Freeware
on the internet
A survey of the
leading search engines makes interesting reading. Do you know
what the two most common words that are typed into a search
engine are?
1. Free.
2. Sex (I included the second to get your attention!).
I don't know about the latter,
but something for virtually nothing really appeals to us all.
Free pictures, desktop themes, wallpaper, a screen saver, games,
music, the list seems endless, and all are in abundance.
But free programmes from the
internet? Risky, it may seem. We are unsure what they will do to
our computers, technical support if things go wrong, and the
risk of downloading a virus often makes us wary.
There are two main categories.
Freeware and Shareware. Shareware is a concept that allows you
to ‘try before you buy’, usually 30 days, before the
programme either refuses to run, or a screen appears, telling
you to register or buy the product. Winzip (a file compression
utility), is an example of such a product, and Paint Shop Pro (a
very popular graphics package), also started its life in this
way. Previewing a piece of software is an effective way of
making sure that it does exactly what you want, and with the
money the makers get, ensures that the product is improved and
updated. Freeware is, well, free. Free to download, use and keep
forever, with no restrictions on use.
"This is all very well,
but are these free programmes any good?" I hear you ask.
Well, the short answer is that most are very, very good. From
totally free anti-virus software (with free regular updates), to
word processors, utilities, and even a free operating system,
the wealth of quality free software on the internet is
staggering. "So, if this software is that good, why do the
makers give it away?" To be honest, I just cannot answer
this. Maybe it is for the benefit of others, maybe a hobby, I
just do not know. All I can say is, that there are literally
hundreds of pieces of software on the net, ranging from the
useful, to the essential, and when you start to find them, I
warn you all, it can become something of an obsession!
I use a word processor that
looks very similar to a well-known one, but takes up less than
3Mb of hard disc space. A text editor that lists, views, opens
and saves the 9000 text files on my PC, a compression utility to
rival the very best, and many more. All excellent quality, all
free, with excellent help and technical support. A free lunch?
Not quite, but you can some pretty big burgers with the savings
you make!
Anthony Smith, Cambridge
Advice
from a self-taught "technician"
Any novice to the
world of computers who reads this and hopes for encouragement, I
am afraid, will be sorely disappointed. Don’t get me wrong,
computers are an essential part of my life. My PC allows me to
write emails to family and friends, research my family tree, set
up my own web page, make contact with old school friends now
hundreds of miles away, write lesson plans and worksheets for
school, research anything on the web, take wrinkles off faces on
photographs.... I could go on and on.
So what’s the problem? Well
the downside, as anyone starting in this field will realise, is
when things don’t work. For example a few weeks ago I was all
set to write an important email. The PC booted up as usual. I
opened up the Internet Provider software and the screen froze
into a Mondrian-style picture of half opened windows. The mouse
was frozen, so there wasn’t even the chance of trying to
"unfreeze" things with a system check application.
After a few half-hearted depressions of the Escape Key, I
resorted to Alt-Ctrl-Del and even that had no effect. That meant
turning off, waiting a bit, and then turning back on again.
Now I was faced with that
disapproving screen, telling me I had failed to shut down
correctly, and as a penance I was forced to wait while the scan
disk chugged through its various checks. OK - so all came back
to life and I tried opening my Word Processing application
instead (just to make sure everything was in order). Low and
behold the same thing happened again. Biggest freeze-up since
1947 (silver surfers please explain this to younger readers!)
Naturally I shall not give a
multimedia description of what happened next for fear of
censorship by some Cyberpatrol authorities. Suffice to say it
wasn’t only the screen that was blue!
I had now decided that
something major was wrong and maybe my system check software
could find the fault. I got it to check the hard disk, system,
windows etc and eventually found that 66% of the hard disk was
fragmented. Oh the relief! It was like going to the doctors with
strange symptoms, and discovering you only had chicken pox.
Unpleasant - but hardly life threatening. The cure took about as
long as that for chickenpox (well 4 hours to be honest, but it
felt longer). I thought I had been quite rigorous in using a
virus checker, scan-disk, clearing out the recycle bin etc., but
this one obviously had slipped my memory chips.
