Some years ago, a motor mechanic gave me a simple car tune-up tip - just fit a weaker accelerator pedal return spring. The subjective result is that the car’s throttle response is markedly improved, so the car feels nippier.

As with cars, so with computers - when did you last check your mouse response? When setting a PC up initially, most of us will feel more comfortable with conservative mouse settings. But after you’ve used your PC for a while, why not try increasing the mouse speed and acceleration parameters? Just tweaking them a little will result in less wrist movement and a PC that feels more responsive.

Thanks for an entertaining and informative magazine, keep up the good work!

John Ellerington

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the July edition you had a report on how people are using Facebook, Amazon and blogs etc. to track down information about people. Reading this reminded me about how I traced the woman who is now my wife!

We went to University together and were good friends but lost touch afterwards. Wanting to re-establish contact five years later and only knowing a few key facts about her I set to work. First stop was our University’s Alumni page where they have a “Who’s doing what” page.

This gave me the name of the town she was living in, what line of work she was in and that she worked for a “major retailer”. I then searched the electoral roll and found her address. An additional search on this site provided the names of the three people she was house-sharing with. A phone book search then turned up the phone number listed under one of these other names.

Finally a Google search turned up a webpage of a charity in the same town with someone of the same name doing the same line of work as I discovered earlier. One email later and we re-established contact! Some months later we started dating and two years ago got married! My wife didn’t (and still doesn’t) have much of a “web presence” in the form of blogs or social networking but in four steps I had all the information I needed. The moral of this story is that you don’t have to use these sorts of sites to be traceable.

Phil C.

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your review of the Nokia N95 (July 2007) cause me some amusement following my recent experience with a Nokia E50. Having switched service providers, and having been presented with a shiny new E50 fully of useful features for the business user, I spent several hours transferring my address book from my previous handset, digesting the E50’s manual, and generally getting to grips with its little quirks, only to get complaints of a severe echo on the line from anyone speaking to me on the phone.

A quick trawl of the internet revealed so many threads reporting similar problems that one might suspect a design fault. My amusement with your review of the N95 mobile phone was that there was not a single comment in whole page about the phone’s ability to make calls, presumably the primary function of a mobile??? My own recent experience shows that this should not be taken for granted!

Trevor Towler

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gordon Laing says that Olympus has a good chance of being one of the three surviving big players in the DSLR market (PCW June 2007). Not if they stick with the technological and optical dead end that is the Four Thirds system, with the limitations of its very small sensor and tiny photosites.

The latter is the major factor in restricting image quality. Ten megapixels is about the limit that can be stuffed on to a sensor measuring only 18x13 mm (the near universal APS-C format is 24x16 mm), while maintaining reasonable noise performance. The marketing advantages of dust removal, in-camera shake reduction and live preview are not specific to the Four Thirds system and other manufacturers already provide them.

What Canon, Nikon, Pentax and the others are free to do is increase pixel ratings and sensor size sizes in parallel, thus continually improving absolute imaging quality without having to resort to increasing levels of digital manipulation to keep up with an advancing market. Olympus now has to do this within the straight jacket of the Four Thirds system – unless they have discovered some way around the laws of physics.

The Leica and Panasonic Four Thirds DSLRs are more exercises in PR rather serious contenders in the market. The forthcoming Olympus professional DSLR will be that only in name as its low light/high speed limitations will mean few pros will indulge in the concept.

The current range of Olympus DSLRs are fine cameras in themselves and much appreciated by amateurs, but for better or worse, the upper, DSLR end of the market will continue to be driven by increasing pixel counts and sensor  sizes, and Olympus risks being left behind in that race by handicapping itself with the Four Thirds format.

Patrick Chambers

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5)

It was good to see technology in education being covered in the Expanding Education/VLE article in the July issue of PCW. The article missed the whole point of the use of this technology in schools however. 1) It is not a new technology, it is an old one. VLEs in one shape or form have been used in higher education since the early 1990s. 2) It’s a learning solution that has been designed for post-18 distance learning. 3) Schools have no choice - DfES policy says we all must have a Learning Platform by 2008 and that the strength of this technology lies in the potential for a more personal experience of learning for pupils.

The challenge for schools is to develop a suitable model for classroom use of VLEs. How do you use a software solution that is built upon an anywhere-anytime-flexible model of teaching and learning and use it in a system that is 9-4, classroom based and anything but flexible. If VLEs are only going to be used as a storage facility for lesson resources (the way in which they are most commonly used in higher ed) then there are better solutions for this.

10 out of 10 for featuring education (let’s see more of it) but 6 out of 10 for an article that could have done more justice to the current debate about the use of VLEs in schools.

