Sony MICROMV / Micro MV format - erasing and copying

Copying MICROMV tapes to a computer

Initially, in the late 1990's you almost had to have a Mac to do video easily, but doing video has always been possible using the PC.

I used to have three different Firewire cables and have needed each of them for various transfers to a Mac; a PC and a laptop. Do industry standards like Firewire, USB, HDMI make a standard? Anyway, there's a small Firewire to small Firewire or iLink cable; a large, long D-shaped plug to large long D-shaped plug cable and finally a small to large Firewire plug.

To read Micromv on the Mac I would use iMovie 9 running in OSX Yosemite. Plug in the MicroMv camera using a Firewire cable (the plug is the long D Firewire plug on the old iMac going to a small Firewire socket on the Sony IP7 camera). Then use the iMovie camera button to control the camera to import your footage. (By iMovie 10 this no longer worked for me unless there's a tweak to find). But iMovie is good enough here. 

Using the PC it may be simpler to get a copy service to transfer your stuff. There were at least a few services on ebay charging £4 per tape (2015).

Otherwise the software that works on an old PC machine includes Sony Movieshaker software or Pinnacle Studio 9. Sony Vegas video editing software also worked for me and it was by far the most featured package.

Erasing MICROMV tapes

In the absence of a bulk tape eraser, I've simply recorded a view of the wall over old tapes. After that's done, go to the camera menu, look for Title and Erase All, press Execute and the tape memory, which stores what's been recorded and when it is erased.

Playing MICROMV video

Use VLC player for the easiest ride. MICROMV transfer to the PC produces .MMV files which is a variant of the MPEG2 / DVD format. Before I found VLC player I used a command-line program that could convert MMV to MPG.

Otherwise try uploading what you have to Youtube and see what that makes of it.

Not one but two jumpers for Christmas!

Hmm.

Hard disk jumpers

 

Dell Vostro 270 using two monitors with not fuzzy HDMI and screen rotation

The Dell Vostro 270 is a great value desktop PC and whisper quiet. It is as speedy as one needs for office work. At under £300 for a system box, I can't fault it even for editing pictures, audio or video. I replaced the Dell supplied keyboard and mouse with a Gyration set.

I was about the replace the on-board Intel HD Graphics with a twin-monitor ATI Radeon card, as I have on several previous Dells, but was delighted to find both VGA and HDMI monitor outputs. Information elsewhere conflicted on whether you could use both at once. I really needed to extend the desktop space by using monitors, however persistence shows that you can:

• Connect the VGA socket to one monitor (LG1710B) with a standard VGA cable.

• Simultaneously connect the HDMI socket to the second TV/monitor (LG M237WDP) using an HDMI to DVI cable (This was sold as a Sky box to digital monitor cable). 

• Save yourself time by not trying to use HDMI to HDMI. When I connect the Dell Vostro 270 HDMI to the HDMI of the LG LG M237WDP the result was too blurry. Although the graphics driver settings can be set the HDMI output to monitor quality instead of TV quality, I couldn't get a sharp enough result. I had been here before and failed. I previously sent the output of a iMac to the LG M237WDP and got a blurry picture. An iMac to DVI cable made the LG display well.   

• All was well with the dual monitor setup above, however I needed one monitor image rotated to portrait orientation. The Dell supplied graphics driver had no rotation option. An update of the Dell graphics driver at the Intel website, using the Intel machine detection web page furnished me with a 64 bit driver with the rotation option.

• This Vostro came with Windows 8 and much-to-hate. However the redeeming feature of Windows 8 is that in a multi-monitor setup, the annoying start menu and modern apps live on one screen while the desktop apps work on the other. Pressing Windows key + Pgup or Windows key + PgDn toggles the suffocating Windows 8 start menu between the two monitors.

• I'm still not liking Windows 8. I'm going to see if Windows 8.1, due soon, will change this annoyance. If not, for 8 dollars I will buy peace with Stardock's Start8 and Modernmix apps. Modernmix is the one to love: it lets you run Windows 8 modern apps in a window instead of full-screen. I don't need full-screen apps on a desktop PC where I've always got multiple apps open at one time.

 

Logitech Dinovo keyboard charging problem solutions

The dinovo Edge is one of Logitech's premium quality keyboards with a flat profile, quiet keys and Bluetooth so that it pretty much works on anything. Over a few years use I can vouch that a charge of the battery has it working for a couple months. A 10 minute charge lasts a whole day. And though these are no longer unique features, the keyboard is lovely to use. My only gripe is that it's less useful for left handers.

Backing up these claims is a three year warranty. I've worked on Logitech stuff for years and it is typically very up to spec. 

There are several reports of a problem where the normally green blinking charge light alternately blinks red and green. One solution is to contact Logitech and get their experience on this. 

But you could try a few other things first. The hassle is in proportion to the gain. My thesis is that if a battery says it's charged or throws an error, it's more likely due to a signal from the temperature pin of the battery or a change in the charging current or suchlike. These occurs in situations other than "it's broken or dead". Here's what I do when I think the keyboard is sick, rather than terminally ill: 

a) Repeatedly put the keyboard in and out of the charging dock. Try this with the keyboard either off and then on. One way or the other, you might be able to recharge it. This worked for me.
b) Drain the battery (put a weight on a Fn key) and see if you can better charge from this empty state. This also worked for me.
c) If the red / green flashing recurs leave the keyboard somewhere cold. Then charge till you see an error, then cool and repeat. This worked for me and we were working good for months at least.

d) Not tried yet and I'm keeping this in reserve: use a different power supply to get enough juice in the battery to make it happy again. As with over-discharged mobile phone batteries, a higher or lower charging rate can knock some sense into them. Monitor this in case the temperature goes awry.

e) I have not tried to replace the battery. The battery is not soldered to the board, however removing the orange underside will make a mess of it. I'm saving this for a desperate moment. 
[UPDATE:  After  successfully using the tricks on this page over a few years, I ran out of luck,  the red-green flashing continued and my desperate moment had arrived. I followed a Youtube video to use a hairdryer to remove the orange underside; then undo several screws and ultimately to swop the battery for a new one. The 'new' battery  actually came from an old Sony camera. This has been a huge SUCCESS as the keyboard now hold a charge and also charges with ease. 

f) Some folk suggested to unpair the keyboard, reinstall the (optional) Setpoint monitoring software or hitting various keystrokes. I suspect these are accidentally useful.