Don’t let this tale put off
any "newbies", and any geeks that have read this far,
well I am sure you always put the disk defragmenter on your task
scheduler .......don’t you?
Ann Stewardson, Stockport
Poets’
Corner
You have won my heart from Issue One!
You do what others have never done,
You cut the jargon down to size
With print that's easy on the eyes.
I've always been a Geller fan -
Such an interesting man!
And Michael Hewitt makes me think.
You always put a useful link
To the Web in Workshops and
Reviews,
As well as the entertaining News
That keeps us fully up to date
(And makes my bedtime very late -
I really cannot put it down,
But read on, in my dressing gown!)
And now you're asking me to write
A column ... done it! With delight!
Pamela Crane, Faversham,
Kent
A
bit to the right and it’s over there
They say getting
to grips with computers is easy and maybe they’re right. After
all most of the mysterious stuff is looked after by the
Operating System. We’re free to run programs with little or no
concern for what’s going on deep inside our machines. But back
in the mists of time the world wasn’t like that. Computing was
strictly for the enthusiast. It was a world of computer junkies,
collectively known as nerds. These guys were something else.
They knew everything. They assembled computers from scratch and
thought in machine code. In fact they were the experts and, like
experts everywhere, they spoke in riddles. They had the whole
thing tied up. But a new dimension opened up when BASIC
(Beginner All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was born. The
programming language was adequate for non-professionals,
excellent for beginners and, about that time, things really
started to move.
A kid in the States, called
Gates had fallen out with IBM. He promptly forgot about them and
went on to become the fourteenth richest country in the world
– that’s if you think of him as a country that is…
In the UK, a retailer and
inventor of miniature radios launched the Sinclair ZX80
computer. The first ones came with a mere 1k of memory, no hard
drive, no floppy drive, a cut down version of BASIC and they
sent their output to a TV. People loved ‘em. But there was no
software around. So if you wanted your shiny new computer to do
something you had to get to grips with BASIC and set about
writing your own software. That’s part of how the software
industry was born. Of course there were other computers around
by that time, most notably the Commodore Pet. And, unnoticed by
anyone, Bill Gates was starting to take over the world… Then
came the GUI (Graphic User Interface) firstly from Apple, then
from Microsoft and we were suddenly away. Modern computing was
upon us, complete with mouse and little on-screen arrow.
Remember how the simple act of co-ordinating eye and hand
movements was a difficult trick to master? Getting the skill has
been known to put people off computing for life and that’s a
shame. But Windows has the solution. Rather than watch a tyro
get to grips with the ways of a mouse, simply suggest they
select the Start button. Then point ‘em to
Programs/Accessories/Games and finally have them click on
Solitaire. It’s a sort of Patience game. All the beginner then
has to do is choose a card and ‘drag-n-drop’ it onto
whichever stack suits. A few games of Solitaire and the little
arrow will always go where the mouse sends it. And it’ll be
fun.
Ian Bradley, Essex
Into
the future with MP3
Well I think most of you by now will have heard of the format
MP3. For those of you who may have been in a deep sleep for some
time now, it is becoming a very popular thing around the world.
It has been in all the newspapers that bands are promoting music
on the internet in this way. It has been the subject of legal
battles to stop it, because record companies feel that it will
take their revenue away. MP3 is the format for storing
compressed music files on your computers hard drive. The files
are compressed to approximately a tenth of their original size,
so take up less space on your hard drive.
I have been experimenting with
MP3s for a few weeks now. There is software available for
transferring your existing music CDs into MP3 format, and you
are also able to download MP3 music files from various sites on
the internet. Some are available as free downloads and some you
have to pay for, these are available for your own personal use.
But the music can only be played on your computer through an MP3
player, or by downloading the files to a portable MP3 player.
But the quality of the sound is on a par with original CD
quality.
