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Forget 3D gaming
Your otherwise fine nostalgia-fest "History of PC Games" feature (PCW April 2008) barely mentioned the text games that were so popular in the early 80s.
Back in the days when graphics cards were unknown, Ram was 640KB, operating systems and applications were loaded by floppy disk, the internet barely existed outside the military and monitors were monochrome and text-only.
Back in 1980, when I was working for a metropolitan authority that shall remain nameless, the playing of text games, particularly Zork and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was endemic amongst us grunt workers to counter the sheer bureaucratic ennui of our daily existence.
They were gripping, required us to use our imaginations, and were often fiendishly difficult - I still remember with pride being one of only three people to finish Hitchhiker's Guide after what must have been hundreds of hours' of play over a year.
Their best advantage, though, was that because they were text our bosses thought we were beavering away at word processing or data entry, a luxury modern cubefarm drones no longer have in the days of high-quality 3D graphics.
I mourn the demise of text games which, like a good book compared to a multi-million dollar film, require you to use your imagination rather than bludgeoning your senses with whizz-bang special effects. They also ran on the lowest spec PCs, required no graphics cards, needed no motor skills other than typing, and you could learn how to play them in minutes.
I hope that, one day, gamers will return to the technical simplicity but narrative complexity of text games, and that new titles will be produced by writers with imagination. And if this ever happens, I hope and pray that a sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide is one of the first to emerge.
Fred Riley
Three cheers for Ada
In the news article "German beats wartime Colossus on Nazi decrypt" (PCW April 2008), you describe how Joachim Schueth recently used his laptop to beat the replica Colossus at Bletchley Park - I suspect living nearer to the transmitter helped him too.
On the same page, you also mention Ada Lovelace, so it is rather odd that you didn't mention the connection between them. Joachim used the Ada programming language to process the radio signals and to simulate the behaviour of Colossus.
How refreshing it is to see someone choosing to write programs in Ada, whether it is for the sheer fun of it or because they want confidence that their programs will not let them down on the day. Well done Joachim and Ada!
Terry Froggatt
History of computing
From Pacman to Pentium (PCW April 2008) was excellent reading which brought back many Memories; I had completely forgotten about The Last One.
I appreciate that the article was not intended to be a complete history of computing, but I was a little disappointed that two of my machines were not represented - one was the Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P. Here's to the next 30 years.
Ivan Drake
Future-proof archiving
I thought your article on archiving (PCW, January 2008) was very interesting. It gave a lot of useful information about how to get content into digital form and organise it as well as some information on physical storage mediums. However there are some really important points which weren't touched on at all.
Choose the file formats you use carefully, When you or your children want to view the content years from now, will the software and the machine to run it on be available? My own advice would be to choose file types that are simple and non-proprietary, like BMP for images, WAV for sound and TXT for text.
So that it's likely there will always be a reader available, if you don't do this you will have to keep an eye on what's going on in the IT world and reformat the data every so often, not a trivial act when we are likely to be talking about multiple gigabytes or even terabytes of data.
The same thing should be considered when choosing which piece of software to use to organise the data. If you have to migrate your data, the task is made much easier the database within the product is capable of being exported in a simple form - CSV being the most commonly accepted format.
Database corruption or loss is a real possibility over retention times the length of a person's life or beyond. Images and other items should be capable of being stored externally to the software so that the database contains only links, not embedded files.
If you choose to use a physical medium for your backups, such as DVD, beware the same obsolescence problems. One manufacturer of "archive grade" DVDs that I checked did not quote any figures for lifetime of media that I could find, even for this flagship product.
My own advice would be to use online services and let the data migration be their problem, not yours. As always use two services, not based in the same town as each other or as you.
Roland Bavington
Security issues
In spite of the recent furore about Data Protection (or actually non-protection), I am still staggered by the number of individuals and companies who make no attempt to encrypt vital data on their computers. Have none of these people ever considered the possibility that their computer might be stolen or need to be repaired?
This was forcefully demonstrated both to a friend of mine who repairs home computers and his client, a home-working solicitor. Having decided that the best solution would be to back-up the data, reformat the hard drive and reload the software, it was only when he suggested that he should take it back to his workshop that the solicitor realised the full implications of data protection.
