Highwayman

The last Yahoo! account l opened a year ago still offered free POP access (.com.au). Works fine with Outlook Express for me. I noticed one time on the US Yahoo! that a lot of the extra features in the paid version were provided free in the Australian one.

Looking at the Australian Yahoo! site the only advantages for me to have a paid account would be no advertising and 2GB storage, not worth USD20 to me at the moment however if l had to pay to retain POP access l probably would.

One reason l think the Yahoo! Australian POP accounts are/were? free is that you agree to receive advertising offers in your e-mail. Thing is, after the first offer you can just decline future offers and that's the end of the offers.

It took me 6 months to sort out a payment problem with True. I made the big mistake of paying a month in advance, which took 3 people and a call to head office to find out how to process such a payment. That should have warned me. It was never credited to my account and despite having all the receipts it took six months before they agreed they had neglected to credit my account with the advance payment.

Did a similar thing with CAT and AIS, no problem at all. I guess no-one ever pays their True bill in Advance if the lack of knowledge on how to process it was anything to go by.

I've had my last three yearly non imm. "O" multiple entry visas issued at Melbourne, the most recent being May of this year. It's never been a problem, (I'm Australian) just took my marriage certificate and that was all they needed. Staff there are always very helpful and polite. Managed to get one visa issued in only three hours in an emergency.

I will be driving from Surin to Bangkok on a Sunday and was wondering if there is another border crossing enroute other than Poipet /Aranyprathet where l could update my Non Imm. "O" visa?

My map (old) shows a crossing at Chong Chom. Is this an international crossing point available to visa runners? I was hoping to avoid Poipet which l imagine would be very busy on a Sunday. I'd prefer driving a few extra kms to standing in line for ages at Poipet.

I have come across the search engine you mention before on another PC but l can't remember where it came from, however see if this helps:

In Tools/Internet Options/Advanced select "Do not search from the address bar"

Another thing you could try is to add to your HOSTS file an entry blocking the url. That will only work if you're using a proxy btw. Don't forget to clean out your temp files before you restart IE.

I have yet to see an AMD FX cpu over here, while it is the mainstream cpu for gamers a long while already in the rest of the world...

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Is this what you mean?

www.pantipprice.com/

I am can't even figure out which socket to start with (478/775)? But was looking to start with a Intel (775) P4 640 (3.2) or a 478 Prescott 3.2.

Socket 478 while still available is obsolete for what you want, 775 is what you need for P4.

For better value l'd take a look at the AMD range. Socket 754 would be fine for what you want, 939 if you wanted to do some serious gaming.

Asus have the best rep for mainstream boards and easy to find in Thailand. Gigabyte, Intel and Abit not always so easy to find. Some of the onboard audio and video you get with the more expensive boards is pretty good so that might do the job, you never know (steps back awaiting flaming from other TV members).

As was mentioned earlier, top line components like cases, power supplies and cooling systems can be a problem to locate.

It all comes down to what price you are prepared to pay.

i know about pantip but am reluctant to buy from them, i would prefer to buy a top of the line from the US with an international warranty.

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Is your problem with 'pantip' that you're concerned you won't get what you paid for i.e. something gets swapped on you? If so just go to a big retailer like DataIT (1st floor @ Pantip Plaza) or IT City on the top floor. If you buy from either of those places you won't have any problems getting what you paid for, although it might be a tad more expensive but worth it for the peace of mind.

Getting something sent over from the US might mean you get slugged with import duties so l wouldn't be going down that path. Take a look at the US HP/Compaq site and you might find that Thailand isn't that far behind the US in models.

Ad Muncher, very nice. I think it's going to be a keeper.

I used to use Ad-Block with Firefox but gave up on it as it was more trouble than it was worth. The great thing about Ad Muncher is that it works across different brosers e.g. Firefox, IE and Opera. I have a custom list in my Hosts file to block some really annoying adverts but it looks like l can get rid of those entries now.

It's only been noticably bad on this site. Is pagead2.googlesyndication behind the adverts on the right of the page? Even with a change to my hosts file l can still see them (not a concern btw) but the page now loads quickly without hanging most of the time.

You can edit this comment if you need to, but a thread on the computer section mentions Ad-Muncher which certainly speeds loading of just about all websites, including TV.

For a couple of weeks now l've had problems with page loading of Thai Visa. Many times if l look at the status bar in my browser (Firefox) it shows around 90% of the page loading quickly but it then hangs for up to a minute, sometimes longer, before the contents of posts are displayed. According to the status bar the bottle neck is pagead2.googlesyndication.

Any idea why this would be so?

Google itself is usually one of the fastest loading pages on the internet so l'm surprised that this is where my problem lies. I'm sure that this must be the cause of the slow page loading as when l ammended my hosts file the problem instantly disappeared and pages now load as quicky as you would expect on an ADSL connection.

Some people say www.maildozy.com is okay.

Based on IE - so there lies the problem!!

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I think you must be thinking of a browser other than Opera.

The Opera browser normally comes with advertising unless you pay USD39 for the ad free version.

Opera Software is temporarily offering the paid version of its browser for free, as part of its 10th anniversary celebration.

Complimentary registration codes for Opera 8 are being given away until midnight Tuesday. The license is good for the life of that particular browser.

