Microsoft Office is out to get me

You know how in horror films the bad guy always comes back, no matter how many times they’ve been killed. How after being shot, stabbed, blown up, set on fire, run over, drowned and, well, basically anything else that would kill someone in the most horrible way possible, they still manage to thrust a hand up in the last scene to show that they’ll be back. Well, that’s exactly how I view Microsoft Word’s stupid language settings.

No matter what steps I take to kill the English (United States) setting, it always comes back when I least expect it, menacingly underlining all of correctly-spelt words in red because it’s spotted that I’ve used an ‘s’ rather than a ‘z’.

I wouldn’t mind so much if I hadn’t tried everything to get rid of it. Put it this way, if Word was Rasputin, I’ve gone full-on Russian revolutionary against it. I’ve told Word not to automatically check language settings ever; I’ve set English (United Kingdom) to be the default language and even believed the message that pops up telling me that the NORMAL template has been changed.

It appears, though, that there’s an ABNORMAL template that Word uses, as it’s never long before Word decides that a document I’ve opened or some text I’ve pasted is American. In retaliation I have even been into the Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings application and removed English (United States) from the list. Yet, go back into Word and the digital hand of American spelling thrusts its way onto the screen.

No matter, you might think, why not just change the language of a document back to English (United Kingdom) manually using the handy button at the bottom of the Window. Well, I don’t because it doesn’t work the vast majority of the time.

Aside from shrinking myself down to a microscopic-size, jumping into the hard disk and stalking from cluster to cluster pumping magnetically-erasing bullet after magnetically-erasing bullet into the screaming hoards of 0s and 1s that make up the English (United States) dictionary, I’m at a bit of loss as to how to kill it off.

Fortunately, I’m feeling slightly better about the whole thing, as I’ve managed to get one-up on Excel. I’m now full of the same kind of smug feeling that you get when you trick a pet cat into doing what you actually want it to do.

The feature I’m talking about: Excel’s graphs. Now, for a spreadsheet that’s designed to manipulate, control and present facts and figures, you’d think that quite a lot of time would have been spent making graphs easy to use. Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

For years on Shopper we’ve been haunted by Excel randomly deciding to only show every-other label on a graph. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why it does this, and sometimes a graph will work properly, sometimes it won’t. Naturally, we thought it was a bug. So did Microsoft, which has a helpful little page that suggests resizing the graph until the labels reappear. This, you might have guessed, doesn’t work.

Then, I found out why: it’s not a bug, it’s actually a feature. Format the axis with the labels on it and there’s an option to change the interval. Randomly, Excel decides to set the interval to 2 on some graphs, making every-other label disappear. What a brilliant feature, as though there are actually times where you’d like to make people viewing your graphs guess what the missing labels stand for. Thanks for that Microsoft.

Still, now I’ve fixed that problem I can relax. Until, that is, I discover that the English (United States) dictionary is really in league with Clippy and they’ve just spotted that I’m about to write a letter...

Unlimited Confusion

Three's new INQ1 phone is pretty clever - I'll be reviewing it in next month's issue of Shopper (255). It supports tethering (using your phone as a modem) out of the box - when you plug it into your PC via USB, it pops up with an application with a big green "Connect" button.

Along with the INQ1, Three promotes a Texter deal that costs £15 a month and offers unlimited texts and Internet. I thought this was a pretty good package, and assumed at first that the "unlimited Internet" part of the deal would cover data usage when using the INQ1 as a modem. However, reading the small print, I noticed the following:

"unlimited internet and Facebook access is Internet Max add-on (1GB) - phone browsing only, your data usage does not include using your phone as a modem"

So how much would I be charged if I mistakenly assumed that tethering was part of the deal? The small print doesn't say. Neither does the 40-page PDF that I downloaded, that includes all of Three's pricing plans. It required a call to customer service to find out the cost: £2 per MB. That's a hefty charge for not reading the small print.

Now, we all should know by now that offers of "unlimited" Internet usage are misleading. "Unlimited" usage deals are in all cases covered by a "fair usage" policy, and what constitutes "fair usage" varies widely from operator to operator. Last time I looked, Orange had a "fair usage" allowance of only 256MB per month, whereas T-Mobile is rather more generous, allowing 3GB. In Three's case, "unlimited" means 1GB per month.

There is an option to add a mobile broadband package to the INQ1's "Pay Monthly" deal - the cheapest is 1GB for an extra £7.50 per month. If you go over this 1GB allowance, you'll only be charged a measly 10p per MB. So, let’s recap: if you don’t read the small print and assume “unlimited Internet” applies to using your phone as a modem: £2 per MB. If you go over the limit on your £7.50 per month, 1GB mobile broadband package: £0.10 per MB.