Jim Fanning

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a student (15) in full time education I read with interest your article Expanding Education. In my experience, initiatives including computers and learning are prone to failure for several reasons.
Firstly, a computer is no longer a word processor; it is a means of chatting to friends, a way of browsing videos and emailing. I guarantee that any student who sits down at a computer will get sidetracked in to seeing who’s online or checking their inbox.

Secondly, there are the technical barriers. You state in your article that a web-based interface provides cross platform compatibility. This is only the case when the application on the web page is cross platform, not as in my school’s case dependant on an ActiveX plug-in that only works on XP in Internet Explorer.

Thirdly, some students don’t have access to the internet or a computer at home. “No Problem,” says the school, “they can work on the computers at lunchtime”. This is unfair as they lose their break time to work around a problem not of their making. More often than not, the work won’t be done.
Finally, content is another area in which my school (a Specialist Maths and Computing College) has failed.

The courses available on our VLE system are merely scanned photocopies in non-editable PDF format. Previously we would have done these sheets in class. Now we download and print them out at home for homework. This shifts the cost from school to student, something you did not factor into your Maths Lesson insert - I’m sure a server costs less than a reprographics team!

Put simply, with pen and paper there are only so many plausible excuses such as “I lost my book” or “I forgot”. Whereas as soon as you involve the computer there are millions of excuses ranging from “a virus ate my homework, miss” to “my hard drive got corrupted” and the favourite “the printer ran out of ink/paper”.

I hope no more schools and universities will be suckered on to the VLE bandwagon.

Matthew Malcher

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some years ago, a  motor mechanic gave me a simple car tune-up tip - just fit a weaker accelerator  pedal return spring. The subjective result is that the car's throttle response  is markedly improved, so the car feels nippier.

As with cars, so  with computers - when did you last check your mouse response? When setting a PC  up initially, most of us will feel more comfortable with 'conservative' mouse  settings, but after you've used your PC for a while, why not try increasing the  mouse speed and acceleration parameters? You'll find the settings in Control  Panel / Mouse, and just tweaking them a little will result in less wrist  movement and a PC that feels more responsive.

Thanks for an  entertaining and informative magazine, keep up the good  work!

John  Ellerington

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a subscriber of  some years I am always keen to be introduced to the latest trends in technology,  together with answers to the problems that it creates.

But we should not  forget that these technologies often require expenditure, and may not always be  the most practical solution.

In the June issue of PCW, in answer to a question regarding capturing transparencies to digital format,  the expert advised a solution involving expenditure of a few hundred pounds, followed by a time consuming process of scanning them with the specialist  peripheral.

From experience I know that in some respects the scanning is only  part of the effort; manipulation to provide individual photos from scanned  multiples is quite frustrating.

However, an  alternative is to use a slide projector to display them on to a screen and then  use a digital camera (on a tripod with a short delay on the trigger to minimise  shake) to take individual digital photographs.  Using a Kodak carousel  projector with 80 slides, I can capture 10 photographs per  minute.

Perfect?  No,  but I cannot tell the difference unless I start enlarging. Technology is great  fun, but don't overlook simpler methods.

Andy  Quick

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

While you review a broad range of performance  measures when carrying out a group test of PC systems (such as the £999 PC  system group test in your April 2007 issue), I think you are missing a  particular trick.

I spend a fair amount of time using my PC during my  working day and so when I am considering buying a new system I am very keen to  know how much noise it makes, both when running idle and when carrying out CPU  or harddisk-intensive tasks.

This is particularly so when buying a reasonably  fast system which may have an overclocked CPU such as the Chillblast system in  the review already mentioned, because when buying online there is no way of knowing how bad the whine from the fans might be.

It would seem to me that  many of the performance tests you already carry out put the PC systems into  these states, so that measuring their noise levels would be an easy parameter to measure "for free".

Is there any chance you could consider this for  your future reviews?

Dr Bernard Payne

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read and enjoyed the article on mastering a music collection “Mastering Your Music” in the April issue. It certainly offered lots of clues for those new to the subject. But it was a missed opportunity to really explain what is going on to those of us frustrated by the lack of proper published analysis in this increasingly important area of computer-dependent mixed-media manipulation.

I am cautious about accusing the article of being superficial, when it will clearly serve some readers well. But where is the in-depth comment supported by rigorous testing of the type applied to hardware reviews?

What am I on about? Well, there are lots of codecs out there. All use different alogorithims which result in a different sound. Your codec comparison chart lists only the size of a resulting file using “their respective default settings”. We are not even told what that is. And there is no indication of quality.
Other bland statements, such as WMA at 64Kbits/sec “cannot match the performance of Vorbis and Musepack in other areas” don’t even resolve any obvious meaning.

Meanwhile the now ancient MP3 (MPEG-1, layer 3, to  give mp3 its proper name), is given a bad press, with no reference at all to the newer, better MP3-pro, or MPEG-4 audio.   

