Snakey B

I'm a total know-nothing about e-Readers so please go easy on me if this is a dumb question. As I understand it, when I buy a Kindle I get the ability to download books free of charge (that is, I might have to pay to buy the book but I can get it sent to my Kindle for free). Is that true no matter where I am in the world, so say I am lying on a beach 5,000 miles from home (the UK) and I want a new book? I am finding conflicting information when I look on the internet.

An extra question: can I literally lie on a beach and download stuff, or do I need to be within range of somebody's wireless network, like in a cafe or whatever? I don't understand how it works! Help! :)

I am in the UK, not the US.

Thanks!

The publicity trumpets a battery life of one month, but the small print says that this is based on only using it for half an hour a day. 15 hours? And presumably a fair bit less in reality, since it felt the need to qualify its claim with the words "up to". I feel cheated and I haven't even bought one!

I was intending to get one for my next holiday but it sounds like I'll be lucky if it lasts me for the duration of the flight. Carrying a charger and a plug adapter might be lighter than carting a dozen books across the world and back, but it's hardly the hassle-free "stick it in your jeans pocket and forget about it for a month" that the advertising implies.

Can someone who's got one tell me whether it's really that bad? Or is there a better one out there that I could buy instead?

I'm in the UK, so I don't know if things like the Nook are an option for me.

Thanks for reading!

What it says, really. :)

I'm in the UK, I went to Australia and NZ a couple of years ago and I bought a plug adapter so I could charge my camera while I was there. Now I'm off to Thailand and I was wondering if this adapter will work in the sockets over there. It converts a standard UK three-pin to a type "I", if this means anything to you! It's two-pronged thing with flat pins, and it lets you twiddle the pins around a bit so that they can either be parallel or slightly angled.

I looked up Thailand on Wikipedia and it gave a list of about four different types of plugs that might be used, and one of them was an "unearthed I". What does this mean? Is there any point in me taking this adapter with me? Will I be able to use it?

Sorry to the three people who took the trouble to answer my last question (about what to wear when I go to Thailand) by the way - apparently someone complained about it and it got deleted! So I didn't get to see what you wrote. :(

I'm thinking of doing Vietnam and Cambodia later this year. I'd appreciate any advice on "must see" places, activities/day trips, where to stay and so on. I have Angkor Wat on my list%

I'm thinking of doing Vietnam and Cambodia later this year. I'd appreciate any advice on "must see" places, activities/day trips, where to stay and so on. I have Angkor Wat on my list, and I'd like to see the Mekong Delta (can you get a river cruise of some sort? Is it worth doing?). Other than that I'm not really sure, so I'm looking for recommendations from people who have been.

About me: I'm from the UK, female, 30's, will be travelling alone. I don't like sitting on beaches, I can take or leave shopping and I'm not interested in nightclubs. I'm looking to get a flavour of the countries and see/explore some sights. What I'll probably do is book my flights and a cheap hotel and try to sort out day trips and so on once I'm there (unless you tell me this is a really bad idea.) I did hear it was possible to go on a trek through the jungle and I'd be interested in that.

I could stop off in Bangkok on the way if I wanted - would you recommend that? What is there to see?

Also, any comments on the weather much appreciated (I understand that this will vary depending on whereabouts I am). I've no idea what sort of clothes I should take.

Thanks!

OK so I have this new laptop. This one here, if it helps at all: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-11-6-Inch-Netb...

I'm having trouble "doing stuff" - everything seems to be slow, from boot-up to starting programs (it likes to stop and wait a while between me clicking something and it doing it), and it takes ages to load internet pages that have any sort of animated graphics on (it will freeze for 10-20 seconds per page - hugely inconvenient). I want to use Skype for webchat with my friends and this is so slow it's just stupid and sometimes crashes altogether.

This must be something I can solve, I refuse to believe that a computer bought in July 2010 can be slower than my previous one bought in 2007 even though this new one's only a little laptop. It's not as if I'm asking it to play the latest games at maxed-out settings. I'm only surfing the net.

