It’s looking like a turbulent year for HD DVD, what with the Warner Bros’ announcement in January that it would exclusively back the rival Blu-ray format. It has also suffered from DVD rental giants Netflix and Blockbusters phasing out the format, American retailer Best Buy's recommendation of Blu-ray over HD DVD for consumers, and Walmart's decision to support only Blu-ray from June 2008.

Just days after reading Gordon Laing and Barry Fox's articles about the HD format war, I learnt that Toshiba (HD DVD’s main backer) had announced that they would no longer develop, manufacture or market HD DVD players from March this year. This, I feel, must be the tip of the high-definition iceberg in favour of Blu-ray, as Toshiba's pull-out effectively ends the format war.

I feel for Laing. In his piece he referred to the VHS/Betamax format war lasting for years, and stated that "we could be in for a long ride yet" in this new race for high-definition supremacy. It now seems that this ride has been cut very short indeed. After all the money and time put into the successor to the DVD by Toshiba and various other companies, not to mention the consumer spending upon the technology, it seems such a waste. But every battle must have a victor, and, just like VHS, Blu-ray has won both the battle for manufacturer backing, and in turn the war.

Being an owner of a Sony’s £300 Playstation 3, which supports Blu-ray playback, I am somewhat pleased that the outcome wasn’t the opposite. I do not wish to gloat, but this is a definite reassurance that the money I spent on a next-gen console was spent well.

Although I do not own any Blu-ray films, I feel content in the knowledge that my PS3 will be able to play high-definition films in the future, should I feel the need to watch them.

Loz Hawksworth.

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have had about 12 months of difficulty getting a totally reliable connection since I was switched to the ADSL Max service (up to 8Mbits/sec).

In that time I found out that the crackly phone that had crackled for years was seriously reducing the speed of my connection as the interference, on occasion, was so severe it would reduce the speed to 100Kbits/sec, which the exchange would not reset until 24 hours later.

Also, the connectors that are sold for DIY extensions are not without their problems, and the reason why you have the option of loading any version of the router's firmware that has been issued in the past as well as the most recent version, is that sometimes the older version is more stable for your connection than the most recent version.

Fortunately I have experience of electrical fault finding and eventually found a workable solution to overcome the intermittent problems I had. However, even for me it has not been easy. BT was adamant that the line was satisfactory and, if I were to book a visit, I would be charged £180 pounds if they felt that the problem lay at my end.

I do not see how a competent telecoms technician could take longer than half an hour in such a visit and this charge is in excess of its actual cost. For many users, a visit from BT may be their only option as many problems are beyond the competency of the average user.

Neil Hardy

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The article about Colossus and Bletchley Park reminded me of my early days in IT.  In 1968 I operated an Elliot 803, before the company, a poultry breeder, moved to an ICL 1901A. What a machine that was; it filled a large room but had only 8KB of memory (‘store’ in those days).

All input and output was on eight-track paper tape, even the printed output that then had to be fed into a free-standing ‘Creed’ printer that had a tape reader attached.

On the night shift when there was no manager around, we used to feed the paper tape straight from the paper tape punch into the printer's tape reader, across the floor and into the next room. We corrected keying errors by plugging holes in the paper tape or punching new holes.

Storage consisted of two very large tape decks (one input, one output) with a difference: the tape was magnetic-coated 35mm film that was fed under a head with a very precise head gap. If the gap was wrong, the tape could not be read as the film would not touch the head. The computer was controlled by a large console with many buttons on it, including one labelled “Clear Store” – and that is exactly what it did.

Rows of buttons represented bits in a word (39 bit words), and could be set to pass ‘parameters’ to a program; only one could run at a time.

The machine was programmed in machine code or Autocode. In spite of its limitations, it was used to calculate payroll and perform genetic calculations. The good old days? Hardly, but interesting to look back on now.  I for one would like to see the Elliot 803 at Bletchley Park.

Rod Theobald

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was one of the early readers of PCW but I couldn’t afford Pet, Apple or Tandy as they cost six months' salary. I saw an advert for kit called the UK101 for £100, but you only got a bare motherboard and had to solder all the components, including the keyboard. It was a reasonable price if it worked, but a big waste if it didn’t. I found a shop that offered to fix any faults for £10 which meant I was more or less getting a working computer for £110.

It certainly worked, but it didn’t do anything as you had to write all your own programs using the built in MS Basic. Back then, PCW had a regular column for UK101 users and, month by month, I leant how to write or modify programs. There was a great camaraderie amongst users that helped people solve problems.

