Missing issue?
Have I missed an issue?
PCW December 2007 informs me there will be an article on wireless print servers next month. But the Letters page in the January 2008 issue then refers to the Editor's Choice (the D-Link DP-310) in the previous issue.
As January follows December, did you sneak an issue in I missed?
Ann Edwards
January 2, 2008 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Technology isn't just for the young
It’s not long after you retire before you see condescending attitudes toward the elderly. “Ooo, look at that old man, he’s learning to use a computer. Isn’t he clever?” A refrain that is all too common nowadays and one that is encouraged by a government that assumes all older people need to attend, or be dragged along to, basic computer classes.
But millions of Britons from an earlier generation worked for many years with advanced high-tech systems. Men of my age (70) and even older worked in space sciences, atomic power stations, advanced transportation systems and, yes, computer systems. Don’t forget the first programmable computer was built at Bletchley Park in the 1940s (check out the working replica, it’s awesome).
I myself worked in the aircraft and other high-tech industries from the 1960s onward, and can include in my portfolio Concorde and guided missile systems, computer-controlled power generation and so on. Of course, manual workers and women of this past age may have had no opportunity, or even desire, to enter the world of electronics. But quite a lot of us oldies are, surprisingly to youngsters, techno-freaks.
I have built my own new (updated) PCs three times and am now online using Wifi; the only reason I’m not using all of the latest gadgets is a lack of finance. So, all you young-uns, stop being so damned condescending to wrinklies: you never know, you could even learn a few things from us.
Mind you, a virus called the Victor Meldrew Syndrome seems to be attacking my old operating system and causing me to grumble, as you have probably noticed. A stable and secure operating system from Microsoft? I don't believe it!
Brian Slack
December 21, 2007 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
VoIP's failings
I have always had at least one VoIP phone in my household for many a year now, yet I have recently started to favour the good old-fashioned plain old telephone service (POTS) over the many issues regarding VoIP phones compared to that of a POTS.
A few months ago I started to realise the increasingly annoying amount of issues to do with VoIP phones. While the price may be cheaper there are many issues that make me choose to use a POTS phone instead of VoIP.
First of all, set up is far easier. With POTS all you have to do is plug it into a phone line and you are pretty much ready to go calling who you like in an instant. VoIP, on the other hand, requires you to connect it up to your computer, either via cable or, even harder, wireless. A lot of the time it goes wrong, requiring you to edit network settings and the like.
When you finally do get it working it turns out that, due to the phone and internet being from the same company, it requires you to have a new phone number as well as being unable to drop your phone service without losing your internet connection.
Secondly, there's the delay. Even a tiny amount of delay causes major echo problems. Even something as common as a router firewall can cause delay up to anywhere from ten milliseconds to 3 seconds.
Thirdly, power is a problem for VoIP. With a POTS phone the power is supplied by the telephone line itself, meaning that in the case of a power outage then your phone is still useable without any problems. A VoIP's phone's power is supplied via AC power, as is the router it relies on, which can cause obvious problems if the power is down during an emergency.
After considering the advantages compared to the disadvantages of POTS and VoIP phones, i think it is a wise choice to stay on POTS until a time when VoIP is more stable, reliable and of a better quality.
Callum Smith
August 17, 2007 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dialup is sufficient
The dialup Dilemmas letter from P Smith (PCW October 2007, Letters) struck a chord with me. I have an 8am to 6pm, Mon to Fri dialup connection which costs £4.99 a month from Tiscali. I am retired so these restricted hours are ok for me.
I don't download video, but do use the internet about 20 hours per week. Downloads do take a long time, sometimes hours, but I have lunch, work off-line, or read PCW, during the download. To go broadband would cost me an extra £120 per year. I can buy a lot of software, or wine, for £120 a year.
I know which I prefer.
John Wood
August 17, 2007 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mastering your music
I read and enjoyed the article on mastering a music collection “Mastering Your Music” in the April issue. It certainly offered lots of clues for those new to the subject. But it was a missed opportunity to really explain what is going on to those of us frustrated by the lack of proper published analysis in this increasingly important area of computer-dependent mixed-media manipulation.
I am cautious about accusing the article of being superficial, when it will clearly serve some readers well. But where is the in-depth comment supported by rigorous testing of the type applied to hardware reviews?
What am I on about? Well, there are lots of codecs out there. All use different alogorithims which result in a different sound. Your codec comparison chart lists only the size of a resulting file using “their respective default settings”. We are not even told what that is. And there is no indication of quality.
Other bland statements, such as WMA at 64Kbits/sec “cannot match the performance of Vorbis and Musepack in other areas” don’t even resolve any obvious meaning.
Meanwhile the now ancient MP3 (MPEG-1, layer 3, to give mp3 its proper name), is given a bad press, with no reference at all to the newer, better MP3-pro, or MPEG-4 audio.
Instead of giving us the projections of experts about which storage medium will last longest, you waste space on a price comparison which readers could easily compile themselves with a pencil or a calculator.
I could go on, but I don’t want to presume to rewrite the article.
Whoever embarks on storing a digital music collection wants to know three things.
1. Which software is the most accurate, reliable means of ripping CD/DVDs.
2. What is the most aurally faithful codec for a given bit rate, to enable an informed decision about the quality / file size trade-off.
3. Which is the most stable, dependable long-term storage solution.
If any of these questions were answered in the article, I need to visit an optician.
Which brings me to the subject of storage raised in the May issue’s editorial. The long-tern reliability of digital media is not a new issue. We are seduced into believing that things are constantly improving. Yet, as DVD speeds increase, dependability does not.
