April Mailbox: Pricing VDSL2

The argument that Telecom may have a case for charging extra for VDSL2 is specious.
Telecom is not a newcomer and would have been aware that standards and equipment change frequently. They would, when setting charges for ADSL, have factored in the costs of equipment replacement, upgrading and maintenance.

Just as many of our DSL modems are ready for VDSL2 (and are backward compatible to the current ADSL standard), Telecom would probably have installed their equipment with VDSL2 in mind and hence there would be no extra costs there – merely replacement of older equipment, which would probably have been rostered for replacement in any case. Maintenance is an ongoing expense and would be no different.

Therefore, as I have already suggested, there is no case whatsoever for any increase in access fees and Telecom’s argument for an increase is merely corporate greed.
Alan Torrance, Auckland

Alan wins a copy of Norton Internet Security 2010 from Symantec for letter of the month.

Why widescreen?
Why is everyone so hyped about ‘widescreen’ these days? Sure, it makes sense for a television or projection screen that’s going to be used primarily for watching movies or TV, which is increasingly being broadcast in widescreen format.

But why computers? Are we really to believe the majority of computer users spend most of their time watching videos and movies on their PCs and laptops? I doubt that – I suspect that like me, most people primarily work with documents, browse the web and look at their digital photos on their computers, perhaps with the occasional bit of entertainment thrown in. With documents and the web, you want as much screen height as possible, not width. And most digital cameras take photos closer to the 4:3 aspect ratio than 16:10 or 16:9.

I suspect it’s a bit of a con by monitor and laptop manufacturers. A 19-inch wide aspect screen is considerably smaller in area than a 19-inch 4:3 aspect one – and consequently should be much cheaper to manufacture. At my wife’s work, her office has five PCs with 19-inch widescreen monitors. When hers died recently, I got the job of choosing the replacement – a 19-inch, 4:3 aspect Philips. It’s actually quite hard to find a 4:3 screen these days. Now, her co-workers are jealous because she can view an A4 document pretty much at full size – something they can’t do.

At the risk of being self-contradictory, in my home office I use a Dell Ultrasharp 24-inch, 16:10 wide aspect screen – but at that large size it’s tall enough to view an A4 document life-size, and the width gives me the bonus of being able to view two full pages side-by-side, vital for the layout work I do. So yes, there are uses for widescreen. But working with documents on the current crop of widescreen laptops or smaller widescreen monitors must be a real pain with their reduced height.

Apple has shown great sense making the iPad 4:3 aspect – yes, movies will have black bars, but digital still photos, documents, book pages and web pages will all fill the screen nicely. It’s time more manufacturers realised that watching movies isn’t all that computers are about.
Dave Addison, Helensville

G Data fail
In your January edition you evaluated G Data Antivirus 2010 as being a very good product. I trialled a 30 day version but I was unable to buy the product because the company informed me that it was not possible to buy or pay for their product from New Zealand. I even rang the main office in Germany. If PC World features a product then please make sure it is available in New Zealand.
Paddy Clifford, via email

Security solutions
Thanks for a very useful and timely article on antivirus solutions (February PC World).
At home I use freeware and have been trialling the full version of ZoneAlarm, which includes an antivirus. After the trial ran out I converted to the free Zone Alarm firewall and installed AVG free to run alongside.

However, I’ve found this combination doesn’t work well anymore and slows the PC down dramatically, especially on boot-up and when downloading mail.

Looking for a solution, I came upon Comodo, which I’ve trialled before but never stuck with.
It is now my favourite solution for PC security, though of course we users only know how good something is when it fails to deliver.

At work, I think we’ll be opting for Norton Internet Security – based on your review.
Geoff Holmes, Palmerston North

In defence of Seagate
You gave the Seagate FreeAgent Theatre a poor review in your March feature on media players but I have one of these units and it functions superbly.

I do, however, have it connected to the TV with an HDMI cable, and it does everything it claims. I use many file types from movies in ISO format to FLV clips converted to AVI, and all work perfectly.

I have installed but do not use the supplied Seagate software to synchronise the PC and hard drive programmes, as the Media Player has an easy to use menu with options to store the programmes any way one wishes.

Seagate’s upscaling also gives a very good result with converted FLV or MPEG4 YouTube clips played on a Panasonic 42-inch HD Plasma TV.

If you have the latest Seagate Player, and it is connected to the TV using an HDMI cable, you could have a faulty unit if it won’t perform.
Alister Tompkins, Feilding

Broadband bottleneck
Your article about what New Zealand is missing out with the limited internet (Broadband Diary, February PC World) has been a noticeable issue to me since I started using the internet in 1997. Overseas internet friends would often complete a download in a matter of minutes while it would take me a whole day (and a larger bill). I was recently in Vietnam and Hong Kong for three months and the only thing I dreaded on returning to New Zealand was the internet speed and bills. I got three times faster internet in a Vietnamese countryside house where my grandmother lives than in Mt Albert, Auckland.

However, I’ve learnt a few things during my engineering and computer systems studies that might need to be pointed out. Having fibre optic cable to the home in New Zealand is only part of the solution. The main problem is that internet traffic is routed through only one undersea cable to Australia, then to the rest of the world. This is a bottleneck that other countries don’t suffer because multiple cables are available to route traffic.
Chris Joe, via email

You make a great point Joe, and the launch in recent weeks of the Pacific Fibre proposal for a new cable to the US is designed to address exactly this problem – Ed