Help! PC not working

[cambrensis]

[QUOTE=johnwash1;1588939]Hi Ian, I'd send you a PM to say this, but it would be ironic! Please encourage people not to PM, but to post publicly. It may help someone else. It also means we all get the benefit of others seeing what we write, correcting it, or adding further comments to it.

I'd have agreed with you but (and there's always a but...)...the last time I became involved in this way was about a year ago when cheaver had a problem with Linux Mint failing to update itself on her laptop, but doing so successfully on her tower machine. We were going through the problem step by step as I could see exactly what was the cause.

A moderator appeared and "suggested" we move to PM as it looked as if we were drawing attention to our shops. Had that person taken the trouble to check it would have been found that although registered as seller+ i had not actually set up a single shop (still haven't in fact, owing to illness). Off we went and completed the job. Several were disappointed as they had been following. The moderator had suggested we were hogging the thread and that most would have been bored...well - there are other threads!

So...suffice it to say that this afternoon I received an email from Pastime to say that the file I had sent her had her Apollo working again. I took about two minutes to find that driver by using my usual search method - a clustering engine. I never ever use Google directly. The use of a clustering engine was the only thing which might have interested others. I find one an essential search tool.

Ian

[johnwash1]

[QUOTE=cambrensis;1589185]

Hi Ian, I'd send you a PM to say this, but it would be ironic! Please encourage people not to PM, but to post publicly. It may help someone else. It also means we all get the benefit of others seeing what we write, correcting it, or adding further comments to it.

I'd have agreed with you but (and there's always a but...)...the last time I became involved in this way was about a year ago when cheaver had a problem with Linux Mint failing to update itself on her laptop, but doing so successfully on her tower machine. We were going through the problem step by step as I could see exactly what was the cause.

A moderator appeared and "suggested" we move to PM as it looked as if we were drawing attention to our shops. Had that person taken the trouble to check it would have been found that although registered as seller+ i had not actually set up a single shop (still haven't in fact, owing to illness). Off we went and completed the job. Several were disappointed as they had been following. The moderator had suggested we were hogging the thread and that most would have been bored...well - there are other threads!

So...suffice it to say that this afternoon I received an email from Pastime to say that the file I had sent her had her Apollo working again. I took about two minutes to find that driver by using my usual search method - a clustering engine. I never ever use Google directly. The use of a clustering engine was the only thing which might have interested others. I find one an essential search tool.

Ian

What a shame. But I guess moderators can't always get it right. Perhaps a PM to the moderator would have been a way forward!

I've never heard the term 'clustering engine' before. Sounded like something out of a Mad Max movie! Having googled it, I see it's somewhat like metasearch, but perhaps with some differences? I used to use various metasearch engines years ago, but eventually I decided Google was fast and generally gave me the answers I wanted. Which engines do you recommend? I'd like to explore.

Glad Pastime is sorted.

[cambrensis]

My favourite is "carrot2" which may be installed as a search bar, or accessed via a page. I use the bar, but as it's open source you can use the native code within something you write yourself if you wish.

The old metasearches simply searched all other engines and lumped them together. What i dislike about Google is that if you put in a simple search term it will throw up just about everything under the sun starting with the most popular search. It does this quickly it is true, but you may very well find several pages of totally irrelevant material before you get anywhere near what you are looking for.

It is true that it is very fast if you have carefully constructed your search terms according to the rules of logic - but then you've lost time constructing the search.

The beauty of the clustering engine is that it collects everything and then clusters the results according to topic; selecting the topic you really meant gets you into the section you wished to search very quickly.

Searching for the HP Apollo drivers resulted in several clusters, one of which dealt with the HP Apollo series (laser printers) and another dealing with the Apollo printer by HP (inkjet) - two different families. Within that latter there were about 5 links to drivers for W7 and W8. I simply selected the one from MS...the blurb confirmed it to be the right one when I opened the page.

Printers are a world apart of course. HP has used both Epson and Canon mechanics, though in recent years they have been mainly Canon. Having downloaded the driver I wanted, I spent an interesting few minutes reading an article by some chap who had worked out which Canon drivers would work certain HP printers.

A few years ago I used to use a different clustering engine (name now escapes me) but one day I had a terrible shock! I wanted to see if the R.A.C. (for US readers the "Royal Automobile Club") had any sites separate from what was available from its normal homepage. My search was blocked! I then discovered that the Search system had been purchased by some "born again" group over the weekend and that they were dedicated to guarding the morals of the young etc.The alterations they had made meant that R.A.C. was blocked as a search term as it meant something indecent, immoral or fattening in their nomenclature! I never did work out what. Needless to say that particular search engine very soon disappeared from the web.

[johnwash1]

My favourite is "carrot2" which may be installed as a search bar, or accessed via a page. I use the bar, but as it's open source you can use the native code within something you write yourself if you wish.
...

Thanks Cambrensis, I'll take a look.