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There are good jogs... everywhere! I do 8km/day down here in Saphli, on the beach, carry empty 1.5l plastic coke bottle to dissuade canine interlopers.

In my 17 years on/off here -

round-the-lake run in KhonKaen

Surin, head southeast to exercise park

Trat, road near new bus station then on the road towards border with Cambodge

Chantaburi, big jogging scene at central Park

Pattaya, you can squeeze in a jog head south towards Jomtien, then head back north and do the beach walk before the working girls/customers take over.

Petchaburi - can head to sports ground, do a few laps around the outside (exercise park is present)

Narathiwat - excellent to jog to the beach, exercise park there too

Prachuap - good beach heading north from town

BanKrut - 10 km beach to the south

and yes BKK - Lumphini Park any day

Get out there early, avoid the sun/crowds/cars. Always carry you dog dissuader. AA

I bought a pair of Bonntrager 26 x 1.5" @ 450B/tyre down here in Chumphon (not cheap). Semi-slick, roads here in Thailand so good that you can forget knobblies unless you are a serious MTB-er and want to wreck you body and bike. AA

Gee, APrathet sounds easy compared to the crap I used to go through at the Klong Yai/KohKong border. Thai side was easy, Cambo side... so many snouts in the trough. The whole gamut - touts to fill in your border pass, no international vacco cert., office closed for lunch, minimum 1,500 baht for 30 day visa etc. Hope the e-visa has reduced all bakshish to a mangeable 200B now. AA

I was just wondering - why do the distro.s come with so much 'stuff'?

Brasero et al. - aren't we all using usb sticks now?

Pidgin/Thunderbird - isn't it easier just to have a hotmail/yahoo and a gmail for backup security?

For (those who thrive on) social interaction - does not skype do everything gwibber et al. promise?

I could post a list of what I have exterminated, but am reluctant to recommend, say,

installing Chrome then killing FFox. Might be some very important dependencies twisted...

Welcome any feedback on what else I can delete from my system. AA

Thx again fellow linux-nauts. I have settled on the mothership Ub 12.04 pangolin, will let the Mint teams fine tune their gear for a while.. also playing with puppy (lupu.528 .iso) on a stick, looks very wholesome. AA

I heartily endorse the suggestion to toss MSOffice and get LibreOffice.

But am surprised that you got the new hard disk with XP. If you could upgrade to Win7

(and I just use win7 starter), there is a facility for using both Eng and Thai. AA

I was set up by 3BB with a Huawei HG521c wireless router a month ago. Plan 6Mbs (actually delivers 6.3) for one year ~ 630baht/month, router cost one-off 1,281 baht.

Great wifi performance around the house, downloading max thus far 900kb/sec. Maybe you could speak to 3BB and renegotiate a few easy things... AA

I have aussie pport, always fly to KUL with one-way ticket, when you arrive you will be asked 'how long would you like to stay, sir' - and even if you say one week you will be given 90 days.

Malay Immi. DOES NOT LIKE people entering with one pport and leaving on another, so better tell the better half. AA

Yes, 8Gb usb sticks are really only 7.4Gb.

If you are using windows, you can compress your data to store more stuff on your [465Gb} HD.

Connect your HD, click 'Explorer' (usually second button from left in lower panel), R-click on your HD, L-click on 'Properties', then tick the box that says 'Compress this drive to save disk space', AA

BY the way, if you need to get to Southern Bus Terminal from town, bus 149 (8 baht) goes right past the Australian embassy (South Sothoen Rd) and gets to SaiThaiMai about one hour later. Plenty of buses to Phuket, but this is a holiday weekend! AA

If all goes pear-shaped, computer dies etc., then with toshiba laptops you can totally restore them to as-delivered-from-factory state by holding down (and keep holding) the '0' (zero) key before you power it on.

You better check this (on google) for your model, before taking drastic action. AA

Day 1 I went to above and tried to make a withdrawal with my KBank Visa card. Everything proceeding as per usual until a whirring sound from the guts of the machine (suggesting the cash was stuck inside) and finally ATM informs me 'transaction cancelled' - no receipt, then machine becomes comatose. So I go to Chumphon Kbank, tell the staff of my problem: card works fine in ATM there, but that was not the problem.

