Computer Articles - Internet and Computer News » Eternity

OpenOffice 3.0

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:09:33 +0000

This week OpenOffice 3.0 was released and once again I found myself questioning as to why we spend good money on Microsoft Office when there is a completely free alternative available that does the job just as well. After all, it’s not as if Office 2007 is cheap; the professional version comes in at an impressive £350 and it’s not as if I even like Office 2007.

Unlike previous versions which used a standard Windows interface, I find the latest incarnation completely out of keeping with other applications which all keep to roughly the same, familiar user interface. Perhaps old age it starting to catch up with me but even after a year of usage I still find myself spending what seems like an eternity looking in vein for even the most basic of functions. Software for the Windows Operating System has always adhered to a certain menu layout so that users could quickly and easily pick up a new application, but it seems Microsoft now require us to spend weeks figuring out where they’ve moved a basic function such as ‘find’ which should be located in a drop down ‘edit’ menu.

OpenOffice does include almost everything that you could require from an office suite and fortunately the interface is laid out in a fashion becoming a Windows application so it shouldn’t take long to pick up. The applications below shouldn’t be considered cut down versions of the Microsoft equivalent; this is a powerful piece of software in its own right and most users won’t notice any difference in functionality:

Writer: The equivalent to Microsoft Word which includes all the usual features such as AutoCorrect, AutoComplete, AutoFormat, Styles and Formatting, Spellchecker, Grammar Checker and illustration tools. Unlike many other applications (including previous versions of Microsoft Word), Writer can also open and save the .docx format that is used by default in Office 2007.

Calc: Similar to Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet application, Calc includes all the standard functions as well as more advanced features such as an Intelligent Sum button and Scenario Manager.

Impress: This is designed to replace Office’s PowerPoint presentation application to allow you to create multimedia applications using a combination of clipart, drawing tools, animation, transition effects, text tools and special effects. Work can be shared using a number of formats such as the standards .pdf, .html and Flash.

Draw: Does pretty much what it says on the tin; Draw allows to create graphics including sketches and plans quickly and easily.

Base: An advanced database application for managing raw data, forms, queries, tables and reports which also includes a number of wizards that should get newcomers up and running immediately.

It’s at this point that the penny drops and I realise that there is something missing; unfortunately an e-mail client as an alternative to Microsoft Outlook appears to be absent which for an Internet company such as Refresh is a big issue hence why we probably haven’t yet made the switch. While there are free alternatives available such as Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird I personally have never found they come anywhere close to Outlook in terms of functionality.

Perhaps for the next incarnation they will consider the inclusion of an e-mail client but this omission aside, OpenOffice is a near perfect application which can be downloaded free of charge from www.openoffice.org. The 142mb file size, whilst large, shouldn’t take more than about half an hour, even on modest broadband connections.

iPhone

admin — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:06:47 +0000

Whilst I dedicated an article to the iPhone when it was first announced I haven’t touched on the subject since. This was until my Sony handset broke a few weeks back and for what seems like an eternity whilst I wait for it to be repaired, I’ve been left using a four year old girly pink clamshell Samsung phone borrowed off my girlfriends sister.

The fact I’m now using a handset which I’m afraid to use in public for fear of ridicule has somehow made me appreciate how much of a statement your mobile phone makes about you; similar to the watch on your wrist or the shoes on your feet. Whilst I have never considered such things particularly important and would never advocate living your life by third party perspective, I doubt I would ever go out wearing a watch won from an arcade grab machine or a pair of plastic sandals on my feet.

I fear that having to carry around a pink handset which even a twelve year old schoolgirl would be ashamed of may have actually turned me insane and now owning an Apple iPhone now seems like quite an appealing proposition; even if nothing else, at least the newly sparked rumours surrounding my sexuality would be quashed.

A few mates have recently invested in the second generation of the iPhone and whilst there is no excusing the smug look that darts across their face whenever given the excuse to get the phone out in public, there is no denying that it would appear to be a desirable piece of kit. If by any chance you haven’t ever seen one, the iPhone is a mobile phone handset which instead of having the conventional screen and key combination, it simply has one large touch screen and you navigate your way around by pointing, tapping and dragging your fingers across the intuitive menu system.

