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D-Day Monday for Office 2007 formats after quiet birthday
The launch of Office 2007 yesterday was curiously muted, considering that this is a mega-revamp of the world's most-used applications. Perhaps Microsoft fears that it will get a less-than-enthusiastic reception, because whatever you think of the new interface, it is very different indeed. Microsoft says people find it easier, especially for using features that they are not familiar with. It may nevertheless be viewed with suspicion by the many users who are frightened of computers - and if they are using the new software at work, they may demand retraining. They are also likely to be irritated by the need to come to terms with the new file formats, the undoubted benefits of which will be lost on general users. But take-up of the new suite will surely be slow, with the biggest sales initially being within PC bundles. The January 30 launch was not the only important date in the Office 2007 calendar. Monday (February 5) is the deadline for national organisations to register comments and objections to Microsoft's application to have the new Open XML formats approved as an ISO standard. As we reported last Friday, the British Standards Institute is being urged to object to the move. The BSI has now told us that it proposes to send in comments on Monday, but it won't yet say what they are. So far as we can gather from a BSI statement, comments at this stage concern the standards procedure itself - including whether Open XML should qualify for a fast-track approval. Standards bodies from other countries will also submit comments to an ISO committee, which will decide whether Microsoft's application can proceed. If Microsoft gets past this hurdle, which is by no means certain, there will be a further five months of examining the details of the company's 6000-page Open XML specification. And again, according to the BSI, there is no guarantee that it will be approved. ISO has already approved the rival XML-based Open Document Format but it told us last year that there are no rules against have two standards. But critics argue that there is no point in having two standards.
Vista express upgrade on hold
We've just reported the news that the Vista express upgrade programme has ground to a temporary halt following a massive response.
This is just a drop in the ocean because when we rang up all the big manufacturers we found none of them, apart from PC World, appeared to know anything about the Vista Express Upgrade scheme, repeatedly telling us someone else will call us back.
PC World's succinct answer (surprisingly for their poor customer service record) was marred by them telling us March 17th is the last day customers can cash in their Vista coupon when it is, in fact, March 15th.
Have you had problems getting hold of your Vista express upgrade? Give us your feedback below…
Update 15/02/07: We've published Moduslink's response, denying that delays are its fault, here.
Update 8/03/07: Microsoft has apologised for the delays customers have been experiencing over this fiasco. In an interview with PCW Microsoft wouldn't say if Moduslink had done a good or bad job distributing Vista disks. It is also happy about the fees retailers are charging for the 'free' upgrade.
PCW's PS3 first impressions
As if dealing with the biggest software launch in five years wasn't enough, a Playstation 3 landed on our desks yesterday.
So, even though some of us had been up since 4:30am and had a mountain of Vista stories to work through, we found the biggest TV in the office and had a little play on Sony's new baby.
Sony's PS3 UK-birth isn't due until March 23rd, but this is basically the retail unit you'll see in shops. It crashed once when playing Resistance: The Fall of Man (which looks rubbish anyway - think poor man's Gears of War) but the interface is very nice.
The game demos looked poor when compared with XBox360 games, but that should (should) change over time.
Nvidia and ATI release new Vista drivers at last
Nvidia and AMD both made new drivers available for download yesterday, to accompany the Microsoft Vista launch.
AMD claims its new ATI Catalyst 7.1 offers a big leap in performance over beta Vista drivers but admits Windows Vista is still eight per cent slower in Far Cry, four per cent slower in Dark Messiah and 1-2 per cent slower in all the 3Dmarks and Half-Life 2 when compared with XP performance.
Crossfire support is once again limited, with no OpenGL Crossfire support whatsoever.
In a statement AMD says it is now developing performance adaptive anti-aliasing and their Catalyst Control Center for linux.
Nvidia's new Forceware 100.54 driver has bigger problems with early reports suggesting there is zero SLI support and the videogame Prey won't work.
How to solve Vista driver problems for HP inkjet printers
HP Invent. So why not HP Support? If, like me, you've been dreading having to ditch a perfectly good inkjet printer because HP's dragging its feet on Vista drivers, here's a bit of good news to cheer you up. HP has published a kludge to let you get several unsupported Deskjet and Photosmart models up and running.
They're basically telling you to install the nearest built-in Vista driver to give you basic functionality until they get their fingers out to write proper drivers - there are detailed instructions at the link above, but you basically con Vista into installing a parallel port printer and then change the port to USB when it's succeeeded.
My Deskjet 5150 is running now using the 5600 model drivers and at least it will print a Windows test page now. And in colour. Whoopee.
