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I do recall though that there’s a period post redundancy where if you start another role you are expected to repay your settlement.

Having rethought this I think with the mists of time I’d confused it with the tax free element of the redundancy payment becoming taxable if you took up work to quickly but as I say it was around 16 years ago so may not be relevant today.

It’s a good few years since I took redundancy never regretted it, I do recall though that there’s a period post redundancy where if you start another role you are expected to repay your settlement. You’ll obviously want to check this is still a thing.

I can’t think of any device in a home that requires better performance than wifi can provide (other than possibly gaming latency for nerds?). You’d want wifi so you don’t have to faff around with a load of wires. I wouldn’t have enough space on a 24 port switch to wire everything in my house.

Unfortunately some people do lack imagination. Sad but true.

Depending on the house layout, size, #floors, construction type etc, put 2-4 ethernet runs up to your loft.

With traditional wood floors/joists you can mount wireless access points in the loft & get great coverage throughout the home. These type of floors are much more wireless transparent than walls.

If you have solid floors then consider installing ethernet cable for ceiling mounted accesspoints.

Put two ethernet runs wherever your isp line enters the home.

Give thoughts to where all these ethernet runs go back to, ensure there is sufficient power for the switch, cctv nvr, alarm, nas etc, etc. Don’t forget easy access.

Do some investigation into cat 5e, 6, 6a for yourself, 5e is now supports 2.5-5Gbs connectivity & lots of reports of 10Gbs in good domestic installations, 6 (imho) is harder to install & has greater bend radius than 5e with minimal benefits in a retro fit. 6a would be the min (for me) if you want a 10Gbs speeds that are certified, however your contractor needs to install to specifications, for that which if irc means the ethernet needs to be in conduit & they need the relevant skills & tools to test 10Gbs speeds.

You have to weigh up cost, ease of install vs ultimate speeds but as always it’s planned use case dependant.

Surely it’s a one pan full english (other regional variations are available)

I’ve seen a ‘functional skills ICT level 2’ course…..not sure it’d even be worth doing though, seems like I could do about 90% of it already!

Can’t see that being worthwhile, I’d try YouTube & some home practice.

Excel get the concept of formulas, pivot tables & charts.
Power point is more art than science imho.

As said I’d say good working understanding of the ms office suite inc PowerPoint & onenote.

It’s always great if someone has a understanding of the concept about backups vs onedrive type file synchronisation products.

A grasp of online security do’s & don’ts.

Above that I’d suggest you’re getting into specifics.

Insurance is all well and good, but the info on laptops is just gone if they are lost.

Surely you’d just restore from the backup?

If there’s no backup & the data is vital I’d look at a same day flight & collect in person, especially as even being you own property I suspect you’ll be hit with duty & taxes on two laptops, it’s likely a rtn flight would be cheaper & safer.

Stansted to Lux & rtn on Tuesday £42.

If you do a search on John Darko’s site he’s done a few reviews on the budget end, just search for network & they’ll come up.

https://darko.audio/

No words for this situation, so sorry for your loss.

I’m likely not the best placed to answer on a windows platform as I moved over to Mac over 10 years ago & have found time machine backups sufficient.

That said I used to use Acronis True Image which I see has been replaced by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, I understand it’s still a good product but unfortunately as with much software today they have moved over to a subscription model, which is fine for some software but not for backups imho.

Arc7 also has a good reputation, is a simple license product & allows both local backups to a usb or nas device & cloud based backups if needed.

Paragon Backup & Recovery Community Editon is free & also has a good reputation though I believe the free version limits you to usb storage only (but this may have changed)

R-Drive Image Standalone Also gets positive feedback.

With backups it’s worth understanding the process & types & also you need to test the restore process to ensure they are working & you understand the restore process.

Things to consider/investigate for yourself.

System vs file backups, do you want your whole system including your os installation or just data files backed up?

Full, Incremental or Differential Backups, You always start the first backup with a full backup of either your whole system
or data files.
The next backup can then be either of the three options, full takes the most space & time but will have the quickest restore time as each time you backup you have a full backup & only need to restore from the backup on the date in question.

Incremental backs up the difference since the last backup bet that full or incremental, so you do a full on Monday, incremental Tuesday-Sunday & notice that you lost some data Saturday, you have to have Monday’s full backup & the incremental on the days the file changes all available to restore to Saturday.
This uses the least space but can take the longest to restore, btw the backup sw manages the restore process you’re not expected to track what incremental backups are needed to restore.

Lastly The difference in incremental vs. differential backup is that, while an incremental backup only includes the data that has changed since the previous backup, a differential backup contains all of the data that has changed since the last full backup. Uses more space than Incremental but obviously needs less time & backup files to be available.

