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Kelvyn Taylor - Editor, PCW

Forget 3D gaming

Your otherwise fine nostalgia-fest "History of PC Games" feature (PCW April 2008) barely mentioned the text games that were so popular in the early 80s.

Back in the days when graphics cards were unknown, Ram was 640KB, operating systems and applications were loaded by floppy disk, the internet barely existed outside the military and monitors were monochrome and text-only.

Back in 1980, when I was working for a metropolitan authority that shall remain nameless, the playing of text games, particularly Zork and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was endemic amongst us grunt workers  to counter the sheer bureaucratic ennui of our daily existence.

They were gripping, required us to use our imaginations, and were often fiendishly difficult - I still remember with pride being one of only three people to finish Hitchhiker's Guide after what must have been hundreds of hours' of play over a year.

Their best advantage, though, was that because they were text our bosses thought we were beavering away at word processing or data entry, a luxury modern cubefarm drones no longer have in the days of high-quality 3D graphics.

I mourn the demise of text games which, like a good book compared to a multi-million dollar film, require you to use your imagination rather than bludgeoning your senses with whizz-bang special effects. They also ran on the lowest spec PCs, required no graphics cards, needed no motor skills other than typing, and you could learn how to play them in minutes.

I hope that, one day, gamers will return to the technical simplicity but narrative complexity of text games, and that new titles will be produced by writers with imagination. And if this ever happens, I hope and pray that a sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide is one of the first to emerge.

Fred Riley

The birth of PCW

Congratulation and thanks on the first class 30th anniversary issue of PCW, it looked absolutely great.

Here are a few more facts on the early issues of PCW, which it seems are vague to many people. The first issue was published (available in the shops) on February 8th 1978.

This issue was not dated (just issue 1, volume1) as I was not sure that there would be a second issue - firstly because all experts at that time thought it was too early for a PC magazine, and secondly I had very little money, no office and no permanent staff. In fact, our "office" was a table at the Troubadour Cafe on Old Brompton Road, SW5, with a convenient telephone kiosk located just outside.

The editor was Meyer Solomon, who lived round the corner and was working part time in the cafe, while the magazine address was listed as the newsagent above where I was living at the time.

What prompted me to publish the magazine was that I was always interested in new technology and had read a considerable amount about it (free newspapers and magazine from my shop!).

In mid 1977, the US newspaper, Wall Street Journal, published an article on small computers, which fascinated me. I researched a bit more by getting Byte and Kilobaud magazines from the USA.

The first issue was a sell-out and we received about 3,000 subscribers, which ensured there would be more issues of PCW.

Angelo Zgorelec (PCW founder)

Three cheers for Ada

In the news article "German beats wartime Colossus on Nazi decrypt" (PCW April 2008), you describe how Joachim Schueth recently used his laptop to beat the replica Colossus at Bletchley Park - I suspect living nearer to the transmitter helped him too.

On the same page, you also mention Ada Lovelace, so it is rather odd that you didn't mention the connection between them. Joachim used the Ada programming language to process the radio signals and to simulate the behaviour of Colossus.

How refreshing it is to see someone choosing to write programs in Ada, whether it is for the sheer fun of it or because they want confidence that their programs will not let them down on the day. Well done Joachim and Ada!

Terry Froggatt

Has Asus missed a trick?

It's not just me (a 50 year old ex-Z88 and Acorn Risc PC user), but also my wife (a 42 year old late adopter of home computing) who would like an Asus Eee PC and a Wii. However, whilse most people seem to have understood what is good about a Wii they don't seem to have grasped the essential about the Eee PC, and I fear this could include Asus.

The issues for me, and lots of others, are price-point and practicality. If you want a laptop for email and a bit of word processing, then there is a world of difference between £220 and £340 in the justification stakes. You just cannot compare a £1,000 Apple Macbook Air with an Eee PC any more than you can compare a Ford Ka with a Ferrari. However the Eee PC is not just a cheap laptop, it is small enough to take in your luggage - not as your luggage.

For many, this is a very practical point. I also think Asus missed a trick with the soldered flash memory. If they had put a second SDHC port inside and fitted it with a fast card then they could have made one model but shipped whatever was in demand.

But what do I know, I can't even find one in stock at the right price.

Mark Foweraker

Psion of the times

I loved your April issue - all very nostalgic! When my young lad (now some 32 years old and with one and a half PhD's), first came home from his primary school talking about computers, I resolved to keep ahead of him.

Inevitably, a Sinclair ZX81 came along, soon followed by a ZX Spectrum and then a BBC Micro with all the bits.

Throughout this learning curve, I discovered Psion and have had virtually every model since the very first "push/pull" grey device. I used these various Psion offerings throughout my healthcare career as I had a need for truly portable, instant access information.

Now, as a professional photographer, I have learned to absorb the digital age and Photoshop, and still believe I am keeping ahead of my son - especially when it comes to imaging and spreadsheets. I thoroughly enjoyed your 30th anniversary issue and will keep it safe as a reminder of how far we have come.