And while I'm in the mood: Hey, Fujitsu - where the hell are the Vista drivers for my ScanSnap fi-511EOX2??
Kelvyn Taylor, PCW
Windows Vista launch: Bill Gates' speech in London
Video review: Microsoft Windows Vista operating system
Microsoft's much hyped, and long anticipated, Windows Vista operating system is now available, and here we review some of the main new features.
Vista comes with a completely new look and is far more stable and secure than XP at launch. However, we'd advise people think carefully before upgrading. Using Microsoft's Window's Upgrade Advisor tool will tell you whether your hardware is up to scratch, and indicate potential problems with software programmes and peripherals you use.
It's then a case of deciding which version, and we think the Home Premium will suit most people. Basic is a little too, well, basic and at £250 for the upgrade and £325 for the full boxed version, Ultimate is likely to be out of the price range many are prepared to pay.
As for whether you should upgrade an XP machine, it depends on the type of user you are. Novices, anyone with a single PC they rely on and hardcore gamers are probably better of holding back for a couple of months, while some driver support issues are finalised. But if you're an expert, or have more than one PC, then Vista is a worthwhile upgrade.
You can also read a more in-depth review of Windows Vista on PCW.
Windows Vista: "Slightly terrifying"
[LIVE FROM THE UK LAUNCH] Yep,it's finally here: Windows Vista is launched. Bill Gates himself wowed us all at the British Library with details of how he can now keep tabs on his kids' Internet surfing, and as an encore showed how if you own a priceless Leonardo da Vinci 'Leicester Codex' (as he does), Vista is just the tool you need to match it up with its long-lost sibling.
Looking older and slightly richer in person than in photos, he spent a while talking about how great Vista and Office 2007 are, before disappearing stage left to continue his task of saving the world from OS X and Linux.
Oxford history don Prof. Martin Kemp described the academic possibilities presented by the newly conjoined notebooks (part the British Library's 'Turning the Pages' project) as "slightly terrifying"
We're not too sure what happened after that as 
we dozed off..but we should have some pics and videos soon if the Wifi here stops turning itself off.
6am start as PC World doles out 21 copies of Vista to waiting 'crowd'
Despite Overclockers selling Microsoft Vista for over a week now, I, PCW staff writer, headed on down to Tottenham Court Road at 5:50am to see the first legit copies being sold (since OEMs should really only ship out with new PCs/system integrators).
With Bill Gates still jetting in to the country on a private jet for the official launch party at the British Library, it was here Microsoft execs and PC World staff tried to pull off a Vista launch of their own.
Despite four amusing models (including a strong-man and Marilyn Monroe look-alike) and a lot of hype on the radio, this was a glamour-less affair falling long short of any Apple, Sony or Nintendo launch by a significant margin.
PC World had promised the first 10 people to walk through its doors would get a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition but at 6:02am there were 21 people in the queue and PC World decided to give everyone a free copy, although there was some confusion when two customers got a full version and the rest only got an upgrade.
Leo Mazur was the first to get his copy. He claimed to have queued since 12:50am and when I asked him why he had been there so long he replied "I didn't have anything better to do."
One of the last people to get a free copy, who worked for Dixons (same company as PC World) according to a Microsoft rep, only had to stand in line for 20 minutes.
The store currently has 31 XP laptops and 12 Vista laptops on sale and Hamish Thompson, director of media relations for PC World, said XP systems will still be sold in its stores for the next six months and the store manager, Nick Stanton, added "there will be some price action them".
Sony designs limitations of a PDA into its first ultra-mobile PC
Good to see Sony coming out with an ultra-mobile PC but the price is a shocker: £1999. This for a PC with a 4.5in screen. The Vaio UX1 was actually on show at this month's Consumer Electronics Show at Last Vegas, where my colleague Rob Jones managed to snatch this picture of it, which gives you a good idea of its size.
We have yet to see the full specs but the apparent absence of a video port is astonishing. The point of these devices is surely that they put desktop power in your pocket, but take full advantage of your home or office facilities when available.
The design is more reminiscent of a PDA than a notebook, with the slide-out button keyboard looking like a larger version of the Blackberry look-alikes that have abounded over the past year. I'm loth to criticise the machine before seeing it, but on the face of this looks like a bad decision.
Ultra-mobile design, by my lights, should be an exercise in creating the smallest practical size for a working platform - and, unless there is more to those buttons than meet the eye, that keyboard is going to be hard work if you are writing anything longer than a text message or swift email. As Microsoft's handwriting recognition is well up to those tasks, there seems little point in having it.
