[ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
Hi Listers! Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I am happy to remove the installed Windows 7 and replace it with Ubuntu but was wondering whether anyone here has any experience of this model running under Ubuntu. My main concerns are around compatibility of the wireless NIC and graphics. The wireless NIC purports to be Acer InviLink Nplify and the graphics are Intel HD Graphics Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0. Does anyone have any experience of either this machine or perhaps more importantly the compatibility of these components. Any observations would be welcome as I am due to travel to the UK at the week end and was considering making the purchase. The selection here in Greece is both limited and expensive! Thanks for your time. Bob Giles -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xubuntu 11.10 Problems
On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 12:46 AM, Nigel Verity nigelver...@hotmail.com wrote: some real problems. The online upgrade crashed, the system recovery option on the LiveCD didn't work and the full install has resulted in a system whereby most of the theme settings are ignored by most applications, so that the whole OS is stuck with the look of classic Windows 3! Which theme were you using? From what I can tell, it looks like 'greybird' is about the only theme that supports GTK+ 3 at the moment, so other themes will fallback to the default GTK+ 3 theme, which does look a little Windows like. I guess it is still early days for GTK+3, but hopefully more theme designers will pick it up soon and start converting their old GTK+2 themes. Meanwhile, the greybird theme looks quite nice. :) -- Philip -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
On 17 October 2011 07:32, Bob Giles thecorf...@gmail.com wrote: Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I got a similar one (Acer Aspire 5742 Laptop, Core i3 380M) for my mother a couple of months ago and everything appeared to work with Kubuntu 11.04. A couple of people asked if it worked with dual screen and I couldn't test it because it was already off my desk. Now I have managed to test it with a 2nd screen and can report that it works fine (both the VGA and LVDS are 768 pixels high and at 60Hz and I haven't seen any flickering or artifacts, it might be an issue with some other configuration). Their ADSL is pretty ropey and I'm only with them for a couple of days so I'm going to delay the 11.10 upgrade for a while in case there are issues. I managed to leave my Kubuntu installation, any blanks Knoppix CDs at home so if it goes wrong, the laptop will become unusable until I visit next time so better not to risk it. As a result your mileage might vary with 11.10. She's been quite happy with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a while on an older Tosh, this was supposed to replace that one. Unfortunately I didn't want to inflict the bug called Unity to her so I went with Kubuntu. It's been some time since she used something else than the Gnome 2 interface so as a result so far all I heard is complaints! On the other hand, she's getting used to it. For a 70+ year old, that's some progress! Now if only I could convince my father to pick up the news from the internet, not the newspapers! Tried it this week and failed so far. Apparently the newspapers are cheap enough for to be bothered with the keyboard and a mouse. -- Hakan (m1fcj) - http://www.hititgunesi.org What part of 'ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn' don't you understand? -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
On 17/10/11 10:24, Hakan Koseoglu wrote: On 17 October 2011 07:32, Bob Gilesthecorf...@gmail.com wrote: Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I got a similar one (Acer Aspire 5742 Laptop, Core i3 380M) for my mother a couple of months ago and everything appeared to work with Kubuntu 11.04. A couple of people asked if it worked with dual screen and I couldn't test it because it was already off my desk. Now I have managed to test it with a 2nd screen and can report that it works fine (both the VGA and LVDS are 768 pixels high and at 60Hz and I haven't seen any flickering or artifacts, it might be an issue with some other configuration). Their ADSL is pretty ropey and I'm only with them for a couple of days so I'm going to delay the 11.10 upgrade for a while in case there are issues. I managed to leave my Kubuntu installation, any blanks Knoppix CDs at home so if it goes wrong, the laptop will become unusable until I visit next time so better not to risk it. As a result your mileage might vary with 11.10. She's been quite happy with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a while on an older Tosh, this was supposed to replace that one. Unfortunately I didn't want to inflict the bug called Unity to her so I went with Kubuntu. It's been some time since she used something else than the Gnome 2 interface so as a result so far all I heard is complaints! On the other hand, she's getting used to