In your reply to "open-source consortium" in your September edition you state "Most people know how Window and Windows applications work". I realise what you meant to say but the semantics are important.

Indeed, very few people know "how Windows works"; indeed Microsoft itself claimed it didn't have all the source code together. You may call this nit-picking but give me a moment.

One reason that this distinction is important is that when considering support options even a Microsoft certified dealer doesn't actually 'know' how Windows works nor does a third party programmer developing against the API. I was recently dismayed to have to Install Internet Explorer onto a firewalled and quarantined PC in order to install a major OCR package. I very much doubt
this was a deliberate requirment of the programmers, indeed it is a dependency of the installer.

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Being in the market for a new base unit (in fact two), PCW was my first stop to see what the current state of the market was.  The August edition was very favourable to a Mesh Core 2 Duo system.  So I headed off to the Mesh site.

I found they had a good performing Core 2 Duo base unit only system, designated the Elite2 duo SLI costing £799 inc. VAT, a fair price. So I put two of them into the shopping cart at a cost of £1,598 and proceeded to checkout and payment details stage. However I found that at the checkout stage, the total being asked was a whopping £1,760. How can that be?  On examination of the details, it transpires that the delivery charge on a base unit to Northern Ireland is an incredible £69 + VAT, giving a total delivery charge for two base units (note, just two base units, no monitors, keyboards,
speakers or other things that might require additional boxes) of £162.15 !!

Surely this is some mistake, how can it cost such an amount to send parcels whose weight in total must be no more than 20kg, to an address in the UK ? Royal Mail will send an item up to 10kg anywhere in the UK (yes, including to and from Northern Ireland), guaranteed next day delivery (yes including to and from Northern Ireland), and insure it for £1,000, for £18.90 all inclusive.  So assuming that each unit weights less than 10kg, that's a total of £37.80, fully insured, and  guaranteed next day delivery.

I recently sent £1,000 of items, weighing 8kg to Taiwan, using DHL express service, the items got there in 3 days, at a cost of £55!

Clearly, a company like Mesh can negoitate highly favourable delivery terms with a carrier, given the volume of business, so one must assume they can get FAR better rates than I can, as an individual.  So I find it impossible to believe that £162 reflects the actual costs of delivering two base units to me in Northern Ireland, regardless of the carrier chosen.  I have actually tested the checkout, and if I was to buy 10 base units, Mesh would charge me £690 plus VAT (that's £810) for delivery!!

If goes without saying that with those delivery charges, I was not inclined to purchase from Mesh, and assume that few from Northern Ireland would consider it a cost effective company to deal with.

Ian McNeill

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don’t know whether this has been covered in the past, but I managed to easily clear the blocked heads on an Epson inkjet printer and thought some of your readers might be interested in the solution.

The printer had been little used and consequently the head cleaning function had to be run whenever it was turned on. Eventually it refused to print, even after many cleaning cycles. Rather than just dumping it, I thought I’d physically try to clear the blocked heads. If it didn’t work, I had nothing to lose.

I removed the ink cartridges, placed some cotton wool pads soaked in Waitrose Daily Shower Spray over the ink probes and left for a couple of hours. I then cleaned up the area and fitted new ink cartridges.

After turning the printer on, it went through its charging cycle and I tried a test print. Perfect, just like a new printer.

I don’t know if there’s something magic about the Waitrose product or whether similar cleaners will work as well. But, if you have a printer that’s not behaving, it might be worth trying something similar.

Stephen Jones

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks for the article ‘Our PCs, Our planet’ (PCW, October 2006). I would like to add a few comments.

You correctly stated that RoHS does not cover batteries, that’s because these are already covered by the Batteries and Accumulators (Containing Dangerous Substances) Regulations and the recovery and recycling of them will covered under the new batteries directive (see the DTI's web page for more information).

The WEEE directive only requires distributors to offer take back equipment when purchasing an equivalent replacement. Some distributors will also be joining a scheme that will allow them to opt out of offering a direct take back service and will instead ask the end user to deposit the items in the local WEEE skips as and when the WEEE is implemented.

The latest on WEEE is that it will not be implemented in the UK until the end of 2006. Producers will then have to join a producer compliance scheme which will act on their behalf in collecting equipment from your local tip.