The best keyboard of this size to pass through PCW Towers was on the old Psion 5, and even that was heavy going if you had a lot of writing to do. The fact is that for a keyboard to be comfortable it has to be at least a little wider than the UX1, which would argue for a fold-out design like the standalone PDA keyboards popularised by Targus.
Another option would have been something like the neat clip-over keyboards, doubling as lids, that Motion Computing offers for its Tablet PCs. These also allow you to stand the tablet on its side to be used notebook style. The UXl's slide-out keyboard appears to keep the screen flat, forcing you to use the device PDA style when using the keyboard.
The device has a USB 2.0 port and Bluetooth so there is nothing to stop you using a separate keyboard, wired or wireless.But, for all the drawbacks of the design, Sony has demonstrated that a true Pocket PC is viable.
OS X is a rip-off
In response to Apple's excellent ad campaigns to switch Windows users to a Mac I thought I'd look at the price of XP and OS X.
XP Home launched in October 2001 for 179.99. From the start it offered inbuilt CD burning and added free security updates like a firewall and other software like Windows movie maker and (eventually) got it right with tabbed, clean browsing in Internet Explorer 7.
Apple, on the other hand, charged for OS X updates; sure they had new features - DVD playback, better CD/DVD writing capabilities and interface goodies like gui dpi control, but only a minority of people took advantage of v10.3's "fast user switching"...
A look back reveals average UK pricing for new versions of OS X was:
Mar 01, OS X 10.0 = £99
Sep 01, OS X 10.1 = (free)
Aug 02, OS X 10.2 = £84
Oct 03, OS X 10.3 = £84
Apr 05, OS X 10.4 = £89
So, keeping up to date for five years cost Mac addicts a grand total of £356.
Windows XP Home could be had for £164 at launch and all the updates have since been free (although not as many of them, or as thorough).
Overclockers is selling Vista Home Premium OEM (full version) for £73 inc. VAT and if Apple goes and releases another 5 versions of OS X over the next five years, so another £356, then Vista is five times cheaper – in my opinion, a relative bargain!
My point is Microsoft could have charged for Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 in the same way Apple charges for its yearly updates...
How Intel shrank processors to 45nm without taking a leak
Pictured left is a die shot of one of Intel's new 45nm Penryn processors, which the company claims represent the biggest breakthough since the sixties. Its development forced Intel to address one of the biggest problems of miniaturisation: leakage current.
A standard transistor of the type used in processors consists of source and drain electrodes sitting in a silicon substrate with a tiny gap between them. Above this gap is a thin layer of insulator, or dielectric; and sitting on that is the gate electrode 
(click image at right for pop-up diagram). Toggling the voltage at the gate toggles the charge distribution across the gap, and thus its ability to pass current.
This solid-state switch is never quite perfect because there are tiny current flows even in the off state. Most important is the "leakage" across the insulating layer under the gate. This layer is made of silicon dioxide (SiO2) in current designs and when it becomes only a few atoms thick, as it does as processor transistors get smaller, leakage becomes prohibitively high.
So why not have thicker insulation? The problem is that the thinner the layer, the higher is the capacitance of the structure - the amount of charge it can hold. The higher the capacitance, the better the current flow in the on state, and the faster the switching. In other words if you thicken the insulation to reduce leakage, you slow the transistor down.
What Intel has done is to replace the SiO2 with a 'high K dielectric', based on the element Hafnium, which allows a thicker (and thus less leaky) layer of insulation without reducing the capacitance.
Intel has also replaced the usual silicon gate with what it vaguely refers to as a mix of metals. Kaizad Mistry, product manager for Intel's 45nm logic technology development, said Intel was keeping this secret as the precise proportions of these and hafnium are critical.
The overall effect is to boost current flow in the on state, providing fast switching, and cutting leakage in the off state.
Intel claims that relative to 65nm technology the Penryn chips will pack twice as many transistors in a given area, with a 30 percent reduction in switching power, 20 percent faster switching, and a tenfold reduction in leakage across the gate dielectric.
It also claims a fivefold reduction in current leaking between the source and drain.
Dell's H2C gaming monster goes on sale in UK
Dell has started selling its super high-end H2C gaming machine in the UK.
It is factory overclocked to 3.2GHz without any core voltage increases.
Experienced enthusiasts might want to stay clear of the product since Dell has locked the vcore bios settings so you can't increase core voltage for extra overclocking.
Voltage on the memory dims can be increased though and products on show at Dell's innovation event in Marbella were overclocked to 3.6GHz by pushing up the FSB.