Incidentally, I recently enjoyed an exhibition of the "Historic Development of computers" at the top of La Grande Arche in La Defence in Paris where they had actual examples of computers from the earliest to date.

Today, although I use a variety of PCs in my daily business, I still rely totally on a Psion 3MX for all my personal matters and immediately-to-hand information. It has been 100 per cent reliable, despite three serious drops.

Switching between three agendas, 14 spreadsheets, five databases, three word documents, it has never been beaten in terms of speed of access.

Other software (Berlitz, Phrase, Wine, Dietary Analysis etc) simply add to the versatility of this serious previous world-beater - and it was British-designed and made! An absolutely brilliant device - where next? Perhaps the nearest device is the latest Nokia Communicator?

Keith Erskine

In the frame

I found your digital photo frame group test (PCW April 2008) very interesting, but I feel you have missed two important points.

I have one of these picture frames which is very similar to the featured Cenomax, but without the remote control. It works well and is very satisfactory when viewed from a distance of one metre or greater.

I reduce my photos in Paint Shop Pro to the optimum size of 480x234 - some of my albums contain hundreds of photos, so I do them in batches of around 20. I then put the reduced size photo album onto a 256MB SD card and run the photo frame.

The frame ignores the alphabetical or numerical sequencing, instead playing them back by what appears to be each photo's time stamp, thus throwing my holiday photos out of sequence. It also treats the albums in the same way. I tried renaming the photos within the albums after reducing the size, but it made no difference.

Based on the fact I should be able to get approximately 7,000 resized photos on a 256MB SD card, another problem comes to light: if I switches the unit off overnight, it restarts at what it thinks is the first album again.

The chances of getting through 7,000 photos in one day is limited, so I am unlikely to see the most recent additions to the Photo Frame shown unless I leave it on permanently going through its slide show.

Ron Hak

History of computing

From Pacman to Pentium (PCW April 2008) was excellent reading which brought back many Memories; I had completely forgotten about The Last One.

I appreciate that the article was not intended to be a complete history of computing, but I was a little disappointed that two of my machines were not represented - one was the Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P. Here's to the next 30 years.

Ivan Drake

A bad year for HD DVD

It’s looking like a turbulent year for HD DVD, what with the Warner Bros’ announcement in January that it would exclusively back the rival Blu-ray format. It has also suffered from DVD rental giants Netflix and Blockbusters phasing out the format, American retailer Best Buy's recommendation of Blu-ray over HD DVD for consumers, and Walmart's decision to support only Blu-ray from June 2008.

Just days after reading Gordon Laing and Barry Fox's articles about the HD format war, I learnt that Toshiba (HD DVD’s main backer) had announced that they would no longer develop, manufacture or market HD DVD players from March this year. This, I feel, must be the tip of the high-definition iceberg in favour of Blu-ray, as Toshiba's pull-out effectively ends the format war.

I feel for Laing. In his piece he referred to the VHS/Betamax format war lasting for years, and stated that "we could be in for a long ride yet" in this new race for high-definition supremacy. It now seems that this ride has been cut very short indeed. After all the money and time put into the successor to the DVD by Toshiba and various other companies, not to mention the consumer spending upon the technology, it seems such a waste. But every battle must have a victor, and, just like VHS, Blu-ray has won both the battle for manufacturer backing, and in turn the war.

Being an owner of a Sony’s £300 Playstation 3, which supports Blu-ray playback, I am somewhat pleased that the outcome wasn’t the opposite. I do not wish to gloat, but this is a definite reassurance that the money I spent on a next-gen console was spent well.

Although I do not own any Blu-ray films, I feel content in the knowledge that my PS3 will be able to play high-definition films in the future, should I feel the need to watch them.

Loz Hawksworth.

Crackly lines

I have had about 12 months of difficulty getting a totally reliable connection since I was switched to the ADSL Max service (up to 8Mbits/sec).

In that time I found out that the crackly phone that had crackled for years was seriously reducing the speed of my connection as the interference, on occasion, was so severe it would reduce the speed to 100Kbits/sec, which the exchange would not reset until 24 hours later.

Also, the connectors that are sold for DIY extensions are not without their problems, and the reason why you have the option of loading any version of the router's firmware that has been issued in the past as well as the most recent version, is that sometimes the older version is more stable for your connection than the most recent version.

Fortunately I have experience of electrical fault finding and eventually found a workable solution to overcome the intermittent problems I had. However, even for me it has not been easy. BT was adamant that the line was satisfactory and, if I were to book a visit, I would be charged £180 pounds if they felt that the problem lay at my end.

I do not see how a competent telecoms technician could take longer than half an hour in such a visit and this charge is in excess of its actual cost. For many users, a visit from BT may be their only option as many problems are beyond the competency of the average user.

Neil Hardy