Exceeding my threshold for small print at Groupon

Dear salesperson, 

There is a limit to how many caveats you may add to a deal. The example below pretty much went over my threshold. Let's know if you noticed and resolvedthis and I may resume reading your daily mails.

Three Night Stay For Four With One Day at Disneyland® Paris and Return Ferry from £139 Per Person with the Kyriad Hotel (Up to 61% Off)

Fine print

• Expires 29 February 2012.
• Must purchase 2, 3 or 4 Groupons to complete booking, depending on option chosen. 
• Valid for double, triple or quadruple occupancy only. 
• Booking required by phone; 0844 493 4655 or the e-mail address provided on your voucher. No cancellations or date amendments. 
• Check-in from 2pm, check-out at 11am. €1.10 per day resort tax and any additional costs will be charged at the hotel. 
• £20 pp surcharge for Jan and Feb 2012 stays. 
• £40 pp surcharge for stays between 20 to 28 December 2011. 
• Not valid 29 - 31 December 2011. 
• Transfers between ferry and hotel not included. 
• Eurostar, flight and river cruise upgrades must be confirmed at time of booking, enquire for details. 
• 4* B&B upgrade from £30pp. 
• River cruise available for £15pp surcharge. 
• Original value based on hotel rack rates. Valid for option purchased only.

HP Touchpad (tablet) is not dead or bricked

It's a scary moment when you can't bring your device back to life. The fix on this page also worked on an old phone where the unit had overdischarged. The HP Touchpad has been incredibly reliable, but if it were to crash with the wireless still running, it's going to run down the battery to nothing, or worse over-discharge the battery. It can be brought to life in various ways below.

• Normal start - Press Power - but if it doesn't start
• Soft reset - Press Power + Home button for 10 to 60 seconds or
• Press Power + Volume up button for 60 seconds
• See other variations which people have reported at http://forums.webosnation.com

Of course  none of the above will work if there's no power in the unit. And there are situations where it's not possible to get power into the unit - possibly the unit has crashed and is stuck into a loop OR as someone suggested the unit has over discharged the battery. The solution was to change to a different charger. The normal HP Touchpad USB charger is more powerful than many. If you try a regular charger, the Touchpad may complain that it's not getting enough juice.  What fixed it was to use the low USB current from a desktop PC. Within a minute it was getting a trickle of energy and it could then be weaned back to its regular charging current.

I found the solution at WebOSnation and I have to thank the guy who, fearing the worst, took his apart to trickle charge the battery. Realising this was a last resort, I read more to find the guy suggesting the low current charger. I've tried something similar with a charging problem on a phone and the battery was totally flat. I removed the battery, connected the terminals to a Universal phone battery charger (a few £ on ebay). An hour or so later the old phone battery had enough juice to cope with a normal charge. 

A proper science explanation for this is welcome.

HP touchpad was bought for the ridiculously low price of £89 when HP's sold off the stock when after 6 weeks trading they realised that this was not going well. A year later (August 2012) it is able to dual-boot between Android ICS and WebOS. Android has the edge with tons of useful apps. To do the upgrade to Android see the help at liliputing.com. It is only a bit scary.

Profanol - Tabletipedia - anti-rage (spoof)

Propofol (Diprivan) is used to induce anesthesia during surgery or medical procedures. However we are having none of that as today I invent Profanol (Corblimivan) a non-existent drug to moderate handling of situations that require an expletive. These situations often aggravate latent Tourette's syndrome or bring about its remission. 

Examples include waking up to receive this year's gas bill; reading that St Paul's Cathedral, a Christian church is evicting people with a similar mission on its forecourt; hearing MP Andrew Lansley spout the wisdom of a taxi driver on the National Health Service; or negotiating the perpetual road works throughout Cambridge, UK.  

I claim ownership of the brand having misread the name of the sleep-inducing drug cited in the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor.

PROFANOL

Form - tablet

Tagline - nil by mouth.

Toshiba TDP P4 / TLPLP4 projector lamp

Here's a tale for those who like their use of technology to be bulletptoof.


In 2001 I bought a Toshiba P4 projector (below) which at £3000 allowed me to travel from school to school to do training. Back then you couldn't be sure that the school's only projector was not already in use. It cost money that hurt: that amount could feed the family for a year. To ensure (sic) that we would starve for another month I bought a spare bulb (£350). That would make me bullet-proof, but by 2012 the projector was still working well. After a few attempts to sell it I got £65 for it.Bah! By the way, I also learned from a good source (the lovely Nigel Steljes in person) that the warranty on the bulb would have lapsed by now. So if the bulb was faulty at birth, buying a spare ahead of need does you no good.
 
WAS FOR SALE, NOW SOLD:


TOSHIBA PROJECTOR LAMP UNIT TLPLP4 for the Toshiba P4 projector. Brand new in box. The unit is very easy to replace by unclipping a cover. It simply screws into place so you don't have to handle the UHP bulb itself.  


This is the genuine Toshiba replacement lamp which I bought at the same time as the projector. It's never been used or damaged.  Sells for £150 on ebay.co.uk. Toshiba TDP P4 TLPLP4 TLPLP4 - this is what retrospect says wasn't a good idea to buy:

Lamp spec: 1100 ANSI Lumens; 2000 hour life; 120W

The projector looks like this (this lamp will fill fit some other models). It's tiny enough to fit in a laptop bag and travels in my hand luggage.

Groupon & Printerpix photobook deal

With a holiday coming up in the next few weeks I bought a voucher from .com offering a leather (value £34.99) for under £10. Postage would be £4.50 extra but the idea of such a book at £15 is surely a great deal. 

I laid out the book opting for a bigger book for a bit more.  Ultimately I paid £25 which is fair enough and the fee shown in the invoice here is correct.