I had some serious hands on with the machine in Marbella and my first impressions are that it is an austounding piece of kit. The minimum specs are:
- Core 2 Extreme QX6700 factory overclocked to 3.2 GHz
- Dual 768MB GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards
- 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 Ram
- 320GB 10,000 RPM SATA Raid 0 (2x160GB) hard disks
- Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Soundcard
- 128MB Ageia PhysX physics accelerator
- Prices start at £3,400 (not including peripherals like a monitor...)
Unlike other liquid-cooled systems, the XPS 710H2C is advertised as maintenance-free for seven years thanks to special black rubber tubes so liquid doesn't permeate out.
Suggestions from journalists that including a 1000 Watt power supply was irresponsible were sidestepped although an enthusiastic Dell spokesperson eventually joked that when "the rest of the houses start to dim, we congratulate them."
Finally Dell bragged it was the best gaming PC in the world and one rep told PCW it was even better than anything Alienware has to offer. Alienware was bought by Dell last year.
One of the systems was running Crysis, which is a DirectX 10 game filled with astonishing eye-candy. I can report the current beta is very jumpy, even on the above system, with frame rates bobbling around 30fps max.
In other news Dell's high-end gaming notebook, the XPS M1710, is now shipping with Intel's latest Core 2 Duo T7600G. This processor was announced at CES this month and Dell is currently the only supplier to have it.
It is basically a Core 2 Duo T7600 that has an unlocked clock multiplier and Dell's warranty covers you overclocking it.
Dell's Presto idea (print muchas money)
As you can see from our news story, Dell has launched a new service for home users and very small businesses called Presto that solves problems that aren't covered by its traditional service warranty.
Dave Moore, director for Presto, summed up what Dell's new service would achieve saying "if your printer doesn't work, even if you foolishly bought an HP, we'll help you”.
Moore said the kind questions Presto will answer include: "how do I stop my son surfing the websites that he shouldn't?" and "can you set-up a wireless network for me at home?"
In retrospect Dell deserves a clip around the ear for its demo of the service: a customer rings up Presto because his PC's audio doesn't work. Presto remotely takes control of the users computer (using a piece of software called DellConnect) and fixes the problem by un-checking the mute box in volume properties… and charges £19 for the privilege.
The pricing structure breaks down to:
- telephone calls for small issues cost £19
- telephone calls for more serious problems cost £39
- a technician call-out to your home costs from £79
- an annual subscription to the telephone service costs £79 per year if you buy it with a new Dell PC
- an annual subscription to the telephone service costs £99 per year if you buy it at a later date
Olympus announces crush-proof digicam (plus six other models)
It must be a busy day in the Olympus press office with no less than seven new digicams being announced.
The new range includes two new models in the stylish Mju range, the FE-250 with its whopping 15x optical zoom, and the rugged SP-550 UZ, which is apparently waterproof up to 10m, shock-proof and even crush-proof - something that's simply begging to be given a thorough test.
Here's a brief list of the new models - expect to see full reviews online over the coming weeks.
FE-210, £100 - £7.1megapixel, 3x zoom
FE-230, £150 - 7.1megapixel, 3x zoom
FE-240, £180 - 7.1megapixel, 5x zoom
Mju 760, £200 - 7.1megapixel, 3x zoom
FE-250, £200 - 8megapixel, 3x zoom
Mju 770 SW, £300 - 7.1megapixel, 3x zoom
SP-550 UZ, £375 - 7.1megapixel, 15x zoom
Why the N800 is more interesting than iPhone-class smartphones
Nokia's N800 internet tablet is in some ways more interesting that either Apple's iPhone or Nokia's N95, discussed in our news story today. They are likely to sell more but they are very much devices of today, packaging current technology to meet what the designers hope will be current consumer demand.
The N800, while it should attract a market now, is ploughing a fairly lonely furrow to the future when tablets will be mainstream and far more versatile than the specialist handhelds of today. In this it is taking the mobile-phone industry in the same direction the Ultra-mobile PC is going from the PC space. The difference is that the UMPC packs all its features aboard, whereas the N800 draws virtually everything from the network and therefore needs much less battery power.
I'll be writing a full review over the next couple of days. First impressions are that it looks prettier than its predecessor, the 770 tablet. The processor is said to be twice as fast on many tasks, providing a faster boot-up time. The screen can be driven by your fingers as well as a stylus: the software cleverly detects which you are using and alters menus and the soft keyboard accordingly. This means you can actually type with your fingers and thumbs - not as easily as on a physical keyboard but well enough for text messages. It has two SD/MMC memory slots currently able to hold up to 4Gbyte between them - the amount is restricted by current card capacity.
