Tomm

A mate told me (so don't know how true it is) that BMW charge £88/hour labour, whilst Rover charge over £100/hour. So it's hardly a premium garage thing, it's just standard. Local bike shops are expensive. My mate told me he'd just paid £55 for a new BB+fitting (on an £80 bike, mind ) - I thought he'd been totally ripped off. Until I tried to get my BB out of my road bike. It was stuck in and required all kinds of penetrating lube and brute force to get it out. It took me at least a couple of hours. I suppose a full strip down/service on a 3 month old nice bike would be pretty easy. But on a 4 year old rusted piece of junk it would be a lot harder and they've gotta cover for that. £80 isn't really that unreasonable for a full service - especially if your bike's worth a lot. My car isn't worth as much as my bike and for some reason that costs more than £80 for a service

Yeah, definitely not worth claiming - your premium will go up loads. What's your excess? Surely that'll be about £250?

The thing is though, it works really nicely. Had a brief play on one in the Apple shop near here and they're nice. Although my phone (Orange m700 - Windows Mobile) does everything the iPhone does and more (3g, MMS, GPS, MS Office etc), the iPhone is a much nicer thing to use. The screen is brighter and much more responsive, switching applications is much quicker, everything looks more polished etc. Yes it's more expensive, but BMWs are more expensive than Citroens. When they make a 30Gb one with support for 3rd party applications (and maybe GPS), I'll probably get one to replace my phone and iPod. Until then, I'll stick with what I've got

Yeah I've had holidays for well under £500. For example my uni did a trip that was £299 for transport (bus, boo), accommodation, lift pass. So I just needed to buy food (maybe £40 for the week?) and drinks (again, about £50 if you buy vino from the French supermarkets). Good times.

No selling in NMC, as you knew perfectly well. Warned.

Evenings are usually pretty good but I don't know to be honest. Sunday will still be pretty busy unless you mean like 8am or something. I don't really ride in the centre that often

Muel, I didn't actually click that you lived in New Mills which is well close to Manchester. Should come in some time, it's only 20 mins on the train (about £3).

There's never been any riders around here

The shirts look black in the picture so maybe it's not the best representation? Either way, blue

I am working. To the untrained eye it might look like I'm not. But I'm getting loads done

It's a different kind of snow like T-Rex said. The chemicals in it make it 1) feel funny and 2) taste funny. It feels slushier but it's actually drier and has 'bigger' particles. Certainly nothing like powder. It's good fun but it's nothing like being in the alps.

Nah those things just copy a memory card onto your iPod, via the camera. So you don't have to have the iPod dangling - you just copy the pics across when the card is full. It was quite a good idea when flash memory was really expensive, but I reckon with the price of CF cards now, you may as well just get a few more cards. There's no way you'd be able to use the ipod to look at the pictures anyway - they'll have to go on a hard disk partition.

Teehee. To be honest, it's not going to happen because of a thread like this. So there's not much point debating it here.

It's a cheap 2Gb memory stick at any rate.

Enduros are nice. I have a couple of mates who have them and they seem a good balance of travel/weight/angles for ups and downs. One thing I will say is that it might be worth trying them out before you buy them. I rode an Enduro and it was quite short - I didn't like it compared to my Commencal. So it's probably worth riding them. Commencal's suspension design is awesome though - it's one of the best there is - it's so active yet there's little bob. Saying that though, Giants have good suspension designs too. Giant's range is good though because there are loads of similar bikes (Trance 0,1,2, Trance X0,X1,X2, Reign 0,1,2, Reign X0,X1,X2) and they're all decent but with varying amounts of travel/spec. Like I said before, I think the Reign X just makes uphills a bit too much like hard work for me. I'd probably have a standard Reign of all the Giants - they have 2º steeper head angle and a bit less travel. But if you're after a 6.7" 'hardcore XC'/'all mountain' cum freeride bike - get the Reign X (ooooor a Commencal Meta 666 - that would be my choice). Too much choice

It is a downhill/freeride bike. Pretty rubbish for XC to be honest. I have heard good things about Marin's suspension system, but they are considered really uncool for DH/Fr so that's probably why it's cheap. There are a few better options - something like 5" travel all-mountain bike? I like my Commencal Meta 5.5.3 so something like that would be ideal ( http://www.realcycles.com/products.php?plid=m1b58s1p0 ). Or the Reign X like you said - a mate has got one of them (2007 Reign X O) and it's sooooo pimp. 6.7" of really plush travel, and quite light too. It's a bit too 'slack' for pedalling uphill though, mine is much more of an all-rounder (despite it weighing a good few pounds more since I've got the cheap spec). To be honest, unless you're doing uplift days or some really steep DH, you don't need anything more than 5-6" for trail riding. Maybe for drops a bit more would be better. P.S. I'd take the story of him breaking his back with a pinch of salt

What exactly is ruining your life though? If your computer is running slowly, it is NOT because of the system idle process st33lin a11 yr MHz.

Wow, so you mean you could link the camera up to this device and it could save pictures onto a memory card?! AMAZING.

No, you're being an idiot System idle process is definitely NOT ruining your life. x86 CPUs (I.e. PCs) are not very good at doing nothing. Therefore Windows needs to feed it a constant supply of stuff to be doing. It's not a problem, it's supposed to be like that. Stop worrying. Oh, and for the love of God, don't use IE. WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

Quoted for truth. Seems like you're restricting yourself quite a lot just so you can be lippy to people in public?! I don't care if it goes away in 5 years, that's a LONG time. I used to argue with people all the time, but it just isn't worth it at all.

...And cranks, headset, wheels etc etc

Nope. I had Urban forks (probably 05/06 or something) and like Ali said, there's no way a Head Doctor will fit.

Never seen it before... but what a pointless bike! I'm sure it's a fairly light frame, but having that spec on it is a bit stupid, because it will be no lighter than most other mods. And it'll break more easily.

That's for a refund if you don't like it or you changed your mind about buying it though. If it's faulty, it's completely different.

Nah he's about 5'9 I think.