I would imgine the OP will be spending quite some time trying to find something for his quoted budget of £500 there Woppster! :)

Plus, spending that sort of money I would imagine he would like it to sound good as well. While I know you are somewhat partial to Naim, I personally have yet to hear anything by them that sounds remotely worth the money.

OP – what sort of music do you listen to and how loud do you like to listen? Is the quality of the sound something that is important to you or is it just a matter of being able to hear the music?

Thank you chaps for the ideas and suggestions – much appreciated. I am quite liking the look of the Chris Ward watches at the moment. Some great shouts.

Can’t do the Birmingham thing though as I won’t be back in the country.

Dunno. Fairly modest so likely to be up to around £700 tops. Which does take out stuff like Tag and Omega. Had been looking at one of the Citizen Satellite Wave watches but having tried it on again I am not convinced I like it enough to warrant spunking that much money on it.

I am assuming this is a genuine post rather than a “look at meeeeeee!!” post. Got to say that in the current climate any sort of a payrise is pretty good. There are a lot of people, not just in the public sector, who are on a knife edge just for their job let alone any notions of a pay rise. I would say what you have had is pretty good. but that’s just my opinion. :)

I guess it may depend on what your listening preferences are and how they would pair with your amp. Having said that, I have generally found Tannoy to pretty unfussy speakers when it comes to pairing with amps. Personally I do like Tannoy very much. Currently still have a pair of standmount Mercury S speakers that are roughly 25 years old and are still sounding lovely. The new Revolution XT floor standers are very nice and represent excellent value for money so I can’t imagine you going too far wrong with the Precision’s at what looks to be a bit of a bargain price.

I would argue that a pair of £1800 speakers (or any high priced speakers for that matter) can still sound pretty gash. For example, Focal. And others can have an interesting sound which you may or may not like eg Spendor. However, as I said, I can’t see you going wrong with these Tannoys. :)

I see someone has finally mentioned Swinley. An easy place to ride and have fun at if you can’t be bothered with maps etc.

Depending when you fancy riding then one starter for 10 is to go on one of the Trail Break rides. They have one coming up at the end of April which would be dead handy for you as it goes from Princess Risborough. If you fancy a challenge you can do the 65k ride Ride details

Not been mentioned yet that I can see but don’t rule out a Vectra either. About the same boot space as a Mondeo but probably cheaper to buy second hand. I have had a few over the years and found them to be quiet acceptable cars. The vintage you will be looking at for £1500 I would probably take the Vectra over the Mondeo.

Toyota Avensis?? Hideous cars. Bland, soulless underpowered. Quite probably the most boring car I have ever driven. You couldn’t pay me to own and drive one.

binners – Member

I’m authentic northern, working class scum. I loathe the Tories with every fibre of my being,

Really? **** me, I had never noticed that before in amongst your thoughtful and rational posts on politics. :)

If it really is only general snapping / point and shoot type photography I would go for the Panasonic Lumix TZ35. Brilliant little camera.

Panasonic Lumix TZ35 would be a pretty good start. Stupidly cheap now for what is an excellent small camera. Picture quality is superb. Yes, a DSLR will allow you to experiment more and be more arty with picture taking but if her main aim is to capture good quality pictures of things she is doing a part of a portfolio rather than becoming a photographer then I would suggest a DSLR will be a lot more bother and likely get in the way o what she is trying to achieve.

Would this be one that has possibly come into a sizeable pot of money quite recently? :)

Personally, I wouldn’t.

How many times have you won a million quid!??

Honestly the interweb really brings out the PO in people’s faces sometimes

Really? I assume you are including yourself in that statement then or perhaps care to elaborate on what you are trying to say. Nothing wrong with the statement you appear to be having a problem with

As Kryton says – these days it is not a massive amount of cash. Sure, there’s a bunch of things that could be paid off now and you will be able to be pretty comfortable for a long time ahead with your current lifestyle. But the key thing that a lot of people don’t seem to appreciate is that having £1m does not open a gateway to living life like a millionaire. There is a distinction between the two.