Video review: Fujifilm Finepix F31fd
The Fujifilm Finepix F31fd may look like a standard digital camera, but it comes with face detection that the maker claims will always keep the main person in any photo in focus and correctly exposed.
In our tests we were not just impressed by the feature, which you can see in action in the video review, but also the camera itself. There were a few niggles, such as it selecting noisier high ISO speeds in Auto mode even when the lighting was good, but even so we liked this £199 camera.
As well as the video, you can read more on the Fujifilm Finepix F31fd online.
A tiny media streamer for tiny customers
Agere is starting production of a "mobile content server" called the BluOnyx.
The 6-15mm thick rectangular box sports Bluetooth, a mini-USB port and an SD slot to increase capacity.
The units won't be available until April 2007 but like MSI's similar box, I'm struggling to see an audience for this kind of a device.
Agere hypes the ability to stream content to mobiles phones. It says the unit is "for the YouTube generation" but surely the YouTube generation will be watching YouTube...
Serious users may be better off spending a little more on a proper network attached storage device, like the HP Media Vault we reviewed last month which has a decent sized hard disk and can read and write at 50Mbits/sec, much faster than Bluetooth's theoretical maximum of 3Mbits/sec - if more than one person tries streaming from this "mobile content server" the thing may grind to a halt.
I suspect the real inspiration behind these hard disks is the ever thinning margins and Bluetooth, SD and flashly light add-ons may be the only way to make a profit. Prices range from £50 for a 1GB flash based unit scaling up to £130 for the 40GB 1.8in hard disk device.
Battery 'breakthrough' and the short sharp shock of ultracapacitors
The discovery of a cheap, compact and efficient way to store electricity would be up there with the invention of the wheel, and would go a long way towards helping us avoid being fried in our own profligacy. Yesterday's claimed breakthrough in energy storage by a company called EEStor is not quite at that level, but even so it seems too good to be true and has been received as such by some experts.
But it does highlight those intriquing devices, ultracapacitors (aka supercapacitors), which as their name suggests are pepped-up versions of the capacitors you get in electronic circuits. Capacitors are the electronic equivalent of ponds, storing charge instead of water.
I discovered this the hard way when dismantling an old-fashioned valve radio as a kid. I'd unplugged the machine and assumed it was electrically inert. When I leaned into the cabinet, my head touched the contacts of a large smoothing capacitor; the resulting shock left two tiny burn marks on my forehead. The electrical pond had not been empty.
This ability to deliver surges of power has led to the development of ultracapacitors for use in electrical or hybrid vehicles. Their snag is that they shoot their load and are finished: they lack the capacity of batteries. EEstor claims to have overcome this drawback.
Almost as interesting for users of mobile devices is that ultracapacitors charge as well as discharge very quickly. EEStor claims its first product, designed to run a small electric car, will "fill up" in ten minutes. A laptop power unit would presumably take far less time. That would give it a considerable advantage over a conventional battery of equivalent capacity. Let's hope EEstor has got it right...
Back problems from laptops
Flybook is once again showing off its VM laptop. We originally reported it in June 2006. Now, 7 months later, Flybook are still banging the same drum because it hasn't yet been released.
The company thinks it is ideal for people on an aeroplane since you can manoeuvre the screen if the person in front of you leans their seat backwards.
Well, I'm certainly not going to shell out £1700 if that's how they market it.
Some people might consider buying it as a laptop with a screen that can be raised – I stick my laptop on a cardboard box and plug in an external keyboard and mouse to get the right posture…
UK music-video download store launches
The UK's first dedicated music-video online shop has launched called www.ilovevideo.com.
The site claims to have 99 per cent of UK independent labels signed up and although "independent labels" suggests second-rate material, big names like The White Stripes, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim are onboard.
Only 100 music videos are currently available since it is a soft-launch of the shop but content will quadruple over the next month and the small operation is uploading new videos as fast as it can encode them.
Karl Badger, managing director of ilovevideo, conceded "we're not trying to compete with iTunes", which also has some music videos for download.
Unlike iTunes, ilovevideo.com videos are DRM free, which means you can play them on any device with no restrictions.
The files come in .wmv and .m4v file formats. Portable quality files are 30fps, 750Kbits/sec, 320x240 and weigh in at about 20Mbytes for £1.89
We wouldn't bother with these low res flicks but go for TV quality files instead, which are 30fps, 3200Kbits/sec, 720x576 and weigh in at about 90Mbytes for £1.99.
Video quality is better than iTunes' offerings but it's a shame the TV quality ones cost 10p more than iTunes.
Personally I'm drawn to "Weapon of Choice" featuring Christopher Walken; like anything Dick Van Dyke does, this video demands attention.
