Reading this Apple warranty page it looks like all products are warrantied for 6 years under UK consumer law. Actually It looks like this applies to all nearly all products. Am I reading this right?

http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/%5B/url%5D

I had a massive problem with Mac Mail eating up all the memory. Spent 1/2 a day on the phone with apple support. In th end I gave up and rebuilt the machine from scratch. All was fine and dandy afterwards.

Ring Apple tech support and get them to help you out. As you have just done a software update you qualify for free tech support.

Speak to the health visitor double quick. They can get the experts in to help. We had a child psychiatrist help and she was great. The long and short of it was if you go in to your child every time they cry then they think something must be wrong with themselves.

Remember to look after yourself and share each of you getting a decent nights sleep.

Well after complaining to BT CEO earlier today I have received an email reply direct from him at 10pm tonight. Quite surprised to be fair. Broadband finally got switched on today so at least I am now up and running. He says they are going do a full review to learn from where things have gone wrong. Interested to see if anything comes from it.

But fair enough the CEO actually reads and replies to customer complaints.

Emailed the chief exec gavin.e.patterson@bt.com and got a response from his PA within 10 minutes. Complaint has been forward on to the senior complaints team and 30min after that I have been emailed by them saying they will look into the problem and call me later. Fast reposes for sure, but lets see if they can get an solution.

We have an ongoing problem with BT after moving to them from Talk Talk who were equally sh*t at fixing things. The problem I now think isn’t with BT but with Openreach. Now I know Openreach are part of the BT Group but it seems the problems and time it took to get a fix when we were with Talk Talk and the problems we are now having trying to switch to BT are all to do with Openreach. No one seems be able to pick up a phone to Openreach and actually get an answer. It seems everything has to be messaged to them and then you have to wait at least 24hrs to get a reply.

Its all just a bloody mess and god nows how the government is going to make broadband a Universal Service Obligation. What I am pretty sure is that if I had no electricity or water then an engineer would be out the next day to at least try and fix it. Open reach are just a joke. But why would them improve, they have no competition in the majority of the country.

Amazon Fire Stick works well. Not sure if Eurosport is on it but a NOW TV box is good and super cheap.

Have both Macs and Windows machines our house and never had a problem sending stuff between them or having them networked together. Always seemed to play nicely. It certainly takes a while to get used to a Mac and the different keyboard commands but now as I usually use a mac I swear at the PC and my wife who uses a PC at work swears when using a mac. Nothing to do with functionality but just remembering the keyboard commands.

A radar does seem over the top but when out on my road bike I often think it would be nice to know if something is behind you. Especially when on a downhill and the wind noise is high and you are taking a few more risks. I hate it when something comes roaring past you and makes you jump out of your skin. Normally those pesky motorbikes. Then again all the mirror contraptions look hideous.

We found Auckland pretty dull and like most large cities. I would hot foot it out. Wellington on the other hand is much nicer and as the capital there is loads more to do, like the national museum.

If you are driving around the best thing in the world is to hire one of there: http://www.krusenz.com Totally made our holiday as it plays commentary about the local area that you are driving through and also history of New Zealand and Maori culture. It has to be one of the best products I have ever come across and you end up learning a ton about the country just as you drive. The level of detail and history was just spot on and and not something you would get from guide books unless you had your head in a book for the whole drive.

The problem with Bristol is that one day it will take 5 minutes to get down the M32 and in and around the centre and the next it will take you an hour. If there is any type of accident of roadworks Bristol grinds to a halt.

Train is always good or drive and ride in.

Interesting that they have been able to remove the bodies from Egypt so quickly back to Russia. Compare that to how long it took to just identify the bodies in Tunisia after that terrorist shooting on the beach.

Shopify here and it is great for getting a good looking website up and running quickly. International shipments is fine, but it all depends on how you want to deal with VAT. We just charge people the same and then pay VAT for UK and EU customers and not for others. This is what many companies including many large multinationals do.