it. For a 70+ year old, that's some progress! Now if only I could convince my father to pick up the news from the internet, not the newspapers! Tried it this week and failed so far. Apparently the newspapers are cheap enough for to be bothered with the keyboard and a mouse. Hakan, Thank you for your speedy, lengthy and encouraging response! I am seriously tempted to put the order in now! Interestingly, There was a similar model for sale locally a couple of months back that was running a flavour of Linux but it came with a Greek / US keyboard which we passed on. I can't recall the model but I do know that it was not available in the UK market. It seems that it was aimed at the Eastern Europeans. Strange! (The marketing, not Eastern Europeans!) I was drawn to this machine by both the pricing and the fact that I have one of the earlier Acer Aspire Ones that I have been running Ubuntu on since its purchase. Having just installed 11.10 and Gnome 3 plus some serious tweaking, it seems quite sound but then it's early days. I tend to use this machine as something of a test bed. If it works on that ... I have to confess that Unity drove me to LinuxMint on my desktop but am considering returning to the fold! Thanks again for your experiences. Bob Giles -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Dual boot user does self conversion
I just received this (now slightly edited) email from an acquaintance who is keen to use FLOSS, and has helped with advocacy, but who has until now been using dual boot or just live CD methods - since early 2008. Over three years. This is the sort of time scale I have found to be relevant if a previously committed Windows user with DIY admin confidence but no IT or other technical experience gets interested in Ubuntu. I think this would shorten if a good marketing campaign was run. === Subject: Now running Linux Nattay exclusively Content: Hope you are well. On sept 20th, my Medion computer from ALDI was unable to load Windows or repair it automatically. Was I glad that I had a few Live CDs knocking around. At least I could get on line. I've now installled Ubuntu 11.04 on an old machine I had, back in the days of Windows ME, I think. I'm really pleased I got into Ubuntu.:-) All the best, [signed] === -- alan cocks Ubuntu user -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dual boot user does self conversion
alan c wrote: I just received this (now slightly edited) email from an acquaintance who is keen to use FLOSS, and has helped with advocacy, but who has until now been using dual boot or just live CD methods - since early 2008. Over three years. This is the sort of time scale I have found to be relevant if a previously committed Windows user with DIY admin confidence but no IT or other technical experience gets interested in Ubuntu. I think this would shorten if a good marketing campaign was run. Why? He's been using it for three years already, so has presumably known about it for at least that long. If the intention is to have dual-boot users no longer see the need for Windows, then the solution is surely to have Ubuntu do whatever it is that they're reliant on Windows for quicker? -- Avi -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Dual boot user does self conversion
On 17/10/11 14:12, Avi Greenbury wrote: alan c wrote: I just received this (now slightly edited) email from an acquaintance who is keen to use FLOSS, and has helped with advocacy, but who has until now been using dual boot or just live CD methods - since early 2008. Over three years. This is the sort of time scale I have found to be relevant if a previously committed Windows user with DIY admin confidence but no IT or other technical experience gets interested in Ubuntu. I think this would shorten if a good marketing campaign was run. Why? He's been using it for three years already, How much he has been using it is moot. He has gone to considerable effort to sometimes help me on displays at my local computer fairs. But has obviously not wanted to get rid of windows! Even though the evidence now suggests that he would have been happy to get rid of Windows sooner. so has presumably known about it for at least that long. If the intention is to have dual-boot users no longer see the need for Windows, I can wish then the solution is surely to have Ubuntu do whatever it is that they're reliant on Windows for quicker? The primary situation is as you describe, he has known about it. But the secondary situation - that of how he felt as an unconfident, somewhat isolated user, with neighbours and family (and almost everybody) doing something else, is one in which an average, ordinary PC user is reluctant (I believe frightened) to let go of the system they know longest, have gone through hoops for, have agonised over so they think they know its ways. This is a bitter sweet comfort, and users know it is not safe, but they are not confident to make a real *change*. It takes an epic event to prompt them to decide to commit to a new product. In this case it was a major failure - no choice. This user is happy to have made the change, and is rejoicing but would simply not have done this 'willingly'. This is where marketing comes in. Inform of the product initially, then create an eager need for the product, usually by massive advertising or creating a big positive social buzz, which surmounts factors causing reluctance to act (fear, uncertainty doubt) then supply the endless queue of customers, and support etc. As an occasional friend of his, I was not, single handed, in a position of enough influence to have been able to prompt his decision any time earlier. But a wider eco system of 'popular' (higher profile) users would have done this I believe. Marketing. -- alan cocks Ubuntu user -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Portege P4010 - BIOS Bad Block 3
