I should warn you that what follows are the ravings of a "Mac fanatic" or "true believer" or however else you chose this issue to denigrate my chosen brand of zealotry.

I meant to write a few months ago to congratulate you on the excellent 30th Anniversary issue, which really was incredibly enjoyable.

However, at the time I was sure it was missing one important piece of history: the true story of what exactly Apple had done to so upset Clive Akass. I'm sure that Guy Kewney or someone else could have been induced to tell of the time Steve Jobs stole Clive's lunch money/parking space/girlfriend.

Having just received the September issue, it would appear that Clive's prejudices have spread.

Skipping through the news section - pausing only to mention that the iMac predates the iPaq by almost two years - we get to your cover story, which seems to be based on the premise that the only good Mac is a Mac running Windows. This is certainly a by-the-numbers piece on Apple, covering the usual arguments (overpriced and underpowered, accusations of smugness, one-button mouse etc).

In the feature, Cliff Joseph writes "However, Apple has spent decades and billions of dollars developing the Mac operating system, so it's not going to sit back and let you replace it with Windows". How very anti-competitive of Apple. Of course, the truth is far less dramatic. Intel Macs, fresh from the box, boot using EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). This is Intel's successor to the ageing Bios; the piece of embedded software which Windows requires to load.

There was a time when PCW would have been rubbing its collective hands with glee at the thought of explaining something like this. It would have been given its own box-out, with acronyms explained, a bit of history and a quick discussion of when it's likely to be coming to the PC. Instead, we get one company's embracing of newer technology portrayed as an attempt to lock-out users.

Still, you showed really quite considerable restraint in not taking a cheap shot at the Newton in the same issue's Flashback piece.

Stuart Crook

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Colin Findlay (PCW September 2008, Letters) appears to have only purchased the trial version of the game. In the full version, the successful conclusion of the Vista level allows players to proceed to the advanced level: Office 2007. 

This brings with it a whole range of exciting new sub-plots, including "Find the menu command" (which can keep players amused for hour on end) and "Spot the bug". The latter is especially exciting because the inventors have carefully spread a mixture of bugs around that repeat consistently.

I found a nice one in Excel called "print selection", which only prints the first six lines of the last page selected. Then there are those that appear almost entirely at random - the one I found lets Word refuse to show text boxes in .doc files written in Office 2003, but it only affects some text boxes, so you never know if they should have been there or not.

Sadly, the game has no check-list of clues, and even if you contact the supplier they will keep you guessing!

Office 2007 is not for the faint-hearted gamer. After three months I admitted defeat and decided to restrict my play to the Vista level. Even then, Office 2007 wasn't finished with me, as it decided to port one final game over to Office 2003 - the famous "make the EULA pop up every time I start the programme" game, which can only be completed by editing the registry.

If only these guys at Microsoft could develop real programmes that were as clever as their games!

Dave Scott

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kelvyn Taylor's editorial request for readers' experiences using miniature PCs brought to the surface the sense of exasperation that I, and I'm sure many consumers, feel about IT products and how they are marketed.

I've has an Asus Eee PC for over six months now and I can't fault it. It's portable, reliable and, most importantly, conforms to the 90/10 rule. It does most of what I want to do, most of the time and it does it very well.

I've fiddled about with the full desktop as well as added and changed applications, but I've gone back to the Noddy-style interface and the common applications because these meet my day-to-day requirements. If I want sheer horsepower or sophisticated applications, I use my PC.

This experience, and hence the demand for such devices, seems to have astonished the industry. Why? Because they don't listen to or meaningfully consult with their customers (i.e. you and me) when developing new products and services.

Their strategy seems to be to spend lots of time and money trying to anticipate in splendid isolation what we will buy and devising new, eye-catching features rather than real benefits.

Marge Simpson's frying pan with built in FM radio is a perfect example! Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should!

David Oliver

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It saddens me to hear that Virgin Media has now started writing to their broadband customers who they suspect might be downloading music illegally.

I believe that in doing this Virgin Media is telling their customers that they distrust and despise them. It prompts me to ask the question: is it the responsibility of the ISP to monitor its customers' on-line activities and what does this say about privacy?

What will be the next step? If you walk into a shop are you going to be confronted by security guards warning you that they suspect you might be shoplifting, simply because you are carrying a large bag? Will bus and train companies (including Virgin!) be warning their passengers that they suspect some of them might have illegally obtained goods on their person and, if this is the case, will they be thrown off and banned for life?

Maybe the telephone companies will include a note in their next bill telling people who have called a friend or relative in certain countries that they are now suspected terrorists.

The same news report had someone from the Performing Rights Society announce that he thought ISPs should be held responsible for monitoring the activities of their customers.