The big issue with Shopify is integration into a shipping platform. It does not come with any type of competent software for generating shipping labels and customs forms if needed. As its US based most of the shipping integrations are US based and do not work with Royal Mail. All depends on the number of items he is shipping and what he is doing at the moment. This has turned into a real time consuming pain for us but if you are shipping high volumes then there are solutions out there such as Veeqo. Personally I would look at this aspect first as Royal Mail are just in the process of changing the way labels must be printed and it seems many shipping integrations firms were not really aware of this.

Shopify does also lack tons of basic functionality such as the ability to change orders once they have been placed and as we have found out just recently simple things like a voucher code that will discount a product price and shipping. So if a customer has a £20 voucher and the product costs £10 and shipping is £10, Shopify can not handle this and will just discount £10 from the product price. Madness!!!

Personally we are going on the hunt to find a replacement but I don’t think it will be easy as most others are either very time consuming to setup or costly to have developed, or you have to host them on your own hardware and then you have all the upgrade and security issue. We had this with Magento when we first started and each time a security patch came out we had to pay someone £200 to implement it. Not good for a small business. A managed solution is much much easier.

Check out Volusion and Bigcommerce

A few things to think about and check out

Shipping labels, is there a click once and print all.
Credit card integration, can you use your current provider (this is a whole story in its own)
Can you link into your accounts software

DB – Do you still have the Macbook Air for sale. Drop me an email if you do, email in profile

Should also say I am with FB and agree with others that the telephone banking is great but internet is clunky. I never seem to be able to login first time without having to reset something. Also have a bank account with HSBC and their login process is much easier.

Interestingly in an age of technology and when so many people use internet banking I don’t understand why banks do not compete on their internet offering and unique functions or services. So people here have said Nationwide is good, so I checked their website and can’t find anything about their internet functions just wooly stuff like:

We’re the world’s largest building society
Our members decide how we’re run
We provide great service for our members
We support your local communities
We listen to what our members have to say
We’re committed to being an ethical business
Doing the right thing for our members is at the heart of what we do.

This is all just marketing garbage and nothing I really care about. Tell me why your internet offering is so good. The only bank that seem to advertise their technology is Nattiest with the advert about getting money out of the cash machine when you have lost your card.

Considering banks can’t really compete on interest at the moment there isn’t really any reason or compelling drive to switch, unless they have particularly cocked something up.

Just signed up for BT For unlimited broadband (not super fast as we can not get it), line rental, Youview recordable box, basic TV and HD channels, evening and weekend calls and they are buying us out of our Talk Talk contract. All in £33. You also get access to free BT wifi out and about which is a massive bonus for me work wise.

Through Quidco so £160 cashback.

Reason for moving from talk talk is we have had tons of problems with our broadband and TalkTalk have been so slow at fixing it. Also the TalkTalk Youview box keeps crashing and takes ages to start when you first use it. So far talking to BT they have been great and call centre staff have been very good, unlike TalkTalks indian call centres where they are very polite but hard work to get them to actually fix anything and not just work off a script.

There were probably loads of ifs and buts because employers aren’t really allowed to say now that your all fired and you will be going in 2 weeks time. They have to say there will be a consolation period and the whole point of a consolation period is that it gives the employees time to persuade the company to change it’s mind. So until the consolation period has ended they can’t give you a date and many details. In reality most companies are 99.9% sure they are going to make the people redundant so the consolation period is bit pointless. As there are only 5 of you could all agree with the company to close consultation straight away and then they could start the redundancy period straight away. However you might want to work for as long as you can as at least it is guaranteed income.

Check the French post website. Chances are all the details will be there. It works with most countries nowadays.

And guess what the law doesn’t apply if your kids are in private school. So the Tories bring in a law that doesn’t apply to them.

Now are schools bothered by this because they want the best education for kids or because it effects their attendance stats. In today’s teaching culture I think it is the later!!

To me it seems that the problem with standard comprehensive schools as opposed to grammar and private schools is disruptive kids, not necessarily dim but well behaved kids. Grammar schools and private schools have the luxury of not only selecting pupils but also kicking out the ones that are disruptive. There is always the fall back of the local comp.

Now we do not tolerate disruptive adults at work or bullying at work so why do we tolerate it in schools. Is that the real crux of the problem and therefore the reason for the underlying need / want of grammar schools.