Whilst the first was very much groundbreaking the 3G version released a couple of months back does add a number of improvements to the original. Whilst just as beautiful and slim, the new model features:

- 3G support which provides the mobile with significantly faster data transfer speeds if in a 3G covered area

- Updated software providing a number of bug fixes and new third party applications

- Revised headphone socket; a huge problem for users of the original iPhone is that many standard headphones wouldn’t fit in the recessed headphone socket; this presented a huge problem since the phone is targeted primarily towards users that appreciate a convergence of a traditional mobile phone and an iPod audio player

- An integrated GPS receiver so you can easily see your current position and surrounding area on screen as well as obtaining directions to a desired location without any additional hardware or software.

There are dozens of other little tweaks and fixes that Apple have integrated in to this handset which whilst not providing reason enough for those with an original iPhone to immediately upgrade, does make the idea more appealing to those that currently don’t own one. Unfortunately it is still exclusively on O2 and whilst it will still cost a small fortune on pay as you go, the 8GB version is free of several of their contracts. I could never warrant recommending that a pay as you go customer spend £350 on this handset but if you’re on a contract anyway and can get the unit either discounted or free then you will get a lot of technology for your money.

I’m approaching my 27^th birthday and so far have gone my entire life without ever having purchased an Apple product so personally I think I’m going to wait to see what the recently announced Nokia Tube and Google G1 touch screen handsets have to offer.

Last.fm

admin — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:21:04 +0000

It’s no secret that the radio can at times be both repetitive and, if we’re honest, rubbish. Working in an office, it is pretty essential to have some background music however if I heard Umbrella by Rihanna one more time this summer then I would have actually broken down in to tears.
For those of you unfamiliar with the song you must have been locked away for the entire summer or you simply don’t own a radio as I was exposed to it literally every half an hour through my nine hour working day for a period of three months. By my calculations this means that over the period of the summer I listened to that song over 1,600 times which in my mind is around 1,599 times too often.
If you’re still not sure which song I’m talking about, it’s the one that has three entire choruses that consist of nothing but the following words repeated for what feels like an eternity – ‘You can stand under my umbrella, Ella ella eh eh eh. Under my umbrella, Ella ella eh eh eh’.
You’d be mistaken for thinking that I was in fact just getting something off my chest, but I promise you I am getting to some sort of point. You see, this summer I also discovered a fantastic little website called last.fm which allows you to create your own radio station which plays music that you actually want to listen to. You start by specifying a genre of music or an artist that you particularly like, and then Last FM will create a playlist consisting of music that it thinks you will like based on your choices.
I’m very much in to my alternative rock and typing in an artist such as Lifehouse will create a playlist featuring tracks from not only this band but other artists that typically people that like this particular band have said they appreciate. Most of the choices that it makes are fairly obvious, bands such as the Goo Goo Dolls, Hoobastank and The Calling will all make appearances but occasionally a new band pops up from time to time that I’ve never even heard of before.
Of course, if you happened to like the Umbrella song then type in Rihanna and you will also then be tortured, sorry, I mean introduced, to tracks by other similar artists such as the Pussycat Dolls and Girls Aloud.
My favourite aspect of the site is that, unlike radio stations that tend to only play chart singles produced in the last couple of years, Last.fm will play you album tracks even if they never made it as singles and never hit the charts. For someone like me, a radio station that basis the playlist on chart single sales isn’t really appropriate to my listening style; 25 year old men tend to buy albums, not singles, and so our musical tastes are very rarely reflected in the charts. Because last.fm works off a different model, you will often hear tracks you’ve never heard before and will be introduced to music that is genuinely new to you rather than another rehash of ‘it’s raining men’ by the Weathergirls.
You have two choices as to how you listen to the station, either head to www.last.fm and stream it directly from the website or download the free standalone player. If you’re serious about your music then the player does offer a number of advantages over the website such as the ability to create and store a continually developing profile. Using a profile will allow more information to be collected about the type of music that you like resulting in a more accurate selection of the kind of music you’ll enjoy whilst avoiding that which doesn’t suit your taste.
When listening to a song you will also be given some additional information regarding the artist and their particular style of music should you decide that you want to hear more of them. If a song appears that particularly like then hit the ‘love’ icon and you’ll hear more like that in the future. Likewise, if you don’t like a particular track then hit ‘ban’.
If only I could have done that with Umbrella at the start of the summer….