This weekend I went to a
family party at a local pub. They had the usual sort of thing,
plenty of drink, a buffet and not forgetting the good old DJ.
Then the thought suddenly occurred to me. Remember these parties
back in the seventies and early eighties when the DJ would turn
up in his battered old transit van, with just enough room for
all his equipment and the 20 boxes of LP records? Well things
have moved on a little since then. The DJ still turns up with
his deck and all those flashing lights, but where are all those
boxes he used to have to carry? Well, they now play their music
from CD thus taking up less room and less to carry. So what
about the future of MP3 being used by these DJ’s? Will the day
come when he turns up with his laptop, his hard drive filled
with MP3 music, and just in case people wanted a little
different music he would perhaps carry 10 or 20 MP3 CDs that he
had made up himself? Which is something you can do. Each CD can
hold an average of 180 songs. This would make the amount of
equipment he had to carry around with him even less.
Some of you may say that this
is too far fetched, but it is definitely a possibility for the
not too distant future.
Mark Platt, Oldham
It’s
a weird wide web
The great thing about this internet caper is it unites the world
into one online community. Hmm. I don't know about your
community, but my local estate has a fair sprinkling of dodgy
characters from the mildly eccentric to the out and out barking.
Whilst I appreciate the diversity and rich tapestry of life,
communing with such colourful citizens does not particularly
appeal. Likewise the world wide web. From those who find
jiggling rodents highly amusing to cataloguers of belly fluff
and nail clippings, there is an overwhelming case for a
stringent programme of Care in the Online Community.
Not that I wish to spoil
anybody’s fun. Far from it. It is everyone's right to let the
world know the pleasure derived from counting electricity pylons
and dressing pets in the style of fifties movie stars. And what
a welcome relief to surf into the Parlour of Pomegranates (a
slavering shrine to this frequently neglected fruit). Especially
given the predominance of hard sell e-commerce sites. But even I
can tire of Barfing Bob's Bodily Functions Juke Box.
Oh, I know you're all dying to
find these places now. But I am not about to disclose web
addresses and encourage such wanton wallowing in shallowness.
Not for nothing anyway. I do accept cheques - hey, we've all got
to live. All I ask is, shouldn't we be warned if we accidentally
stumble across these endearing enthusiasts as we diligently
search the superhighway for more enlightening material? Pictures
of oddly shaped vegetables are constantly waylaying me. Has the
world not tired of yet another Elvis Parsley? And what is it
with these food fixations anyway?
Not for the first time have I
typed 'combine harvester’ (don't ask) in the search box only
to be presented with 11,986,562 'exact' matches whisking me off
to exotic sites of a decidedly risqué nature involving heavy
farmyard machinery. It can take hours to extricate myself from
such shenanigans. However, these distractions can shed new light
on a topic I am investigating, in which case I feel obliged to
stay and delve deeper into the matter. All in the purpose of
research you understand.
Anyhow, to return to my point.
I have a suggestion. Perhaps it is possible for some
entrepreneur somewhere to keep an eye on all these website
uploaders. Whenever a really dodgy one appears they could add a
warning sound to the site. This would alert unsuspecting punters
that something peculiar is on the loose. And what sound in
particular, you might ask. Well. What about the 'Duelling
Banjos' from the film Deliverance? Its sinister connotations of
in-breeding and general weirdness would be the perfect
accompaniment to the more wacky websites in wubbleyou wubbleyou
wubbleyou land. No?
Tommy Mackay, Glenrothes,
Fife
Confessions
Of A Footsie Virgin
To the average layman
(and layabout) like me anything to do with dotcom seems to lead
to dotting the ‘i’s on a big fat payout cheque on the
stockmarket these days. So, with this mistaken ethic in mind,
(apparently for every winning internet company, there are four
struggling losers) I decided to spend my time, whilst off work
with flu recently, en PC playing FTSE with the concept of online
share trading. Well, it's better than cutting the grass on your
days off!
My only input into the
mysterious world of stocks and shares had been a free share
issue from a fast and stable ISP called Totalise (www.totalise.net).