People have suggested downgrading from Vista because my laptop doesn't have the ability to run it fast enough, but when I did a search about how to do this the advice seemed to be "don't". In any case my laptop didn't come with a CD/DVD drive or anything so it's going to be an all-round PITA to do stuff like that.

When I clicked on Task Manager it brought up a list of about fifty things that were running. Could this be part of the reason why everything's so slow? I didn't recognise most of the names and I didn't dare start telling it to end things in case it was something vital. I'm not a computer person at all.

Can someone tell me please, what things are _supposed_ to be running in the background when your computer is on and you are surfing the net? Then I can maybe try to work out how to get rid of the others and stop them starting up in the future.

Would Acer have set loads of things to run automatically? I am sure I haven't asked it to do anything like that since I bought it, and the first thing I did was install an anti-virus thing so it shouldn't have been downloading things from websites without me knowing.

I bought a new laptop a few weeks ago and, in short, it's rubbish. I don't know whether it's me or whether I should take it back. Or are all laptops rubbish (this is my first one) and my expectations are too high? I'm not computer literate at all, so there may be something simple that I can do, or should have done.

It's this model here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-11-6-Inch-Netb...

Since I bought it I installed the following:

MS Office 2010

IE 8

Google Chrome

Firefox

Skype

MSN messenger/Windows Live

Talk Talk virus/security package

That's it. No games, no dodgy downloads, no massive video libraries, no cute "add-ons" to Firefox, no taking it apart and poking around inside it... nothing!

All I want to do with this damn thing, ALL I want to do, is create/amend/save Word and Excel files, browse the internet, use Skype and MSN for audio and video chats, send and receive e-mails, upload photographs. That's it.

Having had my rant, here are the actual issues. If anyone can help me with just ONE of these it would be a godsend. They mainly seem to revolve around video and graphics, maybe there's an easy fix?

1. It takes forever to boot up when I switch it on. 30 seconds from switch-on to asking me to log in, about a minute from there to loading my screen, and having loaded my screen about another minute or two before it will allow me to click on something (the hard drive light is almost constantly on for the whole time). I don't have anything, such as Skype or MSN, starting automatically.

2. It frequently, although not always, takes a good ten seconds from when I click on an icon or a shortcut to when it decides to load the program (for example, any internet browser). Same goes for when I click on something to take me to a new webpage. It isn't the websites as I can access them all from work with no difficulty or delay.

3. It cannot cope with moving graphics. If there's a web page with any sort of advert on, which is pretty much all of them these days, it hangs for 10-20 seconds before I can scroll down or anything. It doesn't seem to have a problem loading or running the adverts, just with being able to do anything else at the same time. Once I've scrolled far enough that the advert is no longer on the page, the scrolling is fine again.

4. If there are any moving graphics or webchat etc on the page, I cannot type properly into a text box (e.g. login, or to chat). I type the letters and nothing appears, and then about 10-15 seconds later it all appears at once. Sometimes it all appears, other times only some of the letters appear. Completely useless when trying to talk to someone, and frustrating when all I want to do is log on to a forum.

Thanks to 2 - 4 I surf the net at about one tenth of the speed that I used to with my old computer. In fact I'm pretty sure my 486 with 64k dial-up was faster when I first got online in 1998. I'm about ready to throw this thing out of the window.

5. If I try to use video chat of any description, it either crashes me out or it gives me lousy video quality and then tells me that its totally-ineffective-to-start-with "Acer Video Quality Enhancement" software has stopped working. There is nothing I can do to make this message go away - I click "cancel" or "close" and it comes back two minutes later. I have to reboot to clear it.

Any suggestions? I have a big claw hammer in my cupboard, and I'm on the first floor with a concrete path beneath. Both these are looking like attractive options right now. (For it, not me - give it another couple of weeks before I'm at that stage.)

Starting from London (England) on the morning of Day One (or possibly the evening of Day Zero) and finishing up somewhere near Lubeck/Hamburg (Germany) on the evening of Day Five.

My initial thoughts are that it might be fun to fly to Stockholm for a look around, and then make my way to Oslo, then Copenhagen, then on to Germany.

