Stay away from Chichester the it takes ages to drive & park, consider the train to chi from Brighton, Victoria, Southampton or Portsmouth and use the dedicated buses.

Will likely open up cheaper hotels too.

Ah the old backup quandary.

[Dad_mode]
While it’s true any backup is better than no backup. If you aren’t following the 3, 2, 1 school of thought for data you consider key, critical or irreplaceable then your data is at risk.

3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, 1 copy held off site.

Otherwise you run the risk of fire, flood, theft or virus/ransomware taking out your data & backup.

The other aspect is when did you last test your backups by trying to restore some data, trust me the time to both learn how to restore & if your backups actually worked is not when you’ve already suffered data loss.

[/Dad_mode]

As cross posting PistonHeads seems to be a thing today, there is a 100+ page thread going back 2-3 years on folks use of Dacia mainly Dusters but others too & it seems to be overwhelmingly positive with some niggles re build & dealers.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1900473&i=2180

If you want a generally hassle free experience then I’d suggest Toyota Avenses / RAV4 or Honda HRV or if large enough then Civic.

Whatever you get don’t believe the modern toss about gearboxes being sealed for life & not needing servicing/fluid changes. Once you settle on a few options have a look into servicing for the gearboxes especially if towing, I’d also to use that to filter out potential purchases way over the servicing recommendations if they don’t have evidence of service work being carried out.

For example the ZF 8HP box found in many BMW’s (& Audi & Jag among others) ZF recommended 70-80K as the service interval, BMW said sealed for life.

Having worked for/with Sun Microsystems in the 90’s & 00’s I often had hardware in my mitts that was worth multiples of my house, ESD was drummed into us from day one.

Today after some investigation I’d agree it’s unlikely to be the cause here, I believe that ESD is a thing but it’s much more likely to manafedt as shortening of components lifespan rather that instant catastrophic failures.

@Mark

Just in case you were unaware it also breaks the latest post link when accessing threads, it seems to cycle top to bottom of the thread & when you click on the button it dumps you to the top of the page not the last post.

The overwhelming feedback (mine included) is it’s not a welcome “enhancement”.

I charge extra for that Jim… ;-)

@jimdubleyou

It is easer to terminate with the correct idc punch down tool, easier than crimp on plugs.

Also solid copper core cable is not designed to be used as a patch cable with plugs. It can lead to fatigue & premature failures.

Lack of skill does not mean the correct process shouldn’t be followed.

@molgrips slightly more nuanced than just volume of clients, they need to be actively using bandwidth so other folk streaming video, devices downloading data / apps / games, devices backing up to a nas drive, etc

Though often the issue is when you’re performing task A you have limited control over the usage of the rest of the household.

@a11y an eminently reasonable approach, worse case you have unused cables & spent a few quid, best case you don’t have devices stuttering due to poor wifi.

One piece of advice, run a couple of network drops & power to the loft. It opens up the option to place some devices out of the way & also allows you to put wifi accesspoints up there, if you have poor wifi currently this can help as wifi is (generally with traditional U.K. building techniques) able to penetrate through floor much easier than walls.
Suspended in a loft allows it to fire down & through the home rather than across the home & walls.

[/url]

It’s interesting lots of IT professionals & gifted amateurs alike, like to talk about WiFi as if it was a single defined thing.

They don’t always acknowledge that different radio frequencies have different properties, speed, distance & penetration among others. They often omit to point out that the higher the frq the greater the throughput but the lower the distance & ability to penetrate solid objects.

It’s very infrequent that they acknowledge that WiFi was until relatively recently a one device broadcasts at a time protocol that meant throughput & latancy were always factors of the volume of clients on the network.

This is still a factor despite the improvements made in wifi 5, 6 & 6e around multiple client support with the introduction of mimo functionality. You need to understand a bit around mimo 1*1, 2*2, 4*4, etc what configuration your accesspoint has & the volume of wireless clients connected to it, if they also have mimo antennas to understand how your theoretical maximums are being skewed by real world interactions.

In other words you can have a healthy speed test result but in real use see sub optimal performance because you have multiple wireless clients all competing for the same ‘slots’ on the wireless channel.

Very rarely is the impact of channel saturation discussed.

Don’t get me wrong WiFi is great for many situations, most domestic situations included but it is not (in general use) as stable or fast as a wired connection, because let’s face it, if it was then the majority of data centres & corporate offices would have ditched ethernet & fibre for WiFi to save in installation, management, support & hardware costs involved in deploying copper &/or fibre cabling quite some time ago.

So if you have an application where latency & stability are desired & the ability to install structured cabling why would you not???

Yes
No
Maybe

Along with the mounting hardware as said it can also depend on the kind of mount, is it a bracket on the tv that ‘hangs’ off of the wall plate, is it a single or double arm that allows you to swing it away from the wall?