Admittedly, accessing the Internet is a different experience via a mobile phone than it is via a PC. The likelihood is that data usage will be much lower on the phone than on the PC, as mobile pages are cut-down and use fewer images. But surely, if users are made aware of the “fair usage” limits, it should be up to them to decide how they use the Internet?

I spoke to Three and they assured me that “at the point of sale we will always advise customers planning on using the phone as a dongle to buy one of our Broadband Add-ons”. (This is assuming a customer will a) ask for advice and b) buy the INQ1 in a shop, rather than online.) “We do everything we can do safeguard against our customers getting bill shock [sic] and as such we make sure we let them know via text message when they're nearing their fair usage allowance.”

Surely "bill shock" could be avoided altogether by simply charging the same amount for excess data usage on all price plans in the first place? Personally, I'd like to see a network operator that respects the English language, and doesn't try to redefine the word "unlimited".

Virgin Mobile Broadband on Ubuntu

The netbook bandwagon has been gathering momentum since Asus’s EEE was released at the end of 2007. Although quality varies, we’ve seen some great value netbooks. One of the latest is Dell’s Mini 12 (check out our First Look here). It’s available in both Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux versions.

Like most Linux netbooks, the Ubuntu version is cheaper than its Windows counterpart (although there are also a few differences to the hardware specification in this case). I use Slackware & Slamd64 Linux at home, so don't find it too hard to shift to other distributions, but even I’ve encountered a few problems.

I’m not the only who’s had their share of trouble. John Hudson, Technology Director of IT support and rescue firm Help4IT, told us: "We have received a steady flow of calls from home users who have bought netbooks with the Linux operating system installed. Generally the new netbook owners have called after being flummoxed when they tried to connect it to peripheral devices. Linux supports hardware very well but retailers and broadband suppliers who supply netbooks, or the devices they are required to connect to, have no Linux support capability and point their customers to organisations such as help4IT and our emergency support service, Dial4Rescue."

Unfortunately, most people who've picked up a bargain netbook tend to balk at the price of emergency support. Help4IT is one of several sources providing me with netbook questions for this blog.

A common problem involves getting mobile broadband dongles to work. Support is getting better, particularly for the popular range of dongles from Huawei. I tested support for a Virgin Mobile Broadband Huawei E160 under Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

Setting Up Mobile Broadband
The first step is to install the latest version of Network Manager (0.7). You’ll need an internet connection for this. Yes, this would be one of those Catch-22 situations that calls for a net connection to get your net connection working. I recommend using wired Ethernet at this stage to minimise further complications.

1. Open a command line terminal. (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
   
   
2. Give yourself root access. On many pre-installed Ubuntu distributions the best way to do this is by typing “sudo bash” and entering your password if prompted. If you installed Ubuntu yourself and have set up a password for root, type “su -” and enter the root password.
   
   
3. Type “gedit /etc/apt/sources.list”. This will open the package management sources in a graphical text editor.
   
   
4. Cut and paste in the following lines:
   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/ubuntu hardy main
   deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/ubuntu hardy main
   
   
5. Check to make sure you haven’t accidentally changed anything else, save and exit gedit.
   
   
6. Back in the terminal window type the following:
   apt-get update
   apt-get install network-manager
   
   Type y to continue and again when asked if you want install the network-manager packages without authentication. You may get a couple of error messages at this point, but these don’t indicate a major problem.
   Restart the system.

This should give you all the software you need to get online. That’s the most complicated bit. Not too bad, right? Now shut down your PC and plug in the mobile broadband dongle. If you want to use mobile broadband on a Linux system it's a good idea to boot with the dongle already connected.

Once you’ve rebooted go to:
System > Preferences > Network Configuration

Click on the Mobile Broadband tab and click Add.
The new and improved network-manager should now auto-detect the Huawei E160 (although it may identify it as a Huawei E220 – this isn’t a problem).

You’ll have to add a few settings. These can be obtained from your mobile broadband provider, although this can sometimes be a challenge. Here are the settings you’ll need for Virgin Mobile broadband:

Number: *99# (should be set by default)
Username: (blank)
Password: (blank)
APN: goto.virginmobile.uk

Tick 'Connect automatically'.
Everything else should be left blank as in the screenshot below.



We’re pleased to note that support for mobile broadband devices is getting better and better. Because of the ongoing development of programs like network-manager, Linux users are coming ever closer to being able to plug in almost anything and have it work immediately.

I'll be tackling more common Linux problems here in the future using questions provided by Shopper staff, Help4IT and, of course, any queries that you'd like to send me.

When is HD not HD?