Sure, I would love to win that much money and it would make a material difference to my life. As others have said, it would allow more flexibility in choosing a job that may not necessarily pay so well but could give a lot more job and life satisfaction.

There is also Bluesound as an alternative although I don’t think they support BT. Main place to see / hear is Sevenoaks Sound and Vision – not sure why, but it may be that Sevenoaks are one of the only authorised distributors of NAD equipment these days. Not heard any of the devices but could be considered an alternative to Sonos.

I appreciate that my earlier reply was a tad frivolous.

I am at that age where traditionalists start talking about mid life crisis etc. To me, it feels as though it is that time of life where (as has been mentioned above) you become more acutely aware that time is passing by, your body is getting older and there are opportunities in life that you are close to being “beyond”. For me, it now becomes a case of sitting down and looking at the things that you really want to achieve, what you enjoy in life and deciding to make an effort to do something about it. It is all too easy to just flop on the sofa and switch on the tv. As others have said, try doing something different. Make an effort to go and do something at least once per week that is on your list of “likes” whether that be going to the cinema, or a pub that hosts live music or going out for a ride. Maybe a gym? Comedy? Maybe try a new sport. I took up hockey a few years ago as I was no longer playing football (and hadn’t done for a number of years) and adventure racing was a bit seasonal (spring and summer mostly). Plus I missed the experience of a team “event”. I found something I really enjoy and has also introduced me to a new circle of people. I also try to reduce or limit the things I really don’t like or that take too much of “my time”.

Try swinging – it’s cheaper. :)

Bikingcatastrophe……. Classic case of not reading the thread

Apologies. Yes, you are right, I did only skim read the thread and missed the bit where you said you had an S-Max. {Although, in my tenuous defence, that is really only a Mondeo with a different skin :) ]

You say that 95% of the time it is just you in the car. Is that really just you, or is it you and the dog? If it is just you then the remainder of my original post is still valid. Why not consider downsizing more to a medium family sized estate? Both the Mondeo and the V70 are BIG cars. Your dog isn’t that big. Why not consider the Focus, Astra, Golf, Octavia, Leon sized cars?

Not being rude here OP, honestly, but you don’t seem to be making a whole lot of sense. Which can be understandable when you are a bit too focussed on the wrong thing. Or perhaps, more accurately, not focussed correctly on the right thing(s). What are the facts and what are the requirements?

You seem to want a newer car that is cheaper to run than your current car. Currently you have a Mondeo? Then WTF do you want to be looking at a Volvo V70 for?? This is a slightly bigger, probably much heavier car than you currently have. To pursue this as an option just doesn’t make any sense if you are wanting to reduce your motoring costs. To reduce your costs you almost certainly want to be dropping a car size to something like a Focus or Astra or Octavia. We had a Mondeo until earlier this year. I really loved that car. It was a great car but it got to the point where it was becoming obvious it was to big a car to be lumping all over the place with mostly just me in it. Averaging 600-700 miles per tank – but it was a huge tank and before the recent diesel price drop was getting scarily close to £100 to fill up. So we took the decision to downsize a bit and accept that for the couple of weeks a year when we really do need lots of space (summer holiday for a family of 4 adults) we will make the compromise to take less with us or get a roof box. However, for the rest of the year we get better fuel economy, cheaper to fill up and are creating less pollution. We ended up with an Astra estate. It’s actually a pretty nice car to drive, is slightly more sprightly than the Mondeo but most importantly it still gives me over 600 miles to a tank but costs me only 2/3rds the cost of the Mondeo to fill up.

So, work out what you really need from the car first and then look at the cars that will fulfil those requirements. And that should give you a more refined way of deciding what to look for. I would suggest though, that the answer is not a V70. :)

Depends what your criteria are for where you live. It is a lovely city but is also rather small. Loads of historic buildings and architecture – but mostly of the smaller and more quaint variety rather than some of the large edifices you get in the other historic towns and cities. Apparently it is also one of the 5 more expensive places to live than London in the UK. There are some cheaper parts of Oxford, but given its popularity you can imagine that there is a reason why those parts are cheaper. Sinewy, flowing singletrack MTB riding is largely lacking but as others have said you are a reasonably short drive away from places like Swinley (if you want nicely laid out tails to ride on) or the Chilterns, Downs, Ridgeway if you want “escape from it all” riding.