The consumer is expected to deposit electronic equipment in these dedicated skips and the scheme will collect, treat and recycle this on behalf of its members. This make more environmental sense in dealing with the consumer locally rather than having Dell or HP offering to return old computers to them and having them shipped by vans across the country.

RoHS is, as correctly stated half way through your article, “The restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment” not “the reduction of hazardous substances” as you state in the second paragraph of the article.

And remember to wipe your hard drive or destroy it before taking it to the tip as a recent study has found that most people don’t and your personal data and bank details may be easily recovered!

Mark Dowling

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dragon recently released a new version of its Naturally Speaking speech recognition product and the usual questions are being asked about whether speech recognition will really take off. Certainly speech recognition would give that new dual core processor something worthwhile to do, but someone commented that “talking to your computer is best done in private”. A good point - very few people would feel comfortable talking to their PC in the office and their colleagues might not be happy about it either.

I think a change of focus is required for the technology in order to seed its adoption: home users are the ones who would benefit most from a more natural interface to their computers. Your average teenager might even find it ‘cool’ to talk to their computers and control them like HAL 2000 from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ - it’s certainly been a dream of mine since I was a kid. Dictation however, has never appealed to me and unless I had no choice, I would always use a keyboard for writing.
Guess what? Dragon Dictate allows you to control your computer with your voice, but I bet it has once again only included it in the top end edition of the product which is unaffordable for home users. Why doesn’t it split it out into a separate product? It might find there is a much larger market.

So what about Windows Vista? I read on the Microsoft web site that Vista has new speech APIs built in and you can “seamlessly manage Windows Vista and applications by saying what you see”. So perhaps there will be a reason to buy Vista after all, although I think people would need to see someone else using it successfully before they would consider it a major selling point. But it sounds like the Microsoft focus is more on dictation with the Windows control features being more of an afterthought.

Maybe we need Google to show the way once more with a free download - a voice controlled search engine anyone? Now that would really be something!

Robin Penny

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I find it curious that you feature an article on being environmentally responsible with IT equipment, prolonging the life of systems already in use and reducing waste, yet the next article is a feature on Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, which will encourage many people to ditch their old PCs or components in order to be able to use it.

How many PCs are going to end up in landfill sites once Vista is released? It’s fine to say that people can upgrade their PCs to get it working with Vista, but something that seems to have been missed is laptops. It’s near impossible to upgrade laptops, beyond a bigger hard disk or some more Ram. Considering that laptops are now outselling desktops, there are going to be many users stuck with obsolete equipment. This wouldn’t be so bad, but Microsoft will withdraw support for Windows XP within a few years of Vista going live.

It looks like Microsoft is going to push many of its former customers towards Linux, simply because they cannot afford to replace, or just don’t want to dump, perfectly good working equipment. I’m certainly considering moving in that direction when the support for XP ends.

Steven Smith

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every month I thumb through the pages of PCW and dream of owning the newest hardware. But then again, I think through the multitude of tasks I use my various computers for (Dell laptop for work, IBM Thinkpad for living room web browsing, bedroom PC for network storage and media, plus a media box under the TV). And if I were to replace the lot, I would still have change from £500.
My media box is a story in itself that I would like to share with your readers.

I picked it up from our local recycling centre, it’s a small form factor Compaq Pentium III 600MHz with near silent power supply that now sits hidden under my TV. It’s got a cheap graphics card with TV output, it’s networked to my main PC and runs a copy of MyHTPC. I paid £12 for an infrared serial cable with a remote control from an old video recorder and a media box is born with change from £30.

So what can I do with my media PC? Play my mp3 collection, play DVDs, Divx video clips, view pictures - just about everything I would be able to do if I’d spent £1,000.

We’re faced with mountains of old equipment which we feel no responsibility for its disposal. Legislation now passes this responsibility onto the manufacturer. But people continue to upgrade because software makes more demands on our hardware, for no real benefit. My old Thinkpad came with Office 2000, It ran like a dream until I was seduced by Office XP, even though it added little to my productivity. Office 2007 Beta won’t even give it the time of day.

So my message? Make downgrading your next upgrade. Before you swap your motherboard, CPU and memory, try formatting your hard disk and put last year’s software on it. Resist the temptation to install everything from every cover disk. When you install your camera, just install the drivers, (do you ever use the rubbish software that you always install by default?). You’ll be amazed how fast it is, it’ll bring back memories of the feeling you had when you paid big bucks for a fast, new PC.