As what other have said and also more of a radical change but check the fork steerer. If its aluminium the fork is probably around the 800g mark but swap it to full carbon and you can easily knock 300g off. I have always found stock saddles, posts, stems and bars are either surprisingly heavy or surprisingly light. Never as you would expect “not to bad”

Im not saying don’t claim but it is worth thinking about the long term cost of you insurance compared to the cost of the fame. Strange that others were able to move after making claims. After we were burgled every year I tried to get cheaper quotes from other insurance companies and every time they would not take us on as we didn’t have 5 clear years claim free. That was going to the main players and not with a broker so I wonder if that made a difference. Bloody annoying as I totally agree thats what insurance is for.

Just remember that if you make a claim your premium will go up and you will not be able to swap to a different insurer for 5 years.

After our burglary it was the largest cost as no other insurer would take us on as new business until we had 5 clear claim free years. Current insurer knew they could up the premium and nothing we could really do about it.

The whole idea of Internet of Things to me seems pie in the sky at the moment even though the media keep pushing it saying our homes will be full connected very soon. I love technology, heck I run a company that make iPhone accessories, but I just can’t see the benefit to many of these home connected products. So I will be able to switch my kettle on from my phone, ok but what happens if it doesn’t have any water in it!! Connecting things to the internet is great if it does actually reduce the hassle factor or allows you to switch something on that takes ages to get going, heat up etc. But to me all these things just consumer electricity like it is going out of fashion and often add complexity to life.

I have a smart thermostat and the amount of hassle we have had with it let alone it going haywire when the internet is down and slapping the heating on even in the middle of summer. No way has it saved us any money with its so called smart heating algorithms. Another one of these technologies that work fine if you have perfect broadband which never goes down and you never get a electricity cut.

One thing I did see on Dragons Den was a system that alerted you when your ageing parents had not got out of bed in the morning and switched the kettle on. Idea being you would then know there was an issue or they were ill. Now that is a great use of the technology and good reverse thinking.

Moan over!!

Ive got a Tado smart thermostat and a stand alone energy monitor that just shows really time readings. However I am sue that out energy bills and especially gas have gone up since we got the smart thermostat. Does anyone know off a smart thermostat and a energy monitor that is combined and works for gas and electricity?

We have a couple of these. Super simple to setup and picture quality is good. No need to faff around with extra cabling or having a hard drive unit spinning away 24/7.

http://mobile.ffx.co.uk/tools/product/Byron%20Byrc944%208711658263564%20Floodlight%20And%20Camera%20With%20Sd%20Recorder?gclid=CISx5sDas8gCFQxmGwodCjcBnA

When making claims in the past I have found that many insurance companies suddenly state to have certain rules that are often not in the T&C’s and they seem to think this is acceptable. Or they interpret terms in very weird ways. We had this when our camper was broken into and the TV stolen. The T&C clearly said that they covered electrical and entertainment equipment but the insurance company said the TV was a personal possession even though it was permanently fixed into the van so should have been removed each night!!

Nothing in their T&C’s referred to this (my wife is an insurance broker so knows how to read them.) A letter off to the ombudsman and all sorted after a few weeks. However the insurance company refused to payout for the claim but gave us exactly the claim amount as an apology for the hassle. Fair to say they never got our business again. Al in all stupid on their part as the TV was only worth £120 and paid out just shy of £1000 to get the van all fixed.

I’ve got a new Kindle Paperwhite that I got bout 2 months ago. To be honest the cheap basic Kindle is probably better and has a nicer screen colour but I wanted the light.

Any one else finding Safari really really slow, like taking 20 seconds to open a web page that used to take 3 or 4 seconds?

Christ people are taking wedding far to seriously with all the rules. Its meant to be a fun day. Ultimately we wanted all our friends there so if they have to bring their kids then I would rather they came than not . We just said that it would be great to see people without their kids so we could d have loads of fun. Some people couldn’t get baby sitters so their kids came along. And guess what some of them acted like kids!! At least it meant it wasn’t just another boring straight laced serious service

Weddings are often like new year, people put so much effort into them and over think things that they just turn out a bit crap. Just chill, relax and have fun.