Firstly, what do you think of those three cities as destinations? I've literally just picked them off Google maps as being big. Is there somewhere else I should go instead? If there is some other feature in one of these countries that is a destination in itself, I would be just as happy to visit that instead.

Secondly, is this too much? Would I be able to do Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, including travelling between them, in five days? I don't want to see and do _everything_, just a day or two of wandering around and seeing the sights and soaking up the atmosphere. I'm not bothered about museums or art galleries as we're a bit spoiled for that in London so it's not a priority when I go somewhere else. If there was a nice day-trip out of town to see something special (interesting geography and similar) I'd want to do that, although if it's just scenery then travelling from A to B by train might be just as good. Any suggestions for things that I must see while I'm there?

Thirdly, I'd love some advice on travelling between these places once I get there. I'm not sure where to start and I don't know what my options are.

Is there a good (fun/interesting/straightforward) way to get from Stockhom to Oslo, or would I need to jump back on a plane? If I need to fly, I might skip Stockholm this time around as I would like to see a bit of the countryside as well as the cities and am more interested in e.g. ferries and trains for that reason. I don't drive so a hire car is not an option.

It seems you can get from Oslo to Copenhagen by overnight ferry which might be useful.

What's the best way to get from Copenhagen to Germany? Would I need to fly, or is there a train or ferry - where does it take you to?

And finally, is there anything important that I should know before I take this idea any further? Like, say, if October's a really stupid time to be doing this? Can I get by with only English? Am I going to starve to death because I don't like raw fish? :)

You don't have to answer all of this, I know it's really long, any help at all would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Starting from London (England) on the morning of Day One (or possibly the evening of Day Zero) and finishing up somewhere near Lubeck/Hamburg (Germany) on the evening

I was thinking of going in September and doing Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

What's the rain like? I know that sounds like such a dumb question! But it says it's 33cm a month in September (and 28cm in Cambodia) and I can see this makes it the wettest month by far. OK, fine, but I live in England and I've never been anywhere with a "rainy season" before and I have NO idea what this number means in terms of what it will do on a normal day. Does it pour with rain the whole time for days on end, or chuck it down in sheets for an hour and then clear up for the rest of the day, or what? Can you go out in it? Does it mean that you can't travel anywhere or explore the sights because the ground's too wet/muddy?

Would it spoil a holiday to the point where I'd be better going somewhere else and leaving this trip until next year sometime? If that's the case, when is the best time to go, taking into account the weather and also how busy it's likely to be with tourists?

I plan to travel around and see the temples and jungles and suchlike. Not so bothered about beaches and stuff.

Any help or advice you can give me will be much appreciated! As you can see, I'm pretty clueless about it all right now. I want to at least have some idea before I go to the travel agents.

I went AFK and came back a few minutes later to find my computer hanging and the keyboard and mouse unresponsive (although still red glow under mouse so definitely power). Ctrl-alt-del not working, windows button not working, nothing. The monitor was still showing the last thing I'd been looking at, but had frozen.

Switched off, switched back on again... it doesn't seem to be booting up. The fan is on, power comes through the computer to the plugged-in items such as the mouse, but nothing else happens. Nothing comes on the screen whatsoever (the screen's software tells me there's no signal and then sends itself to sleep).

Inside the computer there is no beep, not even the initial beep you get when you start it up normally, and no random whirring noises of a hard disk in action, just the sound of the fan. The green light is on but not the light that flashes when the hard drive is doing stuff - the hard drive light comes on for a split second at the very start but then nothing. The modem (do I mean router? Sorry, I know next to nothing about computers) lights show a connection to the internet but no connection to a computer/network.

I left it all switched off for about four hours to calm itself down and then tried again, same result.

Up until this happened, I've never had any problems with it at all. No sign of anything about to go wrong, not even in hindsight. I haven't done anything unusual or new with it lately, no new software or anything.

Is this as bad as it sounds?

Any suggestions? My ability to trouble-shoot seems limited - I've already checked that none of the plugs are loose, what else can I do with no visuals/responsiveness at all? I suppose I could take a monitor home with me from work (where I'm sitting now), but the fact that the modem isn't seeing anything either makes me think it isn't that.