You will find cheaper housing in the surrounding areas while still being able to easily access Oxford itself.

If shopping is your thing then it is not the most diversely endowed retail heaven but has enough for most people with most of the main high street outlets as well as a few locals to provide some variety. Plenty of eating places. Generally rammed full of tourists in the summer and students for the remainder.

Having spent many decades in the area I think it is a fab city.

Where is the best place for idiots to learn all about DAC / NAS etc? Until last week I had no idea what DAC even stood for..

You could try somewhere like AVForums to get a learn yourself background. Or, if you prefer the face to face approach think about popping into your local Richer Sounds or hi fi shop to have a chat with someone. I agree, it can all seem a bit bewildering at first!

I’m lead to believe the sound quality surpasses CD – and there is a considerable convenience factor to consider when set-up correctly. I just don’t know where to begin.

I’m not sure I would go that far. If done right it should be able to give the same sound quality as the original CD. The key will be how the CDs are ripped. You need a program such as EAC (Exact Audio Copy) or MediaMonkey to copy (Rip) the CD into a target file format. The use of something like FLAC or WAV is that they are known as lossless formats. FLAC is compressed (so smaller file sizes) whereas WAV is uncompressed (so around the same size a the file on the CD is). Apple do their own version of lossless (ALAC) if you have a lot of Apple kit already and want to “keep it in the family”. If you use something like iTunes today the chances are any files you have ripped from D will be mp3 which is both compressed and lossy. It keeps the file sizes down (good) but at the expense of some (ok, a lot) of the digital content (bad). Overall, mp3 does a reasonable job of keeping the detail of the music by trying to remove the stuff that may not be humanly audible. However, the result is if you compare playing an mp3 file with a CD or vinyl you very quickly work out that there appears to be a lot missing from the overall quality of the sound and, when played through reasonable quality equipment, sounds really quite poor.

For the most part a lot of this has bypassed us in the past because when we bought a CD player it included the DAC. It is only since the advent of digital streaming and the convenience of storing and playing the digital files directly rather than via a CD player that the need for external DACs appeared. If you have a CD collection and are happy to play CDs and fish them in and out of the payer then you could save yourself all the hassle of learning about DACs and streaming because you don’t need to know it. The advantage of ripping CDs and storing them on a NAS is that it makes it quicker and easier (possibly) to navigate your music collection and play whatever you want. Or to create playlists composed of tracks from a variety of CDs – but to be able to play them at CD quality rather than the good old days or recording them all to tape. Oh, and then we get streaming music services such as Spotify or Qobuz and internet streaming radio stations which can benefit from DAC before they hit your hifi system.

So, after all that, it will come down to how you plan to listen to music which will determine what you do or don’t need to buy. :)

I’ve started doing that – my observation is they do sound exactly the same as the original CD – whether good or bad. The 24bit recording is a noticeable step up though.

Which streamer are you using and what did you use to rip the CDs? EAC or MediaMonkey?

Typically the best “source” is a NAS device on your home network. That way it is always on and not dependent on your PC being switched on to access it. Most new streamers will happily read content from the NAS. The streamers have the DAC built in to them.

The software bit for playlists etc can be either something provided by the NAS (that can be used to create playlists etc) or you use the app that is associated with the streamer / DAC you are using.

Some streamers will provide a basic UI / screen interface that will let you scroll through the content it is finding on your NAS.

All depends how far you want to take it really.

For example my Yamaha AV receiver can connect to my NAS and play the music presented to it. However, I am not sure I would want to use it as a pure music player as the quality will be better going through a better DAC into my hifi ie I am not wowed by the quality. Not purchased yet but I anticipate buying a hifi based streamer at some point to allow me to stream from the NAS where I will have my CDs that have been ripped to FLAC.

As a general observation I am not convinced that the DACs provided in most computers / laptops is all that good when compared to those dedicated to music systems.