If you listened to Toshiba last year, you’d have heard the company sing the praises of HD DVD (‘The Look and Sound of Perfect’) and how it would add a new dimension to entertainment. In many ways that was fair enough. The quality of HD DVD is leaps and bounds ahead of DVD and identical to that produced by Blu-ray players, as it uses the same video codecs.
Skip to the start of this year and Toshiba seems to have gone completely mad, reversing its opinion completely. With HD DVD a failed standard and Blu-ray the only HD disc format, Toshiba has decided that, after all, HD isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. So, what’s better than HD, then? Er, DVD.

According to Toshiba, its new upscaling DVD players are all anyone needs. Capable of outputting a 1080p picture, the company would like us to believe that the quality is almost as good as a true HD source. Not only does this make a mockery out of the company’s last few years trying to sell HD DVD, but it’s also complete nonsense.

While we’ll be happy to admit that there’s a difference in quality between different upscaling players, and some do a better job than others, a simple fact that remains: you can’t add detail that isn’t there.

DVDs in the UK have a resolution of 720x576 pixels (414,720 pixels in total); full 1080p HD has a resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels (2,073,600 pixels in total). This means that an upscaling DVD player has to add 1,658,880 pixels of extra data to make DVD 1080p video. That’s almost four-times the number of pixels from the original source and a hell-of-a-lot of data to be making up.
While an upscaling DVD player can use lots of clever algorithms to make DVD look better on a 1080p screen, no amount of intelligence can add detail. A video panning across a book shelf in DVD might mean that you can’t read any of the titles; with 1080p video you probably could. So, how’s an upscaling DVD player supposed to add this extra detail? Are we expected to believe that the player can detect the books by their cover and put the text on the spines?

The kind of upscaling technology that creates incredible detail from poor-quality original video exists only the realm of TV, where the secret government organisation can get the techy guy to enhance the low-res security camera footage to reveal the face of the killer. If this technology existed in the real world, imagine how much money could be saved: Hollywood could simply shoot all of its films on camera phones and enhance the detail in post-production, and tiny 1-megapixel cameras could be the norm and we’d just need to upscale the image later on a computer.

Total nonsense, of course. Upscaling DVD players can only work with what they’ve got. They can smooth low-resolution video to make it look acceptable on a high definition TV, but that’s it. After all, you can polish a turd, but it doesn’t make it a work of art.

My New Year’s resolutions

Having joined Shopper last year as a relative novice when it comes to actually using computers, as opposed to reporting on news about them, I’ve begun a journey of computer enlightenment.

Sure, I could use Facebook, Word, Excel and the like, but if you’d given me a bunch of components and a PC case 12 months ago and told me to make it work, I would have told you to take a hike. But now, I’ve built a working PC, created a website, learnt the basics of HTML and become hooked on WWII shooter Call of Duty.

This year, I want to step it up a notch, so for 2009 I’ve set myself a list of objectives:

Try out Linux

I’ve never owned a PC that ran Ubuntu or any other open source operating system. Yes, I’m a Linux virgin. And the reason I’ve always relied on Windows is, quite frankly, because I’m lazy. Windows has come with every PC I’ve ever bought, and I’ve never wished to challenge myself to using an OS I’m not used to, even if it might make my life easier in the long run. But ’09 will be the year of Linux for me. Having said that, I don’t particularly mind Vista, and I’m eager to check out Windows 7. But I’ll be brave and switch to Ubuntu. For a little while, anyway.

Upgrade my own PC

With a little help from some of Shopper's other staff members, I managed to build my own PC last year. But, if I’m totally honest, my colleagues practically put the whole thing together for me, showing me how it was done as we went along. This year, however, I’m boldly going where I probably should have gone the first time around, and doing it myself. I hereby vow to completely upgrade my own PC this year! But probably towards the end of ‘09, because this PC should be good for a little while yet…

Buy a smartphone

We get to review a lot of handsets here at the Shopper Office. Barry de la Rosa, our handhelds expert, is always keen to show me the latest smartphone he’s got his mitts on – and I’ve been really impressed with a couple of them. The T-Mobile G1 has some very cool features, and I’m hoping Google Streetview and other new applications will be available soon. That would make it worthwhile splashing out on a phone that runs on Google’s operating system, Android. But for now, I’m still mesmerised by the iPhone.

I really do like it – even though I’m firmly of the opinion that Apple products are for conformists of the whole “Apple is a non-conformist brand” view, hence not non-conformist at all, if that makes sense. But I still think the iPhone 3G is a great gadget.

Create a ‘proper’ website

I’ve made a lot of lame excuses about why I haven’t created a decent website yet: I’ve been busy writing for other areas of the Shopper site, I’ve already made a Google Sites website (although I know that doesn’t really count), I’ve just been really, really busy. I’ve been meaning to do it, and never actually done it. Plus, HTML does my head in. This year, though, I’ll sit down, draw up a plan and get it sorted. Just as soon as I figure out what I want the website to be about.