« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
Hello, Metronet - anyone home?
I do feel sorry for those who use Metronet for broadband - that includes myself. The breakdown frequency is unacceptably high, but I am staying with them pro tem in the belief that many others will desert them and thus relieve the pressure on their seemingly poor quality equipment.
It cannot be beyond the wit of man to find an automatic means of telling subscribers who telephone server technical hotlines whether there is temporary capacity overload or access is denied due to equipment breakdown.
Instead of the conventional engaged tone that greets enraged callers, why not enable BT to use the sound of babble by chatting people for overload, the gurgle of a frying electrolytic capacitor for minor faults and the sound of repeated explosions for major breakdown. Then at least we will know whether to try again in five minutes, five hours or five days.
David Boswell
Apple is forgetting graphics designers
Apple seems to be forgetting its main customers- the graphic designer. Why has Apple gone now for a full blown consumer range with the iMac, MacBook and Mac Mini? The high end workstation which video editors love is nowhere in sight and it could harm Apple badly if it doesn't release something quickly. Something the Woz said only recently.
The current 'Yonah' chip by Intel doesn't execute 64bit applications. This is a big shot in the foot for the media sector who choose to use Apple products over Windows XP. Why should a 3D animation designer have to settle for a Yonah which doesn't have the umph for video editing or 64bit execution? Apple could always put in a Pentium D or Pentium EE, but that goes against why Apple killed off the G5. The Pentium D(isgusting) is hot, slower than an AMD equivalent and draws more energy. The EE is all that and severely overpriced as well.
But what's happening in Q4 '06? Well quite a lot and this is where the jigsaw comes together. Intel is to release its Athlon FX-killer 'Conroe'. If Intel has released a working sample of Conroe to system reviewers already, could Apple twist Intel's arm again like it did for the Core Duo chips? Adobe wants to release Photoshop CS3 by the end of the year. Rumour has it that it has been optimised for OS 10.5 codenamed 'Leopard'.
Oh yes that's it - Vista is coming out in Q4. Could Apple release Leopard before its scheduled release of Q2 '07? I think so; it couldn't wait for the Intel range of Macs to come out. BD-ROM should also be finalised by Q4, so a HD compatible Power Mac with Blu Ray and HDCP machine all built up for you by Apple. No headaches there, there will be always confusion over DRM, Apple has the advantage of building the computer and software and giving it to the consumer. Vista will have HDCP and DRM blues at the start due to it's awful system requirements over having to get a new HDCP monitor etc. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if Apple achieves this by the end of Q2/Q3.
I wonder when Dell will be saying 'PC's can do OS X too' in reference to Boot Camp? I think it is unfair and it raises a few European anti-trust eyebrows. What with them slamming Microsoft for having Windows Media Player on, when Apple has iTunes preloaded and Apple clearly bundles iTunes but is harder to trace an unbundled version.
I wonder when HP, Dell, AMD, IBM and even Microsoft at some point, come knocking and start bringing up a few subpoenas over Intel's monopoly, and the fact that Apple can run both OS X and Windows bundled with iTunes.
Liam Billington
Well done, Dabs
I have noticed that your excellent magazine receives quite a few letters of complaint concerning online shops, and that you are tireless in upholding consumer rights. I would like to buck the trend of complaint! I have always considered the Dabs website to be superior to those of its competitors: the ability to filter product ranges by connector type/colour/size/etc is invaluable.
Recently Ibought a not inexpensive consumer electronics device from Dabs which arrived with a faulty fan - that in itself was no problem as one can expect to receive goods with faults from time to time.
Through my own fault however, I failed to notify Dabs until just after their 28 day limit. I felt that there were extenuating circumstances and fired off an e-mail to that effect. The next day, Dabs responded that they would consider the item "dead on arrival" as a good-will gesture. I consider this excellent customer service. I will continue to shop at Dabs and I commend them to your readers.
Nicholas Mace
The falling cost of technology
I always enjoy the ‘looking back’ articles in the magazine and always marvel at how low today’s hardware prices seem compared with, say, ten years ago. Today I was having a clearout of old paperwork and came across two invoices from 1997 for PC components from Simply Computers (Misco now) and realised just how far I was prepared to go to keep near to the cutting edge of PC technology.
The prices I paid in November 1997 were staggering: A Yamaha CD writer (x6 Read x4 write) was 315 GBP (+ VAT) and two 32Mb EDO RAM SIMMs cost me 176 GBP (+VAT). For comparison MISCO’s price for the same memory today is 11.49 GBP + VAT and a CD Rewriter drive (52 speed) is 11.99 GBP + VAT.
