For some time now I have been looking for a cheap and simple digital camera for my 8 and 10 year old children, the digital equivalent to an old 110 Instamatic, something that will take reasonable snapshots, but which will allow pictures to be previewed immediately rather than having to wait until returning home from a 2 week holiday.

The trouble with digital cameras however is that you can never buy last year's models at reduced prices, instead you are forced to go for more Megapixels than an 8 year old child would ever appreciate for the same circa £80 entry level price tag. I spent a lot of time scouring Ebay for what I was after and came close on a few occasions with old models sold from Hong Kong, however by the time you’d added on P&P the deal wasn’t much better than this year's models bought in
the UK.

I was therefore chuffed to bits to find a well-known company advertising in your pages warehouse surplus stock Konica KD-220Z, a 2Megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom for under £30, just what I was after! I excitedly placed my order for two of the cameras and started dreaming up a photo competition to keep the children occupied over the summer.

I was pleased to find the camera came with all the leads, CD, handbook and even batteries, I hurriedly unpacked the first camera and installed the supplied batteries only to find that there was no life in the camera at all. I then noticed a sticker with red underlined text plastered across the cover of the handbook declaring that lithium batteries were strongly recommended, then a further slip of paper fell from the handbook advising that CRV3 batteries are recommended, a theme was beginning to develop, clearly battery life was going to be an issue with this camera.

No matter, I happened to have a pack of new Duracell Alkaline batteries, which I installed and the camera sprang into life, for the moment anyway. Everything went fine at first but 2 hours and twenty pictures later I had two really frustrated children on my hands, not only had the batteries been drained but the cameras had frozen with lens protruding and not responding to any button (including the power down button).

I know this is not a problem common to all cameras of this type and vintage having had many years of satisfied use out of a Cannon A40 which has all the same features, and uses the same number and type of batteries and yet is able to deliver well over 150 pictures on a set of standard batteries. I’m now left wondering how many lithium batteries I can afford on the money saved by going for last year's surplus stock rather than this years current model.
David Bradbrook

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sean Hindle (no relation) wrote in July's PCW about the prohibitive cost of using Dreamweaver in schools. I have two points to make.

Firstly I'm afraid it's time to recognise that Adobe's purchase of Macromedia probably spells the end of Dreamweaver.  As a commercial user I've resisted more recent upgrades because of the UK/US price differential, lack of clarity over the future of Adobe's stable of products with two web authoring tools (Adobe GoLive and Macromedia Dreamweaver).

And let's not forget that MS has Expression Quartz, its Dreamweaver-buster up its sleeves, OK there's still a year to wait but I bet it'll be priced to grab market share. Unless a credible third party arrives on the scene during the inevitable Microsoft release date slippage then to paraphrase Edmund Burke "All that is necessary for the triumph of Microsoft is that their competitors stop trying."

Secondly, should you even consider using Dreamweaver in schools?  It's a large and complex product and takes a lot of learning even for a dedicated adult professional.  Would you propose that to lean to fly one should start off in a Boeing 747 or might it make more sense to use a small trainer aircraft?

My son came home demanding access to Dreamweaver because that's what he was using at school and he had an assignment to complete - and finding difficult.  I showed him how to use MS Notepad and edit HTML "the hard way".  He found it much easier and more logical.  OK Maybe that's a bit extreme but there are perfectly good low cost or free WYSIWYG web page editors - try First Page 2000  The majority of kids now have access to a home computer - wouldn't it be better if they could use the same software at home?  If you really want a tool as complex and powerful as Dreamweaver what about open source NVU?

Rob Hindle

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am sure you will receive lots of feedback following your eBay article in July 2006 PCW, but I have a strong objection to eBay’s policy on reserve prices.

When I first started using eBay, it was possible to set a reserve price for any item you were selling.

About 18 months or so ago, ‘to improve service to all our users’ eBay changed its policy and now you cannot impose a reserve price lower than £50 for any item.  The only other way to control the price of an item you list is to set a minimum starting bid.

That imposes a big risk on sellers of lower-priced goods.  If I have an item that I want (say) £20 for, I have to either
(1) take the risk of being forced to sell for 99p if I follow eBay’s recommendation of setting a low starting bid, and get no higher bid, or (2) dissuade bidders (and show my hand) by setting a starting bid close to my ‘reserve’ price.

I cannot see how this policy helps eBay, and it certainly has dissuaded me from using it to sell modest items.  If eBay found the service was uneconomic on its old terms, the answer should have been to raise the fee for reserve price auctions, not eliminate them.

Needless to say, when I emailed eBay about this issue, I was fobbed off with irrelevant automatic replies and was never able to communicate with anyone who understood or cared about my issue.  Maybe you might have better luck.

Tony Cater

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read your news article in the July issue of PCW about dogs mistaking USB sticks for chewable toys and prayed that’s what happened to my lost USB stick. I wouldn’t have minded had the data been permanently lost just so long as no-one else finding it could access it.

Fortunately, I had the data on my boss’ computer, which is on an admin network, so I didn’t lose it completely.  She gave me a USB stick because sometimes I’m not able to use her computer if she’s using it herself or there are meetings taking place in her office.  That way, I’m able to use it on any of the non-admin network computers in our workplace.  So, I basically carried my work folder around with me on the USB stick.

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a retired IT Operations Manager I find PCW a very useful way of keeping in touch with technological developments.  So congratulations on an excellent magazine.

However, I do not share your enthusiasm for Web 2.0 and thin clients, with all software, personal data and correspondence stored on some remote server(s).  As a keen amateur photographer there is no way I would trust any organisation with my photographs and neither would I want my financial and personal information open to employees of commercial organisation and all and sundry hackers.

I can see the benefits to corporate organisations of remote access to data and corporately configured software, but for private individuals there would potentially be huge disadvantages to being forced to subscribe to the latest (and remote) software. I still use Win95 and an old version of Office on one of my PCs, while having the latest Photoshop on another machine.

I am sure there are many PC users who continue to use older versions of software because they still have all the required functionality.  Mr Gates would I am sure be very pleased to force us all to subscribe to the very latest (and probably flaky) version of his software.

Finally, my PC is always available. Remote servers are not. I also know exactly where my backups are stored.  Could I be confident of software and data being available if stored remotely - I think not!

Mike Curry

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I would like to add something to  your excellent article on Ebay in the July issue of PCW and alert you and other readers to a  problem.

I am an occasional user of Ebay  and recently found to my horror that someone had somehow put several items  purporting to be for sale by me onto my account. I was apparently selling some 8  computers with a total listing fee alone of over £216. I don’t know how it was  done or why apart from some hacker discovering they could do it so they did.  Each item had a starting price of £0.99 and was listed as a 24 hour auction.  Each item was listed in 2 categories with all the enhanced features possible  such that the listing fee alone for each item was £27.

Luckily I spotted it and I hope I  have managed to cancel all the charges. I contacted Ebay and they were  very helpful and all charges were cancelled (or at least they have said they  will be).

The advice from Ebay was to change one's password frequently – a tip that may be worth passing on.
I would still like to know how or  why this seemingly malicious thing was done. All I can think is that I was looking to buy a notebook on Ebay and someone's listing may have had a link to  somewhere else?

Alex  Wood

Posted by on May 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)