I remember the predictions – a laser printer for under £1,000. Oh, how we laughed as a simple nine-pin dot matrix printer cost £450 at the time.

The suggestion in Issue 3 about the computer to help deaf children hear seemed like science fiction at the time, but I now have a Cochlear Implant which enables me to understand speech although I am completely deaf. It is smaller than a Bluetooth headset that fits behind the ear. Most deaf children are fitted with them before they go to school and I don’t think anyone would have dreamt that possible in the 70s.

Derek Trayler

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've read many reviews of laptops and quite a few mention battery life in terms of the number of hours use on a full charge.

I've not seen any comparison of the life of the battery in terms of how long it lasts before you have to replace it, as opposed to recharging. I know that this is not a simple 'test one machine and get a representative answer', but it would be a useful industry standard. Maybe you have enough readers who would contribute data that some conclusions could be drawn.

My own experience consists of three laptops. All used for a similar mix of applications, all went through a careful charge cycle before first use, and all used predominantly attached to the mains. My results were one Compaq Evo that was still giving three hours useful service when the machine was stolen at four years old and two Dell Inspirons that both had hardly enough life to boot the machine with the battery at just over 6 months old.

Not a statistically valid sample, but enough to suggest that there may be a brand dependent cost of ownership issue with the battery life.

Tony Corless

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

On a recent trip to Spain I subscribed to the local Wifi service at €45 for 14 days. I then encountered the usual SMTP relay problems for my email - even web based mail caused some issues.

However, using Thunderbird I changed the outgoing SMTP to my Googlemail setting, using SSL and port 465 with security and authentication ticked.

This allowed me to send mail from my Virgin, Onetel and Gmail accounts. This information may be of use to other readers.

Ann Edwards

Posted by Will Stapley on February 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

In almost 30 years of reading PCW I have never felt so compelled to write in until now. When I was a little boy I always dreamed of owning my own microcomputer. The exorbitant prices were outside the reach of mere mortals until the £70 Sinclair ZX81 with its 1K ram, micro membrane keyboard and expandable 16K Ram pack slot arrived. I soon taught myself how to program in Basic and Z80 assembler. Forget Microsoft Windows it was that little PC that changed the world.

Now that I am older (and none the wiser) I have always dreamed of owning an ultraportable. Again, the excessive prices were too much for a pauper like me, until Asus released the £200 Eee PC with its 256MB Ram, micro-sized keyboard and expandable SD and USB ports. I have owned three beloved Psion 5s whilst waiting for a worthy contender from the smartphone brigade to claim its throne (T-Mobile’s MDA Vario came close).

Forget expensive options like Microsoft Office and XP/Vista, its Linux, Firefox and Open Office that’s making the Asus platform viable in my eyes. I believe Gordon Laing’s observations are spot on while PCW’s recent review calling the Eee PC a ‘toy for the technically minded’ completely misses the point.

Just as the recently released £1,200 Tata Nano car will make driving accessible to today’s Model T aspiring masses, an upgradable £200 laptop with full web, wireless and office productivity could finally make truly affordable  portable computing available to all. I have one, my children will have one and my friends will too. Like Nintendo’s Wii proved with video gaming, this is the start of a computing revolution.

Toyin Agbetu

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

When Vista was announced I had a letter published on your Letters page whinging about how Vista would not let anyone mess with it, how they had stitched it up for people who like to play with the operating system and how I would have to get the old Amstrad 664 out of the cupboard again. Well I would like to redress the balance.

I have been using Vista from Beta 2 and at the moment have Vista Ultimate on my desktop and laptop. It's an excellent operating system and, as long as you take the time to find out about it, you can do anything you want.

You can poke and prod it as well as alter registry entries just like you can on all previous operating systems. And yes, the User Access Control feature does frequently ask you if you want to proceed, but I have got used to that and actually think it’s a good idea - if anyone does sneak rogue software onto your machine then you know if it tries to do anything.

I like the Aero interface and Sidebar while the management options are very good - I particularly like the performance and reliability tools.

It runs everything that I require, including programs I wrote in Visual Basic 3, as long as I supply the Runtime. It also copes with my Delphi programs and I have even managed to load the Installshield program that came with the old Delphi4 system.

Everyone is saying the take up is slow but this is always the case with large organisations. I used to work for a blue chip company and they were always two-years behind the current operating system.

