jeffer

Thats OK - follow his advice - see if we care that he cant speel ludicrous, 2x.

BR>Jack

For people that still recommend windows xp, it would be almost ludricous to insist on a antiquated OS to be put on a new machine ! Nah it is ludricous. Your new pc will run Vista just fine, and will run Windows 7 just fine, as no changes have been made to the driver model.

Didn't I read somewhere that Win 7 has an improved spell checker?  

Download the Win 7 RC for free, install it on a separate partition to your documents and use until the retail version becomes available.  

Hmmm, I read the latest story earlier on the Andrew Drummond website but when I went to show someone just now I get Error establishing a database connection

Maybe the site crashed with so many people wanting to read the story or... 

Funny how this rather important piece of news is hidden on The Nation...

Can't help you with True and it wasn't on my local service either which was strange, they usually show most days of the Tour live.

There was live text and a live feed of Radio 5's coverage available from the BBC website so give that a try if you don't get anywhere with True.

Doesn't display well in places using Opera but that's the price you pay sometimes for using one of the minor browsers. What does work works well and certainly no speed issues using Opera, faster than Thai Visa, actually very fast. There are many Thai sites that are truly bad but this isn't one of them.

Just tried it using IE and a big improvement. 6/10 using Opera, 8.5/10 with IE, very, very fast. Maybe an update for Flash is needed for some users?

If you mean BBC World News then it's available on other cable providers. I have it on in the background now and don't have UBC or True, just the cheap local cable that everyone who won't pay the price for UBC has. Just a matter of finding what's available where you are but being in a condo might mean you don't have a lot of say in the matter.

I thought the channel UBC dropped was BBC Entertainment, least that's why people I know canceled their UBC.

Is a list available where I can read which distinguished VIP's have been invited?

The likes of Jacky Chan, Jet Li....................... or Nippon Boy Bands?

Girl's Generation, Super Junior, Wonder Girls, Paula Taylor's boyfriend, more than likely the type of celebrity they would invite.

I have a couple of mice that come with software for enhanced features, on a mini cd not compatible with my laptop optical drive but go to the website and the software is there for downloading.

I'd suggest the difference in price between the US and Thailand is a little less than John has found. Take a walk around your local IT mall and you will find prices about 5% cheaper without any negotiation for the CPU and motherboard listed. I'm not American but 32 baht to the US$? I thought it was closer to 34 baht now 

I agree that high end graphics cards, cases and power supplies are much dearer than in the US but as mentioned before the demand is simply to small in Thailand to expect any different and the number of brands available in the US means the US has to be a much more competitive market. There is also no Thai equivalent of Newegg imo. EVGA is not a well marketed brand in Thailand so I think the difference in price might be even greater for that brand due to the very limited number of places that even sell EVGA cards.

My hearing is not great so I really don't see the point on spending money on a dedicated sound card theses days as on board is pretty good. If you're a muso or sound engineer that's different but if it's for gaming then I'd be spending the money upgrading somewhere else to be honest.

I purchased  a 1TB WD Green 32MB hard disk recently, 3100 baht, not a huge price difference (less than 10%?) to the US. Not worth bringing one in from the US even if I could due to warranty issues. Despite WD making many of their drives in Thailand I was surprised to see 'Made in Malaysia' on the sticker. Even in Singapore with a wealthier population I don't find big savings on most items over  Thailand. I tend to restrict my purchases in Singapore now to items I can't find in Thailand.  

For the operating system, as a stop gap you might consider using the Windows 7 RC available for free from Microsoft. Partition the hard drive so when the commercial version comes out around October you can install without affecting your files. 

From BBC News of the Future...

"The BBC is not permitted to broadcast from inside Thailand so our correspondent Jonathan Head reports to us now on the latest turmoil to hit Thailand from a location near the Thai-Cambodian border... Jonathan, good morning, what can you tell us?"

Seems they're still being made, quite a few models when you Google, Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, Toshiba but whether they're sold in Thailand I can't tell. Samsung have models but couldn't see anything on their Thai portal, nothing I could find in a few local online electronic retailers either.

http

://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...nic-_-82103389

Hi Nam,

I've got an expensive (at the time) Panasonic VHS player from overseas that plays old tapes here but doesn't record on all channels, different frequency I suppose. Haven't used it for a while, had forgotten all about it.

I bought a VHS/VCD combo player for 5,000 baht at least 5 years ago now. DVD combos were selling for 10,000 at the time. Haven't seen them on sale for a couple of years now, used to sell them at Central and Tesco but wouldn't be surprised if they don't sell let alone make them anymore. I'd think they must be available second hand. The electronics area down Chinatown way would surely sell them still, can't think of the name but someone will know where I mean. LG is the brand of my VCD combo, they had several models for sale.  

The only thing that worries me about BigIT at times is the large number of out of stocks, often on everyday items. 

I hope the stock they have online is better than in their shops. I wanted to buy a WD Elite 500GB external drive (listed on their site) last week and none of their shops I tried could get one for me, not than any other shop even knew what I was talking about 

Looks like a Seagate Free Agent is what I'll end up getting now.

I read somewhere there is also supposed to be a Windows 7 Starter version available for places like Thailand and unlike XP Starter there won't be a restriction on the number of windows you can have open at the one time. Sounded like it would be good for older computers as the main features missing were the fancier graphics and video which you could manage without if the price was right. The Thai Win 7 doesn't get released until a week after the main release so it will be interesting to see what happens.