Hi, Up until Friday I was happily runnng Ubuntu on subject machine. It has never managed to do a restore before, and I have always shutdown and re-booted whenever softaware updates requested it. I have never tried ever to suspend it or hibernate it, due to bad attitude on my part as I regard this function as fancy-dan stuff. I also suspected it would never be able to cope on the basis that if restart never worked then suspend or hibernate never would either. On Friday though my wisdom got the better of me and I tried to suspend it. Boy, did it sulk. It just went dead! Any attempts to re-boot it results in an error message BIOS(Block3) is damaged! (call user serviceman.) Serviceman: Place maintenance disk in drive and press any key when ready. I have spent the weekend on and off researching the net and trying a few things. It would seem that I am unable to access the BIOS at boot time. Pressing F2 is the normal access method but I have tried the ESC key and the left-shift key. The DVD drive is not accessible and there is no floppy drive. I do have a usb read-only floppy drive available but I suspect the usb ports are not operable either. I did see some reference to getting a boot floppy and altering some of the bytes with a hex editor which somehow fooled the BIOS and then allowed the BIOS to be flashed. I never pursued this solution as I could not think (or did not have the means) of achieving. I also had some doubt whether it would work. I could find nobody who had actually really fully solved the BIOS error. The machine cost me less than £50 some years ago, but I loved it so much! It was my Ubuntu/linux learning platform. Is it time for the scrap heap? DaveG -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xubuntu 11.10 Problems
I was thinking of upgrading myself. I'll let you know if i have any problems. -- Sent from my Nokia N900 Please do not send me word documents plain txt or pdf are prefered. - Mensaje original - Hi, I'm not really au fait with Xubuntu, but I do know they tied them selves to LightDM, where as Lubuntu decided it was not really going to ready for 11.10 and stuck with lxdm. I have no idea if your sticking with xcfe with 11.10 would help, it is just a suggestion. Regards, Phill. On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 12:46 AM, Nigel Verity nigelver...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi I'd be interested to learn the experiences of anybody installing Xubuntu 11.10 from scratch or upgrading from 11.04. I've tried both today and had some real problems. The online upgrade crashed, the system recovery option on the LiveCD didn't work and the full install has resulted in a system whereby most of the theme settings are ignored by most applications, so that the whole OS is stuck with the look of classic Windows 3! I've gone back to 11.04 and everything is fine again; rock-solid as it has been from the day it was released. Consequently, I don't think the problem is purely down to my hardware (Acer 1410 laptop). Leaving aside the cosmetic issues, I didn't spot any new features or functions in 11.10 that really justified the upgrade. Possibly a cautionary tale for anybody considering moving up. Cheers Nige -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Portege P4010 - BIOS Bad Block 3
On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 17:44 +0100, David Goldsbrough wrote: Hi, Up until Friday I was happily runnng Ubuntu on subject machine. It has never managed to do a restore before, and I have always shutdown and re-booted whenever softaware updates requested it. I have never tried ever to suspend it or hibernate it, due to bad attitude on my part as I regard this function as fancy-dan stuff. I also suspected it would never be able to cope on the basis that if restart never worked then suspend or hibernate never would either. On Friday though my wisdom got the better of me and I tried to suspend it. Boy, did it sulk. It just went dead! Any attempts to re-boot it results in an error message BIOS(Block3) is damaged! (call user serviceman.) Serviceman: Place maintenance disk in drive and press any key when ready. I have spent the weekend on and off researching the net and trying a few things. It would seem that I am unable to access the BIOS at boot time. Pressing F2 is the normal access method but I