February Mailbox: Upgrade OK

Letters to the editor.

Ted Gibbons | Tuesday, February 23 2010

In reply to Linda from Wellington’s letter (Dec/Jan), I’d like to comment on my upgrade to Windows 7.

I purchased a Toshiba A500 running Vista with an upgrade option to Windows 7. I must admit I was apprehensive about Vista given the negative comments from many people, however, I found the change from XP Professional a pleasant experience apart from the little permission box popping up all the time. I purchased my upgrade to Windows 7 (cost $A35) and with the guidance of the Toshiba Upgrade assistant installed the new version with no problems whatsoever. I also run Office 2007, which I had installed with Vista, and found it was also running like clockwork after the upgrade.

My question to Linda is, if you were having such a good run from Vista why would you spend $500, which you obviously begrudge. If you get a good OS don’t change it to keep up with the Jones, change it because you need to.
Peter Breen, Rotorua

Key features
I received an IronKey personal security system USB drive from PCW as a prize, and just wanted to say how brilliant it is. It took me a while to figure out what it actually was, but then I became a true believer.

Large companies will absolutely have to get them for all their senior staff to use because they protect all those critical bits of data from being stolen. It’s not just for internet cafés, but even for using on a home PC or laptop, as the IronKey keeps all the cookies off the hard drive, and monitors each www session for nasties.

The aspect of not tapping in passwords is great, too, for evading those keystroke loggers.
Lastly, I nearly toasted it before I’d even used it, by forgetting what password I’d set it with.
The only drawback I can find is that it slows down your Firefox a bit when loading new pages.

Sites where you have several accounts, or linked sites with more than one account are a bit tricky, but you can store several accounts at each domain name, so you just have to choose which one to auto-login with before you click. Things like streaming media are fine.
Graham Philip, Taupo

Backup believer
Your article on the various forms of backup (Dec/Jan) was very interesting reading. I use a Seagate external drive, which is set to automatically backup at intervals. In addition, I use Carbonite’s online service at a cost of US$50 per year, per computer. I’m pleased to say I have never needed either, but it does give peace of mind.

An additional bonus with Carbonite is the ability to access files from anywhere. I have used it on occasion, both at work and at home to access files stored in either place. A great convenience, especially when you’ve forgotten to take that file you worked on at home back to work.

Carbonite takes a fair while to back up your system initially, but once this is done it just ticks along in the background. I believe that the combination of the two backups gives the best protection.
Peter McAlley, Napier

Seven niggles
Windows 7 is great (at least on a new computer) but where are the Standard Buttons in Windows Explorer? In Windows XP they can be customised with a right-click on the Toolbar, but there is no such option in Windows 7. A web search failed to find a solution, or am I missing something obvious? I am now using xplorer2, which works fine with Win 7 and has the buttons.
Peter Elliston, Clontarf, Australia

Freeview fail
Your Freeview PVR article (Dec/Jan) was very interesting to me as I’ve had a lot of trouble with my Zinwell unit. Each time there has been a problem I have explained it to the service agents (Next Electronics). Each time the reply comes back stating how the unit is supposed to work, not how to fix the problem.

I got sick of this so I wrote to freeviewnz.tv (who you state is the Zinwell contact). They didn’t want to know. Their email reply said they do not sell or manufacture any products and I should write to the manufacturer. I wrote to Zinwell but have never received a reply, so from my experience I would not give the Zinwell ZMT-640PVR a 7.5, it would be lucky to get a 5.
David Greerton, Tauranga

Locked out
As a keen games player who long awaited the arrival of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, imagine my disappointment at the system that Activision has set up to prevent software piracy.

Their new online service ‘Steam’ makes it all but impossible for purchasers of used versions of the game to register their purchase and be able to install and run it. I feel like an absolute idiot that I never secured the essential user name and password from the vendor who was the original purchaser and I am now in possession of software that I cannot use.

Activision’s website is of no practical assistance in this respect and even their online video on how to obtain support seems to run in silent mode. By trial and error I eventually managed to log on to their support system but am still waiting for my first meaningful contact from them to try and solve the problem.

Activision will not accept online auction receipts to confirm that a sale has taken place, so the moral of my story is that if you’re buying secondhand make sure to get the vendor to send a notarised affidavit with the goods.

Activision makes the statement that their system allows registered users to play the game from any computer and it is not about registering the games to any one PC. Do they seriously think that game hackers will keep secret the details of the user registration that they have set up if they can pirate the game and sell on copies to others? It seems to me that this system only penalises legitimate purchasers like myself who have purchased a used version in good faith. Any quick scan on TradeMe and the like will show that used games are offered for sale all the time, people sell on games after they have been played.
Bob Draper, Via email

Bob wins a Chester Squander notebook bag from Crumpler for letter of the month.

Happy customer
Letters to the editor usually contain complaints of poor customer service, so when someone provides good service they should be acknowledged.

Four days before I was due to fly to the UK, my Phitec Blackbox noise cancelling earphones developed a fault. As I wasn’t able to return them to the shop where I’d bought them and the website didn’t suggest I had enough time to return them under the usual warranty conditions, I urgently contacted Phitec to see if they could help me.

In turn I was contacted by Clement Barberis, the Blackbox manager, who arranged to meet me at the company’s Newmarket office on the morning I was due to fly out. He examined my earphones, replaced them under warranty, then emailed the relevant receipts the next day.

I remain impressed.
Andrew Smith, Via email