Corporations are used to the need to recycle data continuously in order to ensure that it is still accessible when they need it. They have no choice. Their business depends on secure data.
Consumers, on the other hand, live in a state of blissful ignorance which suppliers are happy to profit from.
There is no discussion about the stability of recorded media. In the press, we read only about ever-increasing burn speeds as the measure of significance. This is short-sighted in the extreme.
Personally, I would prefer a five minute longer burn time which secured five years more of data security, but there is no reliable information on the subject. We work in the dark about the future accessibility of our precious material.
It is the fault of consumers and the media for failing to ask the “write” questions of manufacturers. It is not true to say that the makers are not able find out how long media will remain stable. Testing to destruction has long been part of the R & D process. Variable conditions are not an excuse for providing no guidelines.
In this day and age, we should expect minimum performance figures to be stamped on every piece of recordable media. What are we buying storage for, if not to keep it?
Until we make clear to manufacturers that long-term dependability is more important to us than short-term convenience, we will never find out which storage medium is the safest for our most treasured items. Until then, they will continue to provide throw away products for our throw away society. We can depend on that.
Mike Robinson
May 8, 2007 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Broadband for all
Recent letters and articles in PCW about limited or non-existent broadband services prompt me to consider how we ever arrived at a situation where virtually every house in the UK has access to a telephone line.
Obviously the answer is that commercial considerations were not part of the equation - the GPO was a public service utility that could not choose to ignore areas that were more costly to connect to the network than others.
This public service utility has been turned into a monopoly that serves its shareholders first and the public second, therefore I feel that the government has a duty to protect its citizens who live in areas that BT considers uneconomic to reach.
Is it too much to expect that if BT wants to continue to profit from its monopoly in supplying broadband services, both resale and wholesale, it must be forced to supply a minimum level of connectivity for every household?
A simple rule stating that there must never be an order of magnitude difference in Mbits/sec between the slowest and fastest service available to any subscriber would suffice to put even the most remote areas on the broadband map now and keep them updated as technology progresses. Unless this happens, I fear there will be some areas that will never be connected – ever.
Ralph Bartlett
March 19, 2007 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The myth of standby
Regarding your article "Switched on PCs cost the earth" and the general concern about equipment on stand-by, it is quite wrong to say that it 'wastes' electricity. What happens to all that power? It's converted to heat which heats the building.
This means that the heating system will run less. In addition. leaving equipment on standby can improves reliability. Components are not stressed so much. this means equipment will last longer, so less electronic equipment will be scrapped.
The point I am trying to make is that it's not just a simple case of wasting power if equipment is left on standby, it is much more complex equation which should be looked at thoroughly before any generalisations can be made.
If I switch off all my electronic equipment in the house, my central heating system will compensate by running longer. If I save 1KW of electricity, the central heating will have to produce the equivalent amount of heat. Which KW creates the most carbon dioxide? The one generated by the power station or the one generated by my central heating system??
Sandy Norval
November 29, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Mesh...great computers...even greater delivery charges
Being in the market for a new base unit (in fact two), PCW was my first stop to see what the current state of the market was. The August edition was very favourable to a Mesh Core 2 Duo system. So I headed off to the Mesh site.
I found they had a good performing Core 2 Duo base unit only system, designated the Elite2 duo SLI costing £799 inc. VAT, a fair price. So I put two of them into the shopping cart at a cost of £1,598 and proceeded to checkout and payment details stage. However I found that at the checkout stage, the total being asked was a whopping £1,760. How can that be? On examination of the details, it transpires that the delivery charge on a base unit to Northern Ireland is an incredible £69 + VAT, giving a total delivery charge for two base units (note, just two base units, no monitors, keyboards,
speakers or other things that might require additional boxes) of £162.15 !!
Surely this is some mistake, how can it cost such an amount to send parcels whose weight in total must be no more than 20kg, to an address in the UK ? Royal Mail will send an item up to 10kg anywhere in the UK (yes, including to and from Northern Ireland), guaranteed next day delivery (yes including to and from Northern Ireland), and insure it for £1,000, for £18.90 all inclusive. So assuming that each unit weights less than 10kg, that's a total of £37.80, fully insured, and guaranteed next day delivery.
I recently sent £1,000 of items, weighing 8kg to Taiwan, using DHL express service, the items got there in 3 days, at a cost of £55!
Clearly, a company like Mesh can negoitate highly favourable delivery terms with a carrier, given the volume of business, so one must assume they can get FAR better rates than I can, as an individual. So I find it impossible to believe that £162 reflects the actual costs of delivering two base units to me in Northern Ireland, regardless of the carrier chosen. I have actually tested the checkout, and if I was to buy 10 base units, Mesh would charge me £690 plus VAT (that's £810) for delivery!!
If goes without saying that with those delivery charges, I was not inclined to purchase from Mesh, and assume that few from Northern Ireland would consider it a cost effective company to deal with.
Ian McNeill
August 31, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1)
Mobile, but at a price
Gordon Laing is right to be sceptical about mobile connectivity (PCW, July 2006, p. 33). The rhetoric about being online whenever and wherever is so much hot air, because of the charging methods. Let me explain.
Every 3 or 4 months, I spend a day at the British Library, which commendably has Wifi throughout. During that day, I might want to look at my email four or five times. If I have a monthly subscription with one of the major wireless ISPs, there's no problem. But why take out a monthly subscription for something I use only occasionally?
