Does anyone actually use dynamic contrast?

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Playing around with Samsung’s XL2370 TFT this week, I hit a bit of a wall. In fact, not so much hit it, more slammed my head straight through it in sheer, irate frustration. You see, it uses an LED backlight, which Samsung’s press bunf confidently told me would produce a level of contrast the old CCFL kind simply can’t match.

And it does. Not just any old contrast, but MEGA contrast! Yes, MEGA, in capitals. In non-marketing speak that converts into a figure of 5,000,000:1, or 5,000 times higher than the standard contrast ratio on most of today’s TFTs.

Except the XL2370 doesn’t manage that at all. (more…)

Could people learn to love Microsoft once more?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

It wasn’t so long ago that Microsoft was generally considered a dirty word. Dare defend the company and the outpouring of scorn was enough to leave you wondering whose puppy you’d just shot.

To be fair, the software giant hadn’t done itself many favours. Its response to antitrust investigations stopped marginally short of certifiable paranoia, while Vista turned out to have all the charm of a broken bottle being waved at a bar fight. Office 2007 was brilliant, but conspicuously so among a product list that had come to represent the best cure for insomnia.

Microsoft seemed adrift, bereft of ideas or inspiration as its empire was systematically hacked to bits by Google, Apple and Mozilla. And yet, two years later and the company is once again the toast of the tech press. Windows 7 is good, but one product’s not enough to rescue an enormous company’s reputation. What on earth has happened? Is it really okay to like Microsoft again? (more…)

Is Firefox turning into the ultimate nagware?

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Firefox, it must be said, is beginning to get on my Bristols. Like a death by a thousand cuts, the accumulation of minor irritations is pushing me desperately close to permanently decamping to Google Chrome.

From the irritating freeze that seems to temporarily paralyse the address bar about 30 seconds after it has first booted, to the mystery disappearance of the close button when you’ve got nine or more tabs open, to the clumsy implementation of the new Private Browsing mode, to the way the browser refuses to reboot for about 30 seconds after it (increasingly frequently) crashes… Firefox is heading for a fall.

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The Twitter freak show

Monday, August 17th, 2009

PC Pro’s online overlord Barry Collins is, as we speak, trying to be on holiday. This is something he’s not very good at, as evidenced by the fact that 12 minutes after the official start of him not being here, he emailed me about being here. The worst part of this is that he’s actually getting better.

However, in an attempt to prove that he really was going on holiday and wouldn’t be doing any of the things he’s so obviously doing, Barry handed over the keys to PC Pro’s beloved Twitter account, which he nourishes with the sort of obsessive care that even Gollum would consider a little excessive.

Before he “left” Barry instructed me to install Tweetdeck – which is essentially a window wiper allowing you to make sense of Twitter’s endless word rain. He couldn’t have done me any more damage if he’d stirred heroin into my tea. Once installed, Tweetdeck demands all of your attention and I’ve actually developed a tweet twitch from constantly flicking my glance to my second monitor looking for updates. What’s worse is that most of what flashes on my screen I don’t care about, and would live happily without ever having read.

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Twitter goes down (again) but will it soon be counted out for good?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Earlier today (Tuesday 11th August) Twitter went down, albeit briefly for around half an hour, with the official status blog reporting first “a site outage” but then changing tone later to say it was busy analysing traffic data to “determine the nature of this attack”.

Of course, while the Twitter servers may well have been up and running in under an hour of going down, the same cannot be said of third party applications which took considerably longer to recover it would seem. Not, it has to be said, as bad as last week following the 15 fat Russians in a revolving door DDoS attack which saw the Twitter service impacted for days and some third party apps struggling to get back up to speed for days after that. (more…)

The scandal that is Microsoft’s Windows 7 pricing in the UK

Friday, July 31st, 2009

So, how much bad news can you take in one lump? Because we’ve just received news of Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade pricing for Windows 7 in the UK, and it makes for about as much jolly reading as a Stephen King novel.

And just to make things even worse, we’ve now had confirmation there will be no Family Pack of Windows 7 until “at least” 2010. So, if the worst comes to the worst, that means it could be 2011. Or later.

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Microsoft, Windows 7, the EU and common sense

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The world’s gone crazy. Surely Microsoft can’t have decided to do what’s been blindingly obvious to the rest of the world for eternity and – gasp – offer users a choice of web browsers when they install Windows 7? And thus, in one fell and seemingly easy swoop, appease the EU and its browser-producing competition?

But by jingo it has, at least if today’s news story (Microsoft to offer browser choice with Windows 7) is to be believed. During installation, you’ll get the choice of five (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari), rendering the EU’s objection of Microsoft exploiting its monopolistic position irrelevant. (more…)

Uninstalled software shouldn’t hijack your browser

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Finding myself with an idle 20 minutes on the train to work this morning, I decided to give my laptop a long overdue spring clean (it’s July, after all).  I started by uninstalling a handful of applications that have served their purpose.

Once removed, no fewer than two thirds of them (yes folks, that’s two out of three, but I’m building for dramatic effect here), arbitrarily fired up my browser and sent me to their websites to fill out a survey demanding to know why I had the temerity to remove their software from my system. Bloody cheek.

Software that automatically fires up your browser and sends you without warning to a strange website is a hair’s breadth away from malware, in my book. And how long will it be before genuine malware writers find a way to adjust that URL, and send unsuspecting uninstallers off to a site that automatically executes something far nastier than a customer retention questionnaire?

The fact I’ve chosen to uninstall a piece of software means that application should no longer exert any control over my PC, let alone fire up my web browser on its way out. If software companies can’t be trusted to act responsibly with their uninstallers, then Microsoft needs to take that power away from them.

Is it right to censor Wikipedia to save a life?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

David Rhode is a double Pulitzer-winning journalist with the New York Times who just escaped seven months as a captive of the Taliban – yet you won’t have heard about it.

It’s extremely newsworthy, but coverage of the kidnapping would have made Rhode a more valuable hostage. The higher profile the captive, the more attention the captors and their demands get – and the lower the chance of a happy ending.

In situations like this, news organisations often agree to hold off on reporting certain events. They lose a story in the short term, but a reporter gets a better chance at coming home.

In any case, for better or worse, everyone gets their story eventually.

This mutual cooperation used to be relatively straightforward to organise – journalists, especially war correspondents, are a pretty cliquey bunch – but it is one of the long list of things that have received a thorough shaking-up in the internet revolution.

Wikipedia, in particular, was a major problem.

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Bargain of the day: Windows Vista Home Basic for £137.01

Friday, June 26th, 2009

While Barry Collins was researching his free upgrades to Windows 7 news story, he stumbled across possibly the most ridiculous offer I’ve ever seen: you, my lucky, lucky friends, can download Windows Vista Home Basic from the Microsoft UK store for £137.01. Excluding VAT.

Now before everyone rushes off to bag this bargain, I should point out that you can also buy Home Premium for £166.37! Obviously excluding VAT again, Microsoft has to make a living you know.

A quick trawl online reveals the going rate for the full version of Vista Home Premium is around £130 inc VAT – and you can buy it for less than £90 inc VAT if you’re willing to opt for the more restricted OEM version, which is tied to the motherboard you first install it on (so if you build a new PC, you’ll have to buy a new copy of Windows).

So, taking away VAT, Microsoft is charging a premium of over £50 if you buy direct from its store. It would be amazing to discover just how many sales it’s made for these two excellent picks, but sadly I don’t think I’m going to get much joy out of Microsoft on that one. My guess? A princely zero.