Technical Test Thread

Good luck SCYLLA. I feel for you And thank goodness, like Sue I have not had a problem getting here

It's a bit slow though

Sue I tend to log in via the Loch Garten Group or RSPB Home Page and lately have had no problems. Sometimes it goes haywire though and can take several attempts when coming in via the group. The Home Page is usually better.

I use Internet Explorer by preference, now upgraded to IE10.

Scylla - so sorry to hear of your problems :( Hope it doesn't take too long to fix.

Well!  Spoke to 3 different people at Dell (the phrase "pillar to post" springs to mind), the last of which concluded that my laptop might not legitimately be in the UK at all, besides which they don't assist with data transfer over a network.

So I've gone back to square one and everything's working as it should - but not how I want it.  Can't have everything ;-)

Hello scylla,

Seems like you've had a lot of work to do on your computers recently! If you need any help/advice, you know where I am....

I am interested to hear now you get on with the SSD, and what the capabilities are of the machine (CPU, motherboard, RAM etc). My desktop PC is 6 years old, and if I were building a new one from scratch I would probably put in an SSD as the system drive (Windows, Linux etc), getting the fastest one I could afford, and perhaps use that too for temporary data storage such as saving and editing recordings, before moving it to a standard hard disk (and then archiving to a backup drive if necessary). But I don't have the money for a new system right now :-( It's a waste of money IMHO getting one of the slower, cheaper SSDs, although you don't need a particularly large one, as data can be stored elsewhere if not read/written intensively.

I think the CPU is the main bottleneck on my machine (it's an old 3.4GHz Celeron D), and although I do have a good but rather hot-running graphics card (bought 2nd hand), it's often not possible to get software to offload its work to the GPU ('hardware acceleration'), so I can't use its full power. The motherboard won't take any modern processors, so I think it's got to the point where there's little point doing more upgrades on my system. But I hate throwing things away if they still work, particularly high tech stuff which has required so much engineering.

I'll PM you eventually, RtB, haven't had nap yet, can't take my eyes off Carnyx :-/

It's frustrating when you can't upgrade, or make full use of what you've got, because of the bottleneck caused by one component.

I don't think you should care too much about slight differences in SDD performance as described in reviews - in real-life we wouldn't notice the difference.  Getting an SDD of some kind installed is the main thing, the best you can get for budget/reliability, I'm told.  Having said that I went for the newish Samsung 840 Pro when the highly-regarded 830 shot up in price after being phased out!

It's all very well soldiering on with the best of motives, but it's a low-level stress you don't need - unless you are a lot more laid back than wot I am ;-)

Apologies for what is probably a really dumb question, but I can't work out how to take snapshots from webcams. I have a macbook. Unless there is a stills button as at Dunedin, if I try and save something I get the webpage but not a snapshot.

I wonder if I can now post a pic.

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Screenshots ©Scottish Wildlife Trust

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