It seems inconceivable that nine years on I can buy a complete PC for less than those components. And, oh yes, the same order included 5 CD-Rs at 3 GBP each + VAT. Carry on at this rate and in ten years time PC component resellers will be paying us to take the items off their hands! The magazine is now better than ever and, of course, great value for money.
Alan Farrell
Adobe rip-off
I work as an IT technician in the education sector in a local primary school. I was asked recently about running a lunch time computer club for the Gifted and Talented children in key stage 2 classes.
I decided that this was a good idea and that I would teach them to use Macromedia Dreamweaver so that they could produce material for our website and also our intranet.
Macromedia had brought this out for primary schools at £299 for studio 8 with 17 licences 15 student and 2 teacher, a bargain!! I placed an order for this through a reseller, who contacted me to tell me that this was not available since the Adobe take over of Macromedia even though it is advertised, and that Adobe had school licences available as site licences.
I already knew about this as having worked for over 10 years in education I had encountered this in secondary schools where I have worked. Looking at the new pricing I found this was going to cost us a minimum of £1699!!! Over 5 times as much!
This is the price for secondary school, colleges and universities – fine if you have a large budget to play with (most primary schools can’t afford this kind of expenditure and don’t need 500 licences as they are lucky if the have 100 PCs and probably would only use Dreamweaver with the more able pupils in small groups anyway).
I contacted Adobe customer services to check the situation and was directed to their education website once again which I had already seen, and let them know this and pointed out the fact of the price change and the use in primary schools.
Once again this is some corporate big wig who knows stuff all about the education market, grouping everything together under one umbrella (bit like our government – don’t get me started).
How can Adobe justify this massive price increase saying they are “restructuring” their prices. I suspect that this will back-fire on them as most primary schools will look at alternatives, which may lead to the decline of the use of certain pieces of software as the next generation of programmers and designers will be used to using products they learn at school from an early age.
Microsoft had to learn this lesson in schools, restructuring it’s licence prices for education as it came under threat from open source software as schools simply couldn’t afford the extortionate cost of corporate like pricing and began moving away from Microsoft products.
Perhaps some of these other companies for once should take a leaf out of Microsoft’s book.
Sean Hindle
Sat Nav security
Your recent review of in-car Satellite Navigation units covered the main technical issues well - with one exception: you made no mention of security. Having had a sat nav stolen from my car, I've become aware that such thefts are big business at the moment. As I understand it, sat nav theft is the number one reason for car break-ins; the manufacturers need to take this seriously.
Some manufacturers offer the helpful advice that the unit shouldn't be left on display on the dashboard. The principle of this is fine, but to be effective the complete unit and its windscreen cradle needs to be removed - the cradles themselves are easily recognisable. In practice, given the need to route wires safely etc, many users will simply hope for the best.
There is more that the manufacturers can do to help, by adding some simple software based security features to make theft ineffective. PIN codes should be simple to add, rendering a stolen unit useless. Owner information could be stored internally, with some kind of password access to prevent it being simply overwritten. My Tom Tom unit now has my home postcode displayed on the start-up screen: this will make an embarrassing surprise for anyone who buys it down their local pub!
The mobile phone industry has - eventually - recognised the need to address this issue. The sat nav suppliers can easily do the same - and I for one will regard security features as a key product differentiator.
Laurence Barker
Building your own PC is more fun
I'm a first time reader and think the magazine is really well written. However, whilst reading April's issue, the 'Get More for your Money' £699 PC group test, I found I had an issue with some of the content. In this article you protest that It is more expensive to build your own computer than simply buy one, you then list prices of parts and get to a staggering £855. This is well over the prices of the other computers in your test, which are all £699.
This seems reasonable and good advice. However I have just started looking into building my own PC, and have read quite a bit of literature on the subject. So when I came upon your article I
decided to test and see how much I could make the same PC for, using the kinds of parts that you list. I found that I was able to find all the parts for a total of £688.35 including VAT and Shipping. So it is in fact not more expensive to build your own PC.
I do accept that it requires more effort to build your own PC and you do not get the warranty that you get with a bought pc. However, I believe that by building your own PC, or even learning what you need to do even if you never do it, you learn about what is inside your PC and what each piece does and how they fit together. This gives you the ablity to upgrade your PC later, which is often difficult with store bought PCs, and to customize it in anyway you see fit. I think this gives you many more options later in your PC's life too and can in the long run be more beneficial. Very much a case of the more effort you put in the more you get out of it.
Toby Chanin