Neil White

Posted by on August 31, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I am one of the few retired computer engineers (I installed the typesetter on the QE2 at its launch), I still do the odd computer build and repair for friends and relatives. I despair at people being ripped off by salesmen selling over-the-top spec PCs to customers  who will never utilise all the peripherals. I called to look at a PC with  no sound output which had been bought by a lady for her daughter the year previously.

As the guarantee had just expired, she was paying the premium rate on the telephone for advice on how to fix the problem. After  three or four phone calls (and a lot of waiting time) she contacted me through a neighbour.

The fault was due to a faulty connector which was easy to find and only took a couple of minutes. What surprised me was that she had paid  well over £1,000 for a computer to do word processing on. As I was  leaving she asked me if I could explain what the controller did that had come with the computer. She didn't know that she had a TV tuner built into the  PC.

This lady must be like hundreds of others who get ripped off by big name companies overselling and then charging premium rates for help.

It would be nice if a free service bureau could be set up to  give advice to non technical buyers to find out what they wanted the PC  for, and then give them a spec sheet on their specific  requiements.

Bill Gordon

Posted by on August 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Many thanks for your latest on VOIP. I already had the BT101 and can affirm that it’s a good piece of kit. However I was also looking for a cheap USB phone and I am delighted to passs onto your readers how they can 'get one over on the bigger corporations'.

The Tesco Internet Phone E337 Handset at £14.97 is of course the US Robotics 9600A which many are selling at over £20. The neat trick is however that this can be both a standard VOIP phone which will function with X-Lite & SIP but also a feature phone with Skype. If you download the USRoboticsUSBPhone3.0.0.24.exe file from the USR website, you will get full Skype functionality.

One phone, cheap, two uses - so how do you tell the difference. If the US Robotics program is running the display says Skype., if not it says VoIP PHONE. By the way - don't install the Tesco software.

Ian Murray

Posted by on August 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Having read the reviews of the many and varied computers in PCW over the years I have often caught myself thinking “that's a nice machine, but it comes with Windows”. I wonder how many other of your readers think along the same lines?

As you yourselves have reported, on more than one occasion, Linux is becoming more and more widespread, yet if I want to buy a new PC I am forced to buy one with some version of Windows already installed whether I want it or not. I remember a few years ago, and PCW reported on it at the time, there was quite a ruckus over people demanding a refund from Microsoft for unwanted Windows software. This even spawned a number of websites detailing exactly how to go about it. However, I have heard nothing about this matter for quite some time.

It would be interesting, to me and hopefully to other of your readers, to carry out the following experiment. Take one each of a desktop and notebook, from any of the PC vendors, and attempt to get a refund on the unwanted Windows software as well as see how the machines fare when installing one of the current Linux distributions. How about it? Up for the challenge?

This also raises the question of warranties. Since most warranties are designed, I assume, to cover hardware failures, could any PC vendor renege on the warranty say, because a machine had been returned for repair without the software that it left the factory with? It would be interesting to find out.

Tony Moran

Posted by on August 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I hadn't been anticipating the new browser with very much enthusiasm but now I have it I am  really rather impressed!

Previously I have used a  combination of IE6 and Firefox. Firefox is great for tabs and security but it falls down on some aspects of rendering such as opening a page with the text so  small you can't see it, and with the large text too large and the small text too  small. It never seems to display a page the way it was intended.

But at least  you can enlarge or reduce a page quickly with the mouse wheel (Ctrl-wheel).  Further when you increase the size of the text Firefox increases all the text  but leaves the tables and frames the same size so you inevitably get overflow on  things like navigation lists. IE6 at least displays pages with text in the right  proportions but it won't increase the size of text specified in points or other fixed sizes.

There are still very many pages with fixed sizes specified across  the page making those with very small text impossible for some of us to read, so  we don't, we go somewhere else.

IE7 solves all these  problems and adds some very nice wrinkles as well. The zoom facility, quite  distinct from text size which remains, is quite brilliant because it  increases/decreases the whole page, frames, tables and pictures included, by 10%  per click or roll of the Ctrl-wheel. You can still set the text size to any of  the same five sizes we had before but if you use zoom the text size is reset to  medium. This has solved all my readability problems in one go. IE7 is essential  for this one feature alone.

Posted by on August 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Not wishing to dampen down the piece you recently did on Podcasting I was a little disappointed that the focus on how to listen to the various offerings was through an Ipod. Although desktop applications were mentioned there was nothing made of alternative ways to listen or view enclosures such as through Pocket PCs directly.