Day 5 go back to Chumphon KBank with passbook, to update. Sure enough, money was deducted despite 'transaction cancelled'. Go to consult bank staff, get connected via telephone to pleasant English-speaking person, outline problem, am asked for receipt etc. Am told investigation will take 1 day (I suspect a week is more reasonable estimate) but no change (now day 10).

OK, I am being a whingeing aussie bastard but this is the first time I have had an ATM problem (of the non swallowing-card style) in 25+ countries. Just as well I only asked robbie the conniving green ATM robot for 2kB, rather than the 20kB max. Grrrr.... AA

young man, go west, get out out of there and create a gmail email address, migrate all your contacts, life will be much simpler... AA

Hi,

what sort of computer (brand/processor speed/installed RAM) are you using?

Which linux system are you trying?

Might be easier to download another linux distribution, load onto a usb stick [using unetbootin (google it)...]

I've tested about 6 versions this week - Mint 13, Lubuntu 12, racy puppy, Xubuntu 12.04, etc.

I would really recommend linuxmint 11 - looks good, and can get it to run pretty fast (toshiba NB305/1.66 Ghz/2 Gb RAM). After all the testing of other versions, I reinstalled LM11. AA

Free Ram: interesting to see if aussies or kiwis are on top downloading... AA

Installed IPM clear here (17 km N of Chumphon) ~ 1 month ago. Gets all 4 (or 5) regular Thai channels, plus another ~ 10 - of course there are 99 settings available, but most are duplicates. There's a sports channel, not sure what the others are, good picture on cheap simple tv receiver.

I think the installation fee (disc, wiring, converter box and labor) was 2000B - but the boss paid for that. AA

Ah yes, myths prevail in many sectors of society... makes life interesting.

I have boosted the performance of my netbook (Win7 Starter, 2Gb Ram, 1.66Ghz processor) 100 % following suggestions in http://www.computingunleashed.com/speed-up-windows-7-ultimate-guide-to.html. There are other such pages out there, and of course linux users compete for breathtaking speeds.

Agree with posts above - important in windows to regularly, disk cleanup, defrag, and try not to fill your operating system drive more than 30% or windows starts to go slowwwwwwwwwwww... AA

Thx for advice folks. Looks like I'll be spending the next few days idling away...AA

Pharmacists in Thailand mostly speak some English, and can certainly read it. Whenever I needed something (am retired vet) - formalin, povidone iodine, penicillin/clavulanic acid capsules whatever... would write a note with what was needed in case the people at the pharmacy couldn't understand what I was saying.

Ask for alcohol - you'll probably be offered EtOH - so write propyl, be prepared go to a few pharmacists. AA

Just spent a frustrating day trying these two distros. I dual boot on a toshiba netbook with 1.66GHz processor, 2 Gb Ram, Win 7 starter installed, linux allocated 40Gb partition.

Both Win and Mint 11 boot in ~ 45 sec. Mint 13 was taking ~ 2 min to boot, even after switching off some startup clutter. XUb similar 2min + on first couple of reboots, then crashed... so reinstalled Mint 11, and it boots out-of-the-box in 45 sec.

Any advice? Is my machine too small for newer XuB/Mint distros?

I turn off a few startup apps (using BUM etc), have good 3BB wifi connection, but performance of newer distros somewhat disappointing... AA

try www.demonoid.me, has most of the stuff you seek... AA

You will be pleasantly surprised what repairs you can effect with a 20B tube of superglue/cyanoacrylate... I keep my running shoes alive with monthly touch-ups (I do some serious mileage on the beach), also sandals that come apart etc... AA

Used to be opportunities here http://www.helpx.net/

I have been home-brewing for 30+ years (mostly Coopers stout from kits, to produce a low alcohol [one-third the usual content] product). Over the years, managed to dispense with air-locks, finings, sterilizer tablets, even bottles... plastic soft drink bottles are much easier to deal with. So maybe you could just concentrate on finding your friend a good source of cider starter product! AA

Kasikorn has good coverage in CHMPN province, even an ATM out at Saphli, but I have yet to find a Kasikorn CDM. AA