Ask PC Pro: your questions answered
By Barry Collins, Online Editor
Posted on 10 Sep 2010 at 09:00
What happened to the forums?
INCOGNITII ASKED: What are Dennis's plans for maintaining and developing forums? The recent renewed participation of the online team in the PC Pro Forum is encouraging, but other disasters such as site revamp, and the shambles that is the Computer Shopper/Expert Reviews forum, and lack of site maintenance/development is worrying. How committed are you to capitalising on forum interaction, and developing this aspect?
Deputy editor, Barry Collins, replies: A little context for those not familiar with the PC Pro site. On the old PC Pro site, comments made on news stories/reviews etc were integrated with our forums. Those forums were also shared across all our tech sites, and we had a large, vibrant, joint community.
In the past year, we’ve entirely revamped PC Pro, Computer Shopper/Expert Reviews and MacUser, and part of that changeover necessitated the splitting of forums. What’s more, comments are now attached to the articles themselves, not the forums.
On the plus side, we’ve never had more comments on news stories, reviews, features etc. On the downside, it’s had a dramatic effect on forum activity. We’ll stick our hands up and say we made enormous mistakes in the way we handled the forum switchover: it was poorly communicated, rushed and the fact we had to close forums for a week was, frankly, appalling.
However, we are keen to rebuild the forums. We’ll start by chopping away the dead wood forums that are now redundant, create new forums, and improve staff involvement in discussions. We’ve recently increased the number of mods to help keep an eye on spam, but if you’ve got any more suggestions, please let us know.
How to upgrade my PC?
TOMBLE2 ASKED: A long time ago I put together a PC based on a spec from PC Pro which you said would be reasonably upgradeable for some years to come. It's given me good service but now I want to know if there's anything worthwhile I can do to it based on my one simple rule: I won't spend more than £50-£55 on any one component.
The current spec is:
- MB = Asrock ALiveNF7G-HD720p R5.0
- CPU = AMD X2 4800
- RAM = 2GB
- GPU = 8600GT
- HD = 500Gb Samsung
- KBD + mouse = MS Wireless laser 6000 v2
- DVD writer = LG oem model
- Chassis = Asus Vento A2
Executive editor David Fearon replies: Your budget limit makes it tricky, but we’d suggest the following:
Hard disk: Our top upgrade would be our A-Listed Samsung Spinpoint F3. It has 1TB capacity and it’s only £43 inc VAT.
RAM: You can never have too much, and if you’re running 64-bit Windows then upping your complement to 4GB with a couple of extra 1GB DDR2 sticks would be a good plan, assuming you currently have two 1GB sticks installed rather than four 512MB modules.
Graphics card: An ATI 5450-based card is around £49 inc VAT but it’s hard to say if it will give you much better performance than your 8600 GT. However, shop around and you can get a passively cooled one for not much more than £50 and it’ll make your PC that bit quieter.
CPU: Your ASRock board is an AM2 board. New-generation AM3 processors might work but will set you back more than £55.
DVD writer: If your old one is on its last legs then almost any brand-name optical drive will be under £50 these days, or you could get yourself a DVD writer/Blu-ray reader combo drive, eg the Samsung SH-B083L, for about £50 inc VAT.
Should I unplug my laptop?
@KEVINWMOOR ASKED: What’s more energy efficient - unplugging a laptop when it's charged or leaving it to trickle charge?
Technical editor Darien Graham-Smith replies: The process of storing energy in a battery and extracting it again is always going to be lossy; so presuming the laptop has the good sense to switch to mains power once the battery’s fully charged, that should be more efficient than charging up and discharging the battery.
Office file names disappeared
SVTDOT ASKED: I have recently bought a new PC. I couldn't justify the purchase of a newer copy of Microsoft Office, so I reloaded Office 2003 which has given me good service on my old XP machine.
Using Windows Explorer on the XP PC I was able to see details of Word documents without opening them, by letting the cursor hover over the file name. Unfortunately this feature does not seem to be available on Windows 7. Can you help?
Technical editor, Darien Graham-Smith replies: Good question – afraid I don’t have Office 2003 to hand, so I’m not sure what you’re seeing. When I hover over an Office 2010 document in Windows 7 I only see the filename, but if you open the preview pane (just next to the question mark towards the top right of an Explorer window) you can see the document’s contents directly within Explorer. Does that help?
Cheap Blu-ray player
NABSTER ASKED: Cyberlink's PowerDVD seems to have the monopoly on the Blu-ray player market on Windows - is there any cheaper alternatives?