Alternatively, I can buy an hour's time (say) with an ISP. But that hour begins the moment I first connect. I can't distribute it into several short sessions throughout the day. Delving into the recesses of the BT Openzone website you'll find a little-advertised pay-as-you-go tariff for my kind of usage. It's pricey, but cheaper than paying each month for something you don't use, or serially buying an hours'-worth of time and using only five minutes.
As for 3G data connectivity on the move, forget it. It has to be a handsome monthly subscription or nothing.
Allan Jones
June 23, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1)
The ludicrous cost of spare parts
Firstly I would like to note that I like Dell systems. I have bought them consistently for several years not because they are the best but because they are cheap, and until today reliable – they do what it says on the box and the online support with drivers etc. is pretty good, however...
We have just had a not-quite-3-year-old Dell Optiplex GX270 fail on us. It appears to be suffering a known Dell motherboard problem that causes it to either not boot or shut down during the boot process with an error message that declares it has shutdown due to a temperature problem. This is apparently due to some bad capacitors on the motherboard.
I have just been quoted from Dell’s spares provider a replacement for £195 + VAT plus the £5 shipping cost. Please note that this is a second-user, or ‘reconditioned' part with 90 days warranty not a new one!
The very pleasant lady I spoke to did mention they only had one in stock so either they are really attached to it or no one has been stupid enough to buy it at that price, I tend to favour the latter reason.
I don’t know whether this is an endemic issue across the market or just Dell, but this has certainly tainted my impression of the company.
When did it become cheaper to throw the things away? Aren’t we supposed to reduce the waste we generate?
Why does Dell make the cases so easy to open – what’s the point? Am I just older then I realised? Can you provide me with the address of a third world country I can send the thing to so it can be recycled?
Thanks for the opportunity to vent my anger!
Tom Glasson
June 9, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Ebay reserve policy doesn't help anyone
I am sure you will receive lots of feedback following your eBay article in July 2006 PCW, but I have a strong objection to eBay’s policy on reserve prices.
When I first started using eBay, it was possible to set a reserve price for any item you were selling.
About 18 months or so ago, ‘to improve service to all our users’ eBay changed its policy and now you cannot impose a reserve price lower than £50 for any item. The only other way to control the price of an item you list is to set a minimum starting bid.
That imposes a big risk on sellers of lower-priced goods. If I have an item that I want (say) £20 for, I have to either
(1) take the risk of being forced to sell for 99p if I follow eBay’s recommendation of setting a low starting bid, and get no higher bid, or (2) dissuade bidders (and show my hand) by setting a starting bid close to my ‘reserve’ price.
I cannot see how this policy helps eBay, and it certainly has dissuaded me from using it to sell modest items. If eBay found the service was uneconomic on its old terms, the answer should have been to raise the fee for reserve price auctions, not eliminate them.
Needless to say, when I emailed eBay about this issue, I was fobbed off with irrelevant automatic replies and was never able to communicate with anyone who understood or cared about my issue. Maybe you might have better luck.
Tony Cater
May 19, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Hello, Metronet - anyone home?
I do feel sorry for those who use Metronet for broadband - that includes myself. The breakdown frequency is unacceptably high, but I am staying with them pro tem in the belief that many others will desert them and thus relieve the pressure on their seemingly poor quality equipment.
It cannot be beyond the wit of man to find an automatic means of telling subscribers who telephone server technical hotlines whether there is temporary capacity overload or access is denied due to equipment breakdown.
Instead of the conventional engaged tone that greets enraged callers, why not enable BT to use the sound of babble by chatting people for overload, the gurgle of a frying electrolytic capacitor for minor faults and the sound of repeated explosions for major breakdown. Then at least we will know whether to try again in five minutes, five hours or five days.
David Boswell
April 28, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Adobe rip-off
I work as an IT technician in the education sector in a local primary school. I was asked recently about running a lunch time computer club for the Gifted and Talented children in key stage 2 classes.
I decided that this was a good idea and that I would teach them to use Macromedia Dreamweaver so that they could produce material for our website and also our intranet.
Macromedia had brought this out for primary schools at £299 for studio 8 with 17 licences 15 student and 2 teacher, a bargain!! I placed an order for this through a reseller, who contacted me to tell me that this was not available since the Adobe take over of Macromedia even though it is advertised, and that Adobe had school licences available as site licences.
I already knew about this as having worked for over 10 years in education I had encountered this in secondary schools where I have worked. Looking at the new pricing I found this was going to cost us a minimum of £1699!!! Over 5 times as much!
This is the price for secondary school, colleges and universities – fine if you have a large budget to play with (most primary schools can’t afford this kind of expenditure and don’t need 500 licences as they are lucky if the have 100 PCs and probably would only use Dreamweaver with the more able pupils in small groups anyway).
I contacted Adobe customer services to check the situation and was directed to their education website once again which I had already seen, and let them know this and pointed out the fact of the price change and the use in primary schools.
Once again this is some corporate big wig who knows stuff all about the education market, grouping everything together under one umbrella (bit like our government – don’t get me started).
How can Adobe justify this massive price increase saying they are “restructuring” their prices. I suspect that this will back-fire on them as most primary schools will look at alternatives, which may lead to the decline of the use of certain pieces of software as the next generation of programmers and designers will be used to using products they learn at school from an early age.
Microsoft had to learn this lesson in schools, restructuring it’s licence prices for education as it came under threat from open source software as schools simply couldn’t afford the extortionate cost of corporate like pricing and began moving away from Microsoft products.
Perhaps some of these other companies for once should take a leaf out of Microsoft’s book.