Printerpix however do their VAT calculation oddly though. VAT should never be calculated before the discount so it seems to me that P'pix are paying HM Gov too much VAT. 

That point aside, the final product was good. I felt a lack of control laying out the book so it wasn't as I'd wanted. While Printerpix offer lots of page layouts there just weren't enough landscape layouts. It seemed that if you needed more than one landscape picture on the page you feel you're losing photo space and gaining blank margins. I've done a dozen of these books with great results but the Printerpix interface could be better. As could the maths.

Comparing the two services: 

Printerpix 26 pages; thicker paper; black leather cover total cost £25 with Groupon voucher
Snapfish 34 pages; regular paper; black linen cover total cost £23 with 50% offer

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc review - Android mobile

A reviewer of the HTC Sensation, fresh from the seduction by a press briefing, was talking about its 3D interface. Noticing that the weather icons now animate in 3D he adds, "this provides a more immersive weather experience'. Not only is this most hilarious, it typifies just how much the phone makers are driving people's wants. The wants seem to have exceeded the needs.  

Reviews about Sony Ericsson's awesome phone, the Xperia arc have majorly misled me over the last several months (mid 2011). After reading so many, you imagine that not having a dual-core processor in 2011 is going to have an impact on an already fast and responsive phone. 

But I have yet to do anything on the 'xperia arc' that leaves me waiting for a page to turn; a video to change orientation or a web page to load. It's pretty fantastic really that portable devices used to do things at a fraction of the speed of a desktop computer, but now they seem to have caught up.  

Reviews of Android devices by phone-kids on the web just occasionally focus on usability; lightness; the value of having hard keys; how well they nestle in the hand and how well supported they are by the maker. But instead of reviewing how a phone works for the user I read trivia. One kid doesn't like the quality of a plastic cover - even though it ends up hidden behind a phone case. Another kid remarks on the size of the included memory card even though I've not begun to fill it after several months. 


The Xperia Arc is a quality design and is fit for purpose and well fit even for playing around. The Xperia ArcS appeared in late 2011 and has the dual-core processor.











*http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/30/sony-ericsson-xperia-arc-review/

Public Contracts Scotland - win a tender - do the work - and wait wait wait for payment

Everyone but me knows that you need stamina to handle a tender for a government project. The stamina required isn't just for the several late nights to ensure your bid complies with the rules; it's also about being able to wait for your money. What was supposed to be a series of payment milestones was bulldozered by a "Procurement dept"into one final payment which arrived three months late.

A tip on submitting a tender is that if you do include a timeline for your project, you should expect it to be used and abused in your contract. No discussion will be allowed if procurement decides that the project needs to finish on a date of their choosing. You will find that your payment milestones are unachievable and so you'll not see money so soon. 

Do ensure you send only one address and one bank account. If you are outside the UK and have a UK contact, the procurement department will by default post to the address requiring the cheapest stamp. As a result of this we received our contract to sign by the time we were 75% of the way through. Cheques were sent to the wrong account and payments that were said to have been made, repeatedly turned out not be made.





Public Contracts Scotland may have its own one star iphone app. It may also be fair. It may also break new ground by asking new suppliers what their sexual orientation is - hec how groovy but incredible. Expect to feel bullied, not just into answering such a question in this context, but bullied all through your contract. And be sure to price for the time you will spend stuck inside its strangulated hernia.

Blog post file under: work I wish I had never done;

http://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/

Windows mobile - for doctors and hospital patients

Hello. It's now day 1600 of my phone rage over Windows Mobile. Today's rant has nothing to do with the thoughtlessly-tiny OK box in this error message.

If I were a doctor, or a friend of a hospital patient, I'd be distressed over this common error message. It would bring my heart to a stop. The message, which occurs simply when making a call when there's no signal, can be dismissed with a fingernail filed to a point. The real message can't be dismissed so easily: despite having a fantastic user base, Windows Mobile at version 6 (SIX!) isn't going to last many more versions. 

Windows mobile is a pile of

A burst of inspiration today almost led to the creation of a blog to record my phone-rage since swapping a phone OS from Symbian to Windows Mobile. Alas my preferred title of "windowsmobileisapileof..." had already been used by several correspondents.

Ten years ago the Sony Ericsson P800 smartphone offered the freedom to gad about town with access to web; email; train times; diary and a phone. A couple of years on, it was followed by similar models including the P910. All were very functional but still ridiculous to use as such.

But Windows Mobile changed that not a lot. Today it offers access to the same web; email and all but still with yesterday's awkwardness and speed. What's changed is that more people now have it. What's nice is that more people have recognised that for doing almost everything in its feature list, Windows Mobile is a pile of do do.


Keep up the good work Android & Apple

Logitech MX Mouse - rubber grip and battery problem

A Logitech MX900 mouse is the finest of pointing devices and uses regular Bluetooth to connect to a PC. I was looking for a mouse to work with an 2008 iMac and the mouse paired with it easily using System preferences > Bluetooth > +. 

The mouse had a rubber soft-feel coating which had worn and perished over time - possibly due to cleaning and possibly due to hand perspiration (see here for a pic from a guy who paint sprayed the mouse to great effect). My solution was to use a cloth and alcohol (microfibre cloth and alcoholic hand disinfectant) to clean off the rubber and leave a shiny plastic finish as shown here.

The second problem I caused myself by replacing the two NiH AA batteries. The charging light on the base unit was fast-flashing in red because I'd used 2000mA/hour batteries. Changing these for 1500mA/hr which were normal for this mouse's time changed the charging light to a slow flashing green. Long missed mouse with a great result.

How to allow Windows Vista to logon to a Buffalo NAS box / Linkstation / Terrastation

If you can't log into your Buffalo NAS box it's because of Microsoft updating the system for the greater good of encouraging me to switch to Apple sooner.

The symptoms:

The NAS box drive appears in the Network folder

You can access the NAS box via Window XP

You can't logon and it might seem to you that the login details are wrong

You can get the to web control panel using its IP e.g http://192.168.0.20

The cause:

Vista uses the NTLMv2 protocol, which Samba on the box does not support.