The first DirectX 10 game is…
Supreme Commander if all goes to plan.
Despite speculation that it could be many, many months before we see DirectX 10 games that take advantage of Vista systems with 8800GTS/GTX cards or ATI's upcoming R600, Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander, a massive real time strategy game, could steal first honours.
The game launches in the third week of February and Greg Jones from THQ told PCW a patch enabling DirectX 10 support (or Shader Model 4.0 for much more detailed pictures) will be a free download "within a month of the game shipping", so mid to late March.
This real time strategy game is claimed to be the spiritual successor to the highly praised Total Annihilation that was released 10 years ago. The software developers are once again led by Chris Taylor but don't have the legal rights to call it Total Annihilation 2.
It looks like an advanced and massive Command and Conquer – with 4 players you could have an astonishing 16,000 units on the battlefield.
Support for multi-display setups, a fine-tuned zooming ability and mathematical ballistics simulation (rather than set paths for missiles and bullets) means a powerful system is a must, even before DirectX 10 support is considered.
Bill Gates' signature only worth $10
Engadget has spotted a bizarre limited edition version of Windows Vista on Amazon US. It's selling for just a $10 premium over the standard Vista Ultimate Upgrade edition. And if it's genuine why on earth has Microsoft picked the upgrade edition? And does it come with a special support hotline direct to Bill himself? The world needs to know.
New Nvidia Vista drivers next week
We've had word from Nvidia suggesting a new and improved Vista driver will be released at the beginning of next week.
Current Nvidia drivers (Forceware 97.46) for Windows Vista are dire, showing a 10-65 per cent performance decrease in computer games.
By launch day the outlook should be a lot rosier since there will be a rush to upgrade computer systems.
Although Vista is extortionately expensive (£219.99 for Vista Home Premium, the one you'll want to get because it has the fancy aero glass interface, DVD playback and media center) users have been waiting for it and manufacturers who don't have good Vista support won't be able to sell as much kit in new Vista systems.
Nero will have Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback
Nero could be facing hard times in 2007 since Vista will ship with DVD burning in Home Basic and DVD authoring and playback in Home Premium, providing some of Nero's core features for free.
To counter this Ahead, the parent company of Nero, is emphasizing other features in its Reloaded suite, not just its internationally recognized burning rom. However even Nero's peripheral tricks like UPnP media streaming will be free in various guises in Windows Vista.
For more advanced DVD playback, PowerDVD and WinDVD can be had for £17 and £10 on Amazon, much less than £30.97 price tag Nero asks.
Where Nero might be able to throw a spanner in the works lies is in HD DVD and Blu-ray support.
In Q1 2007 Nero will release a plugin to allow you to watch HD DVD titles and in Q2 another plugin will be released so you can watch Blu-ray titles in Nero.
Currently PowerDVD 7 Ultra is the only software that supports commercial titles on HD DVD or Blu-ray discs and it charges $99 (£51) for the privilege. If Nero can price its plugins attractively it might become famous for something other than CD burning.
If Nero doesn't succeed in doing new things then it can take stock in that it didn't collapse when XP arrived with an inbuilt CD writing feature. Ahead went on to sell 240 million copies of Nero, possibly because XP couldn't write to DVDs.
Windows Vista can write to DVDs so Ahead stockholders will be hoping HD-DVD and Blu-ray succeed – Nero can write to burning both types of blanks.
Patrick Peeters, Nero's manager for EMEA told PCW "we saw a very flat Christmas season" but he thinks 5-6 million customers will upgrade to Nero 7 during and immediately after the launch of Windows Vista since older versions are not Vista compatible.
UWB could reduce anti-social use of Wifi - when MPs get round to it
Open a laptop anywhere in central (even outer) London and the chances are that you will find four or five Wifi networks within range. There are only three non-overlapping sets of frequencies in the most-used 2.4GHz bands, which means that these networks are certain to be contending with each other - and this using spectrum already crowded with other applications, such as microwave ovens and Bluetooth.
Next-generation 11n Wifi technology could make the situation worse by extending the range and hogging bandwidth in the process known as channel bonding - equivalent to using two telephone lines instead of one to double throughput.
At the same time people will be encouraged to start using Wifi to stream high-definition video, meaning channels will be more intensively used and contention will get worse. Wifi is not going to scale up well.
News of EC approval of ultrawideband (UWB) technology got submerged in Christmas seasonal spirit, but it could prove a good alternative (or complement) to Wifi. Of course it may turn out to have snags and it may, like Wifi, be hyped into uses for which it is not suitable.