Sean Hindle
April 21, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
BT broadband black hole
I reside in a rural black hole of Surrey just 40 miles from Central London. Not only can one not receive any mobile signal; even from Orange which has a mast a mile away (behind trees), we have been deprived of broadband and had the distinction of being the last exchange in Surrey to be not connected. During the last three year period, BT insisted that they had "no plans" to provide broadband as the number of subscribers were uneconomic.
Campaigns by rural businesses eventually enabled the opportunity to supply broadband be put to tender. Brilliant! However BT won the tender...
Following a successful breakfast meeting with free croissants and coffee, the backwoodsmen and women were advised that the necessary black box would be installed in the local exchange in one week's time and we should check with BT that the overhead copper wire supplying us was adequate to give satisfactory bandwidth and have the line tested and request connection. Following the meeting, a casual check on the BT website still indicated that BT had no broadband plans for our exchange.
A lengthy telephone 150 enquiry (over one hour) involving multitudinous menus, sales persons, broadband specialists and any one that the person answering the enquiry could pass one on to, led to the answer that BT had no knowledge of the impending enablement, they did not know that a tender had been held or that they had won it and all their current information indicated that there were still no plans to install it on our beleaguered exchange.
I await "D" day in three days time with great interest and wonder whether BT should really have a monopoly on all our copper wire. I am still debating whether to use them for an ISP!
David
March 29, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
I got those travellin' blues..
Everyday we see and read about more new gadgets that are smaller, thinner and sleeker being introduced. We are also promised a world without wires and total freedom of movement and therefore enjoyment of our new gadgets.
As your article said sooner or later no matter how long-lived the batteries are, these gadgets will run out of juice and will have to be charged and invariably that means wires, power adapters and transformers.
My family and I have recently returned from a longhaul holiday. Together we had a Motorola, a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and an O2 XDA. We also had an Olympus mini Mju, a Casio S-600 (both of which can only be charged with its cradle) and a Sony handycam.
To top that off we brought along an Archos AV700 to store our digital photos in case we ran out of memory cards, an mp3 player and a Bluetooth headset because my dearly beloved is such a law abiding citizen that he would not get behind a steering wheel without one wherever he might be.
All in there were 6 power chargers, two cradles and their power sockets, one mini transformer and its power socket collectively weighing over 2kg. I also travel with a 5-socket power strip because in most hotel rooms I find that there will only be one spare power point.
My grouse number one is why can’t manufacturers get together and make their adapters the same so that we can charge our gadgets with just one or two chargers. Even USB cables, which are supposed to be 'universal' do not all the same type of interfaces as in the case of our Casio and Olympus cameras.
Grouse number two is, if we have to carry all these adapters around with us, why can’t they make the wires retractable into the head of the sockets so I don’t have to spend a few minutes painstakingly winding them up, tying and bagging them up individually so that I don’t end up with a tangled mess at the end of our journey.
Every time you go buy a new gadget you marvel at the how small or thin the manufacturers have managed to make them. After you have struck a bargain, the sales assistant will go to the backroom or wherever and come back with a box at least half the size of a shoebox. Plonked right in the middle of the box would be this beautiful new, sleek, wonderfully thin new gadget surrounded by all its ugly accompaniments most notably a power charger equal to or twice its size with its equally abhorrent wire attached.
Dear manufacturers of all things small and beautiful, have a thought for those of us who have to be responsible for the nitty, gritty part of our lives and please allocate a bigger portion of your R&D budget to making these power adapters smaller, come with retractable wires or best of all make them universal as in UNIVERSAL. I am sure that is not too much to ask.
Amy Cooper
March 3, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Call this 'rescue'?
I advised my aunt to buy an Acer Aspire laptop almost a year back. I must say I am very satisfied with the bang per buck her budget bought her, and am impressed with many of the tiny convenience features Acer had built in to the initial software setup process.
Recently, a system file went missing or got corrupted. Following instructions, I inserted the rescue disk whose instructions which gave me the impression that it would allow me to recover or replace
the missing file without requiring a full restore. Press "C" for continue, and many minutes later, a very nicely packaged recovery program that never gives you an option to bail out, invites you to
customise the copy of Windows that has been copied on to your freshly wiped main partition....
I thank my geeky stars that I had painstakingly moved my aunt's My Documents folder structure and her email to the cryptically named "Acer Data" partition that had been spared by the zealous recovery tool. Thanks to this I "only" had to reinstall all her applications, antivirus, bookmarks, and change the out-of-the-box Windows settings that common sense call for.
Now, I had been aware that many branded machines are shipped with "recovery" versions of Windows. I may even have been a little too cavalier when I hit that fateful "C" button. But when big name companies can take the pains to add on so many post-Windows-setup customisations to change wallpaper and screensavers to branded nonsense, install utilities, all straight out of the box and post-recovery, and even have the sense to create a separate partition that is NOT wiped by the highly restrictive "recovery" routine..
Surely they could also move the standard user data folders to other partitions too? Ideally, of course, the "recovery" CD should first give the user an option to boot in to the very handy recovery shell
(come on, it's part of the OS isn't it??) that provides all the tools necessary to recover from such file corruptions without resorting to the Nuclear Option.
Charitha Ratwatte (Jnr)
February 17, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Blacklisted email servers
For several months I have experienced problems with one email sender who advises me that his emails are being returned 2/3 days after despatch, with the comment "....unable to deliver". No other explanation was given. Needless to say I was unaware of this but when advised I examined my security set up and found nothing wrong (Norton Internet Security 2005 listed the sender's email address as OK to receive)
Two weeks ago a further sender had all mail bounced back followed by another last week.
I asked my ISP (tesco.net) if there was any filter being applied and was told that I should go to a site address within tesco.net and remove a 'spam' filter that had been applied to my internet address. This had been done without my knowledge. It was suggested that I remove the 'check' against the filter and try again.
