Christmas shoppers can bag substantial savings by going online rather than to the high street, research by consumer group Which? shows.

It found that savings of more than 1,000 pounds could be made on a shopping list of five popular gifts — a flat-screen television, camera, camcorder, hi-fi and DVD recorder.

Researchers compared prices on 72 products at 111 retailers and found that online savings ranged from 11 percent on digital camcorders to 29 percent on LCD and plasma televisions.

Savings could also be made on everything from books (14 percent) and MP3/MP4 players (11 percent) to CDs (7 percent) and champagne (2 percent).

But games consoles — such as the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 — were found to be similarly priced.

“The trick to bagging a bargain is to discover which stores offer the most extras,” Which? said in its November magazine.

“For example, while John Lewis sells the PS3 for 398 pounds, HMV sells it for 425 pounds, but with four games (which cost up to 50 pounds each) and an extra controller — which is the best deal we found.”

Consumers could be missing out on savings of up to 240 million pounds a year by not shopping online, recent research by the Office of Fair Trading shows.

People’s top 10 reasons for shopping over the Internet include ease of price comparison, avoiding crowds, price competitiveness and more choice, according to a poll of 2,343 Which? online panel members.

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Regular maintenance is critical to keeping your ACT! database corruption-free. Database maintenance should be done weekly or bi-weekly. Multi-user databases and large databases should be reindexed more often. To perform database maintenance, you must be logged in as a Database Administrator and be the only user currently in the database.

ACT database maintenance

This error arises when the System registry hive is either deleted or corrupt. System registry hive contains configuration information necessary for the system to boot.

The first thing to try is to run chkdsk command from the Recovery Console and then reboot the system.

If chkdsk does not solve the problem, then the System file should be restored from backups. There are two places to look for the backups, one is the System Restore folder and the other is \Windows\Repair folder.

From the Recovery Console, navigate to the folder \System Volume Information of the root drive, using the command:

cd “C:\System Volume Information”

Here, locate and navigate to the folder whose name begins with _restore using the command:

cd _resto~1

This folder contains many subfolders which have names of the form RPxxx, where xxx is a number indicating the restore point. Locate an RPxxx folder which has the highest number as its suffix (highest xxx) using the command dir command. Then navigate into that folder using the command:

cd RPxxx (don’t forget to replace xxx with the corresponding number!)

Now, there will be a folder named snapshot. Navigate to this folder using the command:

cd snapshot

There should be a file named _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM, copy this file to the \Windows\System32\Config folder with the name System using the command:

copy _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM C:\Windows\System32\Config\System

Then reboot the system. This method works only when the System Restore feature of Windows XP is enabled.

While installing Windows, the setup backs up the System registry hive in Repair folder. If the System Restore feature is turned off, then this backup can be used to restore the System hive. From the Recovery Console, navigate to folder \Windows\Repair, using the command:

cd C:\Windows\Repair

and then copy the System file to its original location using the command:

copy System C:\Windows\System32\Config\System

and reboot the system.

The disadvantage of this method is that, since the backup is created during the installation of Windows, by restoring this backup all the system configuration and driver installations made after it will be lost.

Source: http://swatrant.blogspot.com/

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A study conducted by uSwitch has shown that we have the lowest levels of disposable income for 10 years. With more and more of our hard earned money having to cover the essentials, we’re left with just 33% of our gross salary to spend on “non essentials” such as socialising, holidays and hobbies.

Today, it is more important than ever that you review your household and personal finances and make sure you’re on the best deal.

Here are 7 money saving switches that could save you over £1300 and make this Christmas a very merry one!

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1) An RS-232 cable connected directly to a PC RS-232 port, with the PC connected to the network, that, in turn, is connected to the Internet.

2) RS-232 cables connecting several CNC machines to an automatic (multitasking) switchbox connected to a PC on the network that is connected to the Internet. A variation of this approach uses a multitasking serial hub that is connected directly to the network (which is then connected to the Internet and controlled by a PC on the network).

3) An individual RS-232 cable connected to an Ethernet-to-RS-232 converter connected to a PC on the network that is connected to the Internet, or the Ethernet-to-RS-232 converter is connected directly to the network (which is then connected to the Internet and controlled by a PC on the network).

Connecting a legacy (RS-232) machine directly to the network, as given in the last example, involves these seemingly simple steps: Buy a single-port Ethernet-to-RS-232 converter, then attach that adapter to the factory-wide network by building a cable from the Ethernet adapter to the network jack. Next, build a custom CNC-style RS-232 cable from the Ethernet adapter to the machine tool. Configure the firmware on both sides of the adapter to communicate properly with the network as well as with the RS-232 port. Finally, set the parameters of the machine tool and your communication software on the network side. This approach will allow you to move the machine around and plug it into an Ethernet jack anywhere on the network, as long as you provide the necessary shop infrastructure to make it happen. If all goes well, you will be sending and receiving files between the machine tool and the Internet.

But what about monitoring the activity of the machine? The RS-232 port is available to send/receive part programs. Without substantial modifications to both the software and hardware of the system, you will not know what is going on with the machine (other than it is sending and receiving files).

Source: mmsonline.com

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Normal Fanuc comms settings for your software -

Baud: 4800

Parity: Even

Data bits: 7

Stop bits: 1

The FIFO buffer setting in Windows is also important to prevent buffer overflows (alarm 087) on the CNC.

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Typically your PC talks to your CNC machine via RS232 / Com ports, however newer machines / controls are now being supplied with windows operating systems & USB ports.

If using RS232 generally the cable required for most controls is a DB25 to 9 pin serial & a null modem adapter to fit on either end, these you can get from Maplin or any other electrical store.

This cable works on Fanuc & Mazak controllers & many more.

Less & less new laptops come with com ports nowadays as everything is moving over to USB so always check that your laptop has a com port as standard if looking to purchase one for your machines. I have just ordered 2 from Dell & both do still have com/rs232 ports. If your laptop doesnt have one you can use a PCMCIA to Serial adapter which seems to work with no problems.

You can also try a USB to serial adapter but people are having mixed success with such.

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