Warning: No PC connectivity

First of all, I would like to thank all the readers who responded to last week’s column about my RAM woes.

To recap as briefly as possible, I own a two-year-old computer and had been unable to buy any extra memory for it for less than about R2200 per gigabyte anywhere in the country. Readers sent in many excellent suggestions and offers of help which, I’m sure would have had me sorted in no time at all.

Before last week’s paper had been printed, however, my sister in Australia got in touch to say that she had managed to track down some of the right memory and would bring it out for me when she visits later this month.

The bile on my spleen began to recede and I was almost back to serenity when the curse of the electronics manufacturers struck again. I was handed a video camera, with all its gubbins, and asked to figure out how it worked and teach the teen who would then teach her mother.

I couldn’t imagine any teen with that sort of patience but, never mind, I thought I’d enjoy fiddling with the thing anyway. It turned out to be a Sony DVD605; a cute little number which the book describes as a digital video camera recorder.

I was getting rapidly more enthusiastic as I unpacked everything and started charging the battery and reading the manual. I found that the camera had a mode called Easy Handycam which makes it really, erm, easy to take video and still pictures and record them onto a DVD disk.

I recorded a couple of scenes and had no difficulty, after remembering to switch the TV to VCR mode, to play them back on it. I’m no expert but the sound and picture looked good to me and my head was filling with visions of myself editing my masterpieces on my computer and being the next Steven Spielberg.

Thinks: ‘Hmmm. I wonder how I get the video onto my computer and I wonder where the disc, with the nice video editing program mentioned in the manual, is?’

What I discovered after a re-read of the manual is that, with this camera, there is no provision for transferring the video to your computer to edit it. There is no cable, no software and, as the final capper, not even a jack on the camera that could be used for an optional cable.

The manual covers seven models of camera and it does specify which models have which features, but the type is small and you can easily miss the point if you’re not careful. I fiddled with the camera, manual in hand, for two sessions before I realised that there was no provision for a computer connection.

I wonder how many people have bought the product and not even considered the possibility that Sony might sell them a digital video camera recorder that can’t be connected to a PC. It may not worry some buyers, but I reckon that there’ll be a fair percentage who will later regret their choice of camera.

The moral of the story is that you should be careful if you’re buying a video camera over Christmas. Check very carefully that it’ll do all you want it to do, before you part with your bonus.

Why not leave a comment if you know how get video off of a DVD for editing. Would a video capture card do the trick or would it degrade the signal too much?

A bout with unplanned obsolescence

Two years ago, having run out of names of Goon Show characters, I named my new desktop computer Canopus, after one of the Imperial Airways flying boats which used to visit Durban in the 1930s and 1940s.

The machine is a Fujitsu Siemens 2,8Ghz Pentium 4 with 256Kb of RAM, a 40Mb hard drive, and all the required plugs and ports in the back. It is very well made and visitors to my office often remarked on how quiet it is.

Shortly after buying the computer, I bought another memory chip from a local supplier to upgrade it to 512Mb, which was more than enough at the time. I regularly had a number of programs open at the same time and manipulated image files of between 50Mb and 100Mb, with no problems at all.

The machine has lately begun to slow down a bit because some programs I’ve installed lately use a bit of the available RAM. I decided that it would be nice to add some more memory and didn’t anticipate a problem in getting it.

Which just goes to show how just how wrong you can be, because, after phoning my usual sources, I discovered that PC333 DDR RAM is no longer available locally. To make matters worse, it emerged that I could not just put in a new motherboard with slots to accommodate currently available RAM chips.

It seems as though the plug on the processor has been changed and that, if I went the new motherboard-route, I would have to buy a new processor as well. I then went to Plan B and phoned Fujitsu Siemens to see whether they could help.

I already have two 256Kb chips and they said they could supply me with two 512Mb ones to replace them with. This was great news but it turned out that they wanted more than R1000 for each chip which, I thought, was pretty steep considering that some suppliers PCs are advertising whole new PCs for around R2700.

I then found out that Kingston still make RAM of the correct type for my machine and I managed to track down their SA agent. The said they could supply me through one of their dealers but that the price, surprise, surprise, would be R2200 for a 1Gb RAM chip.

I am angry because my computer would be fine if only I had a bit more RAM but that is not good enough for the PC industry, which obviously wants me to buy a new machine at this point.

