'bookmarks' by clicking on the little spanner icon in the top right hand corner.
This opens a drop-down menu with bookmarks quite near the top.
Also - I'm not sure whether salymap means 'see the print' - as in 'the text size is too small'?
This is VERY easy to alter ( in Chrome) if you have a mouse wheel: click on the screen, hold down the 'Ctrl' button on the keyboard and use the mouse wheel to change the text size.

Yes, I know about the spanner icon, thanks, Waldhorn, but it's not quite the same thing as a bookmark pane permanently there at side of the page (as with IE and Firefox), is it? What you get is a series of drop-down menus, which is more time-consuming and far less convenient. I tend to keep Chrome in reserve for using with web pages which for some reason don't work with Firefox. I suspect that if Chrome adopted proper bookmarks in a pane they would win more converts from Firefox, which has got bloated with age, so much so that I regularly have to kill the Firefox process and start again as it's taking up so much CPU.

[Don Petter]

Also - I'm not sure whether salymap means 'see the print' - as in 'the text size is too small'?
This is VERY easy to alter ( in Chrome) if you have a mouse wheel: click on the screen, hold down the 'Ctrl' button on the keyboard and use the mouse wheel to change the text size.

That also works in IE.

[MrGongGong]

Are the contributors to these messageboards the only people who still use IE ?

[salymap]

Thanks to waldhorn and others but the more I read the more I feel like staying where I am with IE at the moment as my health problems make me lazy about change. Really, if I lost Youtube it's only some old films of Elgar outside Worcester Cathedral that I would miss on my favourites.

[PJPJ]

Are the contributors to these messageboards the only people who still use IE ?

No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

The latest IE is, I think, a perfectly good browser. Having tried them all, I use Chrome most of the time as I find it the most user-friendly.

Two websites which are not Chrome friendly are hmv.com (where buying becomes as assault course of logging in and logging in and so on) and MDT whose sorting on Chrome doesn't. MDT's website has been on the verge of being replaced for some time.

If you have favourite youtube videos you can download them very easily*. This has the advantage for resizing to the size you want, rather than too big or too small - this gave rise to the term "Goldilocks Syndrome".


* JDownloader, some web browsers and so on...... However, there are a few youtube videos which are blocked, I say a few but have come across only the one.

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHZ1ETTBeI

I had to get a new lap-top just before the arrival of Windows 7 which was a bit of a pain having heard all the tales of woe about Vista. Dell did supply a Windows 7 upgrade DVD but I never used it as Vista has behaved very well for the three or four years I've been using it.

The Windows 8 information is a bit off-putting, so thanks for the warning. It needs some serious thought.

[Hornspieler]

I've just stumbled across this incredible bargain on Ebay.

Not for me personally, but I'm sure that someone out there would be interested.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280895927286?ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:GB:1120

NB This equipment is for PCs only. It is not suitable for TVs or Ipods etc.

HS

[Nick Armstrong]

What do people think about the option of 'upgrading' (as in spec rather than OS) by buying a secondhand, refurbished machine? I bought a secondhand MacBook (still with OSX 10.6) and have been more than happy with it. Unfortunately, my little local shop now has a MacBook Pro which I eye wistfully each time I pass. With a reasonable length guarantee - my shop offers 6 months' - they seem to me to be very good value, unless, of course, you want the latest, most luscious machine on the market and can afford it (I buy the cast-offs when people do that ).

I would favour your approach too, ff. I have one quite recent MacBook Pro (10.6) and an older one (10.5) still going strong.

The newer one was getting slow and the battery life was down to 2½ hours on full charge i thought it was coming to the end... but like 2Gongs, I set a day aside, made sure everything was backed up, deleted the Hard Drive completely, restoring to factory conditions - then reinstalled using the original discs with the computer, hooking up to and migrating over my backed up data.

It's worked like a miracle!

The MBP is working with the same lightning speed as when new, and the battery is currently showing at 9¾ hours on full charge.

I'd go for it, ff...

[johnb]

Caliban,

With a new Windows PC, once I have installed the software I use and once I have applied all the Windows and other updates, I backup my PC (using disc imagining software such as Acronis True Image).

This way I can restore that original image backup, rather than having to start from the factory setup. It saves a great deal of time. Once I have downloaded the further Windows updates, updated the Firewall and Antivirus software and installed any further software that I need I then take a further disc image backup - and use that when I next decide to clear the computer.

There must be similar disc imaging software for a Mac.

(Of course, I do other periodic backups as well.)

By the way, when I got this HP PC about a year ago it recommended doing what you did once a year, but then Windows is notorious for accumulating junk which slows the system down.

Just one other thought - I partition my hard drive in two: one partition for the (Windows) system files and software, the other partition for all my data. This way I only need to backup my system partition whenever I install new software and it makes it easier to restore a backup without affecting my data.

[MrGongGong]

There must be similar disc imaging software for a Mac.
.

NOt wanting to become a mac bore
but ALL macs have the time machine backup now
which is in my experience is infinitely better , free and easy to use than any of the PC things I used to use
sad but true i'm afraid ............ just gets on with it in the background everytime you connect a backup drive

I used to faff about with disc images etc but not any more which means I spend more time doing music with my computer ............

[french frank]

but ALL macs have the time machine backup now

Which is brilliant, but I'm still feeling uncomfortable because my second external hard drive is currently being repaired. I back up to that with SuperDuper! as well.

[Nick Armstrong]

Caliban...
There must be similar disc imaging software for a Mac.

NOt wanting to become a mac bore
but ALL macs have the time machine backup now
which is in my experience is infinitely better , free and easy to use than any of the PC things I used to use
sad but true i'm afraid ............ just gets on with it in the background everytime you connect a backup drive
I used to faff about with disc images etc but not any more which means I spend more time doing music with my computer ............

Yes - time machine is unbelievably easy and effective. Now I've got the right Mac-compatible external hard drive, the back-up process is just plug-in and wait.

I have no real idea what 'disc image' means... it's one of those computer things that makes my brain switch off.

[Resurrection Man]

And don;t forget that with OSX Lion that there is a hidden copy of a virgin system and that if your Mac throws a wobbler then it will sort itself out...pretty clever, huh!

Caliban...I am surprised that reloading gave you such a performance boost as generally speaking the underlying UNIX OS core is pretty damn good at managing disk fragmentation etc that you don't need to worry about it. I do suspect that you might have accumulated a load of old caches etc and for that I can thoroughly recommend Onyx for springcleaning your Mac.