There is now software available (my preference being Hubdog) that will download either through a WiFi, phone or USB connection, present in a simple to navigate manner and play both audio and video enclosures. Something that I now use every day.

This type of RSS reader is becoming more and more prevalent and the smaller developers updating regularly based on user feedback. Being able to keep up to date with existing portable hardware.

It's a shame you were unable to include this method in your article as someone who doesn't own an Ipod the Pocket PC way shows that there is emerging software for those who prefer not to use a desktop and still can enjoy the content on the move. Best of all you only need the one piece of
hardware.

Please can you make time to take a look at the alternative methods so that other readers can benefit from this method and not assume that the Ipod is the only way. Just to put your mind at ease I don't represent any developers, I'm just an avid fan of technology and getting the most out of
my PC and Pocket PC.

Alex Hill

Posted by on August 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The September Personal Computer World carried an excellent article on using Linux. However it also contained a response to a letter from Tom Calloway of the Open Source Consortium that prompted me to respond to the confused views expressed. [You can also read this letter on Steve's blog ]

PCW regular contributor Alan Stevens gave a number of reasons for small business not to use Open Source software. Taking each point in turn:

1) Lack of familiarity affects productivity.

Every company has its own requirements and you cannot expect all to use the same processes and software. Companies will use programs that others don't anyway and even considering only an Office suite (say), companies have their own templates and ways of using them. To be honest Linux and
OpenOffice are now so close in features to Windows and MS Office that familiarity is not really an issue. Vista will mean Windows will be largely unfamiliar again and the gap probably larger. Each release of products such as Office is very different. This is a direct result of the marketing needs of proprietary software to show something new for the money you are forced spent, just look at Office 12. In contrast Open Source programs often release with no obvious changes as the effort has
gone into behind the scenes quality.

It can be a very good short term investment to get over unfamiliarity otherwise you may miss out on using the most productive and safest solution. The trick is to manage the learning process and reduce risk. Schoolforge have some ideas for trying Open Source programs.

2) Difficult and expensive to get support

That completely missed the point made by Tom that companies do provide excellent support and Linux is generally more reliable and secure. An article in the same magazine showed how insecure XP is and how complex it is to secure. In addition the large Open Source projects have excellent on line community support that usually gets a rapid and effective response (but you may miss out on listening to hours musac whilst waiting on the phone). In fact the Open Source business model is
often to focus on providing support as the software is low cost. Thus it is the focus of the vendors efforts, not just a must-supply add on.

3)Don't  use Open Source unless you are confident you can master it

Well that could apply equally to Windows or any proprietary software when you don't want to rely on external support, perhaps more so. Again an article in the same magazine showed how insecure and complex Windows is 'out of the box'. Good Linux distrobutions are secure 'out of the box' and much less time is often needed for administration. You can now and Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS to the list of formally supported Linuxs.

4)Linux is OK when using appliances with OS code hidden behind web User Interfaces

This is ambiguous. Is the argument that Linux is OK when running a web browser used to access web programs. It is true that web UIs can be accessed from any system and look much the same but then Open source is a non issue. Except I want a safe browser that confirms to standards not one that has not been updated for ages due to commercial reasons and FireFox delivers that  very well.

Is the assertion that Open Source is best when hidden behind a web UI? Well the UI is usually an integral part of the Open Source program - not a bolt on. The quality of the UI is independant of the development and licencing model used. However Open Source UIs are likely to follow Open Standards closely and thus be usable in any browser. Finally if the inference is that Open Source is not user friendly and needs to be hidden then projects such as Firefox have utterly disproved that out of
date notion. FireFox arguably leads the browser features at this point in time.

A very important issue for small business is that using proprietary solutions can mean that your data is stored in 'secret' formats and is thus effectively owned by the vendor. This so called 'lock in' can be avoided by using programs that support Open Standards and they are usually Open Source. In addition though upgrades and patches are often rapidly released with Open Source, you are not forced to fork out on upgrades at the whim of the vendor (and then have to learn to use all
those changed features).

Members of the OSC and other companies are supporting Open Source solutions that make every sense for small businesses and especially charities and religious organisations. These organisations often have better uses for cash than spending it on expensive software licences, support and administration costs.

Steve Lee

Posted by on August 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)