zzSleepyJohn

Am I right in thinking that Astro and True are on different satellites at different positions?

Yes, True is on Thaicom5 at 78.5°E. Astro is on Measat at 91.5°E

Can I just re-align my True Ku band dish to point to the Astro satellite and receive Astro if I have the right box?

Not unless you have a valid Astro card that's paired with the box, and then there's also the footprint issue.

I'm still puzzled about the footprint issue myself because the Measat 3 Ku band footprint maps I've seen on www.measat.com/satellite_91e_measat3_ku.html, show their Ku footprint hardly extending into Thailand at all, so pulling that Astro Ku signal in from Bangkok would appear to need an outsize Ku dish. I'd like to know how the shops that are selling Astro packages in Bangkok get over that. Or are they perhaps selling kits to be taken back to Malaysia and installed there?? Doesn't make any sense to me at the 31.565 Baht price people have quoted. Can anyone clarify, please?

.... 5B for photocopying/printing is about the cheapest I've come across,...

Ouch! At that price, they must have seen you coming.

You can certainly remove the toner cartridge easily enough on that Brother model. I think the drum is user-replaceable so I suppose that it can easily be removed and replaced. If not I would just keep the box and wrap the whole thing in cling-film. It actually comes with a silica gel sachet from the factory.

I'm not convinced clingfilm around the whole body of the printer would necessarily keep humidity out on its own. I've been religiously wrapping my whole Fuji Xerox back up in it's original plastic bag and putting it all back in it's original box for storage, and that hasn't worked for me. In the days of floppy discs I used to wrap them up with re-cooked bags of silica gel and keep them in a tin box, and I would weigh the silica gel bags to see how much moisture they'd absorbed. The larger the storage area, the more bags were needed to keep the floppies from going mouldy.

So for my "next time" toner and drum storage (that's if there's going to be a "next time"), I want to be able to wrap them up as a small package together with a least a couple of re-cooked bags of silica gel, in tinfoil and maybe with clingfilm as well, and keep the whole package in a tin box.

Some models of laser printer don't have a separate drum at all; it is part of the cartridge. My old Canon was like that. That might be worth looking into in your case.

Being part of the cartridge, so long as the whole thing's easily removable, would be OK. What I reckon would be unacceptable, after my recent experiences, would be if the drum was installed in the main body of the machine.

But yes, you're right. Checking exactly how the drum is configured is going to be a critical factor in any "next time" printer I go in for.

Oh, the joys of being a careful thrifty printer-user! Why can't we print reams and reams every month and forget about saving the trees, like everyone else??

Darrel, We have a printshop in town here that does A4 photocopy sheets for 1baht so that's quite a strong argument against bothering with any printer of my own. On the other hand that 2000baht for a Brother is a pretty strong argument for having one, and it makes my attempts to repair my old drum begin to look non-sensical. I didn't realise new lasers had come down in price so much. My old one cost just under 4000baht 5½ years ago.

Can you remove the Brother's toner and drum unit easily so that you can pack it away in tinfoil with silica gel, like you suggested, between rare printing sessions? With hindsight I daresay if I'd been doing that with my Fuji Xerox's toner and drum, it would still be giving me good clean prints today, but we live and learn, don't we!

Yeah, 700 sheets would see me through to the pearly gates too. Maybe even beyond!! _{{Peter, may I bring my Brother with me?}}

If so, don't you think that more people would be offering this service and more users having this done rather than buying new drums or new printers?

Thanks. Hmmm... you're right though, it's not looking very promising I have to admit, but it just seems so crazy to dump the whole printer for the sake of one darned"red roller" Anyway, I shall keep persevering and try and make sure there really aren't any specialists with the gear and expertise anywhere in Thailand before I totally give up. After all I've nothing much to lose. I haven't yet been able to talk to anyone with real experience in servicing and refurbishing laser printers and copiers, so I think a search for an outfit that does that should be my next step. There must be plenty of those around, especially since Thailand is quite high up in the global league of resourcefulness in fixing old gear.

Next time, put the printer (or the drum, if feasible) in a sealed plastic bag with some sachets of silica gel.

Yes, absolutely! That's a good suggestion and it's what I was planning to do if there's going to be a next time, but if I listen to all the advice I'm now getting, including our friend rakman above about using printshops instead, it doesn't look all that likely there's going to be a next time.

Thanks impulse.

There are quite a few shops Pantip Plaza that sell reconditioned printers and I'm sure they could help you out. That, of course, assumes you're in Bangkok and it's feasible to get there.