I never switched to Vista but most reports on Win 7 suggest it is what Vista should have been. Gotta burn the iso and take it for a test soon.

btw, anyone have a current Microsoft phone number in Thailand to use to validate a Windows XP operating system? My genuine 2 year old XP version won't let me past the log in stage. I get a message to validate it but the numbers are both overseas (purchased overseas) and don't work for me.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Microsoft-Ph...io-t175948.html

New Acer or LG 19" monitors available everywhere for less than 4,000 baht. Hard to justify repairing a 6 year old monitor when new monitors with warranty are so cheap.

http://www.bigitshop.com/online-shopping/L...-W1934S-BN.html

http

://www.bigitshop.com/online-shopping/A...-X193WAbd.html

Well, you wouldn't want Microsoft Thailand to offer any special deals now would you? Might encourage more people to buy a legal version...

btw, anyone have a current Microsoft phone number in Thailand to use to validate a Windows XP operating system? My genuine 2 year old XP version won't let me past the log in stage. I get a message to validate it but the numbers are both overseas (purchased overseas) and don't work for me. 

Anyone know the story with them? All the hardware sections are blank, just a message saying "Sorry, site temporarily closing services. Please visit later this year."

Shocking how the British Embassy offered them jack sh*t in the way of help ?????

From the article:

"The Foreign Office said consular officials had offered to raise the case with the Thai authorities at the time but had been asked by the couple not to intervene."

maybe the choice was to pay up now and get back home , or have the embassy approach and then get transferred to a normal jail for a couple of weeks while it was all sorted out ?

And it's precisely why this sort of scam can continue.

Some people say they would fight the charge if they themselves were innocent, how they would never plead guilty, but people know the reputation of Thai jails. Given the choice between paying several thousand pounds or spending weeks, months or possibly longer in a squalid and overcrowded jail cell waiting for your case to come to court with no guarantee of the verdict and virtually no possibility of securing compensation if wrongfully accused then people pay up so they can get on with their lives. 

You can be sure for every person that goes to the media there are many more too ashamed or embarrassed to do so. You only need to look at the Simon Burrowes case and imagine the cost of being detained in Thailand for an extended period e.g. loss of income or job, legal fees, distress caused to your family etc. When people say they would fight charges in Thailand then I think many are not taking in to account the consequences or simply believe it could never happen to them.

I compared the prices of some standard spirits and cigarettes at King Power to Tesco a couple of years ago and found 'duty free' to be more expensive. 

This report is not very different from one I heard a year ago that I've never seen mentioned in the press or on the internet. It sounded a bit unbelievable at the time but not anymore. 

Anyone who has read the various reports on how King Power got their locations at the airport can form their own opinion as to their involvements in any scam. 

The cartoonist explains

The problem is that many readers go for the initial understanding of my cartoons and invariably get emotional about them. The idea of this cartoon was to show the cynicism of YouTube and the five-star ratings on a video of someone dying. I do not deny that this video was useful because it was the only information available on the event.

The problem is that information is getting more and more emotional (emotion is the enemy of real information and the beginning of a demagogy). Do you think that the millions of people who saw this video care much about Neda or whether they simply watched it to get their daily thrills - consciously or not? It's like watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It's purely emotional, and if you watch it 20 times like most of us have done, you do it for the emotion it provokes, not for the information it brings. YouTube is useful but it is also setting a new trend where the lines between information and entertainment are becoming more and more blurred. That is why in my cartoon I put the "five-star rating" that YouTube put on its version, to show that I did not like the "entertainment" aspect of it.

The other misunderstanding, mainly from Americans readers, is that all political cartoons are supposed to be funny. 

As a French person myself, I can say that European cartoonists are generally more serious, more cynical, more tasteless, more bloody, more realistic and less funny or politically correct. Yes it's a cultural difference that has sometimes caused problems when readers of an English-newspaper overseas can be very homogenous.

No, this cartoon was not meant to be funny at all. It is very serious and is meant to carry a lot of gravity. The idea that I wanted to depict something funny is what usually causes outrage among readers. But the biggest mystery is that some readers actually assume that I would be so insensitive as to make fun of a young dying girl. If my cartoon is not clear enough, the first thing that should come to the mind of the reader is "Alright, it can't be that the cartoonist is making fun of Neda dying because no journalist in his right mind would do that. So what is he really trying to say in his cartoon?"

Also, why should the cartoonist become the villain in this? Shouldn't it be the Supreme Leader of Iran? I didn't kill anyone…

STEPHFF - THE CARTOONIST

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/topstory/30106079/Was-it-a-misguided-joke-or-just-an-insensitive-car

"International mail processing charge" - or something like that.

Often 7 baht.

My experience as well.

Most cards have the adapters with them, it's not in the bottom of the box?

I was thinking the same. Is this your card?

http

://www.leadtek.com/eng/3d_graphic/spec...id=1&act=2

Maybe Leadtek in Thailand is differerent but...

Never used the phone service but a visit to the local dtac office saw the SMS spam stop for good after a couple of days

AIS was not so easy. Don't know what the problem is but after four visits it still hasn't stopped.

I don't know what they are thinking when they send out an SMS early in the morning. Getting woken up only to see some silly marketing SMS, good way of making sure I would never have anything to do with the advertiser.

I wonder if they have tested yet to see if the license plate recognition works after you bake your plates in an oven for a few hours...  and if it works on plates inside those protective covers...