I next asked one sender to send me a simple line of text to test that I could now receive OK. The test failed with the email being returned.
I again approached tesco.net support services as I was still at square one. Tesco’s Their reply is shown below and I wonder if their action is legal and what Microsoft's reaction is likely to be given that Hotmail is blocked.
Personally I am annoyed that no warning was given that this blocking was to take place and therefore I could not alert any of my addressees.
The email just rec'd from tesco.net:-
“Unfortunately Tesco are blocking emails from Wanadoo, Yahoo and Hotmail. These domains are blacklisted by the third party mail filtering service that we use, as sources of SPAM. We are unable to remove the blacklisting. It is the responsibility of the blacklisted ISP to clean up its act and ensure that their domain is not a haven for spammers. Once this has been done they will be removed from the blacklist”
January 27, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Noview Freeview
Your article on Home Theatre PCs was both interesting and informative. Unfortunately, as with virtually all similar articles, the issue of digital terrestrial reception was brushed aside with the line; “If you live in a freeview area with good reception.....”; continuing on as if we all do, completely ignoring the fact that approximately 25% of the population of the UK patently do not.
How about some advice on ways to improve reception in areas that are partially blocked? And what about news of any progress for areas without reception, like you occasionally used to do for the advance of ADSL.
I live in an area where the vast majority of households do get good reception, but because of geographical anomalies and sheer bad luck, there’s a small enclave of twenty or thirty properties that are in some kind of ‘dip’ where reception is poor (reception is also poor for analogue TV, but the only effect of this is that we get a little ‘ghosting’, the image itself is usually reasonable). Houses just across the road or around the corner have no problem.
These enclaves are apparently quite numerous, nationally and there’s little prospect of improvement anytime soon, as there’s no easy (or cheap) way to force the signal to go “around” whatever is causing the blockage. The powers that be are aware of the situation, because when you look up my post code on the freeview.com website, they acknowledge our plight with the line; “SORRY - FREEVIEW doesn’t cover your area for the postcode...”.
I’ve tried a couple of set-top boxes, borrowed from friends and although we do get a signal and some of the channels, the picture can be pixellated and for some reason, contrast/colour is very poor. It’s like watching TV through a fog.
My main concern is for the future. Sometime in the next five to ten years, analogue transmissions are due to end. What happens then? One thing’s certain. I won’t pay for a TV licence if they things don’t improve.
I am of course aware of the alternatives, such as cable and satellite; and they are available, but I don’t want them. I’m happy with the five terrestrial channels and do not wish to swap my 8Mbit ADSL for a vastly inferior, bunged up, cable connection. And before you suggest it, I won’t pay for both.
I suppose I ought to say “thanks for a great magazine” and all that now, but after that letter, I’m not in the mood. Oh, all right then; “thanks for a great magazine”.
Nick Hawryliw
November 24, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
No games consoles for me
Nice to see all the new games consoles being sent out for Christmas but I will not be buying any of them - ever. If I buy one I want to be able to buy it anywhere in the world, buy games anywhere in the world and use it anywhere in the world without Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo telling me what I can and cannot do. Why should I be denied the right to buy and use these machines and their programmes where ever I want to ?
John Kent
November 11, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rip-off postal charges to Northern Ireland
As a resident of Northern Ireland I feel there are a few injustices in the area of IT product delivery that need to be voiced. A few years ago, one was able to order from a variety of online retailers, mostly based in England, without incurring substantial surcharges. Sadly, those days have mostly gone. It seems that it is now fair game to add on up to £15 extra for a delivery to the Province. A quick survey of the major online retailers makes this abundantly clear – for example, Dabs charges £11.75 extra for NI delivery; Ebuyer £15; Savastore £14.95; Novatech £14.10 and Microdirect £15.
This issue was first brought to my attention when I tried to buy a game for the Xbox from Ebuyer, which had been competitively priced at around £20. However, when I proceeded through to the checkout, this almost doubled, given the £15 surcharge to Northern Ireland. Such companies must ask themselves if it is justifiable to charge £15 extra for the postage of a small light item to another part of the UK.
When you look at Royal Mail’s rates, you will find that using Special (next day) Delivery, a parcel of 2kg weight sent from London to Belfast with £500 compensation insurance, costs £6.95 in total – never mind the extra £10-15 pounds customer are asked to pay. As the majority of IT components will weigh less than 2kg, I feel that it surely is profiteering on the part of such companies to charge such exorbitant surcharges. Thankfully, there are still a few places, such as Overclockers.co.uk, which maintain one charge for the whole of the UK.
The companies may argue that their delivery agents charge them more for “overseas delivery”; I too can see the need to pay more for larger and bulkier items. However, I hardly think a PCI card or new processor would fit into such categories and hence would urge such retailers to reconsider their policy on behalf of all who live in “outlying areas”.
Maurice Hall
November 7, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Why no legal remedy for spam?
I'm writing with reference to the letter from Nigel Johnston, published in the August 2005 issue of PCW and regarding spam etc. I am also perplexed as to why no legal remedy can be made available.
I too know of instances where IT specialists have been called in by companies whose operations have been brought to a halt due to the fact their computers have been rendered inoperable due to both malicious (virus) infections and legal, but no by no means benign, installations such as spam and spyware. Mr Johnston makes the point that if he were to go on a wrecking spree in the local supermarket he would be brought to book toot sweet. However, there would be mens rea in that case and therefore subject to criminal proceedings.
