What I mean is, even while downloading a huge file without interuptions, I can load pages about 70% of the time, the other 30% the pages won't load until I refresh them about 20-30 times - all the while the speed of the downloading file is unfaltered. I have already checked the routers connection while this happens and it reports that everything is fine and connected ok. I'm not sure what the page filing is though? I will have a check of the phone cables when I get in tonight. Thanks all! Much appreciated.

Hmm. Not sure about that - if I download a 1gb file for instance, there appears to be no break in the download speed of that file, I'll get a consistent (more-or-less) speed for the whole of the download. If it were this sync issue (which I don't understand ;-) ) why would that only start to happen about a week ago?

I was starting to think that the issue may be wider than just my connection. Many friends have reported similar issues, despite being connected with different ISPs. ...as to it being a DNS issue, I thought that myself, but the same thing occurrs if I access say, google, by IP. It does seem to be random - I'm not sure if it happens at exactly the same time on all machines, as they are in different rooms and the problem only happens for say 10-15 seconds at a time. Hmmm...this is a puzzle. At first I thought it was the wireless network - I don't use wireless very much - IMO, wireless just isn't good enough yet, but it happens with my wired machines too. It only appears to be port 80, so the DNS was a good guess.

...but then with inflation being put at nearly 10% (by economists, not the government) then the bank stand to at least gain £2970. Nice work if you can find it.

Hi all, I'm wondering if anyone has a cure for this problem I am having. About 70% of the time, web pages load fine - and fast. I have an 8meg ADSL line, and when testing the speed it comes up as expected. I can download huge files in no time so I know the connection is fine. However, about 30% of the time a web page will simply time out - this site, google, M$, it doesn't matter which - it's like port 80 is being throttled. I've run some network software, checked who is connected to my router (no-one other than the machines in my house) and there appears to be nothing wrong, yet, I have to sit there and continuously click refresh until a page will load. It's not a problem with the PC, I have 2 others that I have tried on the same network and the problem occures with all of them. 2 are running Linux and one is running WinXP. Help!! I don't know where to look next.

Does anyone know of a list of companies that charge, and how much they charge, for non-payment by direct debit? I would be very interested.

Well, for one thing, we lend them our money that they 'lend on' at a very small interest rate. In A&L's 'cheque clearing account' (despite such things not actually existing ;-)) there is 2 billion quid at any one point. Even the libor rate overnight would give hansom returns on our money. We are already paying for our banking. If we lend to them at 3% below the (publicised) inflation rate then we have our money tied up and thus we cannot invest it elsewhere at a better return. We pay by giving up the 'right' to invest our money at better return. Personally, I have no problem with paying for banking services - I simply wouldn't use them if they continued to offer the same standard of services that they offer now. I.e. Awful customer services, mistakes - often, and generally treating their customers with contempt. If Tesco did the same, I would no longer shop there. Waiting 7 days for cheques to clear is substandard - so is waiting 3 days to transfer money between accounts in THE SAME BANK! 25 quid to move 30 quid into a French bank account? Indeed! The main problem I foresee with charging for these 'services' - which I think they can hardly be called seeing as there really is no 'service' from these companies - is that under ECHR laws, no member state's citizens can be forced by local legislation to pay for a service and/or goods. Under the Wages Act in this country, employees have no choice where their earnings are paid. This is no their choice, which means that effectively to have to pay for the services that banks provide would breach our human rights - and quite rightly so. I have no problem paying any company for services used. If I buy a dishwasher, then I expect to pay for it - if I don't want to pay for it, I don't use that company. However, I have systematically been attempting to eradicate banks from my life - yet, I am trapped at nearly every turn. Why should I not also have the choice of NOT paying for these services? Once I have the choice, then they can charge whatever they like; I'll take my chances with the 'honest' thieves and keep my earnings under my mattress.

""He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf."

Just a quick point, Al Gore was instrumental in creating the Internet (or ARPAnet as it was). It's well documented. Just because people didn't believe his claim, does not make it untrue.

It was going to happen very quickly, but then we did start to think "why the rush" - as for buying another house - not for me, not for a long time - I'm just going to rent one locally for a while.

