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Tallscreen, not widescreen
I totally agree with Jasper Warwick about widescreen notebooks.
We write database applications and widescreens are becoming a problem for us especially when the application has to be used on desktops and notebooks. I'm not sure of the 'side by side' document argument as each document is probably at 50% or less of full size and therefore not exactly readable.
I had hoped the widescreen thing would be a fad, but now desktop monitors are going that way it looks like they are here to stay.
For business use, if screens were going to change shape they really should have gone tall. After all, the paper we print on is portrait and web pages tend to be of fixed width and unlimited height.
I wonder what percentage of notebooks are actually used to play movies on a regular basis? Or perhaps the screens are designed for people who max out Excel's 255 column limit.
Andrew Kennard
Cable choices
I recently upgraded to a PC supporting HD so I thought I’d have a go connecting it to my HD TV, what I needed was an HDMI cable that supported 1080p.
Having spent a fair proportion of the last 20 years fiddling with hi-fi and video cables for various AV setups, I was not surprised to find many different grades and, more importantly, prices available to me.
I was offered 24K gold plated plugs with silver soldering for optimum signal clarity, 99.99% oxygen free cable to combat signal degradation, fully coated and triple shielded cord which I was told would prevent signal interference and don’t get me started on gas injected dielectric, whatever that is.
The prices were equally baffling, ranging from 49p to £130. So I slipped into hi-fi mode and prepared myself to take a leap at something costing a little more than 49p but significantly less than £130 but then I had a realisation.
We’ve been taught to look for things like gold plated plugs and oxygen free cables because with an analogue signal things like signal clarity are important. HDMI on the other hand is digital, so as long as the signal gets from one end to the other nothing else matters after all, nobody buys gold plated network cables do they?
So how can the cable manufacturers get away with overcharging us for digital cables with all the analogue extras we’ll never need? Because we’re used to it, so used to it in fact that despite this revelation I still couldn’t bring myself to buy the 49p cable but I did spend significantly less than £130.
Jake Dovey
Powerline distances
Thank you very much for your interesting group test of powerline networking devices (PCW November 2007).
I would be interested to know if you can say anything more about the communication range reached in practice with the tested adapters - in the test article I could only read that it is limited and determined partially by the physical distance between the adapters.
Sven Ruin
Undelete issues
After much head scratching and research I bought a Netgear SC101 Nas drive and stuck two hard drives in it, giving me a shed load of storage. I then installed the software and firmware updates, attached the drives to the PCs on my network and got music and videos streaming from it.
However, the main purpose of buying the kit was to use my Nas drive as a sort of off-site storage and backup solution, which would free up countless gigabytes of data from my main PC and server.
One day, while I was sorting files out, archiving data and doing the usual spring cleaning routine, I decided that a few files were no longer needed so deleted them. I then headed for the Recycle Bin to recover the file... but it's not there.
Frantically looking around for ways of backtracking and recovering this file that I accidentally deleted, I still couldn't find that file. I downloaded several bits of software that seemed like they would do a good recovery job but, several hours later, I got a "Results = 0" message.
After contacting Netgear support, I was referred to second-line tech support. I explained my dilemma of not being able to recover a deleted file to which the response was, "Yeah, that's because once you have deleted the file, you can't get it back due to the unique file system employed on the SC101". I asked, "Ok, so have you any tools to recover deleted files?" to which the response was, "No and we aren't developing any either."
Why on earth have so many people boasted about all the benefits of Nas drives if you can't do the most fundamental operations on it such as undelete? What good is a so-called backup/storage solution if when something goes wrong you can't undo it?
This problem may not be particularly important to the average user, but for people who are data safety aware I would personally think of an alternative solution before opting for a Nas.
Danny Leonard
Laptops for the older generation
I'd love to see a review from you guys of laptops for my generation - say a few years either side of 60.
t would need to be very light and compact, have a decent screen and keyboard with keys that fit fingers, and the ability to run simple work programmes like Word, Excel, Acrobat, and Powerpoint at good speed, with Bluetooth or wireless capability built in.
I don't think most us need the likes of video-streaming capabilities and sound, just light and compact dimensions in these days of 'one-bag-only' travel.
John Wallinger
