£499 PCs
I read with great interest your article on £500 computers (August 29). Are the ones you mentioned more powerful than the Packard Bell Pulsar 600 we bought two years ago? Bernard Gabony
Jack Schofield replies: Your Packard Bell has a 600MHz Pentium III, 64MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive. The minimum specification today is twice that: 1.3GHz Intel Celeron or Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent, 128MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive. But aim for something three times faster: a PC with the new 1.7GHz Celeron. This is the same as the top-of-the-range Pentium 4 chip from last April, apart from having a smaller cache memory. It also supports Intel Extreme graphics on the motherboard and double-data rate memory (DDR SDRam), which the old Pentium III-based Celerons do not. Finally, today's PC also comes with a much more advanced operating system: Microsoft Windows XP instead of Me.
Or less
Is your £499 PC a case of "rip-off Britain" again? Walmart in the USA has launched a $199 PC. Why can't we have deals like that? Andrew Clark
JS: Wal-Mart's £199 PC has a slow processor (800MHz Via C3), small hard drive (10GB), outdated graphics (Trident), no floppy drive, no modem, no monitor, and originally had no operating system, though Wal-Mart is now installing the "Lindows" version of Linux. This runs some Windows programs using Wine. Remove the VAT (£75), monitor, operating system and any delivery charges from a British £499 PC and the prices are not very different from a Wal-Mart PC with a similar specification. American PCs are certainly cheaper than the equivalent British models: often $1 is roughly equivalent to £1. However, this is not unique to the computer market.
No Java
I have a new computer running Windows XP Home. Several websites I have visited invite you to download the Microsoft Virtual Machine to gain access. When I click to download it, a message pops up saying that it is no longer provided for Windows XP. Lynda R
JS: The Microsoft Virtual Machine is Microsoft's equivalent of Sun's Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and Microsoft has either been taking it out or putting it back in response to Sun's various lawsuits. Basically, your PC supplier could have pre-installed the Microsoft VM, or you could have downloaded it before July 10. The main way to get it now is to install the latest Windows XP Service Pack 1, which provides a roll-up of bug fixes and some new features. Unfortunately, if you download all of SP1, it comes to 134MB. The alternative is to use the Windows Update facility. If you have been a regular visitor, most of SP1's updates will already have been installed; if not, not. Microsoft reckons the average SP1 download using Windows Update is about 30MB. For the latest news on the VM saga, see www.microsoft.com/java/xp.htm.
For further information about XP SP1 and download links, go to www.microsoft.com
Since Microsoft will finally abandon its Java VM in January 2004, you could consider downloading Sun's JVM instead. However, if a website's designers are stupid enough to create sites that are unusable without Microsoft's VM, there's no guarantee they will have tested it with Sun's. Certainly Microsoft has not tested it.
Video on CD
I've got a mini DV recorder that came with Pinnacle 7 Express. I edit and transfer my video on to CD and play it back using Windows Media Player, and that's OK. Pinnacle says if I upgrade to version 8, I can put the CD into my DVD player and watch it on TV. Is there a cheaper/better way to do this? Paul Cooper
JS: Pinnacle sells a huge range of video editing and broadcasting software for home and professional use, and some of its packages come complete with Firewire interfaces for desktop or notebook PCs. Pinnacle Studio Version 8 provides an all-in-one solution that makes it easy to capture, edit, title and burn your video to CD-R and DVD discs.
It is, however, possible to do the same jobs using free software. In this case, you could capture your video with VirtualDub. You could use TMPGEnc to edit and convert your video sequences to Video CD (MPeg) format. You could then "author" the disc and add titles and menus using VCDEasy, before burning the CD-R in the usual way.
Pinnacle's "one-stop shopping" approach is undoubtedly easier, but you will learn more if you take the free software route. There is an excellent list of video software for PCs at www.vcdhelp.com/tools.htm, and this site provides step-by-step guides to help beginners through the process. Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ is also a very useful resource.
Backchat
· Last week, Nick Goodwin wanted to "dual boot" his PC to provide a choice of two different versions of Windows. Michael McNamee suggests buying System Commander from V Communications. I have not used it, but it includes Partition Commander 6 to handle DOS, NT's NTFS, and all sorts of Linux and Unix file systems.
· Joe Flatman wanted to buy his father a train sim for his Mac, but could only find PC software (September 5). Guy Ferger has the Microsoft Train Simulator for Windows but says he has never been able to get it to run using Connextix's Virtual PC for Mac, which is not designed for gaming.
· No long-running SMS-to-PC saga would be complete without a mention of Locust, according to Jon Anderson from Locust. This "provides an absolute multitude of services, including two-way email to SMS. You can also access it through your PC, via AOL Instant Messenger, via Wap, via the web, etc. Anyone can get a free trial by sending a text message saying TRIAL to 07973 410933 or by visiting the website at www.locust.co.uk". It costs £3 per month.
