That does sound very odd. On my next older mac all USB ports were 1.0 or 1.1 whichever. It just was not practical for me to use USB except for keyboard & mouse. I used firewire 400. And of course on my new mac I use firewire 800. Both are apparently faster than USB 2 in practice or so I've read (despite USB 2's supposed capabilities), especially for external drives. USB 2.0 is supposed to be capable of up to 480 Mbps but apparently Firewire 400 (400 Mbps) in practice tends to be faster. Likewise FW 800 is double FW 400's speed.

I think earlier I suggested firewire to PickaxeFairy, but if it's an older computer then perhaps waiting till the next machine might be better so you get faster all round speeds (cpu, bus speed, ram, etc.) And there are faster options around now than firewire 800 such as eSATA which is up to 3Gbps (though its burst speed I think is only double FW 800's burst speed.)

On that topic I notice external drives seem to have dropped price this year since 4 GB drives are now on the market. Last two I bought were 1 TB ext drives.

PickaxeFairy

Engineer/Tech guys giving false info and talking gobbledygook to ordinary people is more common than most of us would like. For example, a lady at my workplace was telling me recently how one of these tech guys came into her home to install a wireless modem and router (2 separate devices).

He proceeded to install the devices in an upstairs room while her Dell PC was downstairs in her living room. He tested that the modem and router were working by installing the wi-fi connection device to her son's laptop then, before leaving, told her to run the connection software on her Dell PC and that would be that.

As you can imagine, her main PC could not connect to the modem or router because it did not have a wi-fi device, she was livid because she had been mislead by someone who could not be bothered to do his job properly.

So what do you do, simple tell your tech guy to install a PCI to USB2.0 card in your PC and get him to test it is working properly by attaching your external HD to one of the new USB2.0 ports. Also, insure that your external HD is assigned an appropriate letter, such as anything above F:\, so that there are no conflicts with your current DVD or CD drives.

Finally, watch the guy from start to finish to see what he is doing, he may not like this but as he is coming into your home so he has to abide by your rules.

Good Luck


UK Bob

Thanks for your reply Bob
That guy you talked of sounds like an absolute joke!


Right, where do I start....

Well Mr Tech Guy came round as promised....

Got the old list out of everything I needed to bring to his attention....
Told him all the issues I've been having; went into loads of detail....

He had a little fiddle, pushed a few buttons.... went into parts of my pc I didn't even know existed!

His subsequent response - "You do realise the internet is slow sometimes - it's probably got nothing to do with your actual pc...."


You're having a laugh, I'm saying under my breath. Could you BE any more patronising!!??

I pulled him up on that, believe me! He went all red and looked really awkward - but then actually went on to *sincerely* apologise!

I think before he arrived, he thought I was some silly little woman who'd believe whatever he told me and that he could feed me some crap and be gone from my flat in 10 minutes so's he could go and have his lunch....

How wrong was he!!

Then - and completely out of the blue - he tells me that he's gonna order me a brand new CD/DVD drive AND a brand new hard drive!!
Seems I'm gonna get a complete new install....

I didn't even need a new CD/DVD drive - but who am I to argue??


RESULT!!

Well done PickaxeFairy

The first rule of dealing with these "tech guys" is watch what they do and take no prisoners.


UK Bob

I find myself wondering....just wtf does a slow internet connection have to do with the ability to transfer data from an internal drive to an external USB drive...I'd have loved to have been there to have beaten on that dillhole!

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Exactly! And when I brought this up and told him the speed is just as sluggish when I'm working off-line.... get this - he then went on and decided to blame dust, saying that all my problems are likely to be a result of clogged up vent holes....
What he didn't realise.... and I do have to chuckle at this point.... is that a couple of weeks earlier, due to another *much less significant* tech call-out issue, the side of the pc had been removed and all air-holes, plus the fan, had been thoroughly cleaned....
Well he could hardly blame a colleague, let's face it - perish the thought - and that's when he said that I must have done something to compromise the workings of my pc....

Not that he was squirming at this point or anything.

I'm sitting there thinking, is this guy for real??
My reply - "Erm - so how could that be the cause then?"

Surprise surprise, he went a bit quiet.
The guy had an answer for everything, I swear - though none of it relevant and none of it bearing any relation to the actual problem....
He obviously thought, being a mere female, that I would think he knew what he was talking about, being a tech guy an' all.... but when I challenged everything he said with realistic, common sense replies and he finally got the gist that actually, I wasn't stupid.... he kinda then just bumbled about and found himself without a leg to stand on....

I don't think I was one of his favourite customers.

Of course - I'm not complaining.... but the only reason I managed to get myself a brand new CD/DVD drive and hard drive is 'cos the so called 'expert' met his match and basically, couldn't actually give me any definitive reason as to why I'm having the problems I am....

At the end of the day, I just don't trust or believe *and probably never will* anything these guys say....

From my own personal experiences, they don't seem to actually be that interested in helping people; more along the lines of "let's feed people a load of crap and get out of there as quickly as possible. We're still getting paid after all....".


Thanks Bob

PickaxeFairy

You know that your experience is totally in-line with what the lady at my workplace told me.

Simply put, they think women are non-technical, non-logical and cannot respond to (or have no defence against) gobbledygook, in other words he's a typical tech guy (male chauvinist).


UK Bob

Bob - did your work colleague ever get her problems rectified?
And I know it's highly unlikely - but did they actually ever apologise?

I'd love to meet her. I'm sure between us, we would gain muchos pleasures by slagging off these supposed 'Tech Guys'....

PickaxeFairy

Well, I know that she made an appointment for another tech guy to visit her home and fix the problem, i.e. install a wi-fi device on her Dell PC, I'll make a point of asking her when next I see her.

As for "slagging off" these tech guys, well she was very angry at the time (and has sworn to have some sort of vengeance).

However, you ladies have both gained some valuable experience, and that is these chauvinist will never be able to pull the wool over your eyes again, and that is something money can't buy.

By the way, how is your PC?



UK Bob

In relation to my pc, Bob - I'm in danger of throwing the damn thing out the window any time soon!!

The guy's coming in a couple of weeks to do the install and everything, so of course atm everything's still as it was....

Today though - and I'm sorry to digress.... didn't wanna start a new thread - something's going on that I just can't work out and it's seriously driving me up the wall!

As I've always done, when I've downloaded a file from Limewire, I convert the bitrate if I need/want to, then shove it in my Shared folder....
For some reason though today - and I have absolutely no idea where the fault lies - when I put the files into my Shared folder, the bitrates are never what I've converted them to....
Had 30 or so files to add, converted them all to what I want, but when I put them in Limewire, not one of them has the bitrate that the file is....
So for example, if I've converted a 192 to a 128, when it 'arrives' in my Limewire Shared folder, it's showing either the original bitrate or one that's completely different!
I've even tried converting them again two or three times - but to no avail. I feel really frustrated with this!!


If anyone can shed any light on this, I'd be most grateful....
I've never had this problem all the years I've been converting files (I use Switch Free Version btw)