Theo

If it goes out straight away even while you are keeping the knob pressed in then it might still be a sign of air in the line. Keep trying. N

We didn't have to go diagonally in our 60' boat when transiting the whole length of the L&L N

A motor takes a huge belt as it starts up (that's why electric cars accelerate so well from a standstill). N

It's always a shame when choice becomes more limited and the personal cost of closing a company must be high. ~Was the propeller materially better than an ordinary one though? If not, an Axiom was rather expensive IIRC. N

I used an 8' piece of scaff board for ages. It's a good idea to have a spreader on the outboard end so that it doesn't tip in use. Now we have an aluminium ladder with an aluminium plate clipped to it. Very light and easy. N

Berko

And there was me thinking that it was a vaguely amusing misspelling of those vessels in which we float. 😲 N

Another benefit of the high speed: updates to Windows happen so much more quickly. Thanks for the life expectancy comments, Jess. I will email Crucial and ask for their advice about a preemptive disc change. It would be nice if they could build in some sort of meter so that you knew how much work they had done. Nick

I bought my SSD from Crucial. One of the services that they provide is a limited version of Acronis so that you can clone the HDD on to the new SSD before you do the install. They supply the lead but you do have to order it. It took about 6 hours to finish the clone. Dell make the HDD just about as hard to get at as they could. You have to take the laptop comprehensibly to bits to do the swap. You Tube was my friend. There were lots of videos showing just what has to be done. There are 15 little screws to be removed from the bottom of the lap top and another five from the inside once you have removed the keyboard. Then another 4 to release the HDD. The trickiest bit was to push back the little flexible tabs that hold the keyboard in place. All was accomplished in about 45 minutes. It would have been quicker if I hadn't discovered at the end that I had 5 screws left over. They were the ones that were under the keyboard. I have to confess that I am rather pleased with myself and even more pleased with the result. QUESTION As pointed out above, SSD's have a limited life. How do you know when their life is coming to an end? I think that I will keep the old HDD just to make an image when I think that I need to. N

That's useful info. Thanks, Jess.

We came past Tardebigge a couple of weeks ago. Full to the brim. N

I think that I will accept it for what it is. It have changed from being nearly unusable to really rather good. And all for the price of £64. Better than the £800 that I was thinking of spending for a new laptop. BTW with the blisteringly fast SSD is the requirement for lots of RAM now less? It will be so much quicker to handle virtual memory now, won't it? Nick

Ah! Ubuntu. N

I have just, this morning, installed an SSD in place of the HDD which had been running at !00% for the 10 minutes that it took to start up. What a difference! I have had a look at the task manager and seen that the disc mostly runs at 20% or thereabouts during startup but the CPU is now running flat out at 100%. So I have moved the bottleneck. Is there anyway of widening the CPU bottleneck. I see that as I type this with only Chrome and the task manager working the CPU is on 21% and the SSD at 2%. Any ideas? Nick

Perhaps someone has already answered this but I would not think that you would get through the Bingley staircases. You can do it in a 60ft narrow boat because you can fit the bow or stern into the angle between the top gates and the wall. A wide boat needs the full clear length. Nick