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Who will pay for Vista DRM?
I read with alarm the efforts Microsoft are going to in Vista to provide DRM.
As a programmer I wonder who is going to pay for the extra effort I will have to put in to implement this security scheme.
As a home user it sounds like I am going to have to purchase a whole new set of hardware to play CDs, DVDs and games.
As a network administrator I will be holding off upgrading the companies network for as long as possible.
Eamon Kelly
I don't want to be protected!
I have just read your article on Windows Vista (PCW November issue). I started computing in the 80’s with a zx81. On this I became accomplished in z80 machine code and eventually designed and built and programmed my own serial interface for this which connected to a 300 baud rack modem modified and put into a case by me.
This let me access the world by accessing widely published passwords to the then university network (later the internet). I then learnt 6502 assembly on the beeb and z80 assembly on the Amstrad 664. The Amstrad was a fantastic machine to program as its routine addresses were in ram and could be easily redirected. I designed and built an eprom programmer for this. I have used CPM and Dos. I have gone through Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and now XP.
I have written programs using Visual basic and Delphi. So along comes Vista and Microsoft believes they need to protect me from breaking my operating system. Who do they think they are? I do not need to be a protected administrator. I want to be able to access and change any file on the system that belongs to me. I want to be able to delete any file that I think fit and alter any registry setting that suits me.
If I break the operating system all well and good, its only a computer and it can be reloaded and you learn from your mistakes. It annoys me when Microsoft play god and think we need protecting. An example of this on XP is cookies/ index.dat. I can replace this file with the default on any of my family users settings but it will not let me do my own.
I have to restart in safe control mode and delete the file with a dos command. It’s the same for other index files that grow and grow. Listen Microsoft I don’t want protecting. Provide the facility by all means for those who do but don’t force it on those that don’t. I won’t even start commenting on DRM yet!! Time to get the Amstrad back out of the cupboard.
Malc Parr
Do IT retailers set out to offer poor service?
Your article 'Lay down the law' (October edition) seems to have been written based on the premise that many IT retailers set out to be unhelpful, and try to make life difficult for their customers when they are unlucky enough to buy faulty equipment.
I cannot understand why any retailer would wish to behave like that. I run a business (nothing to do with IT retailing), and if a customer has a complaint, then I am grateful they took the trouble to complain rather than simply taking their business elsewhere, and I do everything in my power to put things right for them.
My business will be more successful if my customers are satisfied with my service. It's not rocket science, is it?
Why, then, is it so hard for IT retailers to learn this lesson? It is ironic that on the day I read your article, a piece of kit I'd bought from PC World a few weeks previously developed a fault. As it was a
low value item and had worked initially, I didn't keep the receipt, and the manager of my local PC World used this as an excuse not to replace the item.
Sure, they saved themselves the trouble of replacing my faulty unit, which would have cost them a few pounds, but they have lost a customer forever. Was it worth it? If my local PC World is anything to go by, then the premise of your article appears to be absolutely true. How terribly sad.
Dr Adam Jacobs
Cross over Tiscali pricing
I use Tiscali broadband and was recently asked to organise broadband for somebody else. I called Tiscali about their £17.99 package which is 2Mbits/s with unlimited use and was told that we could
only have a 1Mbits/s service, also at £17.99.
This made me slightly cross as they expect me to have a lesser product for the same price. They then said I could only use the service for a limited number of hours a day. This was too far and I'm now looking for another supplier for my friend and myself.
I also find Tiscali's website the most un-user friendly that I know of. For example if you log in to
the email section and then try to view details regarding your account, you have to re-sign in to that section. Once viewed, if you then try to see your current usage you'll have to re-enter your details.
I know BT has a slight monopoly on the market but if Tiscali's website and service is any thing to go by then you can see why.
Something really needs to be done to control these companies who clearly believe the customer is not worth the effort.
James Cook
PCW - The Adviser
As part of the redesign of Personal Computer World magazine, we have introduced a section devoted to UK consumer rights, in which our expert team will attempt to resolve disputes between readers, retailers and manufacturers.
If you are a UK resident in dispute with a seller or have a question about your rights regarding faults, delivery, extended warranties or any aspect of buying goods, contact us at the email address below.
Include a brief summary of the problem, name the company involved and provide a way for us to contact you during the day. Obviously, we cannot take on every reader's case but we hope the answers we provide will give everyone some information about how to fight their corner.
Send your emails to theadviser@pcw.co.uk
High Definition TV jungle
I read with interest Gordon Laing's column in the October issue on how "High Definition" TVs make poor PC monitors (at least regarding non-square pixels).
