Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Questions and Answers - Part 3

Page: 1 ... 98 99 100101102(103)104105106107108... 125

13:50 / 01.02.08

Most reviews I've read speak rather highly of the new breed of ultra-cheap, ultra-light EEE-like things. If I could afford an ultra-cheap laptop just for fun, I'd get one.

I'm pretty sure the Asus runs off a flavor of Linux, so something like OpenOffice instead of MSOffice (Word,ppt, Excel & all that) would be the thing to get. It's easy to use, free, easy to install, free, updated regularly, works pretty well and is free. Although you might be tempted to put a penny in its hat.

All Acting Regiment

13:51 / 01.02.08

Open Office is everything you need. Easier than Word, I find, and completely compatible ...

13:54 / 01.02.08

Whisky, what do you actually need the laptop for? The fact that you suggest either an Asus or any of the proper laptops above suggests that you don't actually *need* either something uber-small or something powerful, because none of those you've mentioned meets both of those criteria at once.

If you're looking for something that can run Office and the internet, you don't need anything even vaguely approaching £700 in price. The laptop I'm typing on at the moment (Evo N410C, well under your 3Kg limit, 1.2Gb/256Mb/20Gb etc.) is perfectly capable of all that and cost less than a hundred pounds on eBay, and I know the shop down the road from me was selling them for £125 each a while back. If there are any second-hand laptop shops around TCR, I'd recommend just going to one of those, unless you've either any particular needs or have an urge for shiny newness that's worth hundreds of pounds.

As for Office, if you're averse to the less-legal option of borrowing off a friend or downloading from the Internet, I'm fairly sure there are plenty of fine-for-most-purposes copies of old versions available for not too many pennies.

[Edit - cross-post - I didn't notice a new page.]

14:44 / 01.02.08

I'll second the recommendation of Open Office. For most if not all domestic users it will do everything you need and do so in an easy to use and professional manner.

Whisky Priestess

12:26 / 02.02.08

What do I need it for?

Good question. Mostly word processing and the internet (wireless purlease), with a bit of Excel - I'd like to be able to open Powerpoint documents as that would be useful. The reason I'm looking for something in that price range is that my old laptop was a Vaio, which was a response to years of having put up with cheap laptops dying on me, and it never let me down and I loved it like a child.

Also, it seems silly to have a laptop stolen and take the opportunity to replace it with something which is crapper, not better. I like my clouds to have *some* silver lining.

I basically want a reliable machine which is fairly light (for commuting reasons as outlined above) and is of a good brand which won't just collapse in two or three years (hello Compaq!). Having had a closer look at the Asus it seems to be an over-featured PDA more than anything and probably not suitable. Also, it would be nice to be able to watch DVDs on the laptop as I don't have a separate DVD player.

I don't especially want Open Office if I can help it as I use Word every day of my life and am used to all its features and the way it works generally - and I find having to use Open Office every time I'm on my boyfriend's PC somewhat tiresome. Although presumably a full suite of Office will add another ?couple of hundred quid? to the price so I may change my mind on this in the shop ...

Whisky Priestess

12:32 / 02.02.08

Thanks all for advice though. Being a computing dunce, I really appreciate it.

Mysterious Transfer Student

21:30 / 02.02.08

Moving on from Whisky's serious computer-related question, to a frivolous one: Soon I will be moving house and plan on doing without a TV set. To allow me to continue playing life-saving console games, I'm considering buying this connector thingy. Has anyone else used one and if not, can they suggest a viable method of using a PS2 or Gamecube with a PC monitor?

16:48 / 03.02.08

Has anyone any experience with using 5-htp to treat depression or any knowledge of whether it works or not. Wikipedia has some data but I was wondering if anyone had any direct experience.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:30 / 04.02.08

WP - I'd probably recommend getting a MacBook, myself, but your mileage may vary, and it would involve an extra cost in getting a copy of Windows XP if you wanted to run Windows on it.

If you don't want to play with Apple, then it's outside my expertise, I'm afraid, but I've heard good things about the Samsung Q45 in your price range - if you don't mind a 12-inch screen and don't want to play 3D games, it has a nice spec, weighs a shade under 2 kilogrammes, build quality is high and it costs £600 including VAT, which gives you £80 left over to buy the Home edition of Microsoft Office, which will give you PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

All Acting Regiment

14:26 / 04.02.08

Are specsavers likely to be able to put the lenses I need in a pair of frames I give then?

14:40 / 04.02.08

Maybe.

All Acting Regiment

15:31 / 04.02.08

I utterly, utterly despise the awful frames that specsavers sell. Without exception they make you look like Steve, 25, who 'needs a dual-core and a 12" monitor'. I want the nice frames from retrospecs.co.uk:

etc

Does anyone else have this problem?

20:00 / 04.02.08

Have you asked your question of an employee in a branch of Specsavers yet? They might be best placed to answer.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:19 / 04.02.08

I've heard of ppl buying a pair of cheapshit reading-glasses off the chemists' and getting the optician to put prescription lenses in those, so you could give that a try. GO IN SPECSAVERS AND ASK DUDE.

20:40 / 04.02.08

assuming that specsavers is like a UK lenscrafters, I would guess that they would, with the caveat that if the frames are at all vintage/in questionable shape, they might have you sign a waiver saying that they're not responsible if the frames crack during normal lens installation.

