Myself and fiancee have adopted this after we had the water meter installed and it was her idea! Our water bills have more than halved. We're now using paper plates and disposable knives & forks. As for energy saving bulbs. Forget them and go back to the regular bulbs. Theses energy saving oves give off very poor quality light and if you smash one you need to leave the room, open the windows and shut the doors as they contain heavy metals which are highly toxic.

I'm on a similar deal with O2 - Simplicity. My package is 300mins/300txts a month for £15. Been on it some time now and very glad I switched.

Tezcatlipoca - that Web Developer plugin is invaluable. Been using that alongside Firebug for longer than I can remember and are the only two web developer plugins I use. One very handy plugin I use is "Flashblock" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433/ This prevents all Flash video/anim files from loading but lets you click them if you want to see them. Some of these Flash files are huge and can make page loading very slow. Not any more, plus this helps save bandwidth by not downloading meaningless junk. ADBLOCK PLUS ELEMENT HIDING HELPER https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4364/ Used alongside AdBlock Plus for selectively hiding junk on sites. I've used this successfully on many sites including Facebook, IMDb, Hotmail and many more to remove the adverts and leave the content. I also use this to disable the mind-numbingly annoying advertising "hot links" - the crap that appears when you hover over selective words.

Some of the software I have in my arsenal when fixing machines is: * Ubuntu: Free, boots your machine up without using Windows. Very handy for diagnosing some hardware faults. Ubuntu also contains a program called MEMTEST86 which can be used to test your RAM for faults. http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download * Jellybean's Key Finder: Free, great for backing up your licence keys for software you've bought. I use this for getting licence keys before destructive restores so I can install software back on the original licences. http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ * Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM): Free, great for removing almost all malware from your machine. Don't forget to get this scanning in Safe Mode as normal scan is not enough. http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php * avast! antivirus: Free - what more can I say? http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download http://www.avast.com/registration-free-antivirus.php * HijackThis: Free, be sure to get someone who knows what they're doing with this - you CAN destroy Windows. Used after MBAM for extra safety. http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html * Sea Tools: Free, used for scanning hard drives for faults. If you get at least ONE error - scrap the hard drive and get a new one. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Not quite. Booting into any version of Windows for the first time on a new user will always take longer than normal as the profile has to be built. Would be better to suggest to time it booting for the second time

Hi, Reboot the computer and go into Safe Mode. You should see a new user in the list called "Administrator" - select it. If you've not used it before the password will be empty. Once you've logged in, Control Panel>Users From here (as the main administrator) you can change the password of your lost account. If you do a system restore be warned that more laptops/netbooks only allow the "destructive restore" method which will permanently destroy all data on the hard drive so you might want someone to back up the data beforehand.

I was called to a friend's house to fix her computer. She'd received a call claiming to be from Microsoft telling her that her PC was infected with a virus and they detected this as it was sending out signals which they picked up on. She's very trusting and gave them some money before I popped around to fix it myself. Just before I turned up they called again trying to get more money and she told them someone was coming round to fix her computer. They tried to persuade her not to let anyone else fix it but she soon made her excuses to end the call when my friend told them I'm an IT expert. They made the mistake of calling when I was there as well. My friend gave me the phone and I played with them for a bit (enjoyed that!) then told them I knew for a fact that everything they were saying was lying and that they would never have another penny off my friend. She hung up. I then called the police and registered the event with them. They told me they were aware of it but because the calls were coming from abroad there was nothing they could do and suggested I phone Microsoft and report it to them. I did and Microsoft were very eager to know about them. In the end all I had to do was run MBAM and uninstall some junk that had gone in at some point.

Hi, Both our mobiles are already registered with TPS and have been for some time so they shouldn't even be calling us in the first place. When the company called us they presented themselves as "Three" and not a company marketing for them. I've had dealings with the ICO before (regarding spam emails) and not foudn them to be of much use as they admitted themselves that they don't really have any power to do anything. EDIT: Just checked with TPS and her mobile wasn't registered but it is now

We used to have a contract with Three years ago and after having to contact Ofcom in one particular case swore never to go back to Three again (just for info, Three in this case were made to apologise) My contract is a sort of contract with O2 (their Simplicity deal) and my fiancee's mobile is PAYG, also with O2. Some marketing company on behalf of Three have been calling my fiancee and every time she told them a very firm "no" and to never call her again. Yesterday while we were at her parent's the same company called 3 times in 10 minutes. First time she told them "no" and when they rang the second time we could see it was the same number so I gave them hell down the phone. The chap on the phone laughed at me so I hung up. Less that two minutes later they phoned again. I tried contacting Three directly to complain but they were useless. Even though I gave her the number which had called us they refused to take action saying they needed more information. If they call again I am to get their "dealer code" and the name of whoever is calling. Where do we stand with this? This has now gone into grounds of harassment and I'm thinking of calling Ofcom tomorrow to report this conduct.

We had a water meter fitted 27 days ago. During the install the chaps who fitted it said the pipes were very old, the job was very difficult due to the closed space and because of this keep an eye on the readings to make sure there's no leakage and if there is report it immediately. I have done so every morning without failure noted the readings and have a detailed log. Yesterday we were out all day and this morning when I took a reading the number was far higher than it should plus I noticed the wheel was spinning and we'd only just opened the front door. Spoke to SWW reporting the leak and asked that the previous reading be noted because I didn't want to pay for the leak what we're not using if it turned out that the leak is at the meter - he said we could be charged as he couldn't guarantee we'd receive a leak allowance. I've turned the water off at the stop-cock and the wheel is still turning on the meter. Where do we stand with our rights (statutory - durability) on this if this is a fault at the site of work carried out by their workmen and the leak appears within 28 days of the installation date? We'd love to keep the meter as this has already more than halved our bill.

Hi all, been taking a stand recently as a consumer, eager to get to know my rights a bit better than I have been and looking forward to biting back for a change.