todays high tech kit

ashanta

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Is it me? I know from the help that I have received from you forumites that a lot of you are technically up to date. I just seem to struggle with the new gadgets on the market and the PC aspects of it all.
I recently bought SWMBO a panasonic camcorder after a she has enjoyed a couple of years with the digi camera. Since I bought it I seem to spend most of my time either fitting "fire wire"," Fire wire lead","video software" "DVD not CD discs". I have just realised that it would have been so much easier to have bought a new DVD recorder (to replace one of my 2 DVD players) and had a simple connections to copy DVD!
I am a faily practicable guy but I feel that there is little information available when you buy anything to do with PC's and it is assumed you understand the technicalities. But i'm afraid I don't and just like the legal world things should be made much clearer and simple for the likes of me!
There I' ve got that one of my chest after an evening trying to record my dearest's first attempt of movie making.

Regards.

Peter.
 

BrendanS

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Unless you are diving in and out of PC's continually, and loading and installing software and hardware on a regular basis, and hence build up a reasonable level of knowledge, it's a minefield, and even those that enjoy doing it for fun can spend hours trying to sort minor issues.

What beats me, is how the averagage family users ever keep the things up and running, and what they do when it goes wrong, unless they have a techie friend or family member to help out.
 

ashanta

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Brendan,

My son Patrick is away at Uni and yes, youv'e got it. He has been the the developer of our current status in this world of high tech gadgets. He has his own PC but he would always be on hand to help us understand how to go about dealing with these things. Now we are lucky if he talks to us once a week and he certainly won't spend time problem solving.
However, he has always said that we will not learn unless we try and play around with the PC! I seem to remember giving him similar advice many years ago /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
Still, I'll keep taking the pills hoping they'll work!

Regards.

Peter.
 

trouville

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I agree. Whats worse is that the retail staff know very little about Electical or PC products. When i wanted a new PC it took a couple of weeks to know what was best for me and where to buy.

Boat items are worse.I want to buy a depth sounder an autohelm and GPS.It came as a shock to find littel information and no choise,in the range of products that meet my needs,(fitting out a Folkboat)

Firstly i looked online and found a simrad TP10 for just £169 a saving BUT when i went to the check out VAT and P&P were added bringing the total to£212.

Another online shop selling NASA clipper had a special offer for the clipper Duet depth and log. The price without p&p was a full £23 more than the cataloge price including postage from an expensive shop in central Zurich--not normaly consider a good place to save money!

Even the super saving hear online from yachting world for an autohelm 1000 is £2 plus P&P more than the Zurich shop???? so much for online savings.

Technical. hear was discused "which GPS" the best for a small boat was the Garmin 72 with marine pack. But the screen is to small for serious use the old 126 or128 would have been far better.

GPS mouse there are so many but im told i should just buy one to try but which?? what do i see on the screen. Then there is nema and sea talk?? it seem that i should buy a GPS repeater VHF dsl? and Radar wire them in buy a 6KW generator to run them then i can go to sea.

On the PC front there are many offers but you realy have to know which processor you want and at what price, marketing has taken over.

At least on the PC front when you have XP everything is really easy wether installing programs or adding hardwear never a problem.
 
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