Reviews editor, Jonathan Bray, replies: There are alternatives from the likes of Corel (WinDVD), Nero, Roxio etc, but as to whether there’s anything cheaper, the answer is, unfortunately, no. You’ll be paying around £35 to £40 as a minimum, whatever player you use.
The problem is that the developers have to pay Sony a royalty of around $25 every time they sell a copy. They have to make a profit on top of that, hence the ludicrously high price. Why Sony persist in charging so much is, frankly, beyond us.
Can you show laptop hotspots?
MR B.W. MOORE ASKED: With Laptops getting faster processors and more computing power, would it not be a good idea to photograph in infrared where the 'hotspots' are on various Laptops?
Editor, Tim Danton, replies: That’s a fascinating question, and not as easy to answer as you might expect. The first thing to say is that laptops generally run cooler now than they did ten years ago, due to Intel’s much-improved mobile processors.
Unless a manufacturer makes a mess of its cooling system (which rarely happens with the big brands) it’s safe to say that a modern laptop running an Intel mobile processor won’t run hot enough to annoy.
Where we have seen issues is with a handful of laptops that run AMD mobile processors, which dissipate more heat. That’s not to say avoid AMD-based laptops (I use the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e every day), just that manufacturers have to take more care to ensure people aren’t bothered by heat.
As to photographing using an infrared camera – that is indeed possible, but not the magic bullet it might appear. The second biggest problem is that different materials have different emissivity values – which is the rate at which a material emits energy radiation. The cameras and software have the ability to auto-compensate for this, but it’s by no means foolproof and all too easy to create misleading results.
The biggest problem is cost and, to a lesser extent, time. We don’t have a camera in the building (they cost around £40,000) so we’d have to rent one for testing, at the cost of around £1,000. Then of course we’d have to spend all that time testing, along with solving logistical problems of actually having all the laptops in the Labs at the same time (not as easy as it might sound).
As part of our standard testing we benchmark these laptops to high heaven, which means pushing the processor to 100% for approximately six to eight hours. After that point, it becomes very clear which ones emit heat – and that’s something we always make clear in the reviews.
What's with all the Cores?
DANIEL TITLEY ASKED: What's the difference between Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7?
Technical editor, Darien Graham-Smith, replies: From a marketing perspective, i3 is Intel’s “value” brand, i7 is “premium” and i5 is sort of in the middle. Technically speaking, though, it’s all bit of a mess.
On the desktop, the i3-5xx and i5-6xx chips are based on the same 32nm technology, but i3s come with a slightly lower range of clock speeds and have Turbo Boost disabled. Both ranges use the LGA 1156 socket, and both have two cores (with Hyper-Threading), built-in graphics and 4MB of L2 cache. i5-7xx chips use the 1156 socket too, but these are 45nm parts with four cores and an 8MB cache. They don’t use Hyper-Threading, and there’s no built-in graphics.
The Core i7 range is just as confusing. Core i7-9xx chips use LGA 1366 (with QPI and triple-channel RAM), and have four Hyper-Threaded cores and an 8MB cache. That’s except for the i7-970 and 980X, which have six cores and 12MB of cache. The i7-8xx ones offer the same cores and cache but plug into the same LGA 1156 socket as the i3/i5. None of these desktop chips has onboard graphics.
And THEN of course there are laptop processors bearing the i3, i5 and i7 labels – generally speaking they come with similar abilities (so the i3 lacks Turbo Boost, and i7s have lots of cores)… and no doubt at next week’s Intel Developer Forum we’ll learn about new chips that will muddy the water even further!
Build-your-own PC
JAMES ASKED: I have been getting PC Pro and Custom PC for over a year now and the time has come for me to build my own PC. I edit video of my grandchildren and write to Blu-ray. i edit old family VHS tapes and write to DVD. I also edit photos and connect to my Virgin cable TV service, and watch and record HD TV. Plus I maintain and develop a website. Can you advise me on suitable hardware?
Executive editor, David Fearon, replies: If I were building a PC of my own to do that right now, I'd definitely plump for a system based around Intel's Core i5 750 processor. It's at the current 'sweet-spot' in terms of price-performance (about £150 inc VAT) and it's quad-core, which will help enormously for video editing, particularly if you're encoding Blu-ray.
For RAM you can generally go for the cheapest generic DDR3 you can find, although speccing 1333MHz should give a bit of a performance boost.
Hard disk would be our A-Listed Samsung Spinpoint F31TB, and the same goes for our recommended motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H.
If you definitely don't want to play games, you can get away with using the integrated graphics chipset in the motherboard, saving you the cost of a separate graphics card.