have tried the ESC key and the left-shift key. The DVD drive is not accessible and there is no floppy drive. I do have a usb read-only floppy drive available but I suspect the usb ports are not operable either. I did see some reference to getting a boot floppy and altering some of the bytes with a hex editor which somehow fooled the BIOS and then allowed the BIOS to be flashed. I never pursued this solution as I could not think (or did not have the means) of achieving. I also had some doubt whether it would work. I could find nobody who had actually really fully solved the BIOS error. The machine cost me less than £50 some years ago, but I loved it so much! It was my Ubuntu/linux learning platform. Is it time for the scrap heap? DaveG Dave, You have my sympathies. Exactly the same thing happened to me a couple of years ago when my first Ubuntu laptop, also a second hand Toshiba, failed. My son shut the lid without shutting it down first. It tried to hibernate and never worked again! The machine had a floppy drive so I even tried the official Toshiba BIOS repair floppy image from their web site, but nothing worked. I think you are looking at a new machine. Barry T -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Portege P4010 - BIOS Bad Block 3
On 17 October 2011 17:44, David Goldsbrough da...@boavon.plus.com wrote: Hi, Up until Friday I was happily runnng Ubuntu on subject machine. It has never managed to do a restore before, and I have always shutdown and re-booted whenever softaware updates requested it. I have never tried ever to suspend it or hibernate it, due to bad attitude on my part as I regard this function as fancy-dan stuff. I also suspected it would never be able to cope on the basis that if restart never worked then suspend or hibernate never would either. On Friday though my wisdom got the better of me and I tried to suspend it. Boy, did it sulk. It just went dead! Any attempts to re-boot it results in an error message BIOS(Block3) is damaged! (call user serviceman.) Serviceman: Place maintenance disk in drive and press any key when ready. I have spent the weekend on and off researching the net and trying a few things. It would seem that I am unable to access the BIOS at boot time. Pressing F2 is the normal access method but I have tried the ESC key and the left-shift key. The DVD drive is not accessible and there is no floppy drive. I do have a usb read-only floppy drive available but I suspect the usb ports are not operable either. I did see some reference to getting a boot floppy and altering some of the bytes with a hex editor which somehow fooled the BIOS and then allowed the BIOS to be flashed. I never pursued this solution as I could not think (or did not have the means) of achieving. I also had some doubt whether it would work. I could find nobody who had actually really fully solved the BIOS error. The machine cost me less than £50 some years ago, but I loved it so much! It was my Ubuntu/linux learning platform. Is it time for the scrap heap? You could try taking the BIOS battery out for a minute or so (assuming it has a BIOS battery - it will be a coin type cell. that should force the battery backed ram back to default values, if it is that that has got corrupted. It may be worth shorting the battery contacts on the board with a screwdriver after removing the battery (the contacts on the board, not the battery itself), that will ensure the circuit is fully discharged. You should get a message saying the ram has been defaulted when you switch on again. Otherwise I suppose it could be the BIOS flash itself corrupted, but how that could happen as a result of suspending is beyond me. Colin Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] AcidRip and Ubuntu forums
Have you tried installing LAME? Maybe one or other update removed it. Regards Bruce On 14 October 2011 21:40, ** johnbrid...@yahoo.com wrote: I am trying to use AcidRip but according to the debug log it has apparently couldn't find encoder for codec mp3 Since it used to work OK I can only assume an update has changed something. I have tried Googling it but the best matches are on the Ubuntu forums and for some reason I cannot log in there either. Anyone any ideas? I have tried my old username and password but they didn't work. I tried to get re-advised of the password but the email did not appear in my inbox (or in junkmail). So I tried registering with a new username and password but when I tried to log in with it this also failed. And then when I tried the re-advise password link again, the email for this also did not arrive in my inbox. If anyone has an email address for the forum admins, could you let me know? Thanks John -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Open Source VOIP