Ironically, part of the point of the HDTV standard resolutions is that the pixels are supposed to be square. The problem is that most panels seem not to use the resolutions at which the signal is encoded - 1280x720 or 1920x1080 for HD. I've always assumed that the reason big panels tend to be 1366x768 or 1024x1024 is that they started out life as computer monitors for trade shows, and they
wanted a computer-friendly resolution (at least with the edges cropped off, in the case of 1366x768), so I'm particularly amused to hear you complain about how they're not suited for PC use.
The 1024x1024 variant might just be to make the internal electronics simpler, but in this day and age that's not much of an excuse for the compromised image.
The thing about 1366x768 and 1024x1024 is that they're not very good for HDTV either. Although the former, in particular, has enough resolution to show a 720p image, it'll still smear it out a bit
in the way a desktop TFT does when given a non-native resolution - I'd rather look at a 1024x768 signal on a 1024x768 screen than on a 1280x1024 one.
A 1080 signal can only be displayed by sampling it down, so you'll never get the full picture quality no matter how clever the electronics. 1024x1024 is always going to cause havoc, since it doesn't even have enough resolution to render the lower HDTV resolution horizontally. If I'm going to spend a lot of money on an HDTV, I'm not too keen on having the final stage of the display mess around with the picture - and there aren't many native 1080 panels out there, and there aren't all that many which are truly 1280x720 either.
I can't understand why there's an obsession with making 1366x768 panels when a native 1280x720 panel surely gives a better picture. This doesn't just concern people trying to drive the panel from a PC, it concerns anyone wanting to watch a HDTV picture.
There's still the related problem of actually getting any HD content out of the computer in the first place, with HDCP protection being required for HD playback in Vista (although it's not Microsoft's fault). No current graphics cards support it, and neither do any monitors designed for computer use (yet), even though many can display a 1080p picture with perfect clarity and relative affordability, so long as you don't mind 120 lines of letterboxing.
This won't - probably - stop you from putting a desktop up on your HDTV, but it does mean that if you want to play HD video on your PC you'd better like your TV, because your monitor won't work. For now, this has put me firmly out of the early-adopter bracket which I'd like to occupy until an affordable (not necessarily large) native 1080 panel appears; there's no way I'm paying HDTV prices for a sub-SXGA screen this side of the millennium.
Andrew Garrard
United Rip-Off Kingdom
I wonder if I have stumbled on the latest example of rip-off Britain. I've been checking the availability of Knoppix 4.0 on DVD. It appears to cost about 6 Dollars (£3.32) or 5 Euros (£3.41) where those currencies apply. In the UK the price is more than double at £7.50! As we sort of share a language with America, Canada, Australia and other countries it is not necessary to personalise a version for the UK, so why are that much dearer?
You like to brag about the value of your cover-disc software. How about giving us a real cheapie and making Knoppix 4.0 your next cover DVD?
Tony Hewitt
P.S. In "Lay Down the Law" by Paul Allen he uses the strange phrase "the UK and Wales", implying, inter alia, that it excludes Scotland. Scotland donated a monarch (James VI) in 1603 to join the party which had long been going on between England and Wales and, in 1707, the parliaments were merged. So what was he trying to say? The Scottish legal system remains autonomous, making it harder to write an article authoritatively covering both countries - but that is no excuse for dumping Scotland and leaving Scottish readers to find their own way home. He also avoids the point that, if a Scot buys from and English-based supplier, the contract will be formed under English law. In the event of a dispute, the Scottish customer will be hard pressed to find a lawyer qualified to practise English law and handle the dispute on his behalf. Some solid guidance on how best to proceed would be most welcome.
Dead pixels are a ripoff
My heart goes out to fellow reader Jonathan Beard about his dead pixels - this sort of happened to me recently.
Having spent nearly £2,000 on a top end laptop, I was dismayed when, only a few days after purchase, a pixel jammed on - a white dot near the bottom of my screen, just below where a wide-screen DVD plays. It made using the laptop for anything other than plain old text entry useless. You really can't look away from it once it starts. Watching DVDs or trying to do graphical work on it was rendered unpleasurable.
To the credit of the vendor, they did offer to change it, and sell it in their 'used' channel, but the sting in the tail was that I had to accept the condition that I was only allowed one such change. As they told me, there was no guarantee that the next one wouldn't have more defective pixels. They told me that this was a very common defect - that 1 in 10 monitors would have such a pixel in the first year.
That is what the industry tells us. In fact, apart from my recent experience, I have never seen anyone with a laptop that had a dead pixel. If the seller was correct about 1 in 10 having a dead pixel, then why do their showrooms have only monitors that are perfect? Surely they should allow for 1 in 10 of their monitors to have a defective pixel, just to show customers what they should expect? Talking to friends and clients, I have mentioned this problem, and no-one had ever heard of a defective pixel, let alone seen a screen that had one.
