Off line
Online readers tempted by the prospect of wireless internet connections (Jumping on the broadbandwagon, July 8) beware. Two years of flaky wireless home telephony (courtesy of Scottish Telecom, now proprietors of Demon Internet) make me very sceptical of the reliability of wireless connections. Having had two dish-based lines installed - one for phone, the other for fax and internet use - I have experienced regular, unexplained dropped lines and, on voice calls, the disappearance of one half of the conversation!

Numerous visits by Scottish Telecom engineers have failed to ensure a reliable service despite an almost perfect signal and clear line of site to the base station.

"Don't understand it," says Customer Service. But an engineer lets the cat out of the bag - it seems that when demand in a particular cell is heavy, the base station drops half of an existing call and allocates the bandwidth to new calls! Scottish Telecom denies this but has offered to pay the costs of reconnecting me to BT landlines - an old but tested technology.
Robin MacPherson,
Edinburgh

Try then buy
Vic Keegan and Neil McIntosh are quite right when they identify the reluctance of people to purchase goods on the net because of the perceived poor security of credit card transactions (When shoppers get the shakes, July 8). They have, however, overlooked a second reason: people like to handle what they are about to purchase and, possibly, haggle over the price. Mike Davis,
Merseyside

Wrong note
It's typical of the music industry to get lathered up about MP3. In reality it's going to be the same as home taping. Yes, people will copy music, distribute to friends and across the net but diminish CD sales it will not.

The less-than-brilliant (compared to a home hi-fi ) sound quality from MP3 on a PC or RIO player, the hassle of downloading and the lack of something physical to own means that people will still want to buy their favorite music on CD.

Even more ridiculous is EMI's notion that people will pay £8 then wait four hours (£2.40 @ 1p/min) for the 50MB download and squander precious hard drive space instead of buying a CD.

The best use for MP3 is "try before you buy", enabling customers to listen to new music before shelling out for the real thing.
Toby Vinnell,
Birmingham

Not so free
In Jack Schofield's What's New, he says that one has to fax Microsoft the certificate of authenticity to get the Win98SE update. I called the number given and was given a website for the pre-printed application form. No mention of certificate, and none mentioned on the website.

I am not so sure about the "free" bit. At £16.82 for post and packing, that should leave them a bit left over after paying 50p for the CD, 50p for the envelope and 50p for the stamp. If every user in the UK applies, they should make about £15m. I sent for it anyway. The web site is:- www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/win98_2nd_form.htm
Peter Kent,
Aberdeenshire

Website tip
Nice article by Jack Schofield (Weaving your own website, July 8). But one important tip (in my opinion): don't be tempted to put everything into one big table, to try to control the layout, especially if there are graphics involved.

A browser will show absolutely nothing until all the bits and pieces are downloaded. If this takes more than five or 10 seconds, the reader will get bored waiting and go somewhere else!

If you must use a table, make sure there's something useful above it, to read while you're waiting.
Romilly Bowden,
Bognor Regis, West Sussex

Jack Schofield suggests getting your own domain name, but he does not go on to say from where. Could you please publish some details of domain name providers and their costs.
Ralph Hodgson,
London N4

Jack Schofield writes: usually companies that sell web space also arrange domain names, If you're using free web space, companies like Netnames will buy and host the name for a fee, but shop around: prices vary. Another example is Domain Names on FreeServe's home page (www.freeserve.net). You can also buy a .com domain name online from InterNic's website, and pay using a credit card. (The cost is $70 for two years - about £45.) But then you still have to pay a company for "webforwarding": ie to host and point it at your free web space.