I can understand manufacturers upgrading their products but, when the product is already good enough for most people who will use it, it seems underhand and manipulative to make incremental improvements and change slots and plugs, just for the sake of driving sales.

Entry-level PCs for the past few years have been pretty potent and sufficient for the needs of most users, except when it comes to RAM. Some of the systems I see advertised still come with only 256Mb, which is barely enough to run Windows properly.

I’d advise asking for an upgrade to 1Gb of RAM, but don’t forget to tell the salesperson that you’ll be checking the price with other retailers and that you’ll be buying from the one which gives the best deal on the upgrade. If you bought a PC recently, and you think you might need more RAM one day, I advise investigating an upgrade before it’s too late.

I’d appreciate it if you left a comment by clicking the link below, especially if you know of where I could get some PC333 DDR RAM.

Cellphone blues

My ambition was to have the oldest working cellphone in the world and I was heading in the right direction, having bought my hardy little Nokia 3310 in Dublin in 2001.

It had an alarm clock with snooze, its most-used feature, and the phone side of it worked reliably and well, despite coming into contact with the floor a number of times. It was with deep regret, therefore, that I discovered one day that it was showing no signs of life and all that it would display on the screen was the battery indicator.

I had been on pay-as-you-go and I was very happy with that but I’d heard that you could now get contracts which would give you airtime every month and allow you to top that up when necessary, by buying airtime vouchers. I thought the idea sounded quite cool because it came to just about what I had been spending every month, and included a free phone.

Ha! I should have known better because, when I arrived at my local branch of Autopage Cellular, I found that my requirements were incompatible with free. All I wanted was a Nokia, in one piece with no sliding or folding bits, and, as the advert would have it, blue teeth.

It emerged that the Nokia 6234 was the most junior member of the range that would meet these requirements and would cost me nearly R1000. I thought that was a bit high, and said so, but it was what I was I was going to have to pay for what I wanted.

The thought that the phone could also connect to the Internet was a slight consolation and so I agreed to the deal. The paperwork was quick and hassle-free but an unpleasant surprise emerged when I told the assistant that I already had insurance, and she said to make sure that the insured amount was R4600.

Over two years the deal will cost me about R4120; and they give me a phone worth R4600?? Not likely. Anyway, you can get a damn good desktop PC for that price and, clearly, the phone is not worth even a fraction of that.

My preliminary impression of the 6234 is that it is OK, but I haven’t been blown away. The speaker sounds quite tinny to my ear and, presumably due to the comparatively large colour screen, the battery life is not great. This is in spite of the fact that the screen switches off really quickly; too quickly, sometimes, when you are peering at it trying to figure out something.

Having had my previous model for so long, I’m battling to get used to the new controls which are often in different places, and the menus are quite complicated. Someone once said that he had been waiting for his computer to become as simple to use as his phone but that the reverse had happened; I know how he felt.

Vodacom did not see fit to turn on my Internet until the morning I wrote this; nearly 11 days after I took possession of the phone. I’ll check out the world of mobile Internetting and report back another time.

Added a week after the print version of the article was written:

The 6234 continues to underwhelm. The battery life is really shocking and the speaker is poor and tends to distort when you turn it up high enough to hear. For some reason, Nokia has changed the plug on the battery charger and it’s now a needle-thin bit of folded tin which is going break really easily. I’ll also have to buy a new car charger because my existing one doesn’t fit. Guess how irritated that makes me?

My old Nokia was good quality and lasted well. It lasted a bit too long for Nokia’s taste, perhaps, but I did go straight out and buy a another one of their phones when it failed. Next time, I’m not going to do that. I was talking to a colleague, who also has a new Nokia, and she has exactly the same negative things to say about her phone.

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below?

Photoshop Elements 5.0

Adobe Photoshop is the undoubted heavyweight of the digital world and, if you’re a professional, it’ll probably be what you’ll use because it offers the ultimate in control over every pixel in your pictures.

All that control comes with a pretty steep price tag, currently around R7000, however, and there is a steep learning curve to get past before you can begin to be productive with it. It is not the ideal solution for organising images and it has few features to make it easy to produce layouts using your pictures, or to share them with others.

Adobe knows very well that the program is too much for most people with an interest in digital photography and that’s why, several years ago, they introduced a lightened version of Photoshop for the amateur market.

It was called Elements and it has apparently done very well with V5.0 having been launched in the last couple of months. A 30-day free trial version is available on the Adobe website at www.adobe.com and, if you download it like I did, you’d better have broadband, because its something 450Mb in size and it’ll take you a month of Sundays.

