was that meant to be funny?

OK so no one wants it. The occasion was obviously so great! I have now got rid of it somewhere else. cheers.

It's probably not proven yet though. For some strange reason usually many groups claim responsibility.

Right, I'm about to try and head home from Westminster. I think it's going to be a hour and a half walk to Paddington and then see if any services are running out to Slough (which according to the website they are). Good luck to all travelling home tonight and if you are working tomorrow, hope it's a better day.

Maybe Orange don't care, but mine is working

Well we have all been told to stay in our office until further notice. So far, we've heard all the tube is down, the busses are suspended and all over ground trains are suspended in and out of London. Guess I'm sleeping here tonight.

Hmm, looks like they went for maximum effect after the olympic bid. Not good at all

I think that is all part of what the IOC look at when chosing a location for the games. They do not like having events too far away from each other and having the athletes travelling too far to events. They would also not like to split teams up so (as a random example) the archery teams couldn't stay up in birmingham whilst everyone else is in London. I actually think that the village being on the site of most of the athletics is the main reason we won the bid in the first place.

That is true but you've missed the £500 per person per night charge there! Bet prices will be similar in London around the time as corporates book everything up.

I'm probably being really naive (wow that really is Evian backwards!) however everything I've seen and read says that Londoners will be footing most of the bill due to increased council tax. Anyway, happy we beat the French but I'm sure as hell going to be out of the south before all that chaos arrives. The trains into London are bad enough now with added plans to make them worse (thanks First Great Western, what a franchise) so I'm not hanging around to see what they'll be like with thousands more tourists. Should be good on the telly though. Just need to convince the wife that she doesn't need to watch the gymnastics in person.

The muppets at the club have charged me for and send me two copies of the Tony Parkes DVD. I can't be bothered trying to explain that I only wanted one so I'm going to sell the other on here. The original cost was £14.99 but I just want to get rid to get some money back therefore I am willing to take £10 to the first person who offers. PM me if interested. cheers.

Well the BBC are reporting that he's changed his mind! Gerrard shock U Turn Good on the Lad. Although I always thought he looked tentative about saying he would stay when asked live on camera at the end of the Champions League final.

Right, Got GTA San Andreas for the Xbox, now I can finally read this thread from the beginning. God I feel a long way behind.

When you click on customise, it defaults the warranty to something like 3 years. Drop that option down to the lowest one (1 year) and you will get it back at the advertised price. Ah yes, under "Extended Service Packs" drop it down to either 90 day collect and return to save £94 to bring it down to £449. Would not recommend that though or select Basic Lite 1 yr NBD to save £58.75, that brings it down to £484

More on the warranty thing, it appears you can get stung for virtually anything you do to your computer. Just been reading that Microsoft in the US are offering a upgrade from Windows XP to Xp 64 for just $12, however if you accept the upgrade, you then lose your right to use the 32-bit version any more AND you more than likely will void your hardware manufacturers warranty. Nice.

Not in my experience, we have many Dell workstations and none of them have rivets or stickers preventing you opening the case. Anyway, looking at the Dell waranty, they only don't cover you for:- "damage caused by incorrect installation, use, modifications or repair by any unauthorised 3rd party or yourself;" So basically, if you broke it, it's your fault. Proving either way is the fun part.

Fantastic, I will be ordering one of these. hmm, just gone to "pre-order" put in my home phone number, clicked submit and you get a message that says "Many thanks for your pre-order, you will be called shortly for payment details". Fat lot of good that is as I'm at work all day monday to friday. Guess I'll have to pre-order again with my mobile. I wonder how much/if any of the proceeds go to Tony?

Dell tend to have all manner of deals at different times. A couple of weeks ago they had free shipping and double memory (which it appears they have extended). Sometimes they just have money off (like £100), sometimes they throw in the monitor for free etc. The free shipping and double memory is a good deal as far as I am concerned. All depends on how much you want this and if you want to wait. As for the machine, more than powerful enough to do everything you want. It will play new games even with the graphics card they bundle. If you are a serious gamer and want all the effects, shading, resolutions, frame rates etc etc then you will need to fork out for a better graphics card. I would suggest trying the games you want to play first though and I bet you'll decide against buying a £200-£300 card. For example, I am still using a 2 year old graphics card with new games like Half Life 2 and Doom 3 with no problems at all. My parents still use a geforce 2 mx with no problems as all they play are Age of Empires and Warcraft 3 type games.

Not much of a gamer myself so I don't know which processor the gamers go for now. Probably the AMD64 just because it says 64-bit on the box! I always bought mine on what I get for the money, hence my current chip is an Athlon XP due to it being about £50 cheaper than the equivalent Intel at the time. That must be about 2 years ago now.

And to add to the earlier conversation, I've never had any problems at all with Ebuyer. Granted I've never had to send anything back.

Celerons are the cut down version of the Pentiums (therefore at the same clockspeed, Pentiums are quicker). They run at the same clock speed but Pentium 4's have 1mb or 2mb on chip cache (VERY quick storage area) to shift instructions between the processor and the rest of the system. Celerons only appear to have 256K cache (thought it would have been more by now) therefore have more of a bottleneck passing information from the processor. Comparing AMD's to Pentiums are harder. AMD's have always run at a slower clock speed but been as quick as Pentiums. For instance an AMD 2700+ processor actually has a clock speed of about 2.1GHZ but runs effectively as quick as a Pentium 4 2.7GHz. Then you have the AMD64's which are what AMD are really pushing now which are 64-bit processors so should out-perform the Pentium 4's. Unfortunately, unless you are using a 64-bit version of Linux or you bother to buy the new Windows XP 64, you will not see too much performance increase due to Windows XP Home and Pro being 32-bit operating systems. Also, even if you buy Windows XP 64, there are hadly any apps currently using 64-bit instructions. Still much confusion.

I just can't understand what you are trying to mix and match that doesn't work. I have added new hard drives, memory, pcmcia cards, usb adapters and mini-pci cards to our Dell laptops with no problems at all. Granted, I've never tried changing the screens, keyboards, motherboards for 3rd party kit but I'm not sure I'd ever want to!

Interesting. Which bit's can't you upgrade that you can in any other model?

Or just sell the new one if you're happy with the old one. fully boxed, unopened from Dell, must be able to get at least £50 back on Ebay. OK, theres hassle but at least you'd be effectively knocking so more money off the price.

Got to agree, if you don't want any messing around, good prices, good delivery time and great support then Dell are highly recommended. This Dell Dimension 8400 appears to be a similar spec to those you are looking at. £751 including VAT and delivery and includes P4 3.2Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 250GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer. If you click on Customise and buy then the price changes from £751 to £892, simply change the "support service" from Basic to 1 year European and update the price. That happens on every dell machine you look at. If you wanted to save a bit more cash, This One is £571. That is a P4 3Ghz, 1GB Ram, XP Home, 160GB Hard Drive, 17" TFT Screen and DVD Writer. Both are more than enough for Tiger Woods and web browsing.