From around the web
times passim
Is there a fix to restore .pcx graphics format at system level to Windows Explorer ( i.e. including showing thumbnails ) and also as importable graphics to MS Office ?
By specious on 7 Sep 2010 
Broadband Havoc
Does anyone know how to fix the problem of my broadband connection decides to not display pages. I get the problem on my PC running IE 6 and my laptop running Google Chrome 7.
By ITADVISOR on 7 Sep 2010
Vista installation hangs at the "completing installation" stage
I have tried to reinstall Vista and every time the installation hangs every time at the last stage "completing installation". I have searched the internet for solutions and it seems this is a very common problem that no-one seems able to solve.
My system is ASUS pn5e mobo with E6850 processor at 3 Ghz and 8GB RAM with Radeon HD5450 display card and 250GB SATA disk.
I would dearly love to find a solution which would help many others, judging by the number of posts on the subject.
Dave, Slough.
By davesutt2000 on 8 Sep 2010
@davesutt2000
Your 8GB RAM may be the problem. Take it down to 2GB and see what happens.
By Stiggy on 8 Sep 2010
Backing up files with long path/file names
I have a few gigabytes of "stuff" to back up. Many of the files have long concatenated path/filenames (over 200 characters perhaps), exceeding Windows' normal maximum number of characters. As a result, Copy operations fail, and the (few) backup programs I have tried either crash or just fail to deal with the affected files.
Can you please recommend any backup packages and/or online backup services that you know will work with all the files in this environment?
Many thanks
By Zeroes on 8 Sep 2010
Getting rid of the Qword trojan
My wife uses IE8 for some of her surfing, and some pages get hijacked by the Qword search engine. I've tried blocking qword.com, deleting registry references and other tips recommended on the web, but it always returns. A full Kaspersky scan doesn't pick up any problems, and StopZilla and Spyware Terminator don't seem to discover it. While I've told my wife to use Firefox instead, that's only a kludge because it doesn't solve the basic problem. Any thought? Thanks.
By davefaulkner on 8 Sep 2010
Imran
@davefaulkner
Try using SPYBOT S&D, its free and very effective.
By imrankhan1984 on 9 Sep 2010
Contacts Folder as an Email Adress Book
I have installed Office 2010 (Home & Business) on a new W7 VAIO and all the options to make my Contacts Folders used by the Address Book in Outlook are greyed out! I'm foiled at every turn. I can't remove the address book and reinstate it, nor change the Contact Folder properties. I'm reluctant to destroy my email profiles/accounts as they are actually working. I've also used Windows "Easy Transfer" to load up my new laptop - and noticed that some of my Contacts have been disappeared, only to return after a search and perhaps some minor mods! All help gratefully received!! Thanks
By AMurtagh2 on 9 Sep 2010
Future of Software Development in UK
As a software engineer of a certain vintage (it was a good year!) I'm concerned that the UK isn't a software powerhouse any more. Our universities produce Java programmers who know Office but don't know how to build big software systems (how could they? their lecturers can't). Do you think the UK has a future in developing world-class software or should I look to the PhDs coming out of Delhi or Kampala, etc?
By RosslynDad on 9 Sep 2010
HHmmm
I have 2x 2 terabite drives in my pc one runs Windows XP Pro drive1 the other has Windows 7,drive2, i installed Windows 7 on the second drive and created a duel boot system and the boot menu comes up as the computer boots and gives me the option which one i want to boot into.
My question is..
If i wanted to seperate the drives ie, booting from on or the other drives Using the F8 key instead for choosing the boot drive from the Bios would i lose the ability to boot from one or even both drives because of the boot menu created when i installed Windows 7
Kind Regards
Hanstrans 3
By hanstrans3 on 9 Sep 2010
Debugging hardware/driver problems
I have had a long running problem with my ATI video card which manifests iself as intermittent video driver crashes.
I know the problem could down to a number of things including the component itself, MB/PSU/RAM, faulty drivers etc.
Question is, is there a tool which can help debug this problem for you without having to tear your PC apart?
By nabster on 10 Sep 2010
Alternative Windows Blu-ray player
Another question..
Cyberlink's PowerDVD seems to have the monopoly on the Blu-ray player market on Windows - is there any cheaper alternative?
By nabster on 10 Sep 2010
Upgrading the old workhorse.
A long time ago I put together a pc based on a spec from PCPRO which you said would be reasonably upgradeable for some years to come.
It's given me good service but now I want to know if there's anything worthwhile that I can do to it based on my one simple rule?
The rule is that I won't spend more than £50-£55 on any one component.