Making these choices really comes down to data volumes, importance, the impact of restore times & appetite for risk & cost.

For most home users a file/data backup is sufficient, the os backup is (generally) more focused on commercial situations where you need to get replacement systems up & running again asap, or where you have complex software setups that are time consuming to recreate.

The need to have point in time restores are not only but mainly: File deletion/corruption, if all you do is copy one disk to another repeatedly & you have a file corruption you have no way to go back to a good version, the same if data is inadvertently deleted & that’s missed once you over write you backup drive it’s gone.

Viruses/ransomware now have a nasty habit of infecting systems but not fully activating for some time, folk complain of restoring from a copy type backup you are suggesting that the virus/ransomware come back again & again, this is because your restoring data that’s already infected but dormant.
Point in time backups allow you to go back 10, 20, 60, etc days to discover a point free from infection.

But all of these points come down to individual appetite for risk & the old saying any backup is better than no backup (as long as it’s tested) ;)

Expand on that? I would argue it’s enough for most purposes. You are protected against deletion and corruption. The only problem is if you find yourself without internet access or somehow you lose access to your MS account and you need access to a backup at the same time.

Ransomware actively targets this kind of sync storage.
Accidental deletion that isn’t noticed within the retention window.
Those that don’t keep a local copy of the data & have access removed for a policy violation.
File corruption that isn’t noticed can be an issue.

My experience has been that folk are even less likely to test there file sync replication than they are with backups.

I’d add that onedrive is not a backup product, depending on the critically of your data you may want to consider a actual backup product.

Also as a minimum I would ensure that onedrive is configured to always keep data on your local drive as well as the cloud.

Slight hijack. I need (wife needs) office for her Mac desktop pro. When I looked on Amazon last night the windows ones were £7 the Mac ones were around £60.
Anyone had the £7 for a Mac? Can you post a link please.

Have you tried looking on some of the sites already posted above?

Rain expert ~£73 here

https://www.camskill.co.uk/m53b0s6136p0/Car_Tyres_-_MPV_Tyres_-_People_Carrier_Tyres_-_15_inch_R15_inch_-_165_60_15_165_60R15

Sadly while you’re a customer of the insurance company they also have a duty to their shareholders to minimise payments which can cause a conflict.

If it were me in this position I’d look to appoint my own assessor & have them keep the insurance company honourable. Unless you have a recommendation then I’d guess google

It might cost a bit of money, but it should stop some of the points above, being made to remain in place unreasonably while works are undertaken, minimal investigatory / drying work, etc.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/loss-assessors/

This will give a indication of what mobile providers are in your location

https://bidb.uk/

Hi Captmorgan, thanks for the advice.

I submitted a subject access request to the store/head office asking for a copy of the engineers report which they have failed to give me.

I also contacted the chap that came to inspect the sofa and he said he cant help me, so I suspect he was favouring the store.

They have 28 days I believe to respond so they may well yet, while I was waiting I’d contact the legal cover provided by my home insurance & see what advise/support they can provide.

That’s also a very good point about the financial ombudsman above.

You furnish the cc company with a copy of the engineers report that confirms they are not of suitable quality.

Just to point out the cpu in the Amazon referb is a 8th gen cpu from 2017 so a five year old design, it will run win11 but if memory serves it’s beaten performance wise by current gen (12/13) i3 processors.

A m1 mac would feel much snappier

Is anyone surprised really ?.

Gather together all your passwords, and thus make them a target to be hacked by the unscrupulous. Almost like asking it to be done.

The proverb has always been, ‘Don’t place all of one’s eggs in one basket’ These password management site to me seem to fly in the face of such wise knowledge.

Then I guess the question would be how do you maintain many multiples of complex passwords without one?

Subject access request for the report if you do not have a copy of it.

Instigate cc charge back.

No need to continue to deal with them.

That’s the easy option. Costs about £20 and takes 5 minutes. Works fine.

For some people, for others they don’t work at all. Much like mesh systems, it’s really all about finding the right solution for the individual issues/use case, rather than ‘I’ve got these, there brilliant…’.

It’s always worth buying from Amazon solely for the easy returns policy should the solution not deliver as expected.

I have to say while over budget Plantation XO is a very special drop.

I’d take a look at the professional standards https://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/code-conduct-solicitors/

See how they have met or more likely not met these, then I’d draft a letter to the firms managing partner detailing the issue including missed deadlines & times/dates of you contacting them for updates & id be asking them to a ensure your work is undertaken within the next 5 working days & they refund your payment. I’d also ask for a explanation for all the delays & lack of response.

Then I’d do a bit of investigation on if there are any exceptions for legal practices in relation to subject access requests.