In your March edition someone complained about the start time being one and a half minutes and then went on to compare it with his laptop running XP SP2, which started in 90 seconds. What's the difference? I timed my desktop from pressing the power on button to sign on screen at 45 seconds - this is no time at all. To load the 16k Ram pack on my ZX81 took something like 20 minutes. What is this obsession with start times? One and half minutes is luxury.

I believe in knocking something if it's wrong and praising it if it's right, and at the moment in my opinion there is nothing wrong with Vista. I know they are bringing out a Service Pack, but this happened with all the other operating systems and it's simply natural progression.

And no, I don’t work for Microsoft.

Malc Parr

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)

I’ve been looking to buy a new desktop system for some time and finally settled on the Dell Dimension XPS 420 with a colour laser printer. I configured the system to my requirements online and the total cost came to just under £1,250 - not an inconsiderable sum considering the starting cost is advertised at £649.

The only problem was the operating system. There was no option to have XP instead of Vista, this is vital to us as one our essential work programs (Avid Xpress Pro) cannot yet run under Vista - in fact this is true of many of our current programs.

In addition my wife’s work intends to remain with XP for several years and our machine had to be compatible with their system. So I phoned Dell to get this changed.

The first operative I spoke to said I couldn’t have XP, but I could load it on additionally myself. I said this was ridiculous; other manufacturers offer this option and I wasn’t about to pay £1,250 to then have to reconfigure the machine myself. After much discussion he promised to investigate this further and email me back - he never did. Two days later I called Dell again, spoke to a different operative and got the same answer.

I find it extraordinary that one of, if not the largest supplier of computers in this country will let you configure every aspect of your system but not the version of the operating system.

Tim Marchant

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been buying PCW most months since around 1999. I'm now 22, which means I've been buying it for more than 1/3 of my life - a scary thought indeed.

My problem is space, or rather a lack thereof. Eight years of magazines takes up a lot of shelf space and in the past year or so I've been going through my back issues and cutting out the stuff I want to keep.

Please, please, please could you make PCW available as a PDF?

Sunil Rodger

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I appreciate that game manufacturers and distributers are unable to test on the vast number of combinations of PCs that exist. However would it not be possible for them to at least put the default resolution on the packaging?

I have a games system that exceeds all of the specifications on the package, but I run it into a JVC 32in LCD television. This does not display 800x600, but it can display higher resolutions and lower resolutions.

So I put the CD/DVD in the slot, click all the install buttons, wait for a while and then hear the sound track but no video. Quite often it is possible to install the game on my office PC, reconfigure the graphics to a resolution that will display and then copy a file with the new info it to my games system. Some I can alter a set up file to run in a window, some I have to reprogram.

I have contacted games manufacturers and distributers, the best quote is: "your set up is too good for the game". No one is prepared to supply a patch or explain how to run the game on a system which conforms to the specification on the box.

I could return the game to the supplier as "not fit for purpose", but by then I have taken it out of all of its packaging and tried to use it so that it would not be fair to the retailer.

Bob Sheppard

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

While searching for something completely different, I came across a copy of PCW dated July 2003. Thinking to have a bit of a laugh over out of date views and equipment I decided to read it.

What a shock I got when the first editorial piece was on the future of communication and its prophetic comments of integrated devices, recently fully realised in the iPhone and its equally useless (in my opinion) counterparts.

Reading to the end I found another equally good piece in 'The Last Word' about the need for better data management, which is just as relevant today if not more so with more applications, data types, and practically unlimited storage for the home user.

Unfortunately pennies dictate that a subscription is off the cards for me these days, but my spare change building up in the jam jar by the telly and the 'emergency beer fund', will be going towards getting the July 2008 edition so I can see if that is as relevant in five year's time. Keep up the good work.

Cenydd Smith

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Richard Jones reports his discs as unallocated (PCW January 2008, Letters).

I came home one day to find my disk drive missing under My Computer, but present and unallocated under Disc Management. A friend used Filescavenger 3.2 to find all the files and copy them onto another disc with file data and structure intact. It reported the loss of a few files, but I think it was just a few system restore files. What a relief.

Rob Tozer

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like to endorse Joe Clifford's letter (PCW February 2008, Letters). I suffered a catastrophic PSU failure which fried both drives of my mirror Raid array. Backup!

Ken Wood

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

My only gripe with vista is the new defrag tool.

I miss not being able to see what is happening as you could with XP, and in Vista it seems to take for ever to defrag. Otherwise I have got use to the new way of file searching etc.

Carol Underwood

Posted by Will Stapley on February 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)