I still prefer Firefox but Opera is a decent browser, very quick compared to IE, even better if you can get it without the advertising strip.

Free registration code

//edit changed to the direct link so there isn't a redirect

One card had been revalued to as much as 100 million baht, he said.

Received the letter from True.

Does anyone have any idea what percentage of True hi-speed customers are non Thai?

I'm surprised they wouldn't have some way of sending out notifications to customers in English as l'd imagine there would be a significant number who wouldn't read Thai.

Lopburi, found l had an e-mail at the asianet link but no luck with the True e-mail. Had a couple of messages saying that l hadn't paid my bill when l checked at asianet. Pretty funny when l'm still having an argument with them about not crediting a payment in advance l made a few months back.

Never ever pay anything in advance with True. It took 20 minutes before anyone could be found who knew how to enter it in their payment system and now even with a receipt they are still saying it's not on their payment system. Thankfully AIS don't have any problems with advance payments.

Think l'll wait for a while before l consider trying their new set-up as it sounds like there are a few bugs to be worked out.

I can't clear my cache on Firefox and went looking for instructions and saw their website trying to SELL a cache cleaner. I ended up with MIL Shield but it didn't clean my cache in Firefox.

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Have you got a link for where Firefox are selling a cache cleaner?

Don't know why that would be when there are several extensions that can do that for you for free if you are unable to do it yourself as shown earlier in this thread.

When Hotmail and to a lesser extent Yahoo! have problems with Firefox the problem is usually at their end, not with Firefox. With Hotmail that's what you would expect if using Firefox instead of IE.

Maxthon has a feature built in that will enable multiple websites to open in tabs when you start it up. If you can't get Firefox to work then Maxthon is the best of the IE powered browsers that l have used.

On August 23, 2005, the company mailed out 285,000 letters to their hi-speed Internet subscribers

I've got ADSL, the basic 590 baht per month package.

Should l have been sent a letter? Haven't received anything so far and l'm only 15 mins. from their area office at Zeer Rangsit, 30 mins. from the Ratchada HQ.

Btw, when you have an ADSL account how do you get an True e-mail account? I normally use Yahoo! as when l had a dial up account before with TA the e-mail account they provided used to get spammed despite trying every which way to configure their mail filters.

Would there have been some e-mail account set up by True for me when l signed up for ADSL? I don't have much use for it but it might be handy if l travel to Myanmar where Yahoo! is blocked but l'm told True isn't...so far.

One other question, the user name they provide e.g. Gb6hRk, is it possible to change that to something easier to remember or am l stuck with that forever?

Another vote for Avast.

I use Norton on my other computer but wanted something cheaper on this old PC and have found Avast to be pretty good for a free program. It even updates automatically which not many free programs do. When it updates it does so much quicker than Norton ever did.

TAIPEI : Hundreds of Thai workers torched a building and clashed with riot police in southern Taiwan during a protest over "unreasonable" rules banning drinking and gambling at their work dormitory, police said.

The riot erupted late Sunday night near a construction site for a subway system in Kangshan city, a police officer at Kangshan police bureau told AFP.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) -- More than 1,600 Thai workers set fire to their dormitory in southern Taiwan, burnt cars and hurled rocks at police after some were caught drinking by their employers, police said on Monday.

CNN

Gmail timing out but Yahoo! is working okay for me.

A mixture with other sites, some including Thai Visa and ABC News Australia slow to load, others just timing out, network errors etc.

Using True basic ADSL on the outskirts of Bangkok, usually pretty good.

A number of the government buses from Morchit stop at the bus stop opposite Robinsons Future Park Rangsit. Only 123-180 baht, usually takes about 4 hours although the bus l got the other morning at 3.50am had me in Aranyprathet by 7am. Not sure l'll be getting up so early next time but at least l was home for lunch.

Even if the JackGolf and other private buses are quicker, for me it's simply not worth the time it takes to trek into Bangkok to join up with them. The slower government bus and DIY visa service works out quicker if you live out Rangsit way

Might give the PNR visa run a go sometime if l have to visit my sister-in-law in Chonburi and my visa is due.

Anyone see page 10B of The Nation, today Thursday 18/08/2005? The photo in the top left corner.

I realise the guy in the middle has a job to do but is that all he is allowed to wear?

I also did the Poipet visa run yesterday.

In light of all the comments about delays l thought l would try getting the first Morchit bus to Aranyprathet. It leaves at 3.30am and l joined it at 3.50am at Future Park. First time l've ever been on a standing room only bus for this trip. I didn't get a seat until the army border checkport where they threw off 6 people, maybe Burmese, l'm not sure.

Got to Aranyprathet at 6.55 so that would have been only a 3hr 25min. trip from Morchit, pretty quick.

Got to the border at 7.05, Thai immigration started processing foreigners at 7.25, l got through in 15 minutes, exited Cambodia 8.15am, wandered around the casino a bit before heading back to Thailand. Just spent 5 minutes at Thai immigration, the immigration guy happily singing along to some Thai karaoke while he looked over my passport. I saw the JackGolf bus parked near the Star diner as l went to get a tuk tuk back to the bus station. Got the 9am bus to Bangkok, the slower 123baht one this time as it drops me off almost to my door which the faster ones don't. If l had got another bus then l could have been at Morchit before 1pm which was when l got home anyway.