Perhaps then Virgin Media should be held responsible for all the scam emails it has delivered to me telling me I have won the European lottery or that I can have £30 million by helping some poor Nigerian diplomat get his money out of his country. In fact I think Virgin Media is opening itself up to law suits from individuals who have lost money through these email scams, after all Virgin is admitting that it is, in part, responsible for the content that passes through it's servers.

In my experience with Virgin Media, I think it would be far better off employing more people to man its telephones (especially technical support) as opposed to employing people to snoop on customers who might or might not be downloading copyright material.

Ron O'Brien

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gordon Laing (PCW September 2008) could have saved himself a lot of time and trouble crawling around on his hands and knees and also possible damage to his landlord's property by adding a network extender.

Having a 3 story house with lots of steel work meant my wireless network situated on the top floor was not reaching the ground floor so I fitted a Hawking wireless extender in under ten minutes at a cost of £54.

Plugging a cable from the Extender to my desktop it found my original signal at once plus the other five signals from my neighbours (some stronger than mine) and a couple of minutes setting up the SSID completed the work. Now the Extender sits downstairs giving me a signal level which has allowed me to type this on my laptop in the conservatory with a wireless signal of "Excellent".

Sometimes the simplest options are the best!

Gerald Barnett

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having read you review of the Iliad in the September issue of PCW I thought I would like to add my view.

I have had my iRex Iliad for nine months now. I brought it with a specific purpose in mind, reading e-books. I currently have documents and about 40 books (with room for 10 times as many) on my Iliad which would, in paper form, fill a large rucksack.

In my view the Iliad is ideal for reading e-books. Although it takes rather longer than I would like to start up, this is more than offset by the battery's longevity. When only having time to read in bed, the battery lasts about two weeks.

Turning a page is a little slower than a book but it does not suffer from the problem of losing ones place when put down badly.

Your review complained about the natural colour of the screen reducing the contrast, but as it is about the same as any paperback I can't see how this matters and as with a book you can read it in bright sunlight, even when in partial shadow.

I don't find the pen interface a problem as I rarely use it. I do use it for reading some PDF manuals, but even then a couple of pen strokes are enough to zoom and position the page into the most readable format.

The Iliad is primarily designed as an e-book reader and, as such, I think is near ideal. I look forward to being able to buy a reader with colour e-paper in a year or so.

Ian Powell

Posted by Will Stapley on July 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thank you so much to your informative article, "Buy a Mac, Get a PC" in the September 2008 edition of PCW. As a software developer, developing cross-platform solutions, I have for many years developed on Windows and tested on Macintosh. Over the years I have invested a considerable sum of money in software for Windows, thus prohibiting a complete change to  the Macintosh. My office has always been Windows-based with a lone Mac laptop for testing. The laptop actually has a Windows installation using Parallels, although this is rarely used.

My main development PC was getting a bit long in the tooth and an upgrade was required (as the boss, I think I'm entitled to a new PC every now and then). A few months ago following a review of some powerful PCs in your magazine, I purchased a blazingly fast quad-core PC with Windows Vista 64-bit. For a few weeks I was delighted with my new purchase, as I gleefully installed lots of software and set all the preferences to make it work the way I wanted.

Then it all started going wrong! The screensaver stopped working, it just never came on any more. Then the computer refused to hibernate. Then it began to restart randomly at any time of day. On a couple of occasions my Outlook file became corrupt and the database I was
developing was damaged; luckily I had backups. On top of all that, I didn't find anything new in Vista that offered any great advance over XP; in fact I found quite a lot of annoying differences - many of which could only be changed with a registry hack. The supplier,
Chillblast, were very helpful and gave me lost of tests to run, but in vain, the computer just kept going wrong. In the end they agreed to take it back and offered a refund.

Then I saw your article about Apple Macs. Until then I had never considered using a Mac as my main development machine, but the time was ripe for change...  and so off I trotted to the Apple store in Brent Cross. The staff were extremely helpful and, although knowledgeable about everything 'consumer', there were definite gaps in their knowledge when I started asking my more technically complex questions. Nevertheless a bit of research on the internet found the answers to all the questions that Apple staff couldn't answer, specifically how to transfer a complex Outlook file with hundreds of folders and hundreds of thousands of e-mails to Mac Mail & iCal. One solution, 02M,  didn't quite work for  my complex outlook PST file
(but should work for most situation), but a conversion via Mozilla Thunderbird did what I needed.