The solution:

Go to Start > Run > "secpol.msc"

Local Policies ; Security Options ; Network Security; LAN Manager authentication level.

Change from "Send NTLMv2 response only" to "Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated". Click OK.

Thanks to the lovely Buffalo Support Forum

Windows Mobile is still aweful

They say that it takes three goes to get a piece of software right. One piece of software that has broken the rule, and charred this expectation is Windows Mobile. So today I break a silence to join those who berate Windows Mobile: they say that 'Winmo' is a lame interface for a smart phone. I've used Winmo since it was called 'Windows CE' - this was a low-power operating system to embed in devices such as electronic diaries. This was lame too. My rogue's gallery of owned or loaned devices includes the successful HP Jornada 710; the well sized Samsung's Izzi Pro and well featured HP Ipaq 6550. Phone features were added to "Windows CE" and Windows Mobile was born, I went for the HTC TyTn II followed by today's HTC Touch Diamond2 running version 6.5. In this hardware collection you will find capable specifications with Bluetooth; WLAN; hi-res touch screens; video calling; fingerprint recognition; GPS and geo-tagging cameras. What you won't find is even one device that can use these conveniently. It can't display photos with any degree of speed or slick; similarly it can't jot a shopping list; show video without distortion and choppiness; install software; select music to play or make a phone call. An ipod Touch makes mincemeat on almost every point. It's even better at adding a contact or appointment for which it was not primarily designed.

I’ll agree it’s unfair to slam Windows Mobile and call it atrocious. But Microsoft has had the resources to change the phone world and numerous versions later, I still find it hard to use my HTC to send a text; make a phone call or do any of those ipod basics.
If anyone reviews Windows 7 mobile and says it's the dog's doodas, they might just find me already deaf. I’ve long believed that WinMo might provide what was missing elsewhere. I’ve done the good thing and put Google’s Android on my HTC (see www.androidonhtc.com). Both Google Android and iphone have had their irritations but by the second or third release they've been sorted.

Buying a phone at mobiles.co.uk - obvious benefits and hidden irritations

A new phone and a better deal seemed possible with mobiles.co.uk. Their O2 tariff was better than any I could find on O2 itself - besides there was 14 months half-price rental. Several snags were to emerge afterwards one of which was to want an Internet bolt-on which O2's web said was free to anyone who was on a 600 minute tariff. In fact that meant anyone who didn't buy through mobiles.co.uk. Thus £6.50 was added to my monthly bill, wiping out most of the money benefit. Automatically and as fairly warned I'd be signed up to the Tech Guys and also to mobile phone insurance. The Tech Guys sub was cancelled in one call. The phone insurance, which covers most risks except phone loss, was cancelled after another. Reminder letters continued to arrive and another call was needed to cancel it.
The half-price rental required redemption - which meant that I must remember to send my bills at 6 9, 12, 15 and 18 months or else forfeit the money. A cheque with an unexplainable amount of £39 then arrives following several emails. So by the end of this I'll have sent 5 bills and received 5 cheques and 15 emails. I am not expecting a reply to a letter asking how the rebate was calculated and I'll conclude Mobiles.co.uk is a faceless, phoneless operation. If getting a mobile doesn't require talking to someone to confirm details, I should know my stuff better before buying online with a click.

PDA's still evolving

see attached pdf with photo gallery - my PDA history
"I’ve spent an embarrassing amount on PDA’s over the last 20 years. In this time personal organiser equipment has been evolving and here I am still funding development. What’s driving this note is whether my philanthropy is finally paying off.

An HP ipaq 5450 running Windows Pocket PC has fingerprint recognition, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN. It can play music and video. It could run as a Sat Nav or handle email through the phone or wireless network. But as I do this never before have I confirmed so many actions or reminded this PDA what it’s supposed to be connected to. Playing a tune is no casual exercise. It will remember your contacts for as long as its battery lasts: if you forget to charge it it’ll lose all your friends. And since a Sat Nav really needs to work in desperate moments, I wonder how much one dare rely on it. Windows Vista didn’t care to talk with it. I conclude that the most highly evolved PDAs have decided to give evolution a miss. Someone please find me something that fits in my pocket and has text entry; phone connectivity; email and a library of photos, video and music.

HP Photosmart 3310 All-in-One Printer Scanner Fax

Here is a printer with networking features to the hilt. Its network link lets any machine connected to the network use the unit to fax, scan or print. Go to the printer and press scan and it'll ask 'to which machine' and then you can scan away, saving files on that machine, as if by remote control. Uploading pictures from a Pictbridge camera or a Flash card reader similarly asks which computer should receive the files. Alternatively, since a drive icon shows in My Computer, you can plug in the Flash card reader, go to your computer and browse the card as if it was a drive.
It has ethernet for wired network printing as well as wireless ethernet and amazingly it hops between these transparently. Disconnect the cable and the wireless takes over.
Really nice is a 10 x 15 cm photo tray which automatically bursts into life when selected by the software driver. No catches or buttons need pressing to hop between A4 and postcard size prints.
The software driver package is a hefty one with a slow install, however, bear with it because the result is a hec of a lot of function.
One small surprise was its Bluetooth capability if you bought an HP Bluetooth dongle. This lets you print a picture from a PDA or phone. Being too mean to buy the HP dongle I plugged in a cheap one made by Bluetake and this immediately started working! I think these BT things must use the same chips!

The HP 3310 was bought to replace a HP PSC 950 which scanned, faxed and came with HP Director - very capable software for its time. Bought in 2002 the build quality of the PSC 950 wasn't up to the hammering we gave it. The new HP prints really fast, feels good and strong enough from the start and it's one I'd care to recommend.

0870 - 0845 National numbers

Good news this month as the telecoms industry move to help telephone callers estimate what they pay when they dial a 'national rate' number beginning 0870. Currently you can pay a wide variety of anything and since very few people on the planet can understand a BT telephone bill, I'll wager that most people will continue never to know this. At around 8p (15 cents) a minute, an 0870 number doesn't cost that much to call but with landline calls now costing almost nothing to call, beside this they look pretty dear.