Sending spam and spyware has no criminal intent and would have to be dealt with in the civil courts. One could make the point that we cannot sue individuals or organisations that send junk mail to the home, and the same applies junk emails and spam/spyware. But, that is a mere inconvenience and the mail can be binned, you don't have to hire an IT expert to rid your home of it.
A colleague of mine recently had to pay £680.00 to deal with such a problem. He winced at the cost, though it took 2 highly qualified and skilled people the best part of the day to get his computers running again, although he, as an Independant Financial Advisor charges a minimum £120.00 for an intial 1 hour consultation, but that's another story. Surely, there must some enterprising lawyer who can bring a class action, or a collective action whereby several organisations can bring an action against the offender.
As Mr Johnston suggests, a high profile precedent whereby those responsible were stung and stung hard is needed. Meantime, I've posted this query before but as yet, no reply. Is it possible to include mail rules where the mail client will only accept mails from enumerated sources, such as .co.uk?
Michael Bowker
November 4, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
High Definition TV jungle
I read with interest Gordon Laing's column in the October issue on how "High Definition" TVs make poor PC monitors (at least regarding non-square pixels).
Ironically, part of the point of the HDTV standard resolutions is that the pixels are supposed to be square. The problem is that most panels seem not to use the resolutions at which the signal is encoded - 1280x720 or 1920x1080 for HD. I've always assumed that the reason big panels tend to be 1366x768 or 1024x1024 is that they started out life as computer monitors for trade shows, and they
wanted a computer-friendly resolution (at least with the edges cropped off, in the case of 1366x768), so I'm particularly amused to hear you complain about how they're not suited for PC use.
The 1024x1024 variant might just be to make the internal electronics simpler, but in this day and age that's not much of an excuse for the compromised image.
The thing about 1366x768 and 1024x1024 is that they're not very good for HDTV either. Although the former, in particular, has enough resolution to show a 720p image, it'll still smear it out a bit
in the way a desktop TFT does when given a non-native resolution - I'd rather look at a 1024x768 signal on a 1024x768 screen than on a 1280x1024 one.
A 1080 signal can only be displayed by sampling it down, so you'll never get the full picture quality no matter how clever the electronics. 1024x1024 is always going to cause havoc, since it doesn't even have enough resolution to render the lower HDTV resolution horizontally. If I'm going to spend a lot of money on an HDTV, I'm not too keen on having the final stage of the display mess around with the picture - and there aren't many native 1080 panels out there, and there aren't all that many which are truly 1280x720 either.
I can't understand why there's an obsession with making 1366x768 panels when a native 1280x720 panel surely gives a better picture. This doesn't just concern people trying to drive the panel from a PC, it concerns anyone wanting to watch a HDTV picture.
There's still the related problem of actually getting any HD content out of the computer in the first place, with HDCP protection being required for HD playback in Vista (although it's not Microsoft's fault). No current graphics cards support it, and neither do any monitors designed for computer use (yet), even though many can display a 1080p picture with perfect clarity and relative affordability, so long as you don't mind 120 lines of letterboxing.
This won't - probably - stop you from putting a desktop up on your HDTV, but it does mean that if you want to play HD video on your PC you'd better like your TV, because your monitor won't work. For now, this has put me firmly out of the early-adopter bracket which I'd like to occupy until an affordable (not necessarily large) native 1080 panel appears; there's no way I'm paying HDTV prices for a sub-SXGA screen this side of the millennium.
Andrew Garrard
September 2, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
United Rip-Off Kingdom
I wonder if I have stumbled on the latest example of rip-off Britain. I've been checking the availability of Knoppix 4.0 on DVD. It appears to cost about 6 Dollars (£3.32) or 5 Euros (£3.41) where those currencies apply. In the UK the price is more than double at £7.50! As we sort of share a language with America, Canada, Australia and other countries it is not necessary to personalise a version for the UK, so why are that much dearer?
You like to brag about the value of your cover-disc software. How about giving us a real cheapie and making Knoppix 4.0 your next cover DVD?
Tony Hewitt
P.S. In "Lay Down the Law" by Paul Allen he uses the strange phrase "the UK and Wales", implying, inter alia, that it excludes Scotland. Scotland donated a monarch (James VI) in 1603 to join the party which had long been going on between England and Wales and, in 1707, the parliaments were merged. So what was he trying to say? The Scottish legal system remains autonomous, making it harder to write an article authoritatively covering both countries - but that is no excuse for dumping Scotland and leaving Scottish readers to find their own way home. He also avoids the point that, if a Scot buys from and English-based supplier, the contract will be formed under English law. In the event of a dispute, the Scottish customer will be hard pressed to find a lawyer qualified to practise English law and handle the dispute on his behalf. Some solid guidance on how best to proceed would be most welcome.
September 2, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Photo prints for life?
I would like to comment on your reviews of photo printers.
In the past you bought a roll of film, took your pictures and then had them all developed, generally discarding only the worst. With the widespread shift from film to digital photography, you now download the images from your camera to your PC and then print only the best, saving yourself from
storing large numbers of paper photographs.
You will of course still have the digital files archived away, but in many ways digital files are more vulnerable than printed images - many of us have experienced hard drive crashes or corruptions of our storage media. When this happens you are likely to lose a large part, if not all, of your photo
collection. Moreover, the file and storage formats we use today are popular, but where will they be a century or more from now? Unless you and your ancestors go through the expensive and time-consuming process of periodically migrating your archives to the technologies of the day you risk
the chance of them eventually becoming obsolete.
