Nevermind. Their network status page just updated.
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Excellent, we did it!
Your invoice is in the mail.
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Around the same time as this, my Afrihost air mobile SIMs stopped working. I’ve been trying to get a response from them, so I finally contacted a rep on mybroadband. They told me my account is under review…
I mean, I’m ok if they want to discontinue the free #DataForAll product I’ve been using on and off for the past 5 or 6 years, but give me some notice before cutting me off when I am counting on using it while on leave in an unfamiliar city!!
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I read somewhere about an app that takes minutes in teams but now that I am looking for it, do you think I can find it.
Teams doesn’t like south African accents at all
Is that using the built in transcription tool? I’ve never had an issue with it at all - all those online lectures done during Covid lockdown transcribed automatically pretty well. I do speak very clearly into the microphone though, so that may be part of it. Also don’t think I have too thick a Souff Effrican accent.
Maybe try switching the Transcript Spoken Language from English US to English UK or Australia and see if that helps?
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Yeah I’d suggest using UK or AUS as the USA English somehow is very strange compared to us.
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Has anyone tried daily driving Windows 10 LTSC?
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This has been discussed quite a few times but times and tech change: I want to get either a portable inverter (power station) or a semi portable one but I want to be able to replace the batteries myself.
After doing some research, the Ecoflow, Flexopower and Jackery models of portable power stations do not allow you to replace the batteries yourself, which is not ideal.
What options do I have for an affordable 500w/h system to run PC/monitors/router for 2-4 hours where I can replace the batteries myself after the nominal cycles are done and it isn’t charging up to even 50% anymore?
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I would still recommend looking at the units just mentioned , just spec for the highest rating you can go to use less battery if possible.
Or you can opt to add a 2nd battery to the ecoflow which is my current recommendation for most folks in your spot.
You can add a 2nd battery later as well.
You can also just stick to the trolley systems, 100ah or 200ah batteries which you can easily replace on the 1kva unit. But lead acid tech or hell which is the same thing. There are lithium options but stock is scarce so waiting lists…
Lastly would be to just do it properly and go for a 3kva inverter with a 2.5 or 5kw battery. Doubles the cost but you can easily move it to a new location in future. Just a little trickier with the electrician connection. But this way you get something with a 10 to 15year warranty.
Sadly replacing batteries on sealed units just isn’t a thing yet, I bet a cocktail on the beach that we will see a new company manufactures them for our market soonish. But again stock is going to suck: 
If you can give me an idea on estimate budget you are willing to spend I can research more options. But sadly I would assume you need it yesterday and there simply is nothing available. Everyone is busy buying any item they find.
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Thanks for the detailed answer Nima! I have a gen which we use often. I just need something to power PC and monitors + router through load shedding. Something I can replace batteries on. Not wanting to spend more than 15k and hoping to spend less on battery replacement in 3-5 years time.
Interesting information on item availability. That will mean a lot higher markup as well ;-(
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Yeah on your price point replacing batteries be ones a slight issue. Trolley is the only one I can think of or investigate replacement for ecoflow maybe.
The trolley will do it, especially with 200ah batteries instaed of 100ah. But the slow charge could be an issue. If you run the generator you can add life to the system but the batteries won’t post too long. I can’t give exact times as this differs on the use case.
So try to over spec to use as little of the batteries as you can per cycle.
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About the battery life, is it true that if you keep the charge above 20% and below 80% that the batteries will last longer?
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From what I’ve heard that is more aimed at lithium based options. LiFePo is better optimised for higher usage so should last longer.
Lead acid and gel based options should essentially never dip below 50% if you care about them. Once a blue moon shouldn’t hurt it much. But daily is where they degrade quickly and need regular replacement.
Damned if you, damned if you don’t.
For this reason my advice is to try get the funds to use the better system, a purchase of 30 to 40k lasting 10 years is better than a 15k investment that require replacement once or twice a year.
Battery technology needs another huge leap and soon, we need affordable but longer lasting units asap.
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Any network engineers in the house?
I have been having some weird internet problems since switching from Afrihost to CoolIdeas. Certain European game servers will have a 200ms ping in the server browser, but in-game will have lag of SECONDS. DayZ is the worst offender but at first I thought the game was jank.
Lots of tests and support tickets, and I was told to try WinMTR (a Windows based trace route app) and this is one of the latest result sets:
The pings are at 5 second intervals, otherwise the nr 6 problem IP will take too long to respond and skew the amount of sent pings. This is about 1.5 hours worth of pings.
Some symptoms also include online services often not working and needing a page refresh. ChatGPT, F1TV.com, F1 22 Online Services, OneDrive etc. A page refresh always works.
Cool Ideas said the problem was escalated to Vumatel, and then it was “fixed” over the weekend. This is the post fix test.
I checked and this IP seems to belong to Dimension Data.
Can I insist from them to be routed through another router? Give me a longer path, but at least it will be stable?
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I had some hitches when I transferred from Afrihost to Cool Ideas, but it smoothed itself out after 2-3 weeks. Since then I’ve only had Vumatel issues during load shedding. And other people in the area, using other ISPs on Vuma as well, complain about the same.
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Shared document? It’s called a Prescence Indicator.
It means Konrad is currently in that “paragraph” - really just an empty line at the moment of your screenshot - on his machine. That paragraph section of the document indicated by the square bracket can’t be edited by anyone else at the moment. It’s to avoid two people making different changes to the same section of a document at the same time and confusing the f out of Word in the process.
The red dot icon means that Konrad is either actively busy in that section of the document. Or, very frequently, Konrad opened the document, read through it, clicked into that point of the document, and then left it open on his machine. 
I think if you hover over it for a second or two it should tell you Konrads current activity and confirm that you can’t change anything in that section.
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Im gonna murder the man shortly. . . . He is desperate to get the document out but the format is so kak
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Ok totally weird question
in an inherited excel document - I have these two blocks that wont go away - no idea where it came from
Looks like vba form input boxes.
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