After signing up with them in November, I had a share
certificate - a portfolio!! - saying I had 210 shares in
Totalise on OFEX. Having never heard of OFEX, the obvious and
safest thing to do was to check 'em out. Apparently, there are
three British stock markets:
· The London Stock Exchange
(LSE), which has all of the major FTSE companies.
· The Alternative Investment
Market (AIM), on which many companies float to get much-needed
expansion capital.
· The Off-Exchange (OFEX)
collection of newish companies.
Having looked at www.ofex.co.uk
and seeing that everything was legit, I went back to the
Totalise FAQ page and found a broker that would deal in OFEX
shares. One 0800 phone call later, a deal had been done at 73p a
share, minus £25 commission, and I now had a contract note on
its way (as well as a cheque for £128.30 coming within the
week).
Armed with the confidence that
it was as simple as I'd hoped, I grabbed a quick look at the
Bloomberg (www.bloomberg.com)
and Money Channel TV (www.moneychannel.co.uk)
websites, studied www.iii.co.uk
as well as www.uk-invest.co.uk
and www.epo.com,
and opened a share-dealing account with www.halifax-online.co.uk
. Opening an online account for stocktrading isn't
instantaneous; you have to send off proofs of identity, sign
direct debits, and wait for passwords and PIN numbers to be
issued, but three days later, I was on the game, buying and
selling popular internet shares after a little checking out, and
in profit. And yes, I was an internet millionaire (in Lira) by
the end of the week!
I'm just about to sell my www.iii.co.uk
shares and am now eagerly anticipating the release of www.lastminute.com
shares onto the open market, for small punters like myself to
pick up like hungry minnows. Totalise is still issuing me with
regular monthly shares; The Mutual.Net (www.themutual.net)
offer free shares and float somewhen soon, as do www.myISP.co.uk.
As the song says; Will I be
rich? Will I be poor? I'll let you know! But tread carefully,
read the papers, do plenty of research, and never invest money
you can't afford to lose and you won't go far wrong. It's fun
and simple; unlike gambling on the gee-gees, you don't lose all
your money if a stake doesn't pay off. And if, one day, you see
a curly-haired beggar reading Computeractive and rattling an
empty floppy disk box near you - it might be me, so please give
generously!
Nick Smith, Mortimer,
Berkshire |
Learning
To 'Drive' the Computer
Anyone can learn to drive, in fact, think of some of the people
who pass the test and it makes you wonder if the examiner was
nursing a big hangover that day or had just met his/her fave
pin-up earlier and had organised a secret tryst after the test.
It's often the most unexpected people who launch into a
conversation about defragmenting their disk or the problems of
sending graphics by e-mail. But in many ways, learning computer
skills is very like learning to drive a car. How many of us
truthfully know what's under the bonnet but have driven many
thousands of miles without it being important. I certainly
wouldn't recognise a motherboard if it popped up in my soup!
The main priority is getting
started and accessing your first computer is often not one you
buy for yourself. Forking out a thousand pounds for something
you're not too sure about isn't everyone's cup of tea. What if
you can't work it is usually the first thought, followed by
justifying when you're actually going to use it. Most people
find some excuse to put it off so usually the first contact is
through someone else. At first the odd half hour on Paint or
Word is quite sufficient and you feel really pleased when you
accomplish a very bad drawing or string a few words together.
However, it quickly becomes addictive and you spend longer each
session.
Round about this time you
wonder if you should maybe attend a class now that you've
grasped the basics and this is probably a good idea, but not
always. I had a pretty bad experience with a very nice gent who
was very enthusiastic. He knew his stuff inside out but when it
came to putting it across he lacked greatly in this department.
During our first lesson he talked non-stop for two hours about
Java and HTML, told us how to fix a computer if it broke - AND
WE HADN'T EVEN SWITCHED ONE ON! Needless to say the classes got
smaller and smaller and by the final week only the tenacious
survived.