It would be quite a long walk to Panthip since I'm living in Chiangrai, so I was thinking more in terms of finding an address where they actually do drum refurbishment on the premises., and shipping mine there. According to that US firm Rotby who sell all the refurbishing gear, a recoated drum will last forever, so what I'm looking for is an outfit that has the gear and the expertise. Every laser printer and every photocopier has a drum, so there must be businesses in Thailand somewhere, doing actual drum refurbishment work. The question is where?

You can also try Fortune Tower at MRT Phra Ram 9 (sp?), but the character of that place seems to be changing with fewer used and reconditioned vendors and more homogeneous shops that all sell the same selection of identical new stuff.

Hmmm.. it's sad to see Thailand following the western world and slipping more and more into the throw-it-away and buy new culture. I suspect we all know it's unsustainable in the long run, and the tide has to turn again.

Those prices are pretty standard for most laser printers.

Yes, thanks for the comment. I guessed as much, and it still leaves me unhappy with the throw-away pressure the situation is exerting on me.

In my experience it is usually (but not always) worth replacing the cartridge(s) but when the drum goes you should just buy a new printer. I wouldn't trust a reconditioned drum to last.

Perhaps I should have explained in my OP that this is a 5½ year old printer that's spent most of its time just stored away through 5 monsoon seasons without airconditioning, and I doubt if it's printed more than 150 sheets in total in its whole lifetime. After the first monsoon season, each time I've got it out to try and print something, I've had to open it up and polish the drum to minimise repetitive black dots and splodges spaced at exactly the same as the drum circumference. What I'm looking for now is some kind of economical fix that will give me another 5½ years of similar very low usage and long periods of storage. I know low usage is a problem on all kinds of printers, but lasers still fare a lot better than ink-jets in this situation.

I'm an old-fashioned codger brought up in the bygone days of post WW2 thrift, so I really hate the present day western world's throw-it-away-and-buy-new culture. One of the things I love about Thailand though, is how shops can often fix broken TVs, washing machines, video players and even laptop computers in their back rooms for a song.

But my problem is just a bit more specialised. I want to get my laser printer drum fixed. Now a laser printer's drum is just a glorified plastic roller with a fine and delicate coating of special electrostatic sensitive selenium material on the outside, and if they are damaged they can be touched up or recoated by someone with a bit of experience with the aid of expensive solutions and tools. A US-based firm Rotby Laser Images, Inc. shows exactly how it's done and sells all the tools to set up a business to do it on their pagehttp://rotby.com/purchase/ This isn't a d-i-y kit for a once-off user though, a business would need to repair quite a few drums to make it worthwhile.

Now buying a complete new drum assembly for my Fuji Xerox Docuprint 203A costs 75% of the price of a new printer, and buying a new toner cartridge costs 50%, so buying these items new just isn't an economic option. Repair or 2nd-hand refurbished replacement drum is what I need.

These laser drums are in photocopiers as well as in laser printers, so there must be thousands and thousands of them around in Thailand with a fair proportion of them wearing out or getting damaged, and I just can't believe that when they get into trouble their owners have to replace the whole machine. There must be repair businesses around who refurbish drums at a price less than the cost of a complete new drum assembly.

So my question is who are and where are these repair businesses, and how could I get in touch with them? Anyone got any ideas or experience with a bad drum on their laser printer?

Check out satthai.tv they have Astro and better yet Skynindo

which is on C band so no problems with the rain

I'm a bit puzzled. Please can someone enlighten me? Are we talking here about Astro on Ku band or an Astro package on C-band?

As far as I can see from www.measat.com/satellite_91e_measat3_ku.html, the Ku footprint hardly extends into Thailand at all, so to be able to pull Ku in from Bangkok would require an outsize Ku dish, wouldn't it? What exactly is it the Bangkok shops are selling as Astro?

Also, does anyone know In the Bangkok region, how low the Astro sat is in the sky?

Or What satellite it is on so I can look it up?

It is not a matter of low in the sky, in fact it is pretty well overhead

http://www.lyngsat.com/mea3.html

It is the footprint that the antennae are designed to cover

All the reports I have seen suggest that coverage is good up to Bangkok

That would be the C-band coverage though, wouldn't it? Astro is on Ku-band and as far as I can see none of the Mea3 Ku footprints extend as far north as Bangkok. Mea2 had a Ku footprint that appeared to cover most of Thailand, but isn't Mea2 defunct now? Has anyone actually picked up any Mea Ku band in Thailand recently, I wonder?