I am sure a host of more knowledgeable people will be along shortly to provide more detailed advice / observations. :)

CZ – the general consensus is that a DAC will improve the sound. Smaller and cheaper options specifically for computer based systems would be the Dragonfly. Again, had good reviews but I haven’t heard one myself.

Personally, I sit somewhere in the middle of the hifi debate. I love the look of a lot of the more expensive kit and it is sometimes nice to go and listen. However, it all feels a bit like the laws of diminishing returns as yes, they can sound a “bit better” – bus it is better enough to warrant spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on it? My view is no. It helps that I don’t really have the cash to be able to do much about it anyway! Having said that, I did acquire a pair of B&W CM6 S2 speakers recently and I have to say that they really are very nice. I was surprised at myself as I have generally not been a fan of B&W at all. However, their new S2 speakers are significantly improved over their previous offerings and really rather good. During my demos I was playing music through my 19 year old Rotel amp and, all things considered, it did a bloody marvellous job. Yes, at some point I would like to change it but for now it is doing a very admirable job. I did contrast it with a new Arcam FMJ A19 and the difference was not very noticeable at all.

However, spending “a bit” of money on reasonable hifi equipment will deliver a sound that helps you to appreciate the music more. You do miss out on some of the pleasure of music if you insist on listening through cheap equipment. But you don’t need to spend a fortune to get something that sounds very pleasing.

OP – the key to this whole discussion is that you have fundamentally misunderstood what is being offered. As others have stated what the dealer is doing is offering you a trade-in or PX value for your car. That is not a statement of the value of your car. As a seller in this type of transaction you have to separate yourself from your vested interest in your car and what you think it is worth (most people over value their own cars) and look at the bottom line. How much are you prepared to pay to change your car? If your budget is, say, £3000 then what you are aiming to do is arrive at a deal were you get the best car you can that meets your needs and costs you no more than your £3k budget. As part of that deal you are also looking at the car you are considering buying and assess whether you feel the asking price is a fair one for the age, condition and mileage.

If you are not happy with the p/x offer from the dealer and you think your car is worth more than that then put your money where your mouth is and go sell it privately. I would say that unless your car is relatively new and highly desirable then most dealers are not really desperately keen to take a p/x in as it means additional stock that they have to move on. Older cars will either go to a local “low end” dealer or will be pushed out to auction. In the case of the former the low end dealer will also be needing to make sure he gets a profit out of the deal. In the case of the latter it costs the dealer money to send it there plus they may well get a lower price on it than they had expected.

Which means, at the end of all that, what they are doing is playing a numbers game. They have a car which has x profit in it. They want to make as much profit as they can while at the same time selling you the car. Your car just becomes another variable in the equation which they have to factor in and work out how much they are likely to get for it. In many cases they will not get anywhere near what they are offering you so that difference comes out of the profit of the car they are selling. Wrap it all up and out pops the figure you have to pay to change vehicles. If you like the number then do the deal. If you don’t then walk away. Unless you really, really want the car they are selling then it’s down to haggling and compromise.

Good god man, a t-shirt tucked into tracksuit bottoms. I’m guessing your jesus sandals and socks were just out of shot

And obviously a closet Brad Paisley fan!

One of the above is not IMHO a cardinal sin… :)

[Poor camera angle though, as we cannot see what you are actually playing]

I am guessing that this is the trade off most of the vendors have decided on for the cheap laptop specs. I imagine that it is much cheaper for them to add some extra RAM or change the CPU than to provide an HD screen. I presume that HD screens for laptops are not a cheap commodity so it does mean spending a bit more on a laptop to get it. They are not bank breakingly expensive – they seem to start appearing at around the £500 – £600 mark. It is a bit frustrating though, I agree.

As an example, the compact but quite nicely put together Lenovo U430 gives you a 14″ HD touch screen laptop with a 750GB hybrid drive, 8GB RAM and an i5 CPU. If you are not bothered about the smaller form factor or the touch screen then they do a 17″ jobbie (Z5070) for around £600 but with a 1TB HDD.