The reality is that there are very few defective pixels - some, I agree, but very few. Imagine that you were buying an expensive dinner service from Royal Doulton, and you noticed a splodge on one of the plates. How would you react if Royal Doulton responded by saying, "Well, it is difficult to manufacture these things to such high tolerances, so you as the customer must take the risk that you get a duff product". I suspect that your reply would be, "I am not paying first-hand prices for defective products, if you put it in the reject channel and charged a fair price for it, then I wouldn't mind."
The industry responds by relying on ISO 13406-2: when was this published, and on what research was it based? As far as I can tell, it hasn't been updated since it was published in 2000, which means that it was based on manufacturing data in the late 90's. Hardly relevant as a criterion for modern manufacturing. It wouldn't matter if the standard had been updated, the question is who should bear the risk of there being a defect - the consumer, or the manufacturer.
My own view is that the manufacturer should bear the risk, and seek to sell the defective monitor in a rejects channel. There are many applications where precision is not required - such as where a monitor is used by an IT department to get access to a server. However, where a user gets a monitor and wants to use it for graphics, watching films, why should we pay a first-hand price for a product that is - by any ordinary standards - defective?
I feel strongly about this - there is one word for what the industry is doing, it is a rip-off. A certain percentage of cars are delivered with defects - does this mean that the consumer should accept them? Would you accept a car that was delivered with scratches on the paintwork? Would you apply the same argument to food - calmly accepting that some food is - in percentage terms - dirty or infected with salmonella, and would you agree that the consumer should just accept the risk?
Come on, this industry practice is a rip-off, and it should be accepted as such. You wouldn't apply these sorts of arguments anywhere else.
R Stephens
All OSes need antivirus protection
Derek Smith (Letters, PCW October 2005) asks what a virus is. OK, the question's rhetorical but, given the context, it's one that's worth answering. A virus is a piece of malicious software (malware) that causes your computer to do something you didn't intend. People write viruses for two purposes:
- To look clever and gain notoriety
- To make money by dubious or dishonest means
In both cases, it's essential to gain widespread and quick distribution so that the maximum number of computers becomes infected before a fix is found and the attack thwarted or at least reduced.
In order to do this, viruses need to target a widely used and also widely connected operating system. Contrary to popular belief, any operating system that isn't Windows is not necessarily more secure.
When I was using Psion handhelds, there were regular queries from new users on the forums I was active on about viruses for these devices. The answer was always that, even with a ROM based OS, a virus was still possible, but the fact the EPOC was not widely used (in global terms) and, above all, not widely connected, tended to make virus writing not worthwhile. In this scenario, a handful of machine might be compromised, but the spread would be slow and easily contained. It's worth noting that, now the Symbian OS has ported to mobile phones, highly destructive viruses have begin to appear.
Windows is the most popular OS and used by a wide variety of people, including many who have no idea how a computer works and don't realise the need for security in the same way that they need to be reminded on a regular basis to lock their car when they leave it in a carpark. These computers, connecting widely to the internet, are highly vulnerable and it's not entirely Microsoft's fault. A secure operating system might be possible, but it would come at the cost of ease of use and simple web access and email.
It's theoretically possible to write a virus for any operating system, but if it's not going to spread widely (and it has to rely on users to achieve this on the writer's behalf), then it's pointless.
Additionally, Microsoft's sheer size makes it a target - write a Windows virus and you can tell yourself you're cleverer than Bill Gates with all his money even if you've never heard of Steve Jobs. Personally, I find the idea of an OS whose main plank is that you can rewrite the core yourself just plain scary; the main reason for the security to date of Linux is that it's used by the technically aware and policed by a wide community but, if it broke out of the specialist arena, would even that
be enough to stop a determined attack?
The truth is that all computer users need to consider the depth of any threat and act accordingly. Mac and Linux AV software is available and any responsible user should install and maintain it for everyone's benefit.
Henry Malt
Zero-defect laptop screens?
I noticed the lab test on TFT screens (September PCW) included reference to Class1 and Class2 panels. A welcome addition, in my view.
Call me fussy, but the 'dead pixel policy' has kept me from buying a laptop, or parting with my large VDU, and despite much searching I have yet to find a supplier prepared to offer a Class1 panel on a laptop to anything other than a corporate customer.
Would it be possible to consider quoting panel class as a matter of course in all relevant reviews from now on? With all suppliers looking for a 'Unique Selling Point' perhaps it will provide encouragement.
You would need to get specific details from each supplier of Class 2 panels. Although all suppliers claim to comply with the same ISO standard, my experience indicates wide variations in how various manufacturers interpret it. Simply quoting a Class 2 panel will not be enough.
Somewhat surprisingly the worst interpretation given to me (after much persistence on my part) was by possibly the largest supplier of 'desktop replacement' laptops.
I was told that Samsung LCD TVs now come with Class 1 panels, but sadly their largesse does not currently extend to laptops.
Does anyone know of a laptop supplier offering class1 panels to consumers?
David Reynolds