Except for a few radio channels all Astro seems to be encrypted. If you were thinking of going in for a subscription, a better bet might be Vinasat Ku at 132°E That comes in good and strong for me even up here in Chiangrai.

OK, thanks purushanti. I'll give it a bit longer on here, and then if nothing's forthcoming here, .will try that

Hi, I normally live in Chiangrai, but I'm in England now, booked to arrive back in Bangkok on 8th December.

I normally go back to Chiangrai on an overnight bus from MoChit, but have been hearing reports of floods still causing havoc on the roads and to the buses just north of Bangkok.

Can anyone give me an update on the currenrt situation and how it's affecting bus services north?

I'm guessing that the floods must be receding now, but does that leave MoChit still a muddy quagmire, and are buses still having to take long circuitous deviations before they can get to Nakhon Sawan and easier roads north?

I won't be doing this bus journey until probably 9th December, so hoping to get an idea on whether to expect things bus-wise might be largely back to normal by then.

Yes, thanks Jiu-Jitsu, That thought had actually also crossed my mind, and that's partly why I thought I'd ask here first if anyone's tried Ubuntu on an Aspire One.

I've been trying to migrate completely away from Windows for a few years now, but none-too-successfully I have to admit, so whenever some requirement like this for Windows comes up, I do my best to find a way round it for a while. Sometimes I do find a way around it, and sometimes I don't!

The only copy of Windows I have is a 5-year old legit version of XP that's registered and in use on another laptop, so I couldn't install that permanently. However I suppose I could use its 30 day trial period to prove whether my sound problems are h/w or s/w. I daresay if I saw the same sound problems on Windows and proved it was h/w to my own satisfaction, I could send the netbook to Acer for repair under guarantee and they'd probably end up installing a new Windows in it for test purposes,

Thanks dave_boo. Let me try this and come back to you. Just now, as per my last post, I've descended into crisis mode on another computer and need to try and restore basic communications there first.

Yes, I agree with you, justsum, about Natty being resource heavy, not only from the desktop angle, but in the wasteful way it gobbles up ram and cache. When I upgraded another laptop from Karmic to Natty last month, I immediately ran into a problem whereby swapfile doesn't get cleared after successive hibernations, and as more cache gets added to it between each hibernation, it's not long before the next hibrnation fails. Community's solution seems to be only to increase swapfile size, which doesn't really address the basic problem. An ongoing long saga on this at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1796851 presently has me totally preoccupied trying to recover from a broken partition table on my main working laptop that happened while I was trying to increase the swap capacity there. But yes, once I get over my current crisis, maybe I should have a look at crunchbang. Thanks for the suggestion.

Big C were doing a special offer on Acer Aspire One 522 netbooks last week, and as I was in dire need of a backup computer and it was a cheap deal, I got them to put 2GiB RAM in one and bought it. It came with no operating system except text-based Linpus Linux, and I didn't really want the hassle of Windows, neither legit or otherwise, so I took at as it was and installed Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) on it myself.

I was expecting the 1.0GHz AMD processor would make it feel slow, but that hasn't been my experience at all so far. Natty does tend to freeze up during initial loading when it's cold (but strangely not if I've warmed it up with a short session in Linpus Linux first). However, once warmed up and logged in it's stable and doesn't freeze. Maybe this could be a processor issue; I'm not sure. It has a 320GB HDD, built-in wifi and webcam, and on the whole seems great considering the size and price.

But I do have a few problems with it's sound. There's just a single (left) built-in speaker and an earphone socket, but when I plug earphones in, the speaker continues to play and there's no sound in the earphones at all. I haven't got the sound system muted anywhere as far as I know, and I'm using the same Natty sound programme and same pair of earphones on another laptop without any problem. On-line radio and video clips only play silently, so there's clearly something wrong, but I can't tell whether it's h/w or s/w or some kind of compatibiity between the two causing my problem. Also, neither can I detect any sound from the built-in mic nor from an external mic in the mic socket.

Before taking my netbook back to Big C and telling them sound doesn't work, I really ought to try and find a way of proving whether there's a h/w problem or not.

The netbook comes with an Acer DVD full of Windows based utilities, including a Conexant audio codec, but AFAIK none of this is of much use to me.

Wondering if any Linux users here have tried an Aspire One netbook, and if so, with what result? Appreciate any comments.