Struggling to understand what on earth it is that you are doing OP. It appears that you have bought a low spec laptop that is running an old install of Windows. Presumably during the last part of the setup (the personalisation bit) you said “yes, get any updates”. And that’s what it is doing. However, because the install is quite old there are a number of updates it needs to do and some updates will require previous updates before they can install. So that is probably why it is going round in circles a bit. And being an HP retail machine it probably also comes with a bunch of crapware installed on it. That will be HP (or the shop you bought it from). Not Microsoft. Plus, if the machine was built with Windows 8 one of the downloads will probably be your free upgrade to Windows 8.1

Once it has been updated the only things it will check for each day are the virus / malware updates. After that, updates are typically only released once per month.

I have been running Windows 8 and 8.1 for quite a long time now and, while there is the occasional glitch (and this is generally down to a driver being a little less than perfect) it is pretty stable and reliable.

And there is the rub. There’s not a huge amount of margin in PC sales so vendors and OEMs load a bunch of crapware to help add a bit more profit. None of the people in that chain have any real vested interest in the end user having a fantastic experience. And then Microsoft get blasted for the user having a shit experience on Windows when there are a host of issue that are nothing to do with them.

This is one of those areas where the Apple experience will appear so much better because they are the only people that manufacture the machines, it is their operating system and their apps that get installed. The whole process is considerably more optimised.

You are an example to us all of in how to avoid trolling

IMHO that is so much more STW; moan about something then immediately do it

I think you may have missed my smiley. I tried to use a bigger one so that it was obvious that the last part was tongue in cheek. Obviously not a big enough one. Lets try this :-) :-)

Given that these are politicians we are talking about I really don’t get why so many are so vexed about the Lib Dem “u-turns”. It is a coalition govt and that tends to mean neither side gets to do all that they want. It may well be that the Lib Dems when in more detailed discussions about the tuition fees decided that on balance their preferred approach was unworkable. Who knows. But to throw your toys out of the pram over that seems rather small minded and perhaps the Lib Dems would be better off without your vote. In the same way that blanket statements such as the Tories being corrupt makes me remember that this is, of course, STW where the trolling never stops. That and the rather irrational frothing of the left leaning members. :lol:

pdw has it right there!

Something more café like and you could pop into G&Ds if you fancy a nice Bagel. Also the home of sumptuous daim bar cookies. And “home made” ice cream.

Nope, not switched ours back on yet.

We never turn it off? You just set the stat in each room to the temp you want it to be & if it’s colder than that it comes on & if it’s warmer it doesn’t.
Don’t really see what we’d achieve by turning it off.

Because the outside ambient temperature is generally pretty warm during the summer it doesn’t matter if the temp dips below 18 or 19 degrees. If we left the “heating” on and relied on the thermostats then there is a possibility that the boiler would kick in. I don’t need or want that during eh summer months. So, to prevent it happening just switch the heating part of our condensing boiler off. :)

And for balance, I remember my dad leaving the RAF in 1979 after 22 years and struggling to get a job, mum working 2-3 part time jobs to cover the bills, before falling on his feet c1982 and having a great 15 year career before he retired. All under Tory rule.

Given the Tories only came into power in 1979 I am not sure you can blame them for the sorting everything out inside a few months. There was a lot going on politically at the end of the 70s and into the 80s.

When talking about Labour matching the Tory spending plans I seem to recall that was only for the first 2 years of the NuLab parliament. after that it was all down to Gordon’s awesome prowess as a chancellor. Or not.

In the same way that the global economic crash of 2008 was not the fault of Labour (although the spending plans and management within our economy before it most definitely were) neither was the economic crash in the early 90s (black Wednesday etc) the fault of the current Govt but more the result of being part of, and tied to, the ERM. Things started to get better once we pulled the plug on that and could begin to take control of our own finances.

Anyway, although the leftist view maybe that solo’s comment was tongue in check it is still at a generalisation level pretty accurate.

Unless they have radically changed I would be surprised that a Chromebook would work for you as they were designed to be pretty much a thin client for Google the internet. And are only really functional when they have an internet connection.

