Two shots from the meeting. Ted had to leave us to attend to an urgent matter.
Apologies: Fred, Margaret, Sally Semlow – who hoped to join us again in the new year, Mario and Jonathan.
I suggested that we might list the successful and perhaps least successful presents/purchases we’d received/made in 2021. I kicked off with the Apple HomePod I’d bought for Jenny last Christmas which has turned out be one of the best bits of kit I’ve ever bought as a gift. The least successful was the Apple iMac 21.5″ (2015) I’d bought for her and which was under specified – criminal mistake on my part! In-between were FitBits, and Tags (which you connect to keys etc); maybe AirTags will be more successful – I need to investigate them more fully.
I reported that Which? have done a survey and written an article on the replacing of the PSTN Landline by 2025. Here’s a link to the article. Renee had requested help with transferring PDF to Pages (or Word) format. You can do it online from Adobe for free, or there are other online tools to do it as well. Otherwise, using the Brave browser, you can Open the PDF file, Save it in Document format; then Open, Select and Copy text onto the application you are using. This can’t successfully handle tables, however they can be treated as graphical images.
Jenny reported that she’d been over-successful; in getting a monitor in that a colleague had managed to buy 20 surplus monitors for £20!!! I said this was quite normal with surplus public sector equipment as they couldn’t be disposed of in other ways at zero cost.
Owen reported that he’d successfully employed an old USB speaker he’d got from a UCISA conference for his laptop. He felt that the purchase of an electronic PhotoFrame had been a bit of a failure due to the need to keep updating it from a USB stick, or WiFi, or SIM card.
David H said something about Heath MOT, a watch for testing blood pressure – I’m sorry I can’t remember the context.
Paul reported a failure (he felt) in the lifetime support for a Google Chromebook. You need to check the lifetime support span for these devices – they may be surprisingly short. [NB Apple’s tend to be longer on average.]
Jim felt that a table mount he’d bought for his phone had not matched his expectations.
Sianed reported that the pulse oximeter (for blood oxygen levels, and pulse readings) they’d bought had been a good investment – I agree.
Stella told us about the failure she’d had in doing some recordings off-screen of some films which had resulted in the sub-titles taking up 3/4 of the screen. On the other hand, she felt her purchase of an iPhone 8 on eBay for £200 had been a great buy.
Steve had been delighted by the purchase of his iPhone but had been alarmed by the heat generated during some activities which had led him to take the case off on occasion.
Ann was delighted with her Lenovo IdeaPad (£320) and said the switch to using SSD for external hard drives was a great success. She had been less pleased with a Toshiba laptop which had problems with the BIOS battery; difficulties in servicing but fortunately she’d not lost the hard disk in the repair.
Renee reported that HER stand for her iPhone had been a success (unlike Jim’s).
Don had started down the road of the “smart home” and reported that his smart plugs were a great success. [Another topic for a later meeting maybe.] His DashCam was a bit of a problem however and the updating of software was not easy – I believe he’d sought external assistance and had it done.
Christine was still experiencing the mammoth failure of her Bridge software, the Lenovo, and the WiFi extenders – I don’t know what else to say!!! On the other hand she was pleased with the Smart TV they’d bought.
John reported that he’d taken the camera he’d bought from JLP back – it was faulty. He was going to look into this again in the New Year – I offered to help.
Happy Christmas everyone.