I upgraded to Natty from Karmic Koala in June this year. Not a totally smooth transition, I'd say. A few of my previously installed programmes such as Skype, Cheese, GIMP, and my printer didn't transfer and I had to re-install them. The new Firefox 5 doesn't have the same convenient newsfeed as before, and the new desktop has a programme launch bar that seems to have a mind of its own.

I went to quite a lot of trouble to backup my home folder and all of my previously installed SeaMonkey browser and mailclient before I upgraded, but in the event this wasn't necessary since all that transferred smoothly and automatically. So there's a bit of a new learning curve involved, but I'm slowly getting to grips with it!

I'm still struggling with a hibernation problem in Natty that wasn't evident in Karmic, though. Fuller details HERE. Basically after waking up from hibernation, Natty doesn't clear the swapfile, so after a 2nd hibernation wakeup, there just isn't enough spare swapfile to do a 3rd. If anyone else has tried hibernation with Natty, I'd be interested to hear if you're seeing the same problem or not.

All in all, Natty feels as if it's trying to be a bit cleverer than Karmic, thinks it knows what I want from it and tends to assume I'm just another typical game-playing and movie-downloading user (which I'm not) , rather like Windows does! I guess this tends to make it more resource-hungry, and although it's managing OK on my currently installed 1.25GiB RAM, if and when I go for a new computer, I reckon I'd better go for a minimum 2GiB RAM.

[Ready to go out of the box with pre-loaded Thai road map. No need for internet access, you must be thinking about a smartphone.

Just wondering if anyone has experience of how easy it is to download maps for other countries on such a Garmin bought in Thailand .

Assuming the aim is to ultimately have coverage in more than one country, basically, how would doing that compare with buying say a Tom Tom in UK for example, and downloading an extra Thai map for that?

I bought an electric strimmer, not a lawnmower, at the utilities shop on the LHS as you go down Prasopsuk Road past the old bus station towards the superhighway. I'm not sure but I think they may have had electric proper mowers. Past the paint shop on the LHS, say at about 70% of the total distance from the bus station to the superhighway.

Kandahar , do you honestly believe the world is being told the truth ...... *snip*....

Why are China, Singapore, Hong Kong and other Asian importers banning some imports of vegetables, seafood and milk products for fear of contamination.

Australia, the European Union, the United States and Russia have followed suit.

But the levels of radiation are not harmful ? B-Sh*t. The Americans have urged people to be at least 80km away , yet the Japanese only recommend 20km. If those reactor plants are not AIR TIGHT then radiation of what ever level, is being put into the atmosphere. Its not about hysteria it IS about facts and sadly I dont think we are getting them .

I would agree we're not getting the full picture, but suggest that's not so much due to deliberate witholding of information by the authorities as it is down to nobody actually knowing or understanding what's going on inside those broken reactor buildings. This despite having brought the world's top nuclear experts in to try and help. It's not for want of trying. This is all new territory and simply nobody knows.

Try evacuating 30 million from Tokyo alone , it is impossible . Those in the area close to the reactors , well , who knows, but I pray to god

that we have seen the worst of it all . Im not trying to hype up a devastating situation but I like everyone else would like to know the truth , good or bad .

So I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Suppose you were in the authority chain over there, given the current situation, how would you handle it differently?

Actually there is one thing: We've heard and seen such a lot at tech expo's about how the Japs are world leaders in robot technology. They've got some very advanced gadgets that are not only both clever and mobile, but now also agile,... and yet we keep hearing how they've sent their technicians into hazardous areas and had to withdraw them agan several times because of high radiation levels, and they still don't seem to be able to get near to the critical areas to find out what's going on. Given that top world experts and world resources are involved in all this, how come they can't send robots instead of technicians in there to do the dirty work? Just a thought.

Looks like a total of 4 quakes.

MAG UTC DATE-TIME LAT LON DEPTH Region

y/m/d h:m:s deg deg km

MAP 5.0 2011/03/25 00:22:39 20.724 99.873 10.0 MYANMAR

MAP 5.4 2011/03/24 15:54:35 20.682 99.739 10.3 MYANMAR

MAP 4.8 2011/03/24 14:23:53 20.595 99.862 10.2 MYANMAR

MAP 6.8 2011/03/24 13:55:12 20.705 99.949 10.0 MYANMAR

Yes, spot on with that list! I felt all four of those here, 14kms south of Town. The first (strong) one really ratted the bungalow, opened a cupboard for me and shook some dust down from the ceiling. The other three weaker ones were much smoother, more like riding up and down on a wave. More to come perhaps?