But it looks promising. Firstly, it is fast: Wireless USB, which replaces the usual physical USB cable with a UWB link, is rated at 480Mbit/sec. Secondly, it is short range, designed for communication within rooms, which maximises the number of possible users in a given area (take note those Wifi vendors who boast of the unneighbourly reach of their products).
The short range is a problem, too, of course because UWB cannot by itself be used to distribute data around a home or office building. But Wifi is overused for this purpose, with the encouragement of companies that ought to know better. It should, where possible, be used to complement a physical network not replace it.
We will have to become ever more subtle in our use of spectrum as local wireless network links become even more widespread. As a general principle they should be of the shortest range and at lowest practical power; where a longer range link is necessary, a directional beam should be used to minimise interference with other networks.
UWB can be used for simple peer-to-peer applications such as dumping pictures from a camera to a PC or set-top-box. But it can be linked into a physical home network, and if it encourages more people to set one up, then so much the better.
It might also get companies thinking of ways to facilitate home use of Cat5 cable or fibre (see, for instance, the latest idea from Tenvera) instead of trying to kid people that Wifi is satisfactory alternative.
Ofcom does not seem to be falling over itself to get legislation framed for UWB, even though it has approved the technology in principle. But while it is talking to parliamentarians, it would do well to discuss the establishment of some sort of best practice for networking homes – one that does not involve the promiscuous and anti-social use of scarce spectrum.
How to baffle users and keep your Product Returns desk busy
Long ago when word-processors had just been invented, I could have built a tidy business helping writers across London get their work printed out. Manuals for the then ubiquitous Epson dot-matrix printers were incomprehensible to anyone but an expert.
It has been an enduring mystery to me why the Japanese, with such a wealth of design skills, seem to be so bad at presenting information, at least to Western eyes. I once thought that this was because their graphical conventions were conditioned by a script that reads vertically from right to left; but it seems that modern Japanese script reads like ours, in rows from left to right.
And it does not explain why Epson expected its early users to understand hexadecimal numbers and control codes.
You might have thought that things had got better; but, according to a new Deloitte report, more than one in two consumer-electronics devices returned to vendors are not malfunctioning - buyers simply couldn't figure out how to use them. Deloitte concluded that vendors will have to make a far great effort to improve user interfaces.
Having just bought a (Korean) LG personal video recorder in the January sales I can see what they mean. The manual is mercifully free of fractured English but you would need to have a fair understanding of what a PVR consists of to make head or tail of it.
The machine boasts a hugely complicated remote control and a tiny LCD status screen. Yet is a PVR ever used without a TV, or at least a monitor? Why not have a simple remote control and use it to navigate a comprehensive no-brainer screen interface?
Again the design is reminiscent of early printers with their tiny LCD panel controls sitting next to far more usable computer screens.
On one point I would take issue with Deloitte, who criticise manufacturers for packing more features into devices than users can cope with. Complexity is not a problem in itself: cooking in the average kitchen is far more complicated than anything a user is required to do on a computer, leave alone relatively simple consumer-electronics devices. And good design hides complexity.
Deadline day looms for Vista drivers
As Microsoft prepares to unleash Vista to all and sundry on the 30th January, it appears some manufacturers are still struggling to get their Vista drivers ready.
We've already come across two products that won't work with Vista - Lexmark's X2350 all-in-one printer (in fact, a number of Lexmark printers are in a similar situation) and HP's new G4050 scanner.
What's even more frustrating is that there's no indication of when these drivers are likely to be ready.
Lexmark has a release schedule for its Vista drivers, but many models are simply listed as "coming soon".
Meanwhile, HP's driver download site says " If what you were looking for is not listed, then it is not available for downloading from the web in this language", which isn't particularly helpful.
Hopefully all will be sorted by the end of the month, otherwise there could be a fair few disgruntled Vista owners who can't use their old XP peripherals.
'iPhone can't make calls' - shock report on the best phone ever
For those of us who have yet to get near an iPhone, there was some clarification in The Sunday Times yesterday of what the fuss is all about. Tom Dunmore, billed as the first UK journalist to get his paws on the machine, says that it is indeed "darn sexy".
The interface, which fronts a version of the MacOS, has context sensitive controls and features like the ability to pick out voicemails from pictures of the caller. Nothing new there, then.
A proximity sensor deactivates the screen when you put the device to your ear, and a tilt sensor reorientates the screen according to whether you are holding it in landscape or portrait mode.
Dunmore also reports that the screen is hard to type on, and describes the devices's 4-8GB of memory and 2megapixel camera as "unexceptional".
And then he tried and failed to make a phone call on it. "The software isn't quite completed yet," an Apple man told him.