I still find it a touch alarming that numerous (but not all) businesses actually profit from you caling their 0870 number and are given 2p a minute on each minute of the call. I doubt if they're getting that wealthly but to be congratulated are those who devised the scheme where a business pays for a 08xx number, and consumers pay more for their calls as a result.

I've dabbled with the idea of getting 08xx numbers for myself and finally succombed. However it's taken a while to realise that if anyone offers you such a number you're obliged to keep it or else no one in future is going to be phoning you. An 0870 number (and an email address) is not just for Xmas, it's a commitment for life,

Plusnet, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) offer a free Fax2email 0870 number that sends a fax to your email box. It's a brilliant service until you put the number on your letter heads because Plusnet have the evil practice of disconnecting the number at random and giving the number to someone else.

Another firm, Robotelecom in Hemel Hempstead provide local call '0845' numbers. I signed up to one on their promise of "no fees to pay forever". This bunch too are truly fickle if not on the fringe of dishonest. Without notice Robotelecom decide to levy a £50 per annum fee for the number. That's not being trustworthty, to the nth degree. They claim that they were taken over by another firm called 'Virtual Effects Ltd' who had different terms so their promises didn't have to be kept. If you hanker for an 0870 / 0845 national number, you're going to pay one way or another. Friends tell me they have a more predictable time using companies other than robotelecom.co.uk.

Oneforall Wireless Telephone Extender

Spending sixty pounds for a telephone extension takes a bit of thinking about but after a couple of years dithering it was time to realise that life is too short for that kind of silly. People need phone sockets for their Sky box near the TV. My need was to get the telephone answering machine where it was needed. The fact that it's a DECT wireless system you can use anywhere made the need to spend £60 just a touch bizarre.
The 'One for All' Telephone Extender puts a phone socket where it's needed by sending telephone juice through the mains cabling. You can then pick up the phone signal at another mains outlet. Numerous reports from those with Sky Boxes were very positive but for straight forward phoning the solution was very hit or miss. First impressions of its two white boxes with mains leads and plugs suggested it's a lot of wires for a wireless solution. Recent units however improve on this by making the boxes with an integral plug. In use you do need to choose your sockets carefully because for a couple of days we'd missed half our calls and getting a line was a touch hit or miss. By day three, when it was clear that caller ID was not working over the link, the unit was on its way back to the shop. The small print on the OFA support web suggests that all these issues are likely. The sales part of the site only warns that it'll not work on ADSL lines or via a surge protector. It not only needs some kind of gauge to tell you how good the signal is - it also needs a note on the box to say that as solutions go this really is half good.

Mounting slim flat panel monitors - and keeping technology out of sight - click for full story

Pop into any computer room and you very often see LCD screens replacing the spaces that were once occupied by CRT monitors. In many cases, the space the LCD actually saves will be brought into question. Often you need to change the desking to reap a space-saving benefit.
Here’s my solution, based on an IKEA ‘Jerker’ desk, which also happens to be cheap. IKEA ‘Jerker’ desks have won fans and become a legend for the way that you can load them up with home office technology. You can for example attach power extensions (using Velcro strips) to the low cross beam. As of this moment mine has 20 out of sight power outlets for a phone, PDA, clock, lamp, computers, monitors, cassette recorder, speakers and external hard drive that have become part of this hilarious space called the home office. Designer Nicolas Cortolezzis deserves a prize… find out what we did (PDF = 250K)

Modified

Technology gone stupid - Jura coffee makers

Internet Connectivity Kit for Jura Impressa F90 & F9 Price £75
o download your favorite coffee recipes from the Internet and upload them on your machine
o You can check the status of your machine at any time. In this way you can provide the JURA service staff with important information so that they can help you with any problems.


Anyone in search of a coffee-maker that makes no compromises on quality will soon find themselves at the door of Swiss company Jura. Year upon year they win awards for best, most innovative coffee maker.
Winning industry awards on this scale is a sign of an active public relations department. Get yourself a fairly good product and a very good PR department and your winning a magazine award is a certainty. Enter more than enough products, spam every category and you can sit back and wait for a sympathy vote or the right mix of judges.
Take the Jura F90 coffee maker which a few years back was all the rage in the press. It has internet capability too which raised certainly my curiosity. What it can do is scantly documentated but having just now downloaded the software to see the features I'm amazed at what it does.

It is this:
1) allows you to customise a message that appears when it is switched on.
2) allows you to discover that you might as well take it back to the shop to fix it when it goes wrong
3) allows you to programme in a coffee receipe (adjust water / coffee) which would take about 2 minutes normally.
4) Connects to your PC with a serial lead. Whoopwhoop! How are you gonna get your PC in the kitchen?



Verdict: People who make coffee makers should stick to doing that.


Nearest competitor for dim technology: Sony Bluetooth DCR- IP7 - a camcorder that allows you to surf the net and send emails via your mobile phone when it's easier to use your mobile phone to do that anyway.

Finding a way forward with TomTom Go - GPS navigation

The world is divided into those who have discovered GPS navigation and those who have not. With a GPS unit you rarely get lost and the result is very, very relaxing.
The TomTom Go has a lot of well thought out software in the box – then again it still has a good few poweruser features that let you add POI’s (points of interest) to navigate to cash machines, petrol stations, speed cameras, Little Chefs, Travel Inns and more. (If I need to remember to go to Maplin, Halfords or ASDA I can tell TomTom to go 'boing' next time I'm driving past one).

The TomTom gives every feeling of being a fairly mature product: basically it kicks.