Thanks for all the advice and support. I'm now working somewhat uncomfortably on the logistics of getting a single entry non-O from the Hull consulate; uncomfortably because I'm now stuck in a caravan, a bit sick in a very cold north of England without easy access to printer, photocopying, stationery, stamps or transport , Thailand just feels like a far-off dream at the moment

....... I suspect that your extension and re-entry permit are toast as they've both passed their sell by date.

Well I had my Thai wife call Mae Sai immigration earlier today to ask them if they could move their original visa and re-entry stamps to my new passport. I was at pains to have her point out to them about how the artificial shortening of their original validity had made them appear to expire last September, although I'm not certain whether this part of the explanation effectively got through or not. They did reply that they could move them easily if I brought them in, so I'm living in hopes on that I might eventually get on-track again. We'll see!

Having downloaded several docs from the Hull website http://www.thaiconsul-uk.com/downloads-and-visas.aspx, I'm impressed by how well-written and how much clearer all the rules and options are to me now. Almost as good as TV

Despite all the helpful advice given 3 months ago above, I still haven't implemented it because my need to return to Thailand has been delayed until now, and I haven't completely come to terms with the need to apply for an 'O' visa before travelling.

Recapping briefly, MaeSai immigration artificially shortened my 12-month retirement visa and re-entry pemit that were issued in March 2010 so that they showed as expiring at the end of September 2010 instead of March 2011 because my UK passport expired at the end of September. I'm now in UK with a brand new passport issued in UK that has no stamps in it and my old expired passport with my shortened 12-month retirement visa and re-entry permit still stamped in it

The worries i mentioned in my original post were based on returning to Thailand on a one-way ticket, but now on second thoughts, maybe it would make things simpler if I come on a return ticket after all. Please can any of you see any snags or flaws in the following alternatve plan?

1. I buy a return ticket UK -Bangkok - UK, out in December 2010, return in June 2011

2. I don't get any visa before I fly, and simply rely on the flight check-in desk in UK allowing me to board based on having a return ticket

3. I show both old and new passports to the Bangkok immigration officer when I arrive, and explain that my plan is to take both passports to Mae Sai immigration to try and get my original 1-year stamps re-instated in my new passport. At this point I only expect to be given a standard 30-day tourist visa on arrival.

4. Within the next few days, I take my Thai wife and all the documents to Mae Sai Immigration and we ask them nicely if they can transfer the stamps from my old passport to my new passport, thus usallowing me to stay on my original retirement visa until March 2011.

5a. In March, I apply for a new 12-month retirement visa

5b In the worst case, if Mae Sai won't transfer the old stamps, I go to the Thai embassy in Laos or Cambodia or Penang with all my documents and apply for an 'O' visa there.

Any comments, snags, suggestions, encouragement, will be much appreciated.

You can travel to Thailand with a one-way ticket if you have a visa. If you can't get a non-O visa, and I don't see why you wouldn't get one from Hull, you can ask for a tourist visa. That is also a visa and enough to be allowed boarding with a one-way ticket.

Note that Hull also will provide a non-O based on visiting friends if you give the address of a friend in Thailand.

That's useful, thank you.

I do have a Thai wife, marriage cert, banks accounts and even current Thai driving licences I can show so it shouldn't be hard to get a new visa if that's what's necessary. I'm just a bit miffed, that's all, to have to go through the procedure and fork out for a new visa when I had a fully paid-up annual one that on the face of it appeared to be valid till next March, apart from what I thought was the small administrative matter of transferring it to a new passport.

Anyway,I'll see what Hull have to say once the UK bank holiday is over.

Thanks again for the further replies.

I've always been able to get retirement visas in the past either from MaeSai or Chiang Khong immigration, and they've always been very helpful explaining exactly what I had to do to meet the requirements. Probably easier than Pattaya or Bangkok judging by what I've read on here in the past, but I suppose whether they'd run to transferring my re-entry permit to a new passport up there could depend on how genuine a smile I can generate at the counter on the day.

The first hurdle I'm going to face unless I get an "O" visa over here is being allowed to board a flight at this end with only a one-way ticket. I don't really want to buy a return ticket because I've no idea when I'd want to return at the moment, and long-term returns are expensive anyway.

I'm trying explaining my dilemma in an e-mail to the Thai Consulate in Hull, UK, who I've been told are exceptionally helpful over here. Still living in hope that they might be able to issue some kind of temporary document that would convince an airline it would be OK to allow me to board with a one-way ticket. It's a big holiday weekend over here so I can't expect any reply for a few days, but if and when I get any positive response from them, I'll keep you posted here.