Problems setting up new PC

[moonjiver]

Well, getting the hardware is just the beginning of the hard work!

I managed to get a pretty decent Acer Aspire desktop, nice big 24-inch monitor, massive RAM and HD storage. Windows 10 seems to work pretty well and not too big a jump from Windows 7.

But inevitably a lot of starting hiccups. I managed to install MS Office 2010 from a disk, without having to uninstall it from my old laptop (useful) and activate it ok. But on the Start-up menu is a tile for MS Office - when I click it, it tries to connect me to internet so as to download the latest version. But it seems to be some sort of mini-file, I can't remove it and, if I try to pin my own Office 2010 (named in the list of apps as Office "upload") to the Start menu, that doesn't work!

Dare I go into Control Panel, Apps and try to delete it that way .. or is it possibly a registry entry? I.e. it's looking for the Office suite but doesn't realise my installed Office 2010 is now there?

I'm about to hook up to broadband - good time because all the providers are warring with each other again. I was intending to go for Plusnet but lately they are getting a lot of complaints about long call-centre queues. Sky (better repuration) have brought out a very competitive and tempting deal - for phone and broadband only, 12 months free, then £10 per month + £17.40 line rental. And £100 pre-!paid MasterCard!

Does anyone care to comment on my dilemmas please?

[Richard]

Just get the latest version of ms office - if you want - it or use control panel to delete anything you don't want.
John Lewis offer broad band via plus net but has good customer service and hand-holding.
Call-centres in the uk and not India, but apart from the odd query you shouldn't normally require assistance anyway.

The Sky package looks good!

[moonjiver]

Thanks a lot Richard. I'm a bit wary of John Lewis, they seem disorganised, kept me waiting for over a week for a delivery date for the PC, then just twelve hours notice!

I think I'm going to plump for Sky, they are obviously trying to compete with the similar PlusNet offer.

I'll try deleting the entries for Office in the app list (except for my Office 2010 upload), see if that works. Never done any of this before! If the Office tile still stays in the Start menu, atleast it's not doing any harm there.

[Richard]

My talktalk connection in Hastings is fairly good, but up in Cheshire it is really poor at times.
Talktalk is a BT 'lookalike'
Sky is similar - using BT lines and so will experience similar issues.
Then you have fibre BB options.

Virgin media BB is good and supposedly better than BT fibre but it depends what you want to pay.
They all seem to offer various speed pricing packages.

Vodafone Home Broadband offers fibre BB with line-rental avoidance for £22/month:

http://blog.vodafone.co.uk/2016/08/09/h ... l-charges/

[moonjiver]

Thanks Richard. Most providers of course have to rely on the BT lines for basic broadband and some problems are inevitable sooner or later. However, Sky seems to be near the top of the popularity list for customer service - best of a bad lot maybe!

Vodafone has had a very bad press lately, been heavily criticised by the regulator. Too risky I think ..

Businesses depend on smoothly running internet services, even in rural areas. Why on earth the government doesn't get stuck in and sort out all the patchy areas of the UK is beyond me. Some reports say that the UK's average download speed is amongst the lowest in Europe. And of course it's often very unreliable.

[Richard]

I think Fibre is the way to go but to get the coverage is another matter.
You should check other providers also:

https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postc ... /?postcode

[moonjiver]

I'm all hooked up to Sky Broadband on the new PC and , so far, it's working fine. Switching to Sky was fast and seemed very efficient and smooth. Only line rental to pay for during the first year and I get £100 on a Mastercard!! Handy cos I've spent a fortune ..

But a host of issues to sort out of course. I have to decide whether to bother with the in-built Mail app or maybe the Outlook 2010 program (I now have an Outlook.com address, since I may well need it later for OneDrive and suchlike), or just stick with my web-based email accounts. If it seems a dumb question, in the past webmail was always more convenient and accessible anywhere - configuring MS as an email client seemed horribly complex to me and also Gmail was considered more secure and reliable.

Just wondered what people's experiences were - is there a big advantage in gathering all your emails into one location on the desktop? How complex is it these days to use MS as an email client? I read the stuff on Mail and Outlook but MS have changed their email systems so many times (Live Mail is on the way out) that I still got confused!

[moonjiver]

Incidentally, I managed to delete the reference to "Office" in the Start menu (was just a short-cut tile!) but it isn't possible to pin my Office 2010 suite to the Start menu - you can only pin individual programs , Word etc., to the menu. I was hoping to make searching down the list a bit simpler!