Once you eventually take the
plunge and buy your much-treasured computer, you're off and
running. As you stumble your way around for the first few months
you usually pick up bits and pieces every day. How to save
files, customise the machine, organise money, make spreadsheets,
things you thought you'd never be able to do in a million light
years all seem so simple after just a short while. Like most
things, the more you learn the more pleasurable it becomes.
One thing's for sure,
computers are here to stay and from what we're led to believe,
we will spend more and more time at computer-related activities.
I daresay there will be some things that can never be replaced
like going for a drink with your friends or seeing your
grandchildren opening their presents on Christmas day (God
forbid) but having said that, instead of going to the pub we
might all well be into video-conferencing and sitting at home
talking with our mates from different locations. It would save
the hassle of going out. I also know families who live abroad
that send photos to Gran and Gramps with digital cameras by
e-mail which is the next best thing if you're not there.
Computers will change society
in a big way so it's best not to get left behind. It's like
learning to drive all over again except you don't have that
terrible test at the end of it. Hop on the bandwagon, take the
plunge. Maybe that class you've been meaning to attend won't be
so bad after all. It's 100% guaranteed that everyone on it will
be as clueless as you. Just think of the people you know who
drive and you could never figure out quite how they passed…
Rona Meikle, Isle of Islay,
Argyll
Technologically
excluded – adventures just outside computing
The youth wandered over, a prince in corporate tie. ‘Aah’,
he said, ‘a nice machine - and fully internet ready.’ ‘What
does that mean exactly?’ asked my friend. The youth, taken
aback by an American accent, jabbed wildly - ‘and fully 2000
compliant.’ ‘As it’s January now, I should hope so’,
remarked my friend. His American assuredness was lent arrogance
by his nasal Bay Area twang. ‘How does the Celeron differ from
the Pentium?’, he jousted. He already knew the answer - he’d
explained it to me three times today. I didn’t know the
answer. I stood beside him, British, wanting the moment to end -
wishing they could shake hands. Maybe we could buy a PC. Yes,
that’s it - we could buy a PC just to make this go away, end
it in smiles. The youth looked troubled. His red tie shone,
fluorescent under strip lights. ‘I’m normally on Stereos.’
It had been this way since he
arrived - his two week decade in my house. All the way from
Silicon Valley, where I’d met him at the wedding of a mutual
friend. ‘Come over’, I’d said. He came over. ‘Stay with
us’, I’d said. He stayed with us. Didn’t see sights, didn’t
do Lake District or Cotswolds or Big Ben. Just shops. Shops in
malls. Computer shops. I came to fear the superior sniff, the
‘let’s see what crap they’ve got in here.’
I should have guessed on the
first morning. The plumber took the front off the boiler. A
sharp intake of breath at what was revealed. Not the dripping
copper of expectation, but circuitry. The plumber was troubled -
he searched for jargon, found ‘motherboard’, looked
satisfied. ‘You see, what happens is that all the information
goes into this motherboard, then it gets processed and comes out
different. So you get hot water, heating. Oh, they’ve come on
a lot these combis. This one’s Italian.’ He sought
traditional answers. ‘Drips. Yes, drips have shorted out this
motherboard. I’ll have to get a new one. From Italy.’ My
friend said ‘sheesh’. I didn’t know they really said that.
‘So where are you from then?’
asked the plumber. ‘San Jose’, said my friend. ‘Silicon
Valley’, I added helpfully. The plumber blanched, left. My
friend changed a fuse. The heating gasped into life.
I found out much about
computing while he was here. Forgot most of it. He turned my PC
from Metro into Ferrari. A tweak here, a ‘de-frag’ there.
The crowning moment was his production of ‘old style memory’
from a plastic bag in his suitcase. ‘Thought this might come
in handy over here’ he said. It did. I felt poor, like one of
those old Soviets fighting in the street over Levi’s
Next month, I’m going to San
Jose to see my other friend - the one who got married. A layman
in Silicon Valley. I’ll report back - once I get the gist of
it.
