Time for an upgrade

[Analoguesat]

I use a Fractal Design case for my PC and have recently upgraded a friend's PC to slightly smaller model, as his case was rubbish.
Please check this manufacturer, if you haven't already ordered the case.
http://www.fractal-design.com/

That is a SERIOUSLY badly designed website - it took an eternity to load fully here on a 2.5meg connection

 

[Archive7]

That is a SERIOUSLY badly designed website - it took an eternity to load fully here on a 2.5meg connection

Sorry about that. Why such a slow connection?

 

[Analoguesat]

Because we are at the end of about 2-3 miles of ratty copper cable and thats all the cables will give us until the next technological jump comes along. We are too far from the cabinet for FTC ( the nearby town has all been done) and the chances of us getting a radio delivered service are remote in the extreme.

Ive investigated broadband via satellite but the monthly costs for anything other than light users are horrendous

 

[skomedal]

Sorry about that. Why such a slow connection?

Rural

We do suffer ancient copper wire connection

 

[skomedal]

Snap AS

 

[Analoguesat]

Rural

We do suffer ancient copper wire connection

OK we could probably be classed as rural but the centre of town is less than 2 miles from the front door.

 

[skomedal]

End of line user ( or close too ) maybe

 

[Analoguesat]

Yup virtually end of line - in a brilliant bit of planning instead of taking the direct route the cable goes round "three and a half sides of a square" to reach us..

 

[skomedal]

Yup virtually end of line - in a brilliant bit of planning instead of taking the direct route the cable goes round "three and a half sides of a square" to reach us..

ME too

 

[Archive7]

Ive investigated broadband via satellite but the monthly costs for anything other than light users are horrendous

Assuming the satellite route cost is reasonable, can you get a license easily for a two way LNB (Transmit-receive) as I think this was and probably still is a major obstacle?

 

[skomedal]

Assuming the satellite route cost is reasonable, can you get a license easily for a two way LNB (Transmit-receive) as I think this was and probably still is a major obstacle?

And if you PC stream live Tv, what then???????????????????

 

[Archive-8]

And if you PC stream live Tv, what then???????????????????

By the sounds of it, you get a very large bill.

 

[skomedal]

By the sounds of it, you get a very large bill.

Nuff said

 

[Analoguesat]

Just looking at the costs again - a 50GB monthly limit on a 9meg down connection with Avanti is 60 quid a month all but a few pennies. (unlimited between 00 & 07)

Thats more than double what Im paying atm - and Im on the Plusnet unlimited deal. The downloads get there eventually, but forget streaming TV. Video streaming sites work most of the time - but forget the HD streams unless you really like the spinning circles of buffering..

 

[Channel Hopper]

The downloads get there eventually, but forget streaming TV. Video streaming sites work most of the time - but forget the HD streams unless you really like the spinning circles of buffering..

I had that for about 16 months, then finally BT decided to come out and find a loose connection on the top of the nearest telegraph pole. Looking for some compensation for the time involved calling them alone (upwards of 1 week ), plus the change to a busiess tariff under their sales team claim it would be resolved in the next 48 hours once I upgraded from residential .....................

 

[skomedal]

Thats more than double what Im paying atm - and Im on the Plusnet unlimited deal. The downloads get there eventually, but forget streaming TV. Video streaming sites work most of the time - but forget the HD streams unless you really like the spinning circles of buffering..

Am with Agder breiband ( norway adsl2+ ) unlimited ~£33 /mo. 3 meg total, end of line user ( 5 miles from exchange ), can surf net and stream filmon uk psb channels hd at same time no probs.

Regards

 

[Analoguesat]

I had that for about 16 months, then finally BT decided to come out and find a loose connection on the top of the nearest telegraph pole. Looking for some compensation for the time involved calling them alone (upwards of 1 week ), plus the change to a busiess tariff under their sales team claim it would be resolved in the next 48 hours once I upgraded from residential .....................

Its actually currently the fastest we have ever had. When bb first became available we were originally told no chance. Then we got about a meg which did for a few years. Then it went up to 2.5meg - until a tree rubbed through the cable and we went back down to 50kbps for a month until Openreach got round to replacing half a mile of cable (loads of trees needed felling which all needed licensing under the felling laws, new poles installed, trenches digging where the cables went under power lines etc etc.)

 

[Analoguesat]

Going back to my comment about the badly designed website - the header image is nearly 500kb alone. With many people being on blazing fast connections web designers forget that there are still poor buggers limping along on pathetic bb connections so they dont bother optimising the web pages.

When I used to keep the old Analoguesat website on line it was first designed way back in the dial up days. Even when bb came along I deliberately kept the site simple for fast loading times. Uploading page changes could be fun at times on dial up

 

[Vipersan]

You might want to find a few more quid to double up the memory to 16gig especially if you're using on board video with a couple of monitors and you'll probably want to get a decent cpu cooler. Once you start crunching 10meg on Airspy that little thing will be louder than a 747 taking off, the BeQuiet range are cheap and silent.
If you intend playing around with the lower bands then branded PSUs are a good bet for EMC, something like Corsair, Seasonic or BeQuiet, I've seen some really crap cheap ones, CE stickered but with all the mains filtering replaced by wire links.
If you can afford it get an SSD for the OS, I went for a 250GB Corsair and I'm really impressed with the speed of it, much better than the SATA III drive it replaced.
This is how my SDR/sat PC has evolved complete with a pair of 24" monitors (both of which I found in skips!), the huge amount of desktop space is great when you're running four or five separate programmes and saves loads of window moving and minimising.

All in good time Paul ..
Just wanna get it up n running for now ..
Tweaks and additions later..
Apparently this one will upgrade to 32gb memory wise ..
so I gotta start feeding 'piggy-bank' again..
lol

..and yes Airspy is VERY demanding ...
The only thing that will run it smoothly atm is my core i7 lappy ..

Monitor wise I have a choice of outputs ..
VGA DVI and HDMI from the onboard chipset ...
..and I tend to use salvaged TVs as monitors ..
Currently using a 22inch Neon ..but I have a nice 32 inch LG I recently repaired the backlight LED array on ..
A nice TV ...but no PC input ..
So looks like its got 2B HDMI
;)

 

[Vipersan]

I just want to take a timeout to praise DPD ..
Delivery service ..
A class act ...
not all delivery services are created equal it seems.

This morning I received email notification of impending delivery of the PC case I ordered..
Delivered by DPD ..and a link to a tracking web page which didn't just use numbers ...but actually showed my house on google maps ..and a pointer to the delivery van...which moved as it made deliverys on refreshing the page..
You delivery number in the Q ...and a rough time window to expect delivery to take place (A one hour window)
You are even given the drivers name ...and the option to appoint a neighbour or a safe location to place the item if you can't be there ..
This is how all delivery services should operate and I have to give them 10 out of 10 ..
So smooth and efficient..
Apprently there is even a smart phone app that can be downloded which does the same job ..
The case is here now so I can resume the build ...though not the same case ordered ...
I changed it soon after ordering..before dispatch to allow more expansion slots..
Still a nice black tower tho..
;)