Dear Roger, I hope you can help. When I turn on my inkjet printer it repeats a deep, familiar sounding noise. The heads chug into action and at one second intervals, it is as if it were playing the opening chords of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. After the warm up procedure the heads come to rest, and just as I'm expecting Jim's lead guitar to wail in. It does leaves me wanting for the rest of the song. Is this normal?
Dear Dave, Since Jim's untimely death, many people imagine these sorts of things so I would probably say this is normal. People 'hear' all sorts of familiar things and this part of a natural desire to make sense of the world.
For example, in the same song JH sings 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky...'. But you'd probably hear it as 'Excuse me while I kiss this guy'!!! There's a whole web site devoted to hearing the wrong things and it's named in honour of Jimi: www.kissthisguy.com. Anyway, in future I'd leave the printer on and just play the record instead. Best Roger.
Saturday
Seven wonders of the shopping world
1. DVD player - £40 at aria.co.uk
2. VHS video recorder - £59 at Argos
3. NTL Broadband - fast, well-priced, never failed and never turned off since September 2003
4. Wireless networking for Internet, printing and file sharing
5. Windows 2000 - rock solid & no need for XP
6. Pentium III 550 MHz - works faster than I think. No need for a 3GHz.
7. London Buses and Congestion Charging - a sea change in getting around London
2. VHS video recorder - £59 at Argos
3. NTL Broadband - fast, well-priced, never failed and never turned off since September 2003
4. Wireless networking for Internet, printing and file sharing
5. Windows 2000 - rock solid & no need for XP
6. Pentium III 550 MHz - works faster than I think. No need for a 3GHz.
7. London Buses and Congestion Charging - a sea change in getting around London
Wednesday
Memory Stick Duo - small size, hefty price
Sony's 128 Mb Memory Stick Duo has arrived in the UK (June 03). The current wheeze for data storage in Sony Ericsson mobile phones, Memory Stick Duo lets you carry photo albums, video, games and music on a slither the size of a thumbnail. It's not that regular Memory Stick wasn't small enough, but here's another physical format to follow Compact Flash, SD, MMC and the rest. It's hardly surprising that people baulk at the thought of buying into, or becoming a slave to any format. The makers would reply that this gizmo fits phones like the SE P800, massively increases its memory and so long as you can copy stuff onto it the job is done. They're pretty much right since it only matters what shape it is when you want to exchange stuff with others.
Costs more than gold
The real issue is what this costs - tax inclusive: on the US Expansys it costs $160 compared to $65 for a regular Memory Stick. In the UK Expansys sell these same for 110 and 67 UK pounds. At the Sony Style website you have a bargain where the 128Mb Duo was last seen at $104.
Incidentally, it weighs only 1.75g and thus at its best price, thus costs $60 a gram. Compare this with 24 carat gold which retails at around $24 a gram. Still that's cheaper than a bag of Loose Diamonds (tiny ones at that) costing $8000 a gram. (For the record, a one carat diamond weighing 0.2g has scarcity value and would set you back $15,000)
Copyright copy wrong
While MSD lets you store any kind of material that fits, it also features Magic Gate protection designed to protect data from being copied all over the shop. The idea is that games or music files you buy over the 'net will be tied to the MSD and not copiable or useable elsewhere. Hear anyone going wow over this?
Tuesday
I love my Internet router
Edited 2016 (Reviewed 2003)
For most folk a router is something ignore. In 2003 when I wrote this they were complicated and costly (£120). Today they're complicated and cheap (£25 up). I'd previously used ISDN for Internet access and it was good. There were tales of routers dialling up needlessly and incurring scary phone bills. But now in 2016, with Internet over cable and ADSL these are the way we go.
It used to be that if you had ADSL you had a DSL modem connected to a PC. If you had a couple of machines and maybe a ethernet linked printer you needed a hub or switch to wire them together. You could also connect a wifi access point to the hub or switch to allow a laptop with a wireless LAN card to surf, transfer files and print from around the building. The cost of this in 2002 was £120 for the modem; £60 for the hub and £120 for the wifi AP. The computer with the modem had to be switched on the whole time.
However I bought the Netgear DG824M at £140 and was really flying. After years of struggle the result was tidy and revolutionary. It was rare to find such a setup in 2003 but it established itself over the next four years. The speed was about 4Mbits/s.
The Netgear DG824M plugs into the phone line. A PC plugs into the router with a network cable (supplied).
A setup program helps your PC to find the router and configure it. This worked exceptionally well. The jargon is explained and the dial up settings are remembered by the router. The router can now be ignored indefinitely to deliver Internet as if it was electricity.
Plug another PC into the router with an ethernet cable to make a peer-to-peer network where you can share the Internet, transfer files and share printers. The DG824M has ethernet ports for three other PC's. If you have more than this you need another hub or switch.
You can connect wireless clients to the router to pick up the Internet. What you can't do is connect to it using another wireless access point. In other words, two wireless access points can't normally talk to each other.
For most folk a router is something ignore. In 2003 when I wrote this they were complicated and costly (£120). Today they're complicated and cheap (£25 up). I'd previously used ISDN for Internet access and it was good. There were tales of routers dialling up needlessly and incurring scary phone bills. But now in 2016, with Internet over cable and ADSL these are the way we go.
It used to be that if you had ADSL you had a DSL modem connected to a PC. If you had a couple of machines and maybe a ethernet linked printer you needed a hub or switch to wire them together. You could also connect a wifi access point to the hub or switch to allow a laptop with a wireless LAN card to surf, transfer files and print from around the building. The cost of this in 2002 was £120 for the modem; £60 for the hub and £120 for the wifi AP. The computer with the modem had to be switched on the whole time.
However I bought the Netgear DG824M at £140 and was really flying. After years of struggle the result was tidy and revolutionary. It was rare to find such a setup in 2003 but it established itself over the next four years. The speed was about 4Mbits/s.
The Netgear DG824M plugs into the phone line. A PC plugs into the router with a network cable (supplied).
A setup program helps your PC to find the router and configure it. This worked exceptionally well. The jargon is explained and the dial up settings are remembered by the router. The router can now be ignored indefinitely to deliver Internet as if it was electricity.
Plug another PC into the router with an ethernet cable to make a peer-to-peer network where you can share the Internet, transfer files and share printers. The DG824M has ethernet ports for three other PC's. If you have more than this you need another hub or switch.
You can connect wireless clients to the router to pick up the Internet. What you can't do is connect to it using another wireless access point. In other words, two wireless access points can't normally talk to each other.
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