Philip Wragg, Sheffield
Thoughts
from a home office
My office is not the sort of place I normally encounter
insoluble mysteries, at least that is what I have always
thought. However, I do run Windows, but that is another story!
Maybe it is something to do with the millennium or some
celestial conjunction but I do have a mystery. Now, I know that
in the real world offices are full of mysteries but I’m
talking about my home office, a place that I am obviously very
familiar with. It has got to the ‘spooky’ stage.
I am not particularly
superstitious but I will confess to avoiding walking under
ladders, not because I fear ‘breaking the triangle of life’
but more because I don’t want to be brained by a cack-handed
tradesman demonstrating that a free falling object heads for the
centre of the Earth. Whether I am at more risk from an errant
litre of Dulux or from stepping into the path of a motor vehicle
I don’t know.
In the Dark Ages mysteries
were attributed very conveniently to either God or the Devil and
were dealt with either by evangelical acceptance, the odd
incantation (in Latin of course) or the occasional purging of
the odd heretic. Come to think of it if you were mildly
eccentric, a trait us Brits have in abundance, life must have
been lived on a bit of a knife-edge. The ‘Thought Police’ in
those days were powered by religious fervour. This is the 21st
century, we are part of the computer generation, and we are
enlightened. A mystery is there to be analysed and explained.
I digress; here I am pondering
the meaning of life to the subdued, soporific hum of two
computers, and yet I can’t get out of my mind the feeling that
I am the victim of a computer literate sprite. It centres on my
chair, a perfectly normal office chair of the screw adjustable
type, yet a chair obviously possessed. Regularly I have to wind
it up. A couple of days ago it took five turns (about 1½ inches
in proper measurement) to get it back to my normal working
height. It never needs winding down! It has become an obsession,
I even find I am analysing how I use it for Pete’s sake, which
must make me a very sad person. The only logical explanation,
although I fail to see what is logical about any of this, is
that my chair is being used overnight by an entity that has an
inside leg measurement approximately 1½ inches shorter than
mine and is obviously engaged in incorporeal hacking? I await my
next phone bill with interest and a degree of trepidation!
Rodney Rose, Minehead,
Somerset
DVD
and beyond
Digital Versatile Disks, or DVDs as they are more commonly
known, are slowly creeping onto the high street. They now adorn
the shelves of WHSmith, Virgin, Woolworths and even ASDA. You
can watch them in the comfort of your living room on a nice wide
screen TV, on your computer screen or shortly, you will even be
able to watch your favourite movies on a forthcoming range of
next-generation consoles. Compared to conventional VHS they
provide noticeably better picture and sound quality in addition
to widescreen playback and a plethora of special features.
Unlike laserdiscs, which were seen solely as a toy for the rich
movie buffs, the DVD will soon become commonplace.
However, they may not be as
good as people think. As with almost everything you can find
them cheaper across the Atlantic, but a lower price is not the
only benefit we are missing. Take "The Matrix" for
example, granted the British release set new standards for DVD
content but it was still lacking the director’s commentaries
present in the US version. I could go on and name and shame
several other titles but I think the point has been put across.
In defence of region 2 titles, many do offer noticeably better
picture quality than American releases due to differences
between PAL and NTSC video encoding.
The main failing of DVDs is
the fact that, for the moment, they are "read only",
meaning you cannot set your DVD player to tape "Eastenders".
Granted DVD-Ram drives are already starting to trickle onto the
market, but last time I checked, a blank disk cost twenty
pounds. Just think how many VHS tapes you could buy for twenty
pounds.
As always there are also
several new formats emerging that could prove to be much better
than DVD. Personally I am betting on new CD sized discs that use
fluorescent materials, which in theory could allow discs capable
of storing terabytes of information. Now that is a lot of
movies. In addition the technology is relatively straightforward
and inexpensive. There are also other developments on the
horizon including the use of holograms to provide massive
storage potential; whatever happens the future certainly looks
exciting!
So, where do we go from here?