I thought I'd take a look at the free 'Virtualbox' Windows virtualisation tool from Sun that you mentioned and was impressed by how closely it matches the features offered by commercial alternatives such as Parallels and VMWare. It was unnecessary to install much of my Windows software because a lot is already supplied as part of the Mac operating system, so my virtual copy of Windows XP sits hardly used. I also installed a virtual Vista PC, which I have not yet needed to touch at all. Some of the new features in Mac OS X Leopard make Windows Vista seem like it is still playing catch up and will be for some time. Furthermore, my desk looks much tidier because I no longer need speakers (built into the iMac), a WebCam (built into the iMac) or even a network cable (built-in wireless).

There are a few minor niggles that I haven't yet got used to / found a solution to, but by and large, I'm delighted that your article convinced me to make the change at the time that it did. Not only can I get on with my work without worrying if my machine is going to
restart at any moment, but my new 24in 3.06GHz iMac looks beautiful on my desk and is the envy of all my staff and colleagues. Apple even had a £60 printer rebate offer at the time of my purchase, so I got a new wireless printer for free.

Hopefully you'll write more articles about the Mac now, so I won't have to question my subscription to a PC biased PCW :-)

Chaim Bacon

Posted by Kelvyn Taylor on July 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Scott

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

We recently purchased some Asus Eee PCs to trial with students and teachers in school.

I have just returned from a ten day study visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and used the Eee for the duration of that visit.

In terms of good points, price is first and foremost. Dropping, damaging or having a £200 PC stolen is not quite the same as one that costs nearer £1,000 - and at this price it's almost feasible to equip every pupil in school with one. Furthermore, while everyone else struggled on the flight with their hefty laptops, the Eee is a real dream machine in terms of weight and size; I used it in an unobtrusive way in and around Jerusalem.

I have no problems with its speed - it boots up and operates quickly - and the wireless connection was faultless; connecting to other devices (including a printer and interactive board) was easy. Our school technicians had installed licensed copes of Windows XP and Office on the Eee, and all worked perfectly.

The not-so-good-points are the keyboard (it's okay for short bursts but a bit of a nightmare for any serious text based work) and the screen, which is just a bit too small for any long-term serious surfing.

Apart from these minor niggles the Eee is a great little PC. I suppose it's a case of balancing up the compromises: cost, size and performance against screen and keyboard issues. For me, it is size that wins the day. You simply had to watch other colleagues lugging their notebooks and laptops about for ten days to appreciate how versatile the Eee is.

I just wish I'd had a chance to try the inbuilt camera with messenger to communicate with staff and students back in school - oops, am I beginning to sound geeky now?

Jim Fanning

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks for the excellent reviews of the ultra-mobile PCs in your August issue. It was nice to see your expert analysis, generally supporting my recent purchase of an Asus Eee 701.

When I looked at purchasing one of these mini-marvels some weeks ago, I saw that most can now provide virtually all the functionality I am looking for as a mobile worker. So for me the test was (and still is) all about cost versus weight and size.

I saw that here in the UK I could pick up my Eee (700 series) for £249, and it weighed in at just over a 1kg (with the battery, adapter and my mini-mobile hard drive). I also spotted that if I wanted anything smaller and lighter I would have had to look at something such as the HTC Shift X9500 (retailing at about £900) or the OQO model E2, which costs a massive £1,500.

Although I looked at this matter before the Eee 900 (your Editor's Choice) became widely available, I would still have picked the 700 model. It's a little lighter, a little smaller and a lot cheaper, for pretty much the same functionality.  

Now I wait with eager anticipation to see how Microsoft will react to this booming UMPC market. They have already extended the life of XP to temporarily plug this gap. I don't think it will be long now before they come up with an operating system designed specifically for these UMPCs - with a small footprint, requiring fewer resources, but able to meet all the mobile workers needs.

Mick Harrison

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have an Asus Eee PC running XP Pro and Office 2003 and it works really well. It has now replaced my corporate laptop (a Toshiba Tecra M9) and is rather easier to carry.

In an idle moment I tried plugging the USB cable from a Toshiba Dynadock into the Eee PC and it loaded device drivers and then kicked into life so I now have network, printing, monitor, wireless keyboard and wireless mouse all on my office desk using the Eee PC - and I only have to plug in the power and one USB.

Jon Bernardes

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have always eagerly awaited the next issue of PCW and the last few months have been no exception.

I've been playing around with Windows Home Server (WHS) for a while now and had even gone as far as ordering the 120-day evaluation. It does everything it says on the box in terms of backups, network storage, remote access and more. Your article about how to build a £99 PC (PCW July 2008) then spurred me into doing just that, but putting Windows Home Server on it instead.

The area that I think PCW has missed out on is how to get the music and video files from the

WHS and onto a TV or hi-fi. It doesn't really matter whether you are using WHS or a simple Nas - they still need some form of device to get the information into a useable form. I've been purchasing Roku Soundbridge media players for the music and they work very well with both the WHS and Internet Radio, however for the video files it appears to be more difficult.