Keeping your computer up to date

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2002 14:58:19 +0000

Once you’ve worked with computers for even a moderate amount of time, there’s one thing that you’ll notice time and time again – Software never works correctly the first around. If you were to buy a car from Audi, you wouldn’t expect to have to take it back to the garage every couple of months to have it updated for numerous glitches, for example to stop a bug that makes the car become unstable when used in conjunction with a certain type of stereo. Computers are a different kettle of fish however.

A typical version of Microsoft Windows when it is released contains tens of thousands of bugs, some of which they know about and some of which they are yet to discover. If they were to wait until every last one had been rectified then we’d be waiting for an eternity for the product to be released which is why dynamic updating has become so popular in todays Internet society.

The manufacturers of most computing products now make a list of any bugs and defects that have been discovered in their software since the launch date and set about correcting them. Once a solution to a particular problem has been discovered, the correction is often put onto their website for members of the public to download for free.

Microsoft is probably the best example of a company that uses such a piece of technology. If you connect to the Internet and then open up Internet Explorer in the usual way then do the following: Go to ‘Tools’ and then ‘Windows Update’, after a short delay a web page will appear, now click on ‘Scan for updates’ and Internet Explorer will now go off looking for specific updates for your computer to fix known issues that have been discovered. After a minute or so, you should now select any updates that you wish to apply (if you have free Internet access then I suggest you download them all) and then click download. They will all now install onto your machine automatically, and who knows, that annoying glitch you’ve been experiencing for a while may be a widely documented problem that Microsoft corrected a long time ago.

Microsoft Office can be updated in the same way by clicking on ‘Office Update’ on the web page that first appears. Probably the best thing about both of these updates is that no information is sent to Microsoft whatsoever and so they are unable to determine anything about your computer or any personal information. Even if you are not experiencing any difficulties then I suggest you still update your machine anyway as there may be a potentially serious problem of which you are currently unaware (an Internet security vulnerability, for example).

Other, non-Microsoft software can benefit from these kinds of updates as well. For example, the Norton range of products use a program called ‘Live Update’ which does pretty much the same thing.

In addition, if you have any form of Anti-Virus software then I suggest you update this every month or so that your computer can detect the newest viruses that are continually being released. Even if the program in question doesn’t have an update program then try going to the manufactures website and having a look around to see if you can spot anything to update your software.

Finally, hardware devices (e.g. scanner, graphics card, modem etc.) are the things that benefit most from having their controlling software (known as a driver) updated. A driver is a program that lets the computer know how to control a piece of hardware that is interfacing with it; imagine it like your dad giving you instructions on how to use your legs to walk or how to use your arms to throw a ball when you were a kid. Without a driver, you could have the printer quite happily connected to your computer although the machine wouldn’t have a clue how to even start using it. The easiest way to go about updating these drivers, which will allow your hardware to run with more stability and often at a greater speed is to find out who makes individual components of your computer and their particular model numbers (the people you bought it off will be able to tell you). Once again, you can now go surfing the websites of these manufacturers looking for the updated software or head to www.driverguide.com.

To summarise, don’t underestimate how much of a change can be gained from updating all the software on your computer. Last year, when I used to live back in Devon I’d often take a customers hardware away for a couple of hours and update all the drivers and software over the Internet and if they’d never done it before, the resultant increase in stability and speed was staggering for something that you could do completely free of charge. Updating isn’t for the light-hearted however, so if in doubt please read a more detailed guide from the Internet or write in and I’ll do a more detailed follow-up in the forthcoming weeks.