The current spec is:
MB = Asrock ALiveNF7G-HD720p R5.0
CPU = AMD X2 4800
RAM = 2GB
GPU = 8600GT
HD = 500Gb Samsung
KBD + mouse = MS Wireless laser 6000 v2
DVD writer = LG oem model
Chassis = Asus Vento A2
By Tomble2 on 10 Sep 2010
Dennis Forums Strategy
What are Dennis's Plans for maintaining and developing Forums?
The recent renewed participation of the online team in the PCPro Forum is encouraging, but other disasters such as site revamp, and the shambles that is the CShopper/Expert Reviews forum, and lack of site maintenance/development is worrying.
How committed are you to capitalising on Forum interaction, and developing this aspect?
By incognitii on 10 Sep 2010
VOIP - router config
You want say 10 ip telephones on your voice only LAN using a virtual pbx hosted by your sip gateway provider. You have 2 adsl lines into the office providing load balancing and fail over. how would you setup your multi WAN router to best serve the requirements of VOIP? For instance: set up the router as DHCP server? Have the telephones on public ip addresses or use NAT? Enable or disable the router firewall? Use QOS? etc.
By DavySmith on 10 Sep 2010
Ed Case
Please could you tell me what would be the minimum spec needed to run the i player hd on a computer. I have a good broadband speed available
Thanks
By i8mondays on 10 Sep 2010
How fast are the new iMacs in absolute terms?
You guys seem to have been pretty keen on the new line of Apple iMacs, praising among other things, their performance.
How quick are they in absolute terms when compared to a full blown desktop tower, such as that Palicomp you reviewed recently? Are they merely fast "for an all in one" or are they fast by any standards?
By SirRoderickSpode on 10 Sep 2010
How fast are the new iMacs in absolute terms?
You guys seem to have been pretty keen on the new line of Apple iMacs, praising among other things, their performance.
How quick are they in absolute terms when compared to a full blown desktop tower, such as that Palicomp you reviewed recently? Are they merely fast "for an all in one" or are they fast by any standards?
By SirRoderickSpode on 10 Sep 2010
Core i7 mobile chips
Hi
I recently bought an Alienware M15X and plumped for the Core i7 740QM, I didn't bother refreshing my knowledge of Intel CPUs at the time I bought it, just opting for an affordable quad core model. I have since done so.
The Clarksfield set appear to be older than the new Arrandale set, seeing as they're at 32nm but dual core only. I think I may have bought an old turkey going for the 45nm 740QM!
Heres the question - £ for £, are the new Arrandale processors more capable, despite only being dual core? Should I have opted for an Arrandale chip like the 620M?
Of course, the machine was bought for gaming performance, and I realise there probably wont be much difference, but could I have gotten more bang for my buck?
.
One last thing - a while back you did a CPU megatest or something and produced a graph where different Intel/AMD CPUs were graphed by price (X) and performance (Y or vice versa). It was a fantastic idea, very enlightening, and I'd love to see something like that again.
By Heliosphan on 10 Sep 2010
How do you choose which laptops to review?
Obviously you only have so much capacity (and a lot of this is sod's law) but ineviatbly the laptops I'm interested in don't get reviewed (examples are HP TM2 12" tablet and Toshiba R630 ultraportable).
By Grunthos on 10 Sep 2010
Where are your past podcast links?
I sometimes take a while to catch up with your podcasts if I'm out of the country for a week. I recently listened to your coverage of the new Firefox beta - and incidentally disagreed violently with your conclusion that Xmarks has been blown out of the water by the new sync feature (it syncs across browsers as well as machines) - but couldn't find the podcast post to comment or link to the Firefox beta.
Love the magazine and podcast, by the way.
By rjrcooper1 on 10 Sep 2010
TushDesai
Hi
I'm an architect and use my laptop for a lot of CAD, photoshop, 3D rendering, etc. I'm finding my laptop of 4 years is really struggling with multi-tasks and want to buy a new laptop which can deal with these programmes. My budget is around £1500-£2000 and my knowledge of processors, RAMs, graphic cards is very limited. Can you please advise me on what is the minimum spec I need and if possible which are good laptops to buy for my tasks.
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Tushar Desai
By TushDesai on 10 Sep 2010
Fast NAS
I have a DNS-323 NAS, but it is very slow. It claims to support gigabit, but gets only a fraction of that speed. It makes working with files held on it tricky.
Can you recommend a fast domestic NAS?
By roblightbody on 10 Sep 2010
Fast NAS
I have a DNS-323 NAS, but it is very slow. It claims to support gigabit, but gets only a fraction of that speed. It makes working with files held on it tricky.
Can you recommend a fast domestic NAS?