The TomTom 700 has an all Europe map which is a lifesaver for even occasional breaks away. If you haven’t ever been to another city and wondered where's the station, airport, hotel and so on, then you could save money and get a UK only map. However when you realise how good GPS is, you might well spend the extra money on the bigger map.
There’s a remote control - I use it, some people do not.
A Bluetooth wireless headset feature works well and lets you chat fairly safely on the phone. You can avoid needing to shout with a regular 3.5mm jacked mike – but it’s good to start with.
The traffic service is pretty good – the traffic service has the feel of a first generation product so you’ll have to contend with frequent ‘can’t connects’ and possibly even old information. However, when it helps me avoid any traffic, I’m a happy bunny. It’s hard to assess its effectiveness but there was no better way of avoiding a jam in an area I did not know.
Itineries can be set up – these are for your journeys with multiple stops. You enter all your way-stops and off you drive – though I’d caution on these. For example, if you stop short of a way-stop, you’re never logged as having been there. The result is that you’ll be redirected back to the stop. For these you have to be on the ball about telling the box where you’ve gone and been – I’d not recommend this feature to the whole world.
Favorite destinations – now these are fantastic: I recommend you prime the box with all your friends places and phone numbers. Then pay them surprise visits.

Issues to note:
maps - not perfect - I do get the occasional glitch (eg I’ve been directed to the back of the shopping centre, some roads do not exist and yet some are being built and appear on the map. Overall its better than good enough.
shape - this is fine mounted in a car but in your hand it is a bar of soap
phones - there is a list of supported phones and this is worth believing. Not being able to absorb the phone's phonebook (P910) or read SMS's was a trivial issue as all else worked.
don't 'use' whilst driving - if you buy a TomTom (even for someone not-so technowise) do them a favour and add addresses and POI's - download POI’s from tomtom forums and usb them over.
gprs - if you find you cannot set this up you may need to get O2 or Vodafone to let you have the full GPRS service.

Yesterday BBC’s Watchdog programme took on the case of someone who couldn’t use the TomTom and wanted to take it back. They'd been driving in circles with it in their home town. The shop refused and a fight ensued. Ultimately Watchdog wins because they have to – but frankly Watchdog could fight more deserving consumer injustices. Instead they rushed to rescue a consumer crybaby who wants the moon on a stick. The TomTom is a fabulous device, it’s imperfect but its every imperfection is worth working round.

Overall: best gizmo in years. Wife agrees, saynomore.

Camera Cards - Smart Media Flash - Recover deleted pictures - Recover from Card Err!

Having a recurrent Card Err! on your camera memory card? We tried a couple of ideas and this really sorted it.
1) Camera chooses not to be able to read the card it did two minutes ago. Solution: clean it. First clean the card slot by wiggle a few cm of Velcro hooks. The gritty surface helps. Next buff up the contacts of the Smart Media card - use a cloth and a few drops of brass/silver polish. Try, I hope it works for you.
2) Deleted some pictures on the card you thought were not worth keeping two minutes ago. Solution: You need a half decent unerase prgram. Get that from PC Inspector (CONVAR) - Google for this. It costs a very generous nothing. Heed all warnings about unerasing files of the hard disc (it can do this too - but there are reasons to be careful).

Out of Office Autoreply Toilet Break

I am away from my desk for ten minutes. I thought you'd need to know. Normally I am here all day answering your letters and thinking I am indispensable.


Action: Send to all
When: When I'm busy
But suppose: no one cares? Yeah right.



We guarantee to not to ever send one of these but should this happen, here's what to do in Outlook
1) Right Click on the message
2) Choose "Create Rule". Choose conditions eg 'autoreply' in the subject line.
3) Uncheck 'from'. Choose 'Move message to ..'
4) Choose 'Junk mail'

Networks are about power fer goodness sake

John Naughton makes an interesting comment in The Observer about school’s “restrictive broadband networks designed by clueless local authorities”. He clearly has inside information though the piece goes on a touch about the Tony Blair government being in on the act.

School networks ARE kind of yuk – most networks are. Maybe you can't put files on your machine or access Google images on yours. School networks are worse than many. But here's a real history to the restrictive network and it pre-dates Blair and even Thatcher. The history goes back to the dawn of civilization.

This is what happened. At the beginning there were people who studied and learned to understand the heavens. These people were the high priests, they were yesterday’s scientists. They could predict events. Knowledge was power. They knew cool stuff and pretty soon they gained an unholy amount of power.

This happened in schools too.

Fast forward to just yesterday when power in schools went through a comfortable era. Schools were run by the knowledgeable – basically the head of maths, head of English and head of science. Oh and the head.
But one day along came the computer. And someone in school learned to work it. Pretty soon their knowledge put them in power. They had found a fast career track. They got promoted to deputy heads in charge of ICT and i/c regional networks.

So I can't blame any bit of government policy for what's going on. Sure the government could fix it and I half think the Observer comment is helping. The cause of duff networks is that they don’t meet the needs of the users. The people in charge can’t find a way to change this even when they want them to.

Techno Palsy - Technopalsy

TECH'NO'PAL'SY n. s as z. to use a machine without reading a manual or even thinking.
When technology continues to be as half-well designed as it is, a certain about of nouse; intuition or rough intelligence is required of the user for the working thereof. If not that, it needs the read of the manual. Where is it? Those with technopalsy may throw it in the bin.

Persons with technopalsy are to be found mostly staring at a piece of technology in puzzlement. Not all such stares are signs of a full-blown affliction.

This most indicative symptom of TP is shown by a conclusive test. The test is based on the fact that many gismos [ibid] have hidden key presses to reset the device or put it into maintenance mode or go where it shouldn't. To the most ordinary geek-type person, these key presses are hard if not impossible to find without a manual.

But the confirmed technopalsied will find the correct key combination within a few minute's use of a device. Hence a Windows PC will be 'accidentally' made to start in safe mode; or it will lock-up trying to download a large file; a digital clock will hop between date-view and time-view; a television will retune itself and seek new channels; an ipod's software will crash; a coffee machine will discharge coffee pretty much everywhere.

Definition from Roger's Dictionary of the English Language, 2005.