This is where printed images score over their digital counterparts, and why it is important that they are as permanent as possible. In our rush to embrace digital recording systems, we run the risk of large amounts of everyday history being unavailable to future generations. Therefore in your reviews of photo printers, I would like to see a rating for the longevity of the prints produced by these printers and their consumables. I realize that simulating aging is a difficult task, but having seen how quickly images have faded from the photos produced by some inkjet printers I feel that more emphasis should be placed on this subject.
This does of course open a much wider debate about the digital storage of all types of information....
Chris Crawshay
August 26, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Is WAP growing up?
It would be good it you could run some pages on what is now available on WAP.
WAP did seem to be pretty rubbishy ["ringtones" for kids, but not much else] but now there seems to be a growing amount of really useful information that can be read on the newer mobile phones.
The BBC runs an excellent WAP site: news, sport, weather, road delays. Yahoo now offers an alternative news service and also offers to find items such as the cheapest Nikon Camera. And the Railways site is brilliant: on 7th July I was able to work out how to get home from the North avoiding London; train times, connection delays all available from my seat in a carriage.
If you could pull this together and give us a listing, that would be a real service.
Ian Macpherson
August 26, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Refreshingly Rory
It was refreshing to read Rory Reid’s column in September’s issue. One reason why I subscribe to your magazine is that you really do take the side of the reader - not the manufacturers’, nor the advertisers’, but plain old Joe Public’s.
Rory elegantly made the case that consumers are frequently bamboozled into buying pointless, faddish gadgets that will be obsolete and require updating within moments. I’ve written before to commend the way you have exposed the overemphasis of megapixels in digital cameras, something which Rory makes clear in his article. Good on yer.
Your refusal to get onto the bandwagon of flogging and hyping every gadget simply because it is there, is truly refreshing and of immense value to the reader. I assume this can’t be easy for PCW, seeing that you must be reliant on advertising revenue to some extent, but it is to be commended. Because of your stance, I know that if a reviewed item is a dog, you will say so; if it is over-hyped, you will say so; and if you say it is good, I will know that you’re not just saying that to keep the advertisers or the suppliers sweet.
In the minefield that is the technology market, it’s nice to know that there is a publication to rely upon for unambiguous, trustworthy advice. Many thanks for that.
Alan Thomas
August 12, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Smaller, better, lighter, less
I just read the letter in the PCW September issue about the compact version of PCW. this sounds like a great idea. While you're looking into that, can you think about providing a version without a cover CD? I have broadband at home, and access to everything on the cover CD already. Not having to pay for a CD I never use would make getting my copy of PCW even more pleasurable.
Andrew Ducker
August 5, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Where is the innovation?
I look forward to receiving PCW each month and especially to reading the reviews of new equipment. I have always wondered why the fax/telephone was never marketed as a ‘must have’ for every home. It was typical of the lack of imagination in many technology driven companies.
If every home had had one, instead of merely a telephone, not only would costs (and prices) have plummeted but the communication benefits to consumers (and to the phone companies’ profits!) would have been enormous. Sending letters direct overnight would have been the norm – first class post would have been almost eliminated!
Recently I have noticed that projectors are beginning to be marketed for home use, but this doesn’t seem very widespread, and having to link the projector to a computer or TV makes life unnecessarily complicated. Again, a lack of customer-driven thinking by technology driven companies! When will one of them add the simple circuits required for TV reception into the projector? Do that and they could capture the home TV market from LCD TVs and at a low price give us all the benefits of large screen viewing.
Come on manufacturers, let's have some useful innovation!
Peter Williams
August 3, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Printing web pages
Why do web pages print with the right-hand edge missing? Over the years I've used many printers on many web pages and, recently, unless the page is laid out with all the text centred, the last word or fraction of a word (who knows?) is omitted down the right margin.
Can it be that all webpages are designed around American Letter page size, which is slightly wider than A4? I've just tried a new HP laser printer using 'ZoomSmart' (scaled to fit A4) which perfectly reduces an A3 Excel spreadsheet to A4 portrait size but which cannot tame a web page.
I, and several thousand others, would be very greatful for for your insight into this phenomenum.
Colin Benson
July 22, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Pin and chips
We now all live in a world where almost everything we do is controlled by PIN numbers. I have today taken stock of exactly how dependent we are on these combination of numbers and how without them we have major problems
I woke this morning and after entering the hallway was prompted to enter my alarm PIN number. After breakfast I turned on my laptop and desktop PCs which both requested PIN numbers. Using my mobile reminded me I needed a top-up via my credit card and, lo and behold, my pin was required to turn the phone pad on and again to allow use of my credit card.
To open my briefcase another 4 digit number was required and 30 mins later upon leaving the house my alarm had to be reset using a 6 figure pin.
Luckily my car CD/radio has a PIN preset that's only needed if power is lost. A call to the cashpoint needed yet another PIN.
Entering the company car park is controlled by PIN number - so is the main office door and several others in the building but these are not set by me and are harder to remember which leaves me stuck outside more times than I gain entry
Powering on any company IT device needs a PIN plus other security PINS depending on what level you need to access.
Leaving work again needs more PINs only this time where as I could not get into the office, this time I cannot get out.
Calling in at the shop for some stress-relieving fluid ( beer to you) and they want a PIN for my new chip and PIN credit card at last I get home and entering the house using a pin to turn alarm off I listen to my answering machine ( guess what - no PIN for this!) and after turning on the TV I have a broadband failure on both TV and computer. When I ring customer services they need a PIN identification number to even discuss the account with me to prove I am who I say I am.
This is sorted so I decide to select a pay-per-view video and this needs my customer service PIN to activate my chosen video.