08:07 / 05.02.08

haven't we been here before? myself and quite a few friends of mine have all bought cheap (or not cheap but hard to find!) frames from ebay, or thrift stores etc, BUT almost universally specsaver et al won't put lenses in them. they usually give you some lame excuse such as 'the heat might break the old plastic' or somesuch, but they probably just want you to buy their frames. however there are places that will do it. i know a place in London that does, if this is any help, ill find the details.

08:58 / 05.02.08

Funny, a branch of Specsavers gave me a decent quote for reglazing some frames I was buying elsewhere. Those were new frames, so I guess there was an assumption that they would be up to the strain of the usual modern lens fitting process.

(I ended up getting £100 off Vision Express lenses by showing them the Specsavers quote for glazing the frames I wanted to buy. I stated my intention to buy the frames and get them glazed elsewhere cheaper, showed them the quote Specsavers had written - Vision Express said they could match the price.)

12:37 / 05.02.08

Or something like this , perhaps.

All Acting Regiment

13:42 / 05.02.08

Cheers gang, I'm off to specsavers shortly.

15:24 / 06.02.08

Does anybody have advice on public speaking? I have a project to present in a few weeks and I'm crapping bricks about it.

In my head, I think I know how to project my voice and appear confident, but in reality I'm sure I'll end up a quivering mess, silently rocking in the fetal position. Any tips to avoid such a situation would be greatly appreciated.

15:30 / 06.02.08

Well one thing to do is breathing exercises beforehand because it slows down your heart rate and stops you feeling so panicky. You can breathe in for one, out for one, then in for a count of two, out for a count of two and so on until you get to breathing in for a count of ten and out for a count of ten.

You can make sure you are clear on what you are saying as confidence brings ease, and if you have to read anything out, read slowly. Most people read too fast. Also much better to make most of your presentation based on a few points rather than reading the whole thing out.

They also say that imaginining your audience is naked is really helpful in recovering from the fear of presenting. I have never tried, but I can see the principle.

All Acting Regiment

15:31 / 06.02.08

Try shouting it out as loud as you can, to yourself in private, whle you're rehearsing. Bellow! Seriously, it works - you start out stuck on 'quiet' mode, but once you push yourself to the opposite extreme, you know what you're dealing with and you can then tweak it to perfection. Like messing around with a synthesiser, sort of.

17:27 / 06.02.08

Llama: In my head, I think I know how to project my voice and appear confident

It's probably worth keeping visualising doing this - keep thinking about your presentation, and how well you're going to project, and how confident you're going to appear. If you've already got an image of this, that's awesome and all you really need to do is stop thinking the "in reality..." bit of your sentence. Because, you know, that's not happened yet, so it's not reality.

What also works for me is thinking about the most confident and together person I know (it varies) and doing whatever they'd do. It works for me because it forces me to recognise that I have pretty much the same range of options and limitations as the people I think are great and what's actually different is how we (want to) deal with those options and limitations.

Good luck with it all!

19:01 / 06.02.08

Does anyone know a substance that's relatively harmless, that will induce vomiting? Before you direct me to eating disorder help sites, this is strictly for a short film where my character needs to drink something, then puke. I realise the easiest thing would be to put something puke-like in my mouth before the scene, and just cough it up, but call my crazy, I prefer verisimilitude.

19:06 / 06.02.08

Salt water might work. It works on me when I am supposed to be gargling. Why don't you have an experiment?

19:13 / 06.02.08

Having read too many books by Lloyd Kaufman, I can recommend a mixture of seltzer and food colouring - it avoids, y'know, actual vomiting while looking quite painful - but, yes, salt water is probably the cheapest and most effective emetic around. See: James Bond in Casino Royale post-Digitalis poisoning for more info.

19:42 / 06.02.08

i haven't known anyone who's actually used it, but i've heard many times that a large spoonful of mustard dissolved in a small glass of milk will do the trick.

19:43 / 06.02.08

and, there's always ipecac, which most supermarkets (and all drugstores) carry, at least in the US

20:22 / 06.02.08

What's the latin for "anything worth keeping"?

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:03 / 06.02.08

Context?

22:24 / 06.02.08

Im just attempting to classify the artwork I have on the net into two categories: scrap and 'anything worth keeping'

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:26 / 06.02.08

Retinenda

God, I love Latin sometimes.

11:29 / 07.02.08

Vincennes, Legba and Olulabelle, thanks for the advice. It's not for a few weeks yet, but I figured it would be best to get the tips before practising the presentation. Will report back on how I got on!

15:20 / 07.02.08

More tips for presentations:

1. If you have a set time to deliver it, make very sure to take off your watch and put it on a table in front of you so that you never have to look at your wrist to checek the time. As soon as you do that, so does everyone else.

2. If, like most of us, you have a habit of rocking back and forward, get a chair or table directly behind you and rest the small of your back against it. Don't sit on it or anything, just stay in contact with it and the rocking should cease.

3. No-one, unless they are REALLY looking for it ever notices someone else doing public speaking is nervous, especially if they are next. You may think you're shaking, sweating and mumbling, they probably won't notice unless you're making no sense at all or just boring them.

15:33 / 07.02.08

One thing I found useful was to pick a person in the back of the room to address - one person, any one person to whom you direct your comments.

That way, you start making eye contact with people AND you speak in a loud enough way to fill the room without freaking out about how many people are listening. It's really just the one.

Page: 1 ... 98 99 100101102(103)104105106107108... 125