Elements installed smoothly and then it decided that it wanted to have a look through my pictures folder and take notes about all it found there. I left it to its task and went out to supper so I don’t know exactly how long it took, but the cataloguing speed slowed right down when it came to my raw picture files.

The program comes in two sections, namely the organiser, which downloads pictures from camera or memory cards onto the computer, and catalogues, print and archives them. The other section of Elements is the editor which is used to edit and manipulate pictures and create layouts; there is an easy quick-fix mode and a more involved one, similar to Photoshop’s, but more friendly.

Inevitably, Elements does lack some of Photoshop’s more advanced features, including quick mask mode, layer masks, and channels, but most users will never even miss them. For its quite reasonable R900 price tag, it is astonishing capable and, in many ways, has a nicer interface than its surly big brother.

I was amazed to find that it has the feature of allowing you to make changes to a whole series of pictures and waiting until you’re finished before doing the actual processing and saving of the pictures. This sort of feature is usually only built into more professional packages and it is a big bonus.

The layout facility allows you to combine pictures with a wide selection of frames, themes and backgrounds for print or in electronic format on disc or the Internet. I reckon you could play for hours creating scrapbook pages, DVD and CD sleeves, or just combining a number of pictures on the page

Elements is similar enough to Photoshop in operation to make it viable to learn on because of its price and because you can use the myriad of free Photoshop tutorials available on the Internet or in magazines. It is easier than Photoshop to learn and use and that knowledge will hold you in good stead if you ever need to make the transition to Photoshop.

I’m very impressed with the program but I did find it a trifle slow on my two-year-old machine, even though it does exceed Elements’ requirements.

Other slight problems include the fact that the initial selection of layout sizes is rather limited and that some of the layouts, such as calendars and photo books, have to be uploaded to a service in the USA for printing, with all the postage costs that that would involve. The good news is that you can add templates and layouts to the original ones provided and there are bound to be a lot on the Internet.

One place where they are available is through the Elements User magazine website which you get access to from the Adobe site when you subscribe to the magazine.

Why not leave a comment by clicking the link below.

Ho-hum browsing

In the last few weeks both Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation have released new versions of their Internet browsers.

Internet Explorer 6 has been around for about five years, if my memory serves me correctly, and it had been looking just a bit aged and careworn. The just-launched IE 7 has been revamped and sports a cool new minimalist interface and a wad of features which, while hardly ground-breaking when compared to other browsers out there, are at least new to Internet Explorer.

Now, before you head ecstatically over to the Microsoft site to get your hands on a copy, there are a couple of things that you should know. The first is that it won't run on computers with anything earlier than Windows XP and SP2 installed on them.

The second thing is that, if your version of Windows is the right one, you will soon have IE delivered to your desktop without any intervention on your part. This will happen through the Windows Update feature and, although, you will have the chance to decline the update, I bet it'll nag you until you take it.

Microsoft does seem to have some sort of subliminal idea that users might not like having their IE upgraded automatically, because they are offering Enterprise (big) customers a toolkit to block the upgrade if they want to.

Anyway, as I was already at the Microsoft site (www.microsoft.com), I decided to download a copy to see what it was like. The install file was a tad over 14Mb and came down my not so-broadband in quite reasonable time.

Installation was no so quick, however, and it took nearly half an hour of whirring and clanking to itself before installation finished and it wanted to restart my computer. That done, I fired the browser up and the first thing it wanted to do was update itself again, which took another 10 minutes or so. Once it was finally going, however, it turned out to have a very different and cleaner look to its predecessor, IE 6.

It also has a new way of browsing where you don't have to open new browser windows if you're visiting more than one website at once. You view multiple sites in the same window and you switch between them by clicking on a row of tabs.

The other great improvement to my mind is the print feature which allows you set page margins and can shrink the content of a web page, width-wise, so that it all prints out. That'll beat trying guess the missing bits of Auntie Rose's travel itinerary when you've taken it to her after printing it out on your computer.

There is doubt in my mind that IE 7 does represent a significant improvement on the previous version but my overwhelming thought about that is; 'so what'?

Firefox has had all these features for some time, is half the size of IE 7, will run on just about any computer, and is arguably more secure because it doesn't have all the hackers in world feverishly trying to find security loopholes in it.

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