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Hi all, I'm headed out (from London) to Rotterdam tomorrow for a long weekend. Just wondering to what extent the country shuts down over Easter - will the trains be running a full service on all the days, will shops and restaurants be open reduced hours or not at all? I'm interested in Friday to Monday inclusive.

Thanks!

I have a full-time job earning above the personal allowance and NIC threshhold. I've just started doing some mystery shopping work on the side, which is nothing to do with my day job.

What's involved is basically you go to e.g. a pub and have to order a drink and a meal, and report on service times, quality of food, staff attitudes, condition of the toilets and so on.

The pay consists of three things:

1. Reimbursement of the amount that you were required to spend in order to do the assignment (e.g. the particular meal or drink that you had to buy and comment on). This has to be receipted.

2. A travel/mileage fee. This is a set amount and proof of actual spend is not required. In most cases this does not cover the cost of my Tube fare there and back.

3. On occasion, there is also a fee for doing a job - small amounts, up to a fiver. So far, when there has been a fee there has not been any mileage/travel paid for the same job. Obviously I still incur a travel cost for the job. So mentally I see this as being the same as 2.

In essence, it's a free meal/drink/purchase in exchange for your time and trouble and the fact that they are choosing when and where and what you eat/buy (the instructions are very specific and there is little or no personal choice). You don't actually make any money out of it.

Unfortunately for me, I work in tax (I specialise in a completely unrelated area) and am a member of the CIOT, which means that I don't have the option of just keeping quiet about my earnings on the grounds that it's such a piddly amount and nets out to nil anyway and nobody's going to pick it up. It's essential that my own tax affairs are clean as a whistle.

So... I know the rough answer, which is that everything (1, 2 and 3) is taxable and I can deduct my expenses against the income. But are the required purchases an allowable deduction? Do the Revenue apply Mallalieu v Drummond at this level and say "oh well you'd have had to have eaten anyway and so it's dual purpose" and disallow it? Is there a distinction drawn between things like e.g. having a meal at a mealtime, compared with something that's clearly a luxury item like buying a cup of coffee (which I wouldn't have needed to do in order to survive)? Does it make a difference whether or not I am required to comment on the quality of the food as part of the assignment (for example, if the assignment is in a shop the brief might just be "you must make a small purchase" but they don't care what I bought or whether I enjoyed eating it)?

Since all I get is reimbursement of expenses that I've actually had to pay out, I don't make a cash profit. If I have to pay tax then these meals will be costing me "real money" (albeit only 22% of their cost) even though I wouldn't have chosen to go and have those meals if I wasn't required to by the assignment. Then again, who ever said tax was fair?

I had a look on the HMRC website and they had no specific notes about it. All their stuff on setting up a business doesn't really cover what I'm doing and is too general to be of use. Does anyone know whether they have a specific policy on this?

Thanks for reading!

(Please note: I am in the UK. I don't need to know how it would work in any other country. Thanks!)

I'll be in Rotterdam for a work meeting on the Thursday before Easter. I don't have to be back home (London) until Monday night. So I have a nice long weekend to see some bits of Holland!

Where shall I go and what shall I do? Are there any special events on over that weekend? Any big football matches?

I've been to Rotterdam before, and Amsterdam (where I watched Ajax play Feyernoord), and I've also visited Leiden, Delft, The Hague and Scheveningen. Happy to go to any of those places again, but would like to do something fun while I'm there - I don't need to go just to see them as I've already been once!

I don't have to fly home from Rotterdam, it could be from somewhere else. Is it possible to hire a bike for a one-way journey between two towns, or do I need to return it to the same place where I hired it? Is the weather likely to be mild enough for a long cycle ride or should I save that for another time when it's warmer? If that would be a good idea, where should I go from and to?

Any ideas much appreciated. Thanks for reading!

What's the best way to do this in a day? Is it do-able by public transport or would I need to sign up for a guided tour type thing? If the latter, are there many companies who operate one-way trips and is there any difference between them?

Thanks!

Hi, I'm in the UK and this will be my first visit to Oz.