In the end he had to spend the whole day at the office, mainly sitting reading his newspaper while waiting for Windows and the other software to load and update, being watched all the time by the solicitor in order to ensure that he didn't read or copy any of the confidential files. Not a cheap exercise, particularly if one cost is the solicitor's wasted time!
Surely the encryption of vital confidential data is just as important as regular backups, and I am surprised as to how little reference is made to the subject in computer magazines. Could it be, as has been suggested elsewhere, that the Government tacitly discourages encryption by individuals as this could hamper criminal investigations?
Personally I use Truecrypt, which claims to be acceptable to the United States Department of Defense for documents up to secret level. Once an encrypted folder has been set up, any file saved to that folder is automatically encrypted and decrypted "on the fly" and it is virtually transparent to the user.
I'm sure there are other, equally good, or possibly better programs available - perhaps it is time for PCW to have a look at the subject and encourage their readers to be more security conscious.
Brian J. Edwards
Norton parental controls
I have just read the review of Norton Internet Security 2008 in the January issue of PCW, in which you state that it does not include parental controls or anti-spam.
I purchased NIS 2008 recently from PC World (on offer at £24.99) and in very small letters on the box there is a link to an add-on pack that can be downloaded free of charge, and this pack contains both of these items - you just need to read everything on the box very carefully.
I cannot understand why these items were not included on the installation CD in the first place.
James Munroe
Game over
I read the rave review of Bioshock and, being a big fan of the first-person genre, I ran out to pick up a copy. However, the game wouldn't run on my ATI Radeon 850XT graphics card.
Bioshock is very particular supported graphics hardware, ruling out all but the most recent cards. My 850XT makes light work of Half Life 2, Far Cry and the like, but due to lack of support for the latest shader-model, it's a no-go for Bioshock.
After experiencing the problem, it only took a few seconds of Googling to discover the hordes of other short-changed gamers who have no way to play this game without shelling out for new hardware.
I realise that this requirement is mentioned in the specifications small-print section on the retail box, so ultimately I'm at fault for not reading it properly, but it would have been nice to be forewarned.
Mark Hall
RIP Cybercalc
I've been using Cybercalc for years after learning about it from a computer magazine - probably PCW. I used it this morning for a quick centimetre to inch conversion and I especially value its real-time currency conversions.
However, this afternoon it wouldn't run and when I accessed the Cybermetrics website it said that Cybercalc was no longer available.
Does anyone know why?
Richard East
No control
As a regular subscriber I looked back through my back issues and can not find any reviews on Parental Control software. I searched the internet and found a few other reviews which seemed to rate Webwatcher as the highest. My prime requirement was to be able to block adult content sites.
The company who supply Webwatcher do not offer a short term test option so you must purchase before you can test the effectiveness of the software. It has a great interface and it is possible to set the controls per login to the PC, however it failed dismally at blocking sites.
To be fair the supplier worked hard with me to correct the problem and, even after downloading the latest version, it would still fail. It was suggested that I monitor the sites visited by the children and then block them - not an option I was prepared to entertain.
So, even though this software came top in several reviews, it was totally unusable from my point of view. Again, the supplier had no quibbles in repaying my money, so the problem is with the software and not the support.
Tony Little
Unwanted software
I have had the misfortune to receive new PCs from Hewlett Packard recently.
Don't get me wrong, the build quality is good, and the warranty and support excellent, but they have submitted to a demand from Microsoft that a trial version of Office 2007 is installed on all new PCs.
If a button labelled "Uninstall Office 2007" were prominently displayed on the desktop this would not be so bad, but in truth, getting rid of this unwanted software is a real pain. Add to this Symantec antivirus software and other so called added value programs, and you find it can take an hour or two to prune the PC back to what you need before starting to configure it for your own requirements.
PC builders should have an option on the order form to allow buyers to request a "Windows only" installation so the PC is as virgin as possible when they receive it.
Microsoft owe me for enough of my life already without imposing yet more time wasting options on brand new PCs.
Colin Ferrington