By roblightbody on 10 Sep 2010
Google Chrome Install
Please help me install Google Chrome on my Win 7 Ult 64bit PC!! I double click the installer and click on yes to allow the app to install and that's all I see. Gone! All the tasks have disappeared. Disable everything and still the same. I have 2 instances of Win 7 dual booted and the same result with the other more basic partition. Almost a clean install of the OS. Have checked on-line and have found a few people with the same problem but no solutions as of yet. TA.
By vikarmo on 10 Sep 2010
Digital Magazine
I've been reading PC Pro and Computer Shopper for many years. Do you have a digital archive of your publications, and when will they be available via iPhone etc apps?
By luke20 on 10 Sep 2010
Dell 1557 feeling sleepy
I bought a Dell 1557 based on your reviews last year and very nice it is. However since purchasing it I have lost the ability to put it into Hibernation or sleep. This was present when I bought it, but now if I try to use either of these modes the screen goes blank but nothing else happens. Any ideas?
By Sarcen on 10 Sep 2010
recycling
I have a 5 yr old MESH desktop system based on AMD x64 4800 with 4GB ram and a newish graphics card. This has been replaced for general use by a new laptop. So I would like to turn this into a file store to replace my near to bursting linkstation... How would you recommend I go abou this and what MB and CPU would you suggest. I would prefer something which would be efficient to run (& quiet). Additionally is there anyway to get it to boot up at certain times to allow it to run radiodownloader.
By Sarcen on 10 Sep 2010
Infrared cameras
I appreciate it is not a subject that PCPro would normally cover, but prices are considerably below the £40k that you quote. Basic cameras start at around £2000.
By tirons1 on 10 Sep 2010
damn
my question didnt get answered :(
By Deathtaker27 on 10 Sep 2010
@Zeroes - you should reduce the filenames if you can, or move them closer to the root if possible.
If you can't physically delete or access the files, try mapping a network drive as far down the tree as you can, so that "c:\documents and settings\user\documents\my music\1\2\3\4" becomes simply "z:" and you can carry on down the path from there.
"z:\5\6\7\8\9\10" is shorter than "c:\documents and settings\user\documents\my music\1\2\3\4\5\6\7\8\9\10)"
I'm looking for a decent (cheap) backup program myself!
By mulvaney on 12 Sep 2010
@davefaulkner
The free Virus Removal Tool from Kaspersky is very good, but you have to install/run it whenever you want to check (this free version doesn't sit quietly in the background trapping virii on the fly). It's good if you know you have a problem that you want to get rid of, that perhaps your currently installed antivirus solution isn't dealing with (you can run it without uninstalling your current antivirus).
http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/avptool2010?l
evel=2
By mulvaney on 12 Sep 2010
File backup
I'm looking for a simple method of backing up a complete file / folder structure of a non-system hard disk and thereafter only backup the changed files.
I don't want it to backup to a single file or to backup (.bkf etc) files.
I don't need a history of multiple backups, because I'm generally only adding files rather than changing them.
I'd like scheduling too.
I don't need to backup the o/s - just simple folders and files, so that I can whip the backup hd out, take it with me and access the files easily from another PC, without having to restore them first.
I gave good ol' XCopy a go, but I guess I haven't got the parameters right for only replacing files that are newer, so at the moment I'm quick formatting the backup and doing another XCopy or Explorer copy each time, which is a long process.
It would be nice to be able to backup the new data from all drives every night (a few GB) rather than one entire drive (1TB/1.5TB) per night.
Cheers
:o)
By mulvaney on 12 Sep 2010
Backup software
@mulvaney
I would recommend ViceVersa Pro as it can be set to backup to a folder a you type and will only update the changes to a file. can be got from here
http://www.cnet.co.uk/search/viceversa.htm
By curiousclive on 12 Sep 2010
Backup software
@mulvaney
I would recommend ViceVersa Pro as it can be set to backup to a folder a you type and will only update the changes to a file. can be got from here
http://www.cnet.co.uk/search/viceversa.htm
By curiousclive on 12 Sep 2010
Backup software
@mulvaney
I would recommend ViceVersa Pro as it can be set to backup to a folder a you type and will only update the changes to a file. can be got from here
http://www.cnet.co.uk/search/viceversa.htm
By curiousclive on 12 Sep 2010
@TushDesai
The advice in the article is useful, but, for CAD, I'd look at a laptop with ATi FireGL or nVidia Quadro graphics - their openGL performance is much better than the gaming chipsets, the drivers are certified and, generally, more stable and the chipsets themselves are certified to run with CAD software.
By big_D on 13 Sep 2010
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