I'm going to be arriving at 8am, so my first question is how long is it likely to take me to get through Customs and from the airport into the town centre? I hope to have hand baggage only.

I'm going to be in town for either two days (the day I arrive plus the whole of the next day, my flight out is at 9am the day after) or three. The alternative is having an extra day in Hong Kong, so I'm trying to work out what there is to do and see in each place and then decide.

So, what shall I do while I'm in Sydney? I might be a bit jetlagged so a quiet-ish day followed by either one or two days of "proper" stuff is probably about right.

I'm interested in scenery/geography, boat trips, walking, unusual/cute wildlife, a bit of culture (but not museums, I live in London and we have loads of them). I'm not interested in sports, nightlife or shopping.

Tourist attractions like the Opera House I'm neutral about - I'm not fussed about going inside if it costs a fortune and I have to queue for hours, unless you tell me it's really worth it. (This is not me being snotty, it's just based on my experiences in London. Some things are just overpriced for what they are.)

Happy to do day-trips and suchlike but I don't drive so any suggestions have to be do-able by public transport, coach tour etc.

All advice and suggestions much appreciated. Thanks!

I'm from the UK and this will be my first time in New Zealand. I'm going for a wedding and once that's over I have two full days to do my own thing before I go on to the next place (Nelson).

Doesn't have to be right in town, day trips and so on would be fine - or even one two-day trip - and I would hope that I won't be jetlagged by then either. I don't drive though so anywhere outside of town would have to be accessible by either public transport or a touristy-type coach trip.

I like interesting scenery/natural features, countryside, walking, boat trips, maybe a bit of culture. Not interested in shopping, sports, nightlife. Also, I'm hoping to travel light so I'm not bringing hiking boots or anything like that.

Thanks!

Since I moved flat in July I don't have a telly. I'm missing the music channels and I haven't updated the stuff I listen to for six months now! Can someone give me some new tracks that I might like, so that I can chase them down on YouTube or whatever?

I don't put myself into a genre category, but I used to listen mostly to Kerrang and Scuzz. Really just a list of what those two channels are playing lately would be fine. Some bands I like are MCR, FOB, Green Day, Aiden, AFI, Marilyn Manson, Three Days Grace, Hawthorne Heights, Good Charlotte, 30 Seconds to Mars.

Thanks!

This would be teenage angst if I wasn't in my thirties.

If he cancels an evening out because he's "too tired" despite still being fine to go out with other people on other nights, this means (at the very least) that I'm not a priority, at at worst that he isn't remotely tired and just doesn't want to spend time with me.

I should add that he's going away for six weeks at the end of this week and this is the last chance we had to hang out together without other people there.

So, why do I care? He clearly doesn't. Why can I not mentally throw him to one side and get on with the rest of my life?

Somebody please knock some sense into me. This is just dumb. And I would like to get some sleep tonight instead of being upset about some guy who doesn't even care that I exist! Give me the magic words to stop this from hurting. Even if it's just "grow up".

Help me out here. I know what the answer is. I just need lots of people to tell me so that maybe it'll sink in.

We've been friends for five years, but one or both of us has always been in a relationship. I've always liked him and I thought he liked me but wasn't sure (and it didn't matter anyway). Now we're both single at the same time, him very recently.

We've started hanging out together more often as a result, and it's obvious that we're both attracted to each other.

He's been clear that he isn't looking for a relationship with me (there was a "yet" in there somewhere, but it could have just been politeness). OK, fine, I get that.

He also says he doesn't want to ruin our friendship with sex and that in his opinion friend-with-benefits arrangements always end badly and he would hate for that to happen. OK, fine, I get that too.

So why, having said all that, does he carry on hinting that he does want sex? What exactly is on offer, if it's not a relationship and it's not an FWB set-up? This is what I don't get.

I can only imagine he means "actually, thinking about it, I guess I wouldn't care too much if it did ruin our friendship".

Or am I missing something?

He's a nice guy, or at least he's always seemed that way. I don't think he's deliberately trying to con me. But any guesses as to what he IS playing at will be much appreciated because I have no idea how to approach the conversation when I next see him.