The colour laser printer

Have you been thinking about selling your printer? Looking at
today's prices for colour laser printers I wonder what I'd get for a 2 year
old Epson Acculaser C2000, original costing £2000. It's powerful and meaty
but the price of consumables hasn't dropped. So I've already spend £1400 on
consumables for it and in a couple of refills time, the running costs exceed
the printer price. Today you can buy an equivalent model for £1000 which
ought to get you a Duplexer, Heavy build quality, Postscript 3, two large
Large Paper trays and most importantly memory. Whatever you do, don't buy a
page printer(ie a laser printer) that might not have enough memory to hold
a page. If you've a printer with 32Mb, and the PC isn't sharing the load,
you may find the printer goes into a coma when you ask for a full page
photo. I'd like to hear that's not so but the C2000 has 160Mb and I can't
recall it ever stalling over a print job.
Other printer buying tips: > Buy a really popular printer as there's a
greater market for consumables. Also, like car buying, check the model's age - you can get discounts on old models a few months before new models arrive in summer.


Colour Laser Running costs Update 2006

Today the transfer belt, a very big consumable part of the colour laser needed replacing so it was time to take stock of how much the laser has cost to run. Here for posterity are the figures.

Purchase price Epson C2000 with all the trimmings £1500 ex VAT December 2001
Consumables bought to May 2006 = £1540
Value of consumables in hand (not used) £320
Net consumed £1320
Pages printed 21500 colour; 6000 black; 27500 total
Average cost per colour page excluding paper: 5p (or 10p including the hardware).
Annual cost = £500 (incl hardware)

Dell Dimension 5000 - buy a PC, forget DIY building

With January sales causing a drop in PC prices, I succumbed and bought a new Dell Dimension. It has loads of USB sockets and a network card but the killer feature is that it's probably the quietest PC I've ever bought.

As the fifth Dell bought over fifteen years, I had stopped buying Dells 5 years ago after they sold me one that never went wrong. This Pentium 3 - 550MHz chugged along nicely for months on end. It was rarely switched off. What helped was thar I'd Ghosted the OS partition at its zenith of reliability and once a year I'd refresh the OS - usually this was after some application misbehaved. Over time I added a video card, a hard disc and some memory to take it through the Windows 2000 and XP eras. The XPS T550 was fairly quiet too but for heavy duty jobs like video editing I used a series of self build PCs .

I look back at this era of DIY PC building as my misguided years. Every building project has been frought with assembly, dissassembly and system hiccups. It's best left to people who have a well-stocked workshop and time to kill. Any money saved has to be balanced against what's involved - even if it is easy and educational. In fact a small fortune was spent on quiet PSU's, new fans and silent flower-style heatsink coolers. On one PC alone that came to £150 ($250) . After deducting £150 for a Dell FP monitor, the near-silent Dimension 5000 cost £250. This was Dell number 5. A zealot I've become.


History
No 1: Dell 486 - ran on Windows 3 - reliable - left running for months.
No 2: Dell Pentium I - 133 MHz - Windows 95 - fairly good - ransacked for parts. Heatsink is now a business card holder.
No 3: Dell Pentium II - 266 MHz - Windows 98 - never happy - used as a music server
No 4: Dell Pentium III - 550MHz - Windows 2000 - still going 2005

Online shopping - cuts service to unacceptable levels

Online shopping dissolves half of the hassle of shopping in town - when the object of desire is rarely in stock and thus the goods are hard to find it's plain crazy not to. And then you can choose from all the competition, not just the stuff on show.
And because you can hop from site to site researching details, prices are keen. Prices are keen because there's no shop to pay for, or staff to answer a phone or now in most cases, hardly anyone to deal with an email. The online shopping world is evolving. Who do you think is going to survive? Will it be the shops at the bottom-dollar no-service end of the market ... will these shops win customers as fast as they lose them? Or will it be those with a more blended good price - good service offering ... who will build a loyal following?

If you really want to remove the hassle of buying things online, look for these features:

• There's a phone number where you can sort out problems.
• Delivery charges are fair, for example they go up reasonably with how much you buy or they diminish altogether.
• Offers are what they say they are - not eye-catchers with small print
• Emails are replied to within an hour or so.
• If the item's not in stock, you're given options as to what to do.
• An apology for a messed up order (wrong things delivered) is an apology with money eg a free gift / free delivery next time. In other words the shop guarantees its service as well as it goods
• Copious information on the product and its applications.
• Customers reviews

Duff shops that need to shape up or shut down

• ebuyer.com; dabs.com - offer cut into the bone service; there is no telephone number that answers. For instance what is the point of asking "where's this morining's delivery" when it takes few days to reply to an email . Or see what happens if the item's out of stock.
• neat-ideas.co.uk; simply.co.uk - there is general dimness across the organisation which leads to mistake upon mistake.
• unbeatable.co.uk; hughes.co.uk; dell.co.uk; northerntools.co.uk - slashed prices but delivery charges at their most ridulous

Star players

• maplin.co.uk - has not forgotten it service pledges; if it's in your 'basket' the item isn't removed because it's gone out of stock.
• phones4less.co.uk - home-phones.co.uk - they know their products; they help; they offer solutions
• amazon.co.uk - great website, and they haven't goofed up to reveal anything's not brilliant.
• johnlewis.com; viking-direct.co.uk; diy.com (B&Q) - fantastic ... these are here to sell you stuff well by any means and not cut, cut.
• er.. that's not that many in this list. Your recommendations are welcome

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Familiar noises from the inkjet printer

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.

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

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?

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.

Micromark mains halogen light fitting proves to be a trojan horse for light bulbs

We've heard it said that an inkjet printer is a trojan horse for inkjet cartridges - the printer is sold cheap because the manufacturer makes the most money on the sale of inkjet cartridges. After all, if you use them to print stuff, you can expect to pay for the ink. Applying the same sense to home lighting hasn't worked for us.
From today we expect to save a lot of money on light bulbs. Our last Micromark GU10 Mains Halogen lamp expired in a pop today and we rejoiced. At nearly £10 each these bright and allegedly good value bulbs allow you to use halogen spot lamps wherever a transformer would be out of place. Often called simply 'mains halogen', and more succintly in this house 'a disappointment' they enable us to use some awesome hi-tech light fittings. The running cost however is another matter. In the space of a year a four-lamp fitting costing £90 has cost as much again in replacement bulbs. But now, by simply removing a few screws, the Micromark spotlight track can be dumped in the attic. This technology may one day find its moment, but just now we'll keep the fitting as a reminder. Micromark are at www.micromark.co.uk but there's no advice here. If you are similarly afflicted, cheaper replacement GU10 bulbs can be found at Argos and Ikea.

Grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces

A bag of chips
Today we went to look at a propective school in Edmonton, North London so surfing took a rest. The depressing event required the measure of spiritual lift that only a bag of chips can fulfil.

North London is a reliable place to find chip shops - Hackney has one (Faulkners), Islington's Upper Street has a couple and here's another in Edmonton. I'd call it 'traditional' which means they sell no kebab but they do sell you a huge bag of chips. I'd also call this a complete meal that creates the best rush of cholesterol you can buy. It comes in flavours: cooking oil, fried chicken or fish. However we needed cheering up after this:

How to feel miserable in a couple of hours

Edmonton, North London is home to a state funded grammar school that parents clamber to get their kids into. For the reasonably well to-do, Latymer is a no-cost option to a private school. The school open day was packed, its organisation shambolic and the atmosphere seething and tense. To suffer this is the price you pay to come here. Without reflecting on the quality of the teaching that takes place, we came away that free brings its disadvantages. Hec if they're this good at marketing, just imagine how you're going to be treated as a customer.

The school's popularity has generated unusual rudeness towards parents. While teachers were only too pleased to explain their craft, the school admin staff were off-putting, discouraging and blatently rude. Their message: you're very unlikely to get your child in here, we don't need your business, go away. And this is what my taxes pay for. After years of my arguing that publicly funded education (or 'state education') was the best way, this is embarrassing.

Hilariously, this school, which clearly spends very little effort or money on marketing pleads poverty to the visiting parents. They insist on a payment to handle each application for a place. The price is a book of stamps or an asked-for shamelessly two pounds. And they're quite rude about it!

Contrast this to the annual school fairs in Islington and Hackney where some schools were happy to press a few £££ worth of glossy print in your hand. Because of an imminent move out of range of those schools we were not able to consider these schools. Nevertheless they left us with a good feeling about state schooling. The Latymer School sadly shamed it. I hope their PR improves.

Latymer grammar school - bargain education - demanding postage stamps with menaces

How to while away some time: try digital video

Here's a tip you'd easily miss. Buy the very latest greatest digital camcorder and then put it in the cupboard for a few years while computers become fast enough, and the software gets good enough to edit digital video. Be sure to do this on a PC rather than a Mac because this ensures a level of usuability we're looking for. Better still buy a Sony Camcorder in the MicroMV format range, open the box, find the recommendation and information on where to buy Pinnacle Studio 7 DV Editing software and of course buy it. You should then discover that Pinnacle have a facinating marketing dept that lets it's imagination rip with their product's capabilities. Were you into using up time, you may experience massive disappointment to find it worked - but that's not the case. Next email tech support and wait for no answer. Wait and do nothing for a year till Studio 8 is released and now works with Sony's MicroMV. Get this and pass the time with error messages that say 'Capture error'. Puzzle further, peruse tech support to find that it didn't work on release. Nexr realise why the person on the box shot is smiling. She got Pinnacle to refund her money and got herself a life and an Apple Imac. I use a PC and must therefore cheer myself up with food.

Update
Sony need to take the blame for inventing this format in the first place. The Sony (Memory Stick) Company is known for inventing things that connect only to Sony. To be fair it was brave of Pinnacle to try to build a bridge between the format and the rest of the world. There's hope as today Pinnacle's US Product Manager agreed that there had been a delay in the compatibility with Sony MicroMV and it is being rectified right now.offers this statement to explain things: "While MicroMV support was planned for the initial release of Studio 8, unforeseen difficulties were encountered in supporting this new format. We are working closely with Sony to resolve these difficulties, and a free Studio 8.3 update with full MicroMV support should be available on the 15th September.".
The patch didn't arrive. As Pinnacle's webboard shows us, setting a date does not make things happen.

Pic: You'd really smile if you got your money back

Today the computer has a rest
Thanks to some woe at the ISP, much of the day's work was blitzed. Life has come to a halt. There is niet, nought and nothing to click on. There is niet to eat also so this nietness is complete. All that's now deemed edible is on the larder baking shelf - and this Plain Chocolate flavour block quickly won the battle for my attention. A bag of Ground Nuts was envious. The Glace Cherries were gutted.
After all that, and a few bites later, this bar has never seen chocolate. It may have briefly looked at some but it learned nothing from that. It's taste and texture cannot be recommended to readers. This cooking chocolate is to chocolate, what Windows XP is to anything else. It's a cosmetic covering to hide whatever's beneath it.

Pic: Cooking chocolate - cure for chocolate addiction

Play shopping for shops on the web

If you buy technology on the web, the firms pretty soon sort themselves out into good and less good. Give yourself a budget of a few grand and award points to the shopping sites using these criteria.

Point one is for the site with all the information you need to buy. Dabs.com do this excellently and get a deserved point here.

Point two is for whether the site shows a genuine stock level and do actually deliver. A few firms have done this excellently. Award negative points if a firm says it’s in stock and then, when you've ordered, sends a whingy email reinterpreting the meaning of 'in stock'.

Point three is for how well they split orders when things are in or out of stock.

Point four is whether they do anything at any speed when you click Checkout. (Order something from cclcomputers.com, wait a few days and then cancel and go elsewhere. Dabs.com win awards for their site but what they mean by next day delivery is measured by the days on planet Pluto. Dabs always disappoints. Ebuyer never disappoints as long as you realise that the firm really wants to go out of business. This this they do by messing up often.

Point five is negative marks for all the excuses you will get when the wrong things are sent, things don't work.

Point six is for a customer helpline that's effective. Several firms (e.g. Dabs, Ebuyer) have 'virtual customer helplines' meaning that there's a number but the response time is a ridiculous seven days.

I’ll return to this later, but first there’s money to be shed