Hmm...
Dunmore also pointed out (as has PCW) that the lack of 3G will entail slow web browsing. This point was echoed in The Observer by John Naughton, who wondered how well the screen would stand up to scratching - and also whether the device would prove "as unreliable as the iPod range appears to be."
He also questioned the iPhone's use of a built-in battery, rather than the swappable ones usual in mobile phones. He asked: "Will users have to send their phones back to Apple when the batteries give up the ghost?"
This issue caused huge embarrassment for Apple after an iPod user was told it would be cheaper to buy a new player than replace his batteries. The company later introduced a refitting service - at a price.
None of this is to say the iPhone is a duff product. It will probably be a success even if, like just about every Mac product of the past few years, it is only half as good as the company's chief executive Steve Jobs says it is.
Arm Whois v2.0 released
Arm has released Whois v2.0, a utility to find information on domain names, severs and computers all over the world.
At first glance it's difficult to justify installing Whois software since many websites offer the functionality and it's even more difficult to justify the price, $29.95, because there are free utilities that broadly offer the same service.
There is a trial version that appears to give you full functionality apart from notices asking for payment.
Like most whois programs it can show who the owner of the domain name, when the domain was registered, the owner's contact information and where the host is situated. Unusually it can also find the owner of the IP address block you are tracing.
Privacy groups like the EFF aren't fond of whois and whois information can be blocked in certain countries not governed by InterNIC (part of ICANN) which oversees popular names like .com and .org.
Even in ICANN territories it's easy to give false information about websites like incorrect telephone numbers and addresses.
The program has a very clean interface with a field to insert domain or IP information you want to investigate and a large field to show the results.
Despite Arm claiming this is a security professional's program I think its target audience is actually non-tech heads who can while away the hours looking where different websites are hosted and who owns them.
Free antivirus rivals AVG
Antivir is an anti-virus package that's recently taken the top virus detection spot, despite being a free product.
In Virus Bulletin testing – independent and thorough, repeated every month with the viruses that are out in the wild - it scored higher than Symantec, McAfee, AVG and Panda.
In fact, it took the top two places in the form of rebadged WebWasher and its self-branded Antivir with 99.89 per cent and 99.86 per cent respectively.
In comparison Symantec picked up 99.08 per cent of viruses, AVG 95.25 per cent.
It only uses 3.8Mbytes of Ram, much less than its competitors, and the company's director of business development proudly states this is because 65 per cent of its revenues go into software development and only 35 per cent on everything else like advertising. Most software houses do it the other way round.
After some gentle digging I was told it’s a German family run company with 15m German speaking users and now it's pushing into the English speaking market.
Many people may be confused as to why a free antivirus product can have a higher virus detection rate than Symantec's and McAfee's paid for anti-virus products.
Well, it's 100 per cent family-owned which makes a profit and has zero debt. Perhaps it has a refreshingly different outlook to profit-driven security companies?
Their CEO and founder is described as a modest man who is focussed on technical excellence. Both of his sons are also involved with the company.
Adding to the good guy image, if you buy the paid for version which includes firewall, support and pop3 filter for €20 (£13), Avira (the parent company) donates €5 to a charity.
With the complaints we've had regarding AVG's free version (due to their massive push to get you to buy the full version), this could become "the next AVG".
CES 07: LCDs get bigger and HD goes hybrid
Having pounded the floors of CES here in Las Vegas over the past five days, it’s become clear that this year, big screen LCD TVs and the elimination of cables to transfer those high def signals wirelessly are hot.
While last year’s show was dominated by 80in or higher sized plasma TVs, this year it’s LCDs hitting that size. Many are not out yet, and the first wave will be 50in plus models, but supersize LCDs will not be far behind.
And to go with those TVs are more HD DVD and Blu-ray drives. LG’s hybrid Blu-ray player has grabbed loads of attention, but the company is also bringing out a hybrid PC drive too, although its high launch price will put off many.
In the PC space, Vista is the talk of the town. Manufacturers have been saying the past month has been very slow as people hang on for the new operating system. And they are lining up many machines – particularly laptops – to launch once Vista ships at the end of this month.
The most eye-catching products were, I think, display based. On Sony’s stand it is showing some stunning looking OLED TVs (pictured left). The TVs were only millimetres thick and although most were only 11inches in sreen size – clearly not big enough - you could see where the technology is heading. And Sony also had a working 27in model on the stand.
Sharp has an incredible looking 108in LCD HDTV (pictured right) on its stand. It’ll take up a whole wall and is going to cost $60,000 or more, but far from being a concept device, Sharp will start selling it from August.