The more distant between wall & tv the more leverage there will be.

No more or less likely to fail than non soldered ram.

If under warranty you send it back, of out of warranty repair or replace.

It depends on if the ssd is socketed or soldered.

It would be easier to restore from your backup than messing around removing socketed ssd’s & using caddy’s to mount on a replacement system surely?

There was something similar on rip off Britain yesterday morning where a woman had been contacted by “insurance company claims handler “ after a prang.
I think she ended up on the hook for around £5k of hire car charges. Can’t remember the exact details

The only cases I recall where the claimant has had to pay the hire charges from a accident claim management company hire vehicle are:

They lave lied/made false representation to their insurer & the claim management company.

They have refused to assist the claim company defend the claim, usually by failing to appear in court when requested to do so as a witness.

Today, I received a call from Admiral, the other party’s insurer. They have accepted full liability and Admiral have requested that I deal directly with them. They have offered me cash in lieu of repair, which I have declined, and have offered a like-for-like hire with no personal liability for the duration of the repair, either a Merc S Class or a Jaaaaag Xsomething. They have stated that their approved repairer guarantees the repair for life (as long as I own the car).

They have also offered me £200 for dealing with them directly, presumably because my insurer will fleece them for the cost of repair and the hire car.

What does the hive mind think about this?

The only downside of this arrangement that I’ve heard of is that of disputes over the quality of the repair, if the repair does not meet your standards it can be difficult to have it addressed to satisfaction.

I would as them to clarify that situation, also if you have a known/recommended repairer I’d seek to use them irrespective of which company is picking up the tab.

As I posted earlier I suspect you’ll get a lot more support/knowledge about how to get a better outcome with the lease company over on piston heads, though to be fair they have there fair share of fud’s too.

As your looking at some historical places

Have a look at Wilton’s music hall, it’s an extremely sympathetically preserved Victorian old music hall, often you can just grab a drink in the bar & have a wander round.

https://wiltons.org.uk/eat-drink

Truman’s old brewery on brick lane is worth a hour or so wandering round, save room for some traditional London fast food, a Salt Beef Beigel at the Brick Lane “Beigel Bake” (there’s two you want the white & blue fronted one, not the orange fronted ‘Beigel Shop’) kinda like London’s Katz’s deli.

Scanned through this & tbh sounds like you need more details from your sister.

It’s unclear (to me) if this is a personal lease undertaken by your sister or if this is a salary sacrifice where her Ltd company has undertaken a business to business lease.

I suspect the latter which is a much different situation.

I’d suggest as great as the community is here you’d be better served clarifying as much details as you can & then posting over on pistonheads in speed, plod & the law or car buying sub forums asking for some guidance.

IIRC You’ll be limited to 90 days in 180 in the EU & no easy way to get a tourist visa to extend that period.

Praise be to Brexit…

Huh. I wonder what would have happened if you’d said “we don’t remember”?

(You and your wife had separate insurance policies on the same car?)

You might recognise this question “Have you had any accidents claims or convictions in the last five years?” Most insurance companies/brokers ask it when quoting for a new policy.

If you held a policy with a named driver & they had an accident / claim on the policy in your name you’ve made a claim, they have had a accident, you both declare for the following five years.

If you held a policy with a named driver & you’ve had an accident / claim on the policy in your name you’ve made a claim, your named driver hasn’t, so only you declare for the next five years.

If your named driver has their own policy on a vehicle you do not have a insured interest in & they make a claim you do not have to declare a accident or claim for the following five years, unless they are named on a policy you have taken out & in that case you are responsible for ensuring the company is aware of your named driver’s history.

Does any of that matter? What does “in charge” even mean? No-one was in charge of it, it was parked on a public road, the most recent driver is in the hotel bar enjoying paying twenty quid for chicken in a basket and the registered keeper is 200 miles away watching Love Island. There is no driver involved so it defaults to the owner’s / keeper’s insurance. It has to, doesn’t it?

(Genuine questions, I honestly have no idea.)

Most unlike you Cougar…

Yes it does matter especially when it is a case of dual policies.
If both insured parties were on the same trip with separate coverage & neither could recall who was the one in charge of the van during the incident period then yes I’d expect there would be discussions between insurers about who was libel.

However in the op’s case where it seems clear he is loaning a van & wanted a independent policy to ensure he minimised the risk to the kind friend who is prepared to loan him his van &that makes the claim process much clearer as (I admit I’m assuming here but) the op hasn’t indicated the owner is joining the trip.

If your having issues with this just wait until someone from a club suggests hiring a 16 seat minibus to go to a event & chip in for costs, the hire & reward issues are immensely difficult to navigate…

OP parks the van in a car park in Ghent

Goes off for a few beers and stays in a hotel.