Well it is clear that the immediate future of digital video is
DVD. It will capture the market mainly through DVD drives fitted
as standard in modern PCs and through the next wave of consoles,
plus it will continue to arrive on high streets around the
country. Although the format does have its limitations and will,
like everything, be superseded by bigger and better things, it
has many years of life left, perhaps even a decade or two.
Chris Korhonen, Harlepool
Wash-day
blues
I bought a new washing
machine the other day. It looked great, switched on okay, and
during the first test rinse through an empty drum it worked
perfectly. Then I had to go and spoil it all by putting clothes
into it.
First of all it stopped during
a spin cycle, then it refused to drain away the water, and then
it wouldn’t switch off properly. After checking through the
unfathomable troubleshooting book, I called the helpline.
"Have you installed any
clothes into your machine?" I was asked.
"Yes."
"Ah."
"What does ‘ah’ mean?"
"Sounds like you may have caused a conflict. Did you put
loads of clothes in together?"
"Of course."
"Ah. Did you mix whites with darks?"
"No."
"Socks with towels?"
"Maybe."
"Shirts with sweaters?"
"Probably."
"I guessed as much. User error, we call that."
"User error? My error?"
"Uh-huh. See, when installing clothes you really should do
so one at a time. Do, say, the towels. If they're okay, next
time add the socks. If this causes a conflict, uninstall the
socks and try the sweaters instead."
"And what if the towels on their own don’t work?"
"Well, not all clothes are compatible. I mean, how old are
your towels? Pre or post ’95? You may need to upgrade your
towels. In fact, you may need to upgrade all your clothes. I’d
recommend anything blue, preferably by Armani."
"But what about my old clothes?"
"Sorry. We can’t be held responsible for anything you
purchased prior to our machine. Thing is, I bet it worked just
fine before you added the clothes."
"Actually, it did."
"In our experience, adding clothes normally does cause
problems. You really have to know what you’re doing. Perhaps
next time you might consider calling in a technician."
Wouldn’t happen, would it.
No, not if you bought a washing machine, or a hi-fi, or even a
car. Imagine being told your car won’t work because you added
a seat cover, or hadn’t emptied the ashtray. Or that if you
installed a different radio, the electric windows might not
work. It wouldn’t happen because we wouldn’t stand for it,
yet it happens every day in the fabulous world of IT. No, ICT.
Let’s not forget ‘communications’, because no technical
support line forgets about communications, do they?
I’ve lost count of the hours
I’ve wasted hanging on the end of a telephone for someone to
come up with the right answer. Or kicked my heels waiting for
someone to ‘get back to me’. Yeah, right. And the cheque is
in the post, mate! All we want are products that work. Is that
really too much to ask? Apparently.
Tony Forder, Market
Harborough.
From
Oz – with love!
As a largely self-taught silver surfer, my computer literacy
learning curve has been anything but smooth. Some things I can
accomplish with a flourish but there are huge areas where my
knowledge and expertise stay firmly at zilch despite all efforts
at reform. However, I have been forced into the email arena by
travelling offspring and so have had to learn to keep up with
the ever-increasing sophistication of their electronic
communications.
I jubilantly sent off daughter’s
graduation photo, (much too embarrassed to admit how long that
took, you know the sort - flanked by the proud parents) to son
in Australia. It came back a few hours later. Only this time
daughter had father’s head, father had Trevor’s head
(daughter-in-law’s cat) and I had the head of an Egyptian
Queen. When I congratulated my son for making me look so
elegant, he said that he’d tried a pigeon first but it hadn’t
looked quite right.
My tastefully arranged-on
-the-scanner autumn leaves were admired in Oz.
There is something fascinating
about it being autumn here and spring there The response was a
scan of baby courgettes and other spring delights picked from
their yard. Daughter-in-law is now pregnant so I dread to think
what might be appearing in my inbox next.
And my birthday card? An A4
centrefold of a young male in his prime. As naked as the day he
was born. I printed it out and stuck it up on the cupboard with
all the other cards. Shame it was a kangaroo.
Chris Gill, Saltaire, West
Yorkshire |