The cheapest solution appears to be the D-Link DSM players but these start at £150. Other solutions include the Xbox but I don't really want to be installing games consoles in rooms just to watch video.

How about PCW continuing the series and writing an article on how to get the files off the WHS and onto a TV or hi-fi? After all, you've given us the options for storing them on the home network.

Mark Laird

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I want to thank you for Gordon Laing's article in PCW about backing up; at last a real-world approach to this that recognises the shortcomings of the traditional backup packages that give you a single massive backup file with no visibility of what is inside and whether everything has properly been backed up.

Gordon hints that there might be a follow-up article. If there is one thing missing from the present article, it is the issue of the other data that is not in "data files". After a crash, it would be nice to be able to retrieve saved email (especially the address book), and as I use

Turnpike as my email program it is a bit more complicated.

Congratulations on a sensible article.

Nigel Ogilvie

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like many others I was waiting for Vista SP1 before replacing my PC.

Then the reviews of SP1 led me to the conclusion that I might as well try to wait for SP2 or even skip Vista and wait for Windows version 7. But my PC started showing signs of impending hardware failure and I needed to buy new PC.

My supplier offered Vista as standard or, for a £50 extra, I could choose XP instead. Well done for recognising and responding to consumer demand to keep offering XP as an option, but why the premium? My guess is that one way or another Microsoft will ensure that manufacturers find it in their best interests to sell Vista in preference to XP.

Leave it to the manufacturers as to how they achieve that - one option being to charge a premium for the "additional cost of a non-standard build".

However, as a consumer I might conclude that if people are prepared to pay a premium for XP then it must be better than the cheaper Vista.

So, Microsoft (surely they read PCW!), why not encourage vendors to sell machines with both XP and Vista preinstalled - dual boot, but defaulting to Vista? As a consumer I'm then not faced with the dilemma of which operating system to go for.

Being a Yorkshireman I went for the cheaper option! I've not yet hit any major snags with Vista, but neither have I found any real advantages over XP.  Doubtless there are technical/security improvements, but nothing that visibly improves my normal day-to-day productivity.

Performance seems broadly comparable with my XP machine, but Vista is running on a faster processor with more Ram. Maybe I should have forked out that extra £50 and benefitted from a real performance hike for my money.

Rob Hindle

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eventually, after a year or more of reading about the tales of woe of installing Vista, I decided to make the move. The company I work for are upgrading thens of thousands of desktop clients to Vista, and I have been involved in managing, testing and remediation of Windows 2000-to-Vista issues, but I had not taken the plunge myself.

The target machine was my HP Pavillion ZD8123 laptop, equipped with a 3GHz P4, 2GB of Ram. I thought it had to go wrong; nothing would be able to work and all the indications were that I would be on XP for the remainder of the PC's life.

How wrong I was. Everything works, it's faster and it is a much better overall user experience.

After 30 years in IT I thought I had seen it all, so how pleasantly surprised I was. It's been running sweet now for four weeks, with five family user accounts and used for at least 4 hours every day. And not a thing has gone wrong.

And No, I don't work for Microsoft - for years I was a badge-wearing VMS and Unix nerd.

Bill Belfield

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have just read the August issue of PCW and having been interested in getting a mini-laptop for several months I have been keeping top of developments, both in your magazine and online.

I am extremely impressed with the speed at which this market is developing, and its great to see people realising that a computer is about more than just raw power now.

I am writing mainly because I think you've actually missed the best mini-laptop currently available. This is the HP Mininote 2133, originally exclusive to RM in the UK, but is now widely available.

I ordered the Linux model a few weeks ago, put XP on it when I received it (using a USB memory stick, the installation was very simple), and could not be happier. For £350 I have got: 8.9in screen with 1,280x768 resolution, 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of Ram, 120GB hard drive, a proper keyboard, good connectivity and great build quality.

This machine, not toy, has completely replaced my Dell Inspiron. I hadn't intended this at all as I purchased it just for travelling, but my Dell has now found its self permanently connected to the TV as a media centre.

Thanks to the high resolution screen and quality keyboard of the HP, I have developed Access databases, run complex spreadsheets, watched videos (including 4OD and BBC iPlayer), delivered presentations, listened to music and played games..

I am now never far from this machine, and I'm even looking to add another use soon by purchasing a GPS receiver to make use of the fantastic screen as my sat nav.

Chris Baker

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the front of the August 2008 edition, your description of East-Tec Eraser 2007 says: "Protect against data snoops by safely and securely erasing your important files".

I can see that deleting my important files would protect them from anyone but it would make it a little difficult for me to use the data. 

Stewart Cockcroft

Posted by Will Stapley on July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)