Comes back the next day and some twonks taken his car down the side of it and done a runner creasing all the panels and the doors. – significant damage that you’d claim off insurance.

Who’s insurance pays out ?

Who was in charge of the van, who parked the van, who collected the van, in the case you hypothesised it’s the op, so clearly the op claims on their policy.

If there was a crash the owner of the van would still have to notify his insurers as not doing so would be withholding a material fact.

Why? They have not had a accident, nor will they have made a claim as they were not responsible for the van at the time, the person who was responsible for the van has taken out their own policy to cover both their legal 3rd party responsibility & their financial exposure should the van be damaged while in there care.

Not all insurance brokers/companies have the same criteria, it is unlikely you find no company to insure you. Who have you tried so far?

You can have two policies on the same car/van, if there is a incident leading to a claim then whoever is in charge of it is the one to claim, effectively whoever is driving or has parked it.

It might be worth looking a a annual policy & canceling it on your return.

Looks quite easy, same binnacle as mk2 focus, the kuga video had horrible music all the way through but was the same method.

a) You completely overestimate my diy skills

b) I wonder why the garage thinks its over £1500 then.

Thanks for posting though.

Perhaps they are unaware of the repair option.

Perhaps they have tried the repair option & found it lacking in some way.

Perhaps they are quoting for a new part from Ford.

Perhaps it’s a gutty job they don’t really want to do.

Perhaps it’s something else.

Personally I’d make a look a a few youtube videos to see how difficult the binnacle removal was especially at ~£100 to repair.

Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking took me a few years to realise its was a version of Trinity’s Three Piece Suit.

@Cougar

I’m sure that the CEO has nothing better to do than personally handle complaints emails from individual consumers. Back in my support days I used to have people tell me they were going to email Bill Gates because their computer crashed. All I can say is, good luck with that.

You’ll notice as you quoted it I said

Email the ceo address with detail of your issue

Not email the ceo, there is a subtle difference, I suspect we all know that despite wishing otherwise the ceo does not sit behind these email addresses, quite often though there are a group of employees who look at resolving issues & there are numerous reports of such, is this the case with Talk Talk who knows, perhaps you want to be less snarky…

How much effort do you want to put into this?

Not much;
Email the ceo address with detail of your issue
https://ceoemail.com/s.php?id=ceo-9625&c=TalkTalk%20Group-Chief%20Executive

More/no response;
Write a stiffly worded letter to the ceo with copies of previous correspondence, get a posting receipt.

If no responses/they continue to chase for the payment send a second / final letter stating you will look forward to defending the matter in court.

Continuing to engage via telephone is likely to be a pointless frustrating exercise that leaves you with no evidence at the end.

A great time for all kinds of Reggae.

^^^^^^^

This in spades, if you haven’t it’s time to change your security questions on all accounts associated with that email address starting with o2, they’ve a lot of data that could be used in social engineering type attacks starting with porting your phone number.

@Winston

Zilog is right, the software is rubbish. To be honest I only bought the WD because I wanted a NAS and it was cheap. Like others I probably should have bought a QNAP or something. It has been reliable up till now and as I use it as a NAS its only the remote access I’m locked out of, local access has been restored. Think I will probably investigate alternatives now though.

I check out the known security issues & breaches with QNAP before rushing to them.

DA or rotary polisher?

Definitely measure up, my ma had to replace one & it was slightly taller than the original.

Sky routers are notoriously shite, plus they have certain “features” which AFAIK most (all?) other ISPs don’t (one of the reasons it’s such a ball-ache to replace their router with a better 3rd party one). This is probably causing some kind of conflict! (Not very helpful and not a solution, sorry, except to say “ditch Sky” lol)

Should someone search this in the future, replacement routers for sky are more readily available than some folk believe (not to say every modem/fw/router/switch/accesspoint will work).

If you google search sky dhcp option 61 routers that should point you in the right direction.

I stand kinda corrected, Twitter seems to show some kind of service failure but no evidence that vm deliberately turned off vpn availability for domestic users.

I suspect this is untrue, I checked for stories related to vm, virgin blocking VPN’s yesterday & again just now & there is no resent reports of this being a thing, perhaps the op could come back & clarify.

If it were me.

Check the doors for speaker upgrade & sound deadening material like dynamat etc.

If neither have been done that’s part of step 1, the other part is to take out the head unit again & identify the rca connectors, you want to understand what pre-out connections you have front l&r, rear l&r, sub out are usual.

Step 2 would be to add a small amplifier to feed the door speakers.

3 would be thinking about sub &/or dashboard speakers.

While unlikely seeing as these are also Germans this came to mind. A uk chap taken court in Germany over cancelled eBay listing.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/elderly-brit-ordered-pay-12000-29555106