If they missed the deadline above, I might give them another 5 days (written notice) & then I’d send a subject access request for all data relating to your case & your attempts to get progress updates, this could take a month or more so I would also advise them that with the lack of progress I was going to instruct another practice & you now expect the refund.

Once I had the information from the sar I’d then report them to the Legal Ombudsman this will generally cost the practice (~£400 iirc) irrespective of your complaint being upheld or not.

While not necessary I’d send the written correspondence via first class signed for or special delivery just to convey to them that you are aware that the correspondence has been received & to help your records.

It might not be the quickest resolution but it’s aim is to either get them focused or clarify that they’re not going to provide the promised service & you’d be better off elsewhere anyway.

Swings and roundabouts. It’s not necessary but I figured it was worth ten minutes of faff periodically for the peace of mind of knowing that your disaster recovery policy is solid.

I suppose the million dollar question is, how much downtime is considered acceptable? Seconds, minutes, hours, days? Then work back from there, how do we make that happen.

This in spades.

If there are issues with the ‘backup’ system it’s better to know well in advance of needing to use it with the option of rolling back to the other machine if you do discover an issue & fixing it when it’s not time critical.

You may want to check that the specific cars are ulez compliant, while the model/year for a U.K. car might be, gray imports from outside the eu tend not to be. Afair.

Torrentshare if you google doesn’t give you anything, by the name of it it doesn’t sound like a diagnostic tool.

I was going to post earlier but with this torrent connection it could be we are entering the realm of maleware/ransomware & something has locked / encrypted his files rather than it being a drive failure. I certainly wouldn’t be moving the drive to another system until I was sure it’s not anything malicious at play.

Also as the updated cnc is now network attached you’ll need to consider if they go on your business lan with internet connectivity or if you are going to setup a private lan with just the cnc & controlling pc?

The later isn’t hard but there are a few extra setup steps to consider/document.

Hard to see why more than one of these would be needed?

https://www.europc.co.uk/dell-optiplex-desktop-pcs?q=Form+Factor+%5C-+Filter-Micro+Form+Factor+%28MFF%29/Processor+%5C-+Filter-Intel+Core+i5

If they are as business critical as they sound it would be worth looking at two of them, taking some time to look at disk imaging / backups & regularly testing the backup system rather than waiting for a failure & trying to remember / conjuring up a process when your backs against it.

see https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Other-broadband-queries/Setting-up-a-second-vodafone-router-as-an-access-point/td-p/2617499

Someone is asking the same question, this thread say what to do.

Connect the Lan Ports on the two routers with a cable, turn off DHCP on the 2nd router. Set up Wifi on your 2nd router.

The key point is do not use the WAN port on your 2nd router.

Have you tried this? I strongly suspect it will work & save landfill. If it hasn’t worked then it’s either faulty or user error so yes it’s either try again, access point or powerline adapter time.

By the way you are not creating a new network with access points but a new ssid, all the devices will be on the same network just different entry points & ssid/password.

I suspect it’s to do with the wan authentication settings on router two.

These should be set to dhcp, I suspect they are currently on pppoe, I’m not a vf bb user so I can’t confirm if router two will allow you to change the authentication settings.

If it does you also need to turn back on the dhcp server on the lan side & change the lan side ip range to a different class c as the lan on router 1, so if that is 192.168.0.xxx change router 2 lan to say 192.168.10.xxx.

Alternatively & perhaps simpler if the router 2 setup has the option for access point mode simply use that.

Edit: if router 2 doesn’t allow either options above then look for a sh tp-link, netgear, Linksys etc basically anything not tied to a isp & with a wan port & you should have more luck.

I’d also add that as access has been given to the pc it’s possible that ransomware that can encrypt data files has been installed.

When rebuilding the pc I’d wipe the data files too & restore that from you backups.

It’s quite often that data ransomware does not make itself known until sometime after the initial attack.

You’ll be wanting Lock & co St James’s st or Bates on Jermyn st.

Are you doing anything different to the last time you did a test restore to check your backups were functional?

The best suggestion so far

Along with the hoodie/face covering issues of cctv, have a google of wifi cctv jamming.

If going for cctv for security/crime prevention I’d always recommend wired poe cameras.

I’m another Omada user here with separate IoT & guest vlans.

The downside I found with Omada was the fw/router at the time did not allow stateful fw rules (& I belive this is still the case). This means that while you can segregate the IoT devices from your secure vlan you can’t write fw rules that allow connections from the secure vlan to instigate a connection to the IoT vlan.

This means putting your control devices in the IoT vlan or moving them as needed which is a pain.

This drove me to turn a old pc into a pfsense router.

You know the saying “Guns for show, knifes for a pro…”

https://66.media.tumblr.com/a9f42b32503472ac1bb6f63900ef7b9f/tumblr_inline_p4w476xLOX1r9wm7d_500.png