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Wood you believe it?
Your photograph of the gold-plated BBC Micro (PCW June 2008, p19) reminded me of the 'wooden' version I made in the 80s. You will see from the photograph it bears an uncanny resemblance to your model featured.
At the time my son and I were attending a night class on BBC computing at Norwich college, and we had to take our Beeb with us. We soon got fed up of dismantling and re-assembling the monitor, floppy drive and all the cabling every week, so I hit on the idea of fitting it all in a wooden cabinet.
The only modification to the computer was the removal of the top of the case and to make a new cover out of aluminium, carefully fitted round the keyboard. All the cabling was placed inside the box, including the mains sockets for the electrical items. Printer and joystick sockets were brought out to the front of the unit.
David Bunting
Touchy OS
Working in IT support, I meet a lot of IT users and an overwhelming majority of them have just one wish for their PC: they want it to go faster.
A few years ago things were different, the requests were more about wishing Windows could do this or that, but since XP it's all been about speed and efficiency. Why then is Microsoft talking about touch-screen technology being integral to the forthcoming Windows 7? Have they learned nothing from Vista?
Windows does what we need it to. Improvements should be focused on getting it leaner and faster, not bolting on ever more features that few will use. Is the Asus Eee PC not proof enough that small and lean is the way forward?
I don't buy a computer to play with the operating system, I buy it to run the programs I need on it. All an operating system should provide is a pleasant and easy to use interface to access those programs while behind the scenes it gets on with the business of running the computer quietly and without fuss.
Surely by version seven Microsoft should have found a way to do this, but I suppose if they did, how would they make people buy the next version?
I can't help but think that Microsoft is scraping the barrel with touch screen; it's clearly essential for a handheld device but these, by their very nature, are at your fingertips.
Desktops however, are very different; who wants to be leaning across their desk all day smearing fingerprints over a new touch screen that they didn't want to buy in the first place?
Touch-screen technology may be useful for some, but surely it should be added on by those who need it, not forced onto everyone into the ever bloating Windows. So as it reaches middle-age, it looks like Windows isn't just susceptible to viruses but to middle-age spread too.
Jake Dovey
Is PCW pro-Mac....
Thank you so much to your informative article, 'Buy a Mac, Get a PC' (PCW September 2008).
As a software developer, developing cross-platform solutions, I have for many years developed on Windows and tested on Mac. Over the years I have invested a considerable sum of money in software for Windows, thus prohibiting a complete change to the Mac. My office has always been Windows-based with a lone Mac laptop for testing.
My main development PC was getting a bit long in the tooth and an upgrade was required. 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! In the end the vendor, Chillblast, agreed to take it back and offered a refund.
Then I saw your article about Apple Macs. 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.
There are a few minor niggles that I haven't yet got used to or 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 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
...or anti-Mac?
I have never brought a copy of your magazine before and, having done so I was astounded that it seems so anti-Mac.
True there are praises here and there, but always followed by a rebuttal - over priced, slow, the 'i' in iMac stolen in 2000, rubbish keyboard, useless mouse, crashing gracefully!
On price you get what you pay for - ask any owner of a BMW! You can buy much cheaper Windows PCs and, provided you don't mind buying a new one every three years, then stick with them.
As for the Mac's keyboard, I find mine very fast. The mouse could be better, mainly because my large hands tend to cover the central button and, as often as not, when in a hurry I find that I have fumbled up the Dashboard. And the criticism of them being slow surely depends upon which one you buy.
As for the 'i' in iMac being stolen in 2000, I seem to remember that in 1998 my first Mac was an iMac. You mention crashing too, what an alien concept. Since the introduction of OS X 10.2 and onwards, I don't think I have ever had a crash on my Macs; they used to in OS 9, but that was years ago.
True there are sometimes situations where the spinning beach ball can hang, but it's only a three-fingered operation to force-quit the problem without affecting the rest of what is running.
I am so glad that I don't have to talk about A drives and C drives - we don't talk drives on a Mac at all. And finally, as for viruses and trojans, I have never had one and I've used my Mac every day for more than 10 years.
Vernon J Yarker
Freesat on the cheap
First let me thank you for an excellent magazine - I have been subscribing for more years than I care to remember. I read your article on getting satellite TV on your computer (PCW September 2007) with great enthusiasm and thought you might be interested in my experience.
I recently brought a caravan and wanted to watch TV while away. I have a laptop with Vista Ultimate, and purchased a Freeview USB tuner (£23 from Ebuyer). I use this to record programmes to watch later.
Reception is mixed, usually poor due in part to the omni-directional aerial fitted to most caravans. I considered upgrading the aerial to a directional type as featured in a caravan magazine but it was quite involved and expensive at £100+ just for the aerial.
I then saw an advert on the internet for a portable satellite system from Maplin. The system was listed as Grade B (slight damage to case) with a full 12 month guarantee, price £49.99 including postage. This has everything required to hook up to a portable TV and the receiver has the bonus of working from 12V DC. For £8.50 I brought a capture card from Ebay that enables me to watch Freesat on my computer and all for less than £60!
John Everitt
Converting the easy way
In your Convert VHS to DVD article (PCW October 2008) issue, I am surprised you ignore what seems to me the simplest and, for many people, the cheapest method: the hard drive/DVD recorder many of us already own.
I connected my old VHS recorder to my Sony hard drive/DVD recorder (RDR-HXD560) via Scart and was able to copy all our old home videos (using the original tapes in a carrier cassette) directly onto the hard drive. The machine also allows some editing, such as cutting out sections or dividing the whole video into smaller clips.
I could then make DVDs from these, naming each clip and putting them in order. The recorder offers a range of options for disc format and degree of compression. I could have recorded directly onto DVD if I hadn't wanted to edit the recordings first, and quality is at least as good as the original.
I can also copy ordinary un-copy-protected VHS tapes in the same way. No doubt other makes and models of hard drive/DVD recorder would do much the same.
For further editing in my Mac I have used free software (Mac The Ripper) to extract editable files from the DVD, but in most cases the limited editing within the recorder is all I need. I haven't tried connecting the recorder output directly to the computer.
Bob Gray
Monitor Madness
I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop and the machine fulfilled my spec requirements.
However, the screen is highly reflective and the computer is almost unusable in normal lighting conditions, making it impossibly difficult to use in a room with very good daylight levels, which causes both eye strain and tiredness.
The Office 2007 ribbon menus are particularly washed out and the reflection is such that the screen doubles as a very useful mirror.
I have talked to Toshiba and tried all the settings available in Vista, to no avail.
After bringing this to the attention of the retailer, I was given permission to look around the store for a replacement laptop with a less reflective screen - none could be found. In another store I eventually found a different type of screen on two Acer Aspire laptops (8920G and 6920G).
Toshiba boasts the Truebrite display while the Acer has a Cinecrystal display. A useful comparison test is to switch the computers off and then compare the reflections on the screens. The difference is remarkable.
Sales staff tell me that the highly reflective screens are better for viewing films from DVD, but this is of minor value to me.
Comments on viewing laptops in a range of lighting conditions would be useful in your reviews. Especially given that portable computers are supposed to be portable and be used in many different lighting conditions.
Cliff Hamer
