Eee and me – “the talk”

Friday, April 25th, 2008

I think it’s fair to say that in the PC Pro offices I’m known for two things: making cups of tea and an unfathomable love for the Eee PC. And when I say unfathomable I mean it. We’re like that couple in the corner of the tube every morning - you know, the overly affectionate ones who never come up for air and nobody looks directly at.

It was a bit of a whirlwind romance to be fair, love at first sight and why shouldn’t it have been? The Eee is thin, pretty and most importantly cheap – pretty much my ideal date. Only thing is, success has turned its head. Suddenly, with the release of the Eee PC 900, it’s not so cheap anymore and if it carries on gorging on additional tech, it’s not going to be so thin either.

All in all, I think somebody needs to sit down with Asus and explain that its baby doesn’t need a bigger screen. It doesn’t need a bigger chasis, it doesn’t need more memory or a higher price tag. There are plenty of other laptops around for that, and yet the uncomfortable feeling persists that while everyone else gets giddy about tiny, cheap laptops, Asus, almost perversely, intends on taking the Eee the other way.

And when it does, expect a very messy break up.

Aren’t PCs brilliant?

Friday, April 25th, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me just what you can do with a modern PC. I had a think last night about all the things I rely on my PC for and came up with a list quite mind-boggling in length.

Just check out the list of things I’ve used a PC to do in the last seven days: I’ve analysed how my fitness is improving, looked for a local Thai takeaway, looked up campsites in Brittany, researched facts and checked prices for a list of reviews as long as your arm.

I’ve downloaded free (legal, of course) house music to my laptop and practised my mixing skills, I’ve played a couple of games of scrabble, planned a walk, and processed and ordered a batch of prints from my digital camera.

Somewhere in there I also edited and archived some HD video, streamed music to my hi-fi, watched some BBC programs on iPlayer and checked in on the cat over the network camera at home. I’ve even sent the odd email.

It just goes to show what an essential tool a computer is these days – what would we do without them?

Admiring bottoms

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Admission number one: the publisher of PC Pro is also the publisher of MacUser. Admission number two: he uses a MacBook Pro. Admission number three: he likes it.

I was admonishing him about this in our local pub the other night, when he came up with what I at first thought was a ridiculous argument – but I’m now starting to believe he might be right.

“The thing is, Tim,” he took a sip of beer to punctuate his point, “the thing is, the bottom of your laptop is ugly. Horribly, horribly ugly. The bottom of my Mac is a thing of beauty.”

And he’s right. I wrested it off him for long enough to take the photo you see before you, and I can’t deny the smooth, unblemished contours. In contrast, take a look at my (otherwise fantastic) ThinkPad X60’s underneath. No other word for it: ugly.

So what can we conclude? That the future is beautiful-bottomed laptops? I think so, but that’s only part of it. The fact is he won’t be buying another laptop unless it looks good from all angles. And it’s not only PC manufacturers who should take note, it’s every manufacturer.

Motherboard blues

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Have you ever had a motherboard that works perfectly in some setups but mysteriously refuses to switch on in others? I ran into this problem during the testing for next month’s motherboards Labs. Surprisingly, it turns out the problem may be that your PSU is too powerful.

The explanation: ATX power supplies are designed to kick in when the motherboard starts demanding current. But there’s no industry standard for precisely how much current a board must try to draw before the PSU wakes up. Today’s hefty power supplies anticipate a heavy load, and if your motherboard asks only for a very small amount of power, it may fall under the threshold for that particular power supply.

There’s not a lot you can practically do about this – your options are, basically, to use a different PSU or a different board. I suppose in theory you could plug more things into the board to increase its power demands, but that’s not very green. Still, it’s all good stuff to know, and could save you a lot of frustrating trial and error should you ever run into the problem.

This tip was entrusted to me by a representative of a major motherboard manufacturer; and now I’m entrusting it to you. Guard it wisely.

The joy of interfacing

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

So anyway, get yourself into your time machine and set it for sometime around 1986. Once you get there, pop on your invisibility cloak, find someone who looks spoddy and follow them into the dining room. See that BBC Micro in the corner? Pop over and give the top a quick tug. Chances are it’s not screwed down.

That’s because, in the old days, computers were for hobbyists with soldering irons, and they were forever taking the tops off to install new circuit boards they’d made.

Doesn’t happen much anymore, of course – you might pop the side off once a year to install a new graphics card, but most people wouldn’t consider actually building new hardware to go inside their computer. And for very good reason: the insides of a modern PC are massively more complex and to build an add-on part yourself that would actually be any use is more or less impossible.