So, at this time, whilst I appreciate the sentiment, I think it best that we continue as we have been doing so. EDIT: I think I'll close this thread before it degenerates as all threads about funding have in the past.

Yep - unless you use a freeware pdf print 'driver'. Before you ask, I have no idea where you would get one for Windows.

A PDF is a portable document format (that wasn't it's orig. acronym, but it's been adopted pretty much world-wide). It's multi page, and is viewable by anyone with the PDF Viewer - which is free, and pretty much the defacto standard for viewing documents over the internet, or in countries where the formatting may be different etc... Your scanning software may have an option to scan to PDF format - mine has, although in Windows I would imagine that you would need to pay for that.

That's what .tiff files were designed for - multiple documents. If you want each page as a jpeg, then I'm afraid you will have to scan each one as a jpeg. Is there any reason you couldn't scan them to a PDF file?

Ha - it may have escaped your notice, but there was a bit of a serious error made recently that resulted in a LOT of threads dissapearing. Threads started that were older than a certain age were deemed not worth spending time restoring.

Bah - why didn't you just say that the font size had changed? ;-)

Yep, currently watching that one, the thing is, things like this, more so than other things IMO, appear to shoot up at the last minute. There's still nearly 5 days to go on that auction, and yet, there are 7 bids already. It's a nightmare!! All I want to do is build a weather satellite station so I can see if the jet-stream really is moving North or not.

True bookie. However, after many years of using M$ products, I am inclined to blame them first. I have spent many hours debugging code, troubleshooting connections, funny happenings etc... and at the end of it - it's Microsoft who have, either by design or not, been at fault. I imagine I'm not the only one who has gone through this over the years, and so the natural thing to do is to blame M$ from the outset. I admit they are not always at fault, however, they usually are. Anyway, your problem: is it just that the window has been 'restored' and just happens to be very small? Can the window be resised when it gets into this state?

The problems you have described could easily be caused by spyware - due to it's very nature, spyware doesn't exactly jump up and say "Here I am". It probably got in through the use of IE ;-)

If you think the issue is that simple, then with all due respect, I challenge you to publish your bank account and sort code in the Bear Garden. I'm not sure anyone would willingly publish their details in a publically accessible internet forum. If you are not prepared to do the same, then I suggest you already know the answer ;-) Yes, I did, and I stand by it (why wouldn't I???). Hardly irrelevant to the OP's question. We've had our wikipedia page graffitied, a variety of other slatings on other internet forums, and constant legal 'threats'. Most of these threats we have either ignored or taken down posts that have been requested - to fight a legal battle against the people we are here to inform and perhaps protect is not really in our interests. It doesn't take a genius to guess that the same level of 'attacks' might occur if our bank account details were known to the public, and it a valid concern. I'm sure you are aware of the incident with Jeremy Clarkson, where he published his bank details to show people that ID fraud was not a concern - only to find that a direct debit had been set up, paying 500 quid out of his account to a charity. As to whether the bank knows it's our account or not, I'm pretty sure that currently, no, they do not, and that is another reason why it would not be wise to publish that information publically.

Not yet - just waiting for the sale of my house to go through, then it's on the cards!!

Does anyone know where I can get one of these cheaply? I have tried ebay, and occassionaly one does appear, but then people bid silly money on them often taking them higher than the original price from the makers.

TIFFs are multi-page documents, so even if you only had one page it would be tricky to convert from .tif to .jpg. There must be an option somewhere in there to save to another file format - if it's M$, the format is probably .bmp. If not, you could try opening the tif in PSP, Photoshop or the GIMP (free) and saving as a JPG or PNG or similar.

It's nothing to do with snobbery. It's simply the better program. No more spyware (well, reduce amounts of spyware - you are, after all still using Windows), no more bloatware, no more strange happenings, properly implemented tabbed browsing. Personally, I can't see why you wouldn't want to change - it's free, and simply less troublesome.

It was an observation that it's not only the banks that would have a field day with the account details being published here. The fact that other sites were not mentioned on the thread is irrelevent - neither were postal orders etc... I'm not sure I follow the point.