Not sure how you can expect to have a wedding overseas and then tell people not to bring their kids. To me that is very odd.

Should also say we didn’t have kids when we got married and didn’t have any for 4rs afterwards and to be honest I never really liked kids before we had ours.

+ 1 for the Headspace app. Find it really good and some of the animations are great for making sense / explaining things. My wife and I do it together and this makes a big difference having a support and someone to bounce ideas off. Most of these things are based on the same techniques but just done in a slightly different way. It is just finding the one that suits you. A bit like getting fit, there are loads of way but ultimately it is exercising your heart , lungs and muscles.

Robw1 – Totally agree with your post. Bristol has far to many do gooders who want all the lovely aspects of say a modern public transport system but don’t want it in their back yard or if it rips up that tiny bit of waste ground. Just look at all those protests about the metro route near the M32. It is not nice piece of land, it never has been, it is right besides the M32 for god sake. I totally agree with people standing up and stopping say the development of Ashton Court or other lovely areas but nothing ever gets built in Bristol.

People do have to realise that if they want a lovely public transport system and open east to cycle on streets in the centre then they have to rip a good chunk of things down to build this and they need a ring road that actually goes all the way around the city to get cars out of the city centre.

It also doesn’t help that some idiot a few years ago decided that the Bristol city boundary would run through Filton so if anything needs to be done in the north of the city you have to get BCC and South Gloucestershire council to agree on things and for some reason they hate each other and always have.

Reported the crackling phone and they have done all the line tests and say there is not an issue. Engineer checked the line but as the weather was good, no rain, the crackling wasn’t there. Basically I need something that I can email to them to say here, look you can see the problems.

\thanks all, I posted this and the internet then went down!! The TalkTalk engineer did say that the cable to the house was an old type and that they seems to have patched it onto my neighbours phone line and we certainly get crackle on the telephone when it rains. Problem is he said Openreach will not come out unless they can show there is an issue on the line. Hence some line checking and logging software would deb great.

peteimpreza -Im on a mac as well so any mac software would be great or I have to power up the old windows laptop in the cupboard. Annoyingly I am in contract until Feb 2016 or off I would go as the TalkTalk TV box is woefully slow as well.

I just got the email. Oh my god that is an ugly bike!! I really like the ideas of On One and Planet X but if there was ever a company that needs to put it hand in its pocket and pay for a decent industrial designer. There stuff be it t-shirts or bike frames are just gopping.

The good news is that Apple are trying to take over the world so much and manipulate industries and business streams that at some point the EU will get involved. There is no way that Apple can blocks ads on one hand and then allow ads through there own News app (whilst taking 30%) without the regulatory bodies coming down on them. Apples market share is far to big to allow an anti competitive behaviour like this to be allowed. Just remember the battles that Microsoft had with the EU just because they bundled Internet Explorer with every PC.

Apple has got itself into a position where it has far to much power over certain industries and its policies will need to change as it is now just so big.

The publishing industry has brought this on themselves somewhat by so many annoying ads and popups that in many cases just don’t work on mobile devices. We the public do also have to realise that you can’t have things like SIngletrack World unless it is paid for and ads pay the wages. Personally I would prefer to have ads and still have Singletrack World. It’s the price you pay.

Both of ours went started around 11 to 12 months. Really once they can hold their head up well. The hardest part we found was trying to get a small enough helmet. Went with the Raleigh one from the first picture as this at the time seemed the smallest we could find. Both of ours are in a Hamax rear seats as they are just so easy to fit and remove. Kids absolutely love it but I guess they do spend a lot of time looking at your back but then again they can fall asleep with no issues.

I don’t get this whole Jeremy Corbyn issue. If the majority of Labour supports like him and his policies then they will vote him in, its called democracy. If you are a Labour supporter / MP / backer that does not like his policies then go off and start another party.

With all these old boy labour MPs complaining that the party will not be elected again, they should go off and create a new party and not try and manipulate a democratic election. Is the Labour party name and identity some sacred cow that they can not move away from. Personally it would be nice to see a party that is true to its roots and actually has some radically different policies.