Hey Guys, Sorry for the off-topicness, but I figured you guys would be the most knowledgeable people I know for this kind of thing. I'm looking to move to an open-source alternative to Skype, I know SIP is one of the protocols used, and I tried SipGate today. On initial testing (a 2 hour call to a home phone in the UK), far better sound quality than skype could ever have given me, and even a free local number! However, I need something that will allow unlimited (or 2500-3000 minutes) for £5-£10 a month as I usually use Skype (with the UK Home Phone Unlimited subscription) to make an hour or two call every night. Since SIP is open, are there any providers doing this? On an initial Google I can't seem to find any. Also, on pay and go with any VOIP provider, why do all providers charge 8-9 pence per minute for a mobile call, but only 1 penny for a landline call? Mobiles and Landlines are always 1 pence per minute for calls made to the USA, is there anyone who would offer 1 pence per minute calls to mobiles in the UK? Daniel -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Open Source VOIP
Just to clarify, the unlimited subscription is needed to call a home phone, the mobile issue is a separate one I've just wondered about for some time. Daniel -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Open Source VOIP
On 17 October 2011 22:21, Daniel Case danielcas...@googlemail.com wrote: Hey Guys, Sorry for the off-topicness, but I figured you guys would be the most knowledgeable people I know for this kind of thing. I'm looking to move to an open-source alternative to Skype, I know SIP is one of the protocols used, and I tried SipGate today. On initial testing (a 2 hour call to a home phone in the UK), far better sound quality than skype could ever have given me, and even a free local number! However, I need something that will allow unlimited (or 2500-3000 minutes) for £5-£10 a month as I usually use Skype (with the UK Home Phone Unlimited subscription) to make an hour or two call every night. Since SIP is open, are there any providers doing this? On an initial Google I can't seem to find any. Also, on pay and go with any VOIP provider, why do all providers charge 8-9 pence per minute for a mobile call, but only 1 penny for a landline call? Mobiles and Landlines are always 1 pence per minute for calls made to the USA, is there anyone who would offer 1 pence per minute calls to mobiles in the UK? There are lots of VoIP providers, it's just a case of finding a package that works for you. Skype does well because its pricing is straightforward. While SIP is free as in beer, SIP systems have to connect into the landline and mobile systems so it's often a case of where they connect: for landlines it's preferable to find a service that has more interconnects so the transit cost is cheaper. For mobiles it's still expensive because the interconnects are where the mobile companies make their money. Depending on where home is, you could even get your folks to get VOIP on their end: Vonage's VOIP service is available in the US and Canada and for the cost of the box $20 I think - it's about £18-19 you get a smart VOIP box that can route calls either over POTS or VOIP from your phone. If you want to include your mobile have a look at Truphone: they provide a SIM and a VOIP app that allows cheap global mobile phone calls and VOIP over wifi and 3G. Otherwise look at voipcheap.co.uk or sipgate.co.uk: the latter give the sort of rates you'relooking for. s/ -- Twitter: @sfgreenwood post-apocalyptic allen keys -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] error: invalid arch independent ELF magic
Hi James, Sorry to be a bit slow in replying. I don't have UEFI but on my last two upgrades have ended up in grub rescue mode. The instructions on the grub2 page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2 - section 12 resinstalling Grub2) were very helpful in reinstalling and reconfiguring grub2. All the best, Tim On 14/10/11 13:38, Daniel Case wrote: I haven't used it myself, but I found a wiki page that might be of some use: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting On 14 October 2011 12:56, James Morrisseymorrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I am having a problem installing 11.10. Install seems to go fine but when i try and boot i get: error: invalid arch independent ELF magic grub rescue I think it has to do with this being a thinkpad and having UEFI. Apparently i need to install grub-efi while on the live CD (http://askubuntu.com/questions/37692/grub-invalid-arch-independent-elf-magic-after-natty-install-on-ssd) but don't really know what to do. If anyone would help with some handholding i would appreciate it. Thanks james -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Open Source VOIP