Thing is though, designing and connecting your own hardware to a PC, while unlikely to win you admiring glances from the opposite sex, is bloody good fun. Fact. I’ve been tinkering with the whole area again for the past year or so – for reasons I may document at some point – and it turns out that there’s a massive array of components that are relatively easy to interface to a PC and do interesting things with. (more…)

XP or not XP: that is the question

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

I knew it was tempting fate. The other night at a Microsoft shindig (the exact point of which, I’m still unsure), I struck up a conversation with one of the Vista marketing managers. In between discussing the dreadfully dull Champions League semi-final that was unfolding on the Media Center in front of us, I casually asked:

“So, XP – is it really going this time?”

“Yes, definitely,” our Vista man replied. “We’ve extended the deadline once, we can’t keep XP alive for ever.”

Less than 48 hours later, and a journalist in Belgium pops the same question to someone slightly higher up the Microsoft hierachy – Steve Ballmer – who replies:

“If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter…”

Someone set the alarm clock.

PC Pro gets wind

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

For the past week I’ve been trying out this tiny wind turbine called the HYmini. The fan charges up an internal battery which can power any gadget that connects to its USB port.

I’ve mounted this one on the handlebars of my bike, and my 12-mile commute so far seems to be enough to power my mobile phone. The only downside is that I have to explain what it is to inquisitive cyclists at every red traffic light.

As well as this, the PC Pro offices are currently stuffed full of solar panels, wind-up chargers and various battery packs. It’s all research for a feature coming up in the next issue, which asks if it’s possible to power all of your gadgets with sustainable energy. Check out issue 165 for the answer.

Top Tip: If you ever have to design a “green” gadget, why not make it an attractive colour? Green green products are a cliché.

Xobni – it’s brilliant you know

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

I wrote a review about Xobni in the new issue and normally I’d leave it at that – but once again the program’s surprised me by its brilliance.

This morning, I received an email from a reader I hadn’t heard from for a year. How do I know? Not due to my enclopeadic brain (my brain is anything but), but because the moment the email dropped into my inbox it came up with a brief history of my correspondence with him.

As it happens, that’s just two emails – but it’s enough to prompt me to look at the previous emails and give them a quick read.

This is great for me, but for a company that thrives on customer relationships it’s surely invaluable.

The five-second itch

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Let me begin this entry with one word: aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

It’s just happened again, and I hate it. The infernal (substitute that with a fruitier word if you will) five-second wait while I sit here twiddling my thumbs waiting for a web application to do its thing.

I say five seconds, but I don’t know how long it’s going to be. Might be two seconds. Twenty. It could even be longer than a minute. It doesn’t matter that I’ve got a dual-core CPU in this machine, all I can do is wait, for an unspecified time, forthe task on some distant server to complete.

And what am I meant to do while I’m waiting? Make a cup of coffee. I’ve got one. Just there. Make a phone call? Could do, but she already believes I’m stalking her. Write an email? I’ve written all the emails that can be done quickly.

The simple fact is I don’t have any five-second (20-second, minute-long) tasks that need to be done. And even if I did, it distracts me from what I’m meant to be doing in the first place.

Right. I feel a little better now. And I think the web app has finally done it’s thing so back to work.

The world’s worst software?

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Software, I’ll happily admit, is a subjective thing. For instance, I really like using Windows Vista, while it brings PC Pro deputy editor David Fearon out in hives.

But the worst software, in my opinion only (my PC Pro hat is over there, resting), is RealPlayer. So much so that I’ve avoided installing it, despite numerous invitations from websites, on this laptop.

Now my run is at an end. I’ve been left with no choice. If I want to listen to You and Yours via Listen Again (and I do, because I missed it and I briefly was on there talking about the IT skills gap – Thursday 10 April if it’s still up there) then I’ve got to do the deed.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s not as bad, invasive and generally annoying as it once was. I’ll see. But judging by the install procedure, where I had to untag about a dozen different options or it would have become my default word processor, I doubt it.

Here, for no particular reason whatsoever, is a list of my top five hated pieces of software:

1. Apple iTunes. Again, it wants to take over my computer. No. You can’t.

2. All bloated disc-burning suites. They used to be a 20MB download, now it’s closer to 200MB. I really don’t need a disc-burning app to bundle antispyware or be my backup utility. Stop this silliness.

3. RealPlayer. See above.

4. Adobe Reader. Why is it so big? It just needs to read PDFs, surely!

5. QuickTime. I don’t need it, I really don’t, so please stop trying to install it every time I visit any Apple-related site. Please!