Instead of giving us the projections of experts about which storage medium will last longest, you waste space on a price comparison which readers could easily compile themselves with a pencil or a calculator.
I could go on, but I don’t want to presume to rewrite the article.

Whoever embarks on storing a digital music collection wants to know three things.
1. Which software is the most accurate, reliable means of ripping CD/DVDs.
2. What is the most aurally faithful codec for a given bit rate, to enable an informed  decision about the quality / file size trade-off.
3. Which is the most stable, dependable long-term storage solution.
If any of these questions were answered in the article, I need to visit an optician.

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

For many  years now, I have used Macromedia Fireworks. Dreamweaver and associated products like Flash to design and code web sites. About 2 years ago, just as I purchased  Studio 8, Adobe and Macromedia merged and are now known as Adobe. Yesterday I received an email from Adobe announcing their latest revision of the suite, which is called CS3, and comes in two web versions, CS3 Web Standard and CS3 Web  Premium.

I went  through the demos and decided that they seemed to be a good product and decided to purchase the Premium edition as an upgrade to my Studio 8. I was looking at  the American Web site and the price for the premium edition was $1,599.00. I clicked on the Buy button on the Adobe Shop, and was redirected to the UK site. The price was now shown as  £1,404.12! At the current exchange rate  of circa $2.0 to the £, that meant that the cost had  suddenly increased from $1599 to $2808.24 – almost double!

I checked  the cost of CS3 Standard and found that the UK version was $740, whilst the American version is $399, again  almost twice the price in the UK. Surprisingly, the carriage cost  of £5.11 compared to $8 does not show such a marked exchange rate  differential.

I spoke  to the sales people at Adobe, and asked them why such a great cost differential. I was told that the staff had been asked this question many times, and had passed the question up to higher authority but had had no answer. They were  totally embarrassed because of this, and could not understand why the price  differential was so great. I also asked whether I could buy the US version, and was told that it would not run as an upgrade because the serial  numbers would not work.

Previously at Macromedia, there were cost differentials, but one had the  opportunity to pay in whichever currency one wanted. This  seems to be another instance of rip off Britain!

Adobe  will have to reduce their prices before I purchase CS3 from them. There are  other similar programs on the market  at much lower prices.

Howard Walker

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'll get it out right now: I'm an Apple man through and through. Having worked both sides of the "PC" divide for over two decades, and at the risk of being bombarded by hate mail, I still find Macs a far more efficient and stable platform than their Windows-based counterparts. Yes I know PCs have better games but a dedicated console suits my needs there better. However PCs do still dominate the world of virtual reality (VR) due to their infinitely tinkerable nature and this brings me to the reason for my letter.

A number of years ago, I designed a VR system for architectural design based on a DEC Alphastation running Windows NT 4. It was fantastic 10 years ago, but I'd like to bring it up to date. I've resigned myself to building a new PC and my needs are fairly bland: a fast processor, around 1Gb of RAM, and a fast dual-link graphics card. "Not much of a challenge," I'm sure you're thinking, but I've not come to the hard bit: the motherboard needs an ISA slot. Many VR hardware manufacturers have disappeared and those that are still around haven't updated their interface cards so I need at least one ISA slot to support my HMDs.

So, your challenge is to spec me out the necessary components (MLB, memory, graphics card, et al) to build a high-performance system which won't break the bank and allow me to still use my VR hardware.

Lee Fulmer

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

First of all let me congratulate you on such a great mag! I have built my system based on many reviews you give every month.

I was particularly interested in the "Build the ultimate home media network"  on your June issue...and I have a question: How viable would be to use a HDXB101 Netgear 200Mbits/sec Homeplug Ethernet Netgear Switch instead of several cables around the house?

I know it would be a bit more expensive as the cheapest I found online is around £104 ex VAT for 2 of the plugs and around £57 ex VAT for each aditional one but in the end buying a good Ethernet switch and meters of cabling wouldn't be much different!

I currently run my PC on a study on the 1st floor, there's an XBox 360 in the house, the laptop in living room and just got a LCD HD TV and a HDD Media center to plug in TV and the wireless is not enough (oh and the PS3 that I'm gonna get more towards the autumn...XBox is my housemate's).

Because I live in kind of an old house, ripping up carpets or drilling holes through the wall wouldn't be in my best interest...nor my landlord's :) and a Homeplug would be useful when I move out to another
house.

Just thought you could have mentioned this on the article or why not a review of this product? This would be great! Maybe if this is a good idea and people start getting to grip with it and buying it prices would start coming down as you see with wireless? Would love to know what you think about this.

Cheers and keep up the great work
Paulo Joao

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on May 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)