Hi Dan. I work for a fairly big Staffordshire based VOIP provider, SIP is definitely the way to go, if you contact me off list I can show you some quotes. However, the reason I am actually replying is about mobile rates. Our sip trunk provider give us near cost price mobile rates, and the rates we pay aren't far off those you stated. The reason for this is the networks, Three being the worst, they sting us in order to cover the low contract rates. There was a recent Ofcom ruling that meant there had a limit on the rates, but they still haven't come down much. Most VOIP providers with good wholesale agreements can offer sub 1p/min UK landline rates. Some of the international rates are so cheap they're cringeworthy. There's not much we can do with mobile networks, especially considering Orange have forbidden the use of their SIMs in SIP gateways (to dial out over). VOIP will always be cheaper then landlines for mobiles, but, most call rates to mobiles are served at a loss and covered by marginal increases in landline rates or creative call packages. Sent from my Desire HD running CM7 On Oct 17, 2011 10:22 PM, Daniel Case danielcas...@googlemail.com wrote: Hey Guys, Sorry for the off-topicness, but I figured you guys would be the most knowledgeable people I know for this kind of thing. I'm looking to move to an open-source alternative to Skype, I know SIP is one of the protocols used, and I tried SipGate today. On initial testing (a 2 hour call to a home phone in the UK), far better sound quality than skype could ever have given me, and even a free local number! However, I need something that will allow unlimited (or 2500-3000 minutes) for £5-£10 a month as I usually use Skype (with the UK Home Phone Unlimited subscription) to make an hour or two call every night. Since SIP is open, are there any providers doing this? On an initial Google I can't seem to find any. Also, on pay and go with any VOIP provider, why do all providers charge 8-9 pence per minute for a mobile call, but only 1 penny for a landline call? Mobiles and Landlines are always 1 pence per minute for calls made to the USA, is there anyone who would offer 1 pence per minute calls to mobiles in the UK? Daniel -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] ubuntu-uk Digest, Vol 78, Issue 28
Thanks Colin - I'll see if I can give the time to try your suggestion - but all those screws and stuff tends to put me off :) Always been a software man rather than hardware. One theory I had from some of the research was it that it was something to do with ACPI. Other oldish Toshibas have had similar fates. Its only a guess, but I suspect suspension writes something to the disk that Toshiba BIOS/boot relies upon not being messed with -- so the boot bits and the BIOS become corrupt. I suspect both need fixing. Oddly, or not, the disk refuses to be seen by a windose vista machine Dave G Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:08:02 +0100 From: Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com To: UK Ubuntu Talk ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Toshiba Portege P4010 - BIOS Bad Block 3 Message-ID: CAL=0gluthjawnrd6q0b6qpyyrgggooxt4nufyvxhf6urkuq...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 On 17 October 2011 17:44, David Goldsbrough da...@boavon.plus.com wrote: Hi, Up until Friday I was happily runnng Ubuntu on subject machine. ?It has never managed to do a restore before, and I have always shutdown and re-booted whenever softaware updates requested it. I have never tried ever to suspend it or hibernate it, due to bad attitude on my part as I regard this function as fancy-dan stuff. ?I also suspected it would never be able to cope on the basis that if restart never worked then suspend or hibernate never would either. On Friday though my wisdom got the better of me and I tried to suspend it. ?Boy, did it sulk. ?It just went dead! ?Any attempts to re-boot it results in an error message BIOS(Block3) is damaged! (call user serviceman.) ?Serviceman: Place maintenance disk in drive and press any key when ready. I have spent the weekend on and off researching the net and trying a few things. ?It would seem that I am unable to access the BIOS at boot time. ?Pressing F2 is the normal access method but I have tried the ESC key and the left-shift key. ?The DVD drive is not accessible and there is no floppy drive. ?I do have a usb read-only floppy drive available but I suspect the usb ports are not operable either. I did see some reference to getting a boot floppy and altering some of the bytes with a hex editor which somehow fooled the BIOS and then allowed the BIOS to be flashed. ?I never pursued this solution as I could not think (or did not have the means) of achieving. ?I also had some doubt whether it would work. ?I could find nobody who had actually really fully solved the BIOS error. The machine cost me less than ?50 some years ago, but I loved it so much! ?It was my Ubuntu/linux learning platform. ?Is it time for the scrap heap? You could try taking the BIOS battery out for a minute or so (assuming it has a BIOS battery - it will be a coin type cell. that should force the battery backed ram back to default values, if it is that that has got corrupted. It may be worth shorting the battery contacts on the board with a screwdriver after removing the battery (the contacts on the board, not the battery itself), that will ensure the circuit is fully discharged. You should get a message saying the ram has been defaulted when you switch on again. Otherwise I suppose it could be the BIOS flash itself corrupted, but how that could happen as a result of suspending is beyond me. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