A few beers later I hit the bed (after setting the house alarm with a pin) and fall into a deep sleep. I have a dream that I die and am waiting at the pearly gates but they wont let me in: "You need a pin number, mate" was the answer.
July 15, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fatal Exception: Rolf Harris vs Bill Gates
I need you to finally answer a question that me and my mate Tarquin have been arguing down the pub for ages and ages.
Who do you think would win a hypothetical fight between Bill Gates and Rolf Harris?
I would be grateful to hear your theories.
Many Thanks
Barry Barron
We reckon it's no contest: if Bill could survive Rolf's opening Stylophone attack, he'd bore Rolf to death in a matter of seconds..
May 19, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
DVD spams attracts me to the pirates
Next time you talk to the DVD film industry, would you tell them that putting 15 mins of advertsing in front of a film and disabling the ability to FF through it is the best reason I can think of for buying a pirate DVD.
My nine year old grandson likes to go to the cinema, primarily because I get mugged for a few mins in the games arcade, popcorn, drink, Macdonalds & a comic. But, unlike me, he likes watching the films again & again on VHS. Now he's moved to DVD.
Until recently I've always found ways around the "this feature is disabled" screen, but the latest purchase defied my best efforts. After struggling to cut to the chase my grandson turned to me and said "I'll be as old as you by the time the film starts, grandad".
And of course he'll get this EVERY time he watches the goddam film.
Now I could copy the entire thing to a hard drive, and either edit it to disable the disabling (if you see what I mean), or get a bit more clever & remove the ads completely. Either of which could find me in court, even though I bought the real thing.
Or I could avoid paying £15 for the DVD, a blank DVD-R, and an evening's effort, and pay £5 to the guy who provides knockoffs with no ads. Preview copies or direct-from-the-industry full spec pirates seem to be the order of the day.
Even at full retail price, the knockoff would be more attractive because it is more convenient than the real thing. How crazy is that?
It's not about the price. I'll pay the full price BUT I just want the film, not video SPAM.
David Reynolds
May 17, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Don't forget CRTs
I don’t normally write to magazines much, but my pent up frustration finally got the better of me. The very last few words of your May issue (Retro, p244) were "we wouldn't even consider testing a CRT today". I ask you to step back and consider if you are projecting the whole picture to those who you advise.
I have a Sony 19in. Trinitron Monitor which I bought second hand 3 years ago for £25. I work at a resolution of 1,600 x 1,200. I play my games (World of Warcraft and Doom 3) at 1,600 x 1,200. I eagerly scan the catalogue I get from Novatech each month for the latest TFTs and their specifications.
I have yet to find one that will deliver a resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 at a reasonable price! The latest advert for a Sony 19in. TFT states "Once you own a 19in. monitor or larger, you'll appreciate the extra work area and higher resolutions." Well sorry, but that is talking about 1,280 x 1,024, for the princely sum of £433.57 (inc Vat). Those of us with CRTs have been enjoying high resolutions and response times for years, at far better value.
I agree that things need to be weighed up, and if desk space and portability are issues for you then TFTs are the way to go, but to ignore the poor resolutions they offer, the costs and the response times of something you are buying to stare at for many hours is bordering on irresponsible.
You have a duty to your readership to present the whole picture and allow them to make informed decisions based upon ALL the facts.
Mark Moore
March 31, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Macromedia macropricing
Macromedia has some great software tools such as Flash, Dreamweaver. They invest in development and deserve to have a good price. However the one thing that I cannot stomach is the price differential between the USA and the UK.
If you download Dreamweaver in the USA the sterling equivalent price is £213, but if you download the same product from Macromedia's UK site the same product price is £339 (excluding VAT). Even allowing for import duties, there is no justification for such a differential. Given the availability of realtime foreign exchange feeds there is no reason for why the price cannot more accurately track the vendor's home currency.
Their ecommerce system checks something to determine that you are in the UK, and defaults to the UK sales site even if you are logged on to their USA site. Whilst this convenient it does mask the price differential. You cannot buy from their US on-line store unless you have a US address.
The UK press including computing magazines could be doing a lot more for the UK public by highlighting this type of Internet exploitation by global companies that have UK offices.
Charles Smith
March 30, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filth ridden PCW is the breast!!
I write to you with utter shock, dismay and contempt for your publication!!!
On page 35 of Personal Computer World May 2005, you had an article which included, amongst other things, breast enlargement (Clone yourself for PC gaming).
You did not, in any way, warn the readers that the article contained references which some readers may find offensive, disturbing or downright depraved.
Not only was this article published, but on page 17 in the very same publication, you printed an article detailing the fall in pornographic spam.
I am not surprised! Your filth ridden publication has amply made up for the shortfall.
Keep up the good work.
Richard Quadling
March 21, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Government to suspend 14% tax on PC monitors?
Last year you had a news article about the increase in duty that monitors with DVI interfaces would be subject to.
From 1st october it would appear they have been attracting an extra 14% duty because they are being classed as video monitors. I'm sure there were plenty of readers who felt this was simply another stealth tax on new technology and I took up the issue with my local MP, Norman Baker, who has written to the Treasury about it.
You will not be surprised that the Treasury's response wasn't exactly helpful. However, another letter and another response and they have added a comment that " ...a proposal is to be submitted to the European Council to suspend duties on certain types of monitor, classified in the 14% duty heading, that are most likely to be used with personal computers."
The comment goes on to say if this goes through it is intended to make this retrospective from January 1st. So how is that going to work? If you bought a monitor recently how will you claim the duty back? Will the government tell us? I'm waiting to see what develops.
Rod Main
March 14, 2005 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