If you do want MS Office there is a pretty useful deal on for students at the moment where for around £70 you get Office 365 for 4 years. That comes with 60 minutes of Skype calls per month, all of the main Office programmes and 1Tb of storage. Almost a bargain.

The decision will be driven by how much you want to spend and what features are important to you. Spend a bit more and you could get an ultrabook – light, long battery life but won’t have a built in optical drive. Easily solved by an external USB powered one for around £20 – or push the boat out and spend £60 for the Samsung external Blu Ray, CD, DVD reader / writer. Expect to spend somewhere around £600 though for a reasonable one that will also give you HD graphics (Lenovo U430 for example). Not fussed about going beyond 1366 x 768 then you can get away with spending a lot less.

Or, if money is no object then splash out on a MacBook – just try not to wince too much when paying for it. They do a student discount on them but I suspect that may only be around 10% and you can only access it by connecting to the Apple web site form the University campus network.

I would disagree. I think there is a lot of “envy”. I also don’t think that many people would not want a fairer society with decent public services – it’s just that when push comes to shove no one really wants to pay for it. 65″ LCD TVs + additional consumerist trinkets seem to trump social welfare for most. And in general the richer people already pay more tax than the poor people as the tax system here is progressive. The more you earn, the more you pay. I also accept that there are a large number of wealthy people who actively minimise the tax they pay through the various legal instruments to do so. It has been said that if everyone paid the correct amount of tax at the current rates then we would have enough to fund the decent public services that everyone apparently craves. However I cannot vouch for the authenticity or validity of that remark.

Didcot itself has the reputation of being a bit of a dump although the face lifted shopping centre gave it a bit of a new lease of life. Some of that may have been due to the twin attractions of a main line train station and a power station. At least one of the big housing estates is built on a flood plain. However, it is a bit smaller and cheaper than Abingdon which is just down the road. Be wary of many of the local villages as they can tend to be a bit stupidly expensive while managing to distance themselves form any useful amenities. I would argue that Abingdon is probably the nicer of the places to live but has worse shopping variety and is correspondingly more expensive to live in. Having said that, it all depends on what you want from area you live in.

There really isn’t very much in the way of technical riding in the area and Oxfordshire as a whole is notorious for being as flat as a pancake so you don’t even get all that many hills. However, you can do long distances on the various bridleways and some very nice rides along the river. If you want to work on hills then do repeated loops of Wittenham Clumps or get yourself over to the Ridgeway. If you go closer to Oxford then you have Boars Hill to do repeated loops around and over.

You can also try AV Forums although the advice is the same – you can’t necessarily just rock up an place a classified.

Jeez, I’m glad I’m not that anal about sound quality and can just enjoy music whether it’s on MP3, minidisc, CD, cassette, vinyl or live. Being all obsessive about the full audio experience must be a pain in the arse!

Maybe you want to go back and read what was actually written and have a proper go at understanding it. :)

I am just starting to get to the place where I can “stream” internally from a NAS. I have an iPod and was considering buying a classic to hold more stuff. Bad timing. :) However, while the iPod is great for my commute or in the car allowing me to carry a bunch of my music without the baggage of a boot full of CDs I do not like the quality. That is the case too for the average internet streaming service as well – and if I am listening to music at home I want to listen to it in full from my hi fi. Sadly, my current hi fi is having to be sold (and at a bargaintastic price all things considered) as it takes up too much space but it is gorgeous. And it utterly exposes how bad compressed (well, mp3 anyway) music files are. I know there are services such as Qobuz that stream higher definition audio but you pay more for them. I find it sad that so many people are content with mp3 for their sum total music experience but that’s their choice really. I personally much prefer the richness and completeness of the full audio experience when I am relaxing at home. I can see the case for streaming media services as very much a great way to find new music, but at home I want to listen to it in full definition. Currently I do not really see the value I the streaming subscription services so bimble along with the free version of Spotify but am constantly aware that it is not the immersive and enjoyable experience I get when listening to CDs.

Good to see the surgeon practiced using a super sharp and smooth blade to make a nice clean incision. Should be invisible when that heals up! :)

Hope the recovery goes well and you are back on the bike soon