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Glossy screens
Am I unusual in thinking that glossy screens on laptops are close to useless? In an amusing bit of doublespeak, these are sometimes labelled as 'anti-reflective'. In perfect conditions they give a nice picture but if there is any light on the user or behind them, there's a big reflection.
In sunlight on a train journey, for example, they are hopeless, sit one way and light falls on the screen. Sit the other way and all you can see is yourself. There is a simple solution, use a matte screen. We recently managed to get one by buying last year's model, but it seems glossy is now almost ubiquitous on laptops and, sadly, starting to creep in on monitors. Is there any chance of sense prevailing over marketing?
Professor Peter Hancock
Laptop batteries
I was interested to read Mike Bassett's letter about recalibrating laptop batteries in the Christmas issue, and have tried without success to find a recalibration feature on my Sony Vaio VGN- A197VP, and on the Vaio-update site.
Can anyone tell me how I might recalibrate my battery, which is less than a year old but will only hold a charge for an hour and a half?
Ian Webb
Smartphone, not so smart user?
Are Smartphones becoming too clever or over complicated, or are users simply not smart enough to spend time working out how to use their phones? Andy Low says "none have the basic essentials I require" in his letter in last month's PCW.
Has he actually switched on his phone and used it? I know for sure that Window Smartphones have all the functions that Andy is looking for, and a simple search could find many more downloadable applications suitable for his needs & device.
PIN locking your Smartphone can be enabled under Settings>lock, just add a PIN number. And you can also download third party apps like 'slide2unlock'.
Johnny Wan
Buy a Mac, get a PC
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
Has Asus missed a trick?
It's not just me (a 50 year old ex-Z88 and Acorn Risc PC user), but also my wife (a 42 year old late adopter of home computing) who would like an Asus Eee PC and a Wii. However, whilse most people seem to have understood what is good about a Wii they don't seem to have grasped the essential about the Eee PC, and I fear this could include Asus.
The issues for me, and lots of others, are price-point and practicality. If you want a laptop for email and a bit of word processing, then there is a world of difference between £220 and £340 in the justification stakes. You just cannot compare a £1,000 Apple Macbook Air with an Eee PC any more than you can compare a Ford Ka with a Ferrari. However the Eee PC is not just a cheap laptop, it is small enough to take in your luggage - not as your luggage.
For many, this is a very practical point. I also think Asus missed a trick with the soldered flash memory. If they had put a second SDHC port inside and fitted it with a fast card then they could have made one model but shipped whatever was in demand.
But what do I know, I can't even find one in stock at the right price.
Mark Foweraker
Psion of the times
I loved your April issue - all very nostalgic! When my young lad (now some 32 years old and with one and a half PhD's), first came home from his primary school talking about computers, I resolved to keep ahead of him.
Inevitably, a Sinclair ZX81 came along, soon followed by a ZX Spectrum and then a BBC Micro with all the bits.
Throughout this learning curve, I discovered Psion and have had virtually every model since the very first "push/pull" grey device. I used these various Psion offerings throughout my healthcare career as I had a need for truly portable, instant access information.
Now, as a professional photographer, I have learned to absorb the digital age and Photoshop, and still believe I am keeping ahead of my son - especially when it comes to imaging and spreadsheets. I thoroughly enjoyed your 30th anniversary issue and will keep it safe as a reminder of how far we have come.
Incidentally, I recently enjoyed an exhibition of the "Historic Development of computers" at the top of La Grande Arche in La Defence in Paris where they had actual examples of computers from the earliest to date.
Today, although I use a variety of PCs in my daily business, I still rely totally on a Psion 3MX for all my personal matters and immediately-to-hand information. It has been 100 per cent reliable, despite three serious drops.
Switching between three agendas, 14 spreadsheets, five databases, three word documents, it has never been beaten in terms of speed of access.
Other software (Berlitz, Phrase, Wine, Dietary Analysis etc) simply add to the versatility of this serious previous world-beater - and it was British-designed and made! An absolutely brilliant device - where next? Perhaps the nearest device is the latest Nokia Communicator?
Keith Erskine
In the frame
I found your digital photo frame group test (PCW April 2008) very interesting, but I feel you have missed two important points.
I have one of these picture frames which is very similar to the featured Cenomax, but without the remote control. It works well and is very satisfactory when viewed from a distance of one metre or greater.
I reduce my photos in Paint Shop Pro to the optimum size of 480x234 - some of my albums contain hundreds of photos, so I do them in batches of around 20. I then put the reduced size photo album onto a 256MB SD card and run the photo frame.
The frame ignores the alphabetical or numerical sequencing, instead playing them back by what appears to be each photo's time stamp, thus throwing my holiday photos out of sequence. It also treats the albums in the same way. I tried renaming the photos within the albums after reducing the size, but it made no difference.
Based on the fact I should be able to get approximately 7,000 resized photos on a 256MB SD card, another problem comes to light: if I switches the unit off overnight, it restarts at what it thinks is the first album again.
The chances of getting through 7,000 photos in one day is limited, so I am unlikely to see the most recent additions to the Photo Frame shown unless I leave it on permanently going through its slide show.
Ron Hak
A bad year for HD